My hypothesis is that on-the-spot problem solvers are likely good at playing office politics, which can lead to the appearance of being more competent. I have never seen a quick thinker be bad at office politics.
Hi? I never even try to play office politics, and have lost at least one job as a result, but I routinely do well with with this sort of puzzle. I don't see a connection.
> In a particularly egregious example of this, when I was interviewing for my second job out of college, I was asked to come up with an algorithm to eventually sink a submarine with unknown (but integral) position and velocity that was somewhere on a number line. (Spoiler alert: to solve this problem, you need to know how to enumerate the rationals.) Once again, zero lines of code.
Once a new employee in a company posted this problem for discussion, claiming that the wording is intentionally changed to make it unsearchable, and the year was 2008. So I'm really interested how this wording came here - was the task popular enough to make it to the Web afterwards or is Emma's knowledge traceable to that employee through a chain of interested people? Or is there some other explanation?
There are problems with evaluating people all around. I had a recruiter flat out tell me I'm simply unqualified for the position. Had I not been so passionate about the product and company, I'd have moved on. Instead, I did an end run around the recruiter and accepted an offer within a couple of weeks.
> "Listen, the very last thing I want is to sound ungrateful. At that first job, I learned all of those things I listed, and more, because the senior engineers patiently sat with me and put up with my stupid questions and never got frustrated with me, even when I got frustrated with myself. But it took me more than a year."
So, you tell me a company succesfully trained you, fresh out of school, in a little more than a year ? It seems to me their recruitment process was actually very good !
Had they pick someone clueless about maths, but good at everything else you listed, they may have never successfully trained her in years.
Of course, maybe maths wasn't relevant at all for the job, in which case it probably was a bad process still, but without more information, it looks correct to me.
> CS theory and problem-solving skills are the important things, the difficult things, and if you know them, everything else is easy.
Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because yes, I absolutely thought that - this blog post is the first time I've ever heard anybody suggest otherwise. A smart software manager would be working to pair up people like her who are good at and enjoy algorithmic puzzle solving but not as interested in the code with people like me who aren't so great at solving riddles but can apply stuff like a mofo. Instead they insist on trying to save money by finding a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem and end up losing more than they could ever save churning through people they see as pawns and expendable resources.
I agree. I've coded for more than a dozen years, and the most advanced math I ever had to use was modular arithmetic --- which is actually quite simple. I call it advanced because I went all the way through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, and I never once had a lesson on the modulus. I learned it on the job out of desperation. As many of you know, it comes up a few times in certain programming problems. While I find pi intriguing and the 100 Prisoners Problem fun to ponder, I never was into math like some people, and I dread the day I have one of those kinds of interviews.
In fact my background is in English. I tripped into programming quite against my will and now love it, and I always thought that all those math nerds who think programming is most like math never really understood English Composition, because I see parallels all the time (the kind taught in The Elements of Style and On Writing Well, which are classics but actually unlike most writing books). Emma said, "To my surprise, CS wasn't different from math at all." To my surprise, CS wasn't different from English at all (again, English Composition, not English Literature).
By the way, I will say that Emma not only is a master of math but also English. Her article was very well written. As casual as it seems, its rhythms, word choice, and humor are masterful. It outstrips the attempts of most bloggers who try to be chummy and funny and who wind up just being annoying.
Actually what programming most reminds me of is organizing, sort of like cleaning my room, trying to fit suitcases in a trunk, or filing papers. Which items are most like each other? How can we fit them more closely together? What if we rotate this one or repackage that one into a different shape? I suppose then it is like architecture or engineering, although I've never formally studied either one.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 38.4 ms ] threadOnce a new employee in a company posted this problem for discussion, claiming that the wording is intentionally changed to make it unsearchable, and the year was 2008. So I'm really interested how this wording came here - was the task popular enough to make it to the Web afterwards or is Emma's knowledge traceable to that employee through a chain of interested people? Or is there some other explanation?
> "Listen, the very last thing I want is to sound ungrateful. At that first job, I learned all of those things I listed, and more, because the senior engineers patiently sat with me and put up with my stupid questions and never got frustrated with me, even when I got frustrated with myself. But it took me more than a year."
So, you tell me a company succesfully trained you, fresh out of school, in a little more than a year ? It seems to me their recruitment process was actually very good !
Had they pick someone clueless about maths, but good at everything else you listed, they may have never successfully trained her in years.
Of course, maybe maths wasn't relevant at all for the job, in which case it probably was a bad process still, but without more information, it looks correct to me.
Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because yes, I absolutely thought that - this blog post is the first time I've ever heard anybody suggest otherwise. A smart software manager would be working to pair up people like her who are good at and enjoy algorithmic puzzle solving but not as interested in the code with people like me who aren't so great at solving riddles but can apply stuff like a mofo. Instead they insist on trying to save money by finding a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem and end up losing more than they could ever save churning through people they see as pawns and expendable resources.
In fact my background is in English. I tripped into programming quite against my will and now love it, and I always thought that all those math nerds who think programming is most like math never really understood English Composition, because I see parallels all the time (the kind taught in The Elements of Style and On Writing Well, which are classics but actually unlike most writing books). Emma said, "To my surprise, CS wasn't different from math at all." To my surprise, CS wasn't different from English at all (again, English Composition, not English Literature).
By the way, I will say that Emma not only is a master of math but also English. Her article was very well written. As casual as it seems, its rhythms, word choice, and humor are masterful. It outstrips the attempts of most bloggers who try to be chummy and funny and who wind up just being annoying.
Actually what programming most reminds me of is organizing, sort of like cleaning my room, trying to fit suitcases in a trunk, or filing papers. Which items are most like each other? How can we fit them more closely together? What if we rotate this one or repackage that one into a different shape? I suppose then it is like architecture or engineering, although I've never formally studied either one.