My Startup Job Interview

http://blog.galler.io/startup-screen

by sgustard • 13 years ago

112 95 13 years ago

blog.galler.io

bliti4• 13 years ago

A guy in a shirt, a guy in a polo, and an Asian lady. Why not a lady? Not calling you racist, but it is interesting how the race of non-whites seems to be included in some manner like it is always relevant. Why not mention the race of the two other people? Is it less relevant? You only mention the lady once. What role did she play in the situation?

Just curious.

milesokeefe• 13 years ago

You could make the same point about OP specifying the type of shirt. It was just a detail.

netcan3• 13 years ago

Good storytelling. One quick detail per person sends the reader on the path to creating their own imaginary picture.

bliti4• 13 years ago

I do understand that. It is a good technique to use. But my question is: Why mention the fact that the lady was Asian, when she is not mentioned again in the story? I feel that providing the extra detail without further involving the character takes away from the story. What does the Asian lady do in the scenario? Does her being Asian somehow influence? People from some Asian countries are very polite and reserved. Did that influence the interview in some way?

Its as if I wrote the following:

John, Mike, and a white man sat down in my table. We all talked about our trip to Disney Land. Dinner was fine, except for the fish. It was over cooked. Mike sent it back to the kitchen, and they prepared another one. Afterwards, we went to the local arcade. Where a mean game of Galaga was played. John, as always, had the high score. I was not as lucky. The score was affected by my bad sleeping habits. Ever since starting this new job, I simply cannot fall asleep as easily as before.

danso• 13 years ago

Perhaps the Asian lady was unclothed?

Joking aside, it's possible that these details stuck in the OP's mind because she happened to be one of the only females and/or Asians in the group.

gedrap• 13 years ago

Or he didn't think about it at all, it just popped to his head and he forgot how race-sensitive some people might be.

altero• 13 years ago

Because otherwise someone else would complain it is white sausage fest?

ianstallings3• 13 years ago

I'm not calling you a racist, I'll just allude to it.

Why are you saying Dave the Polo Shirt guy was not white? He didn't mention that.. Not saying you're a racist..

Tichy2• 13 years ago

Asian ladies tend to look different from Caucasian ladies. So it evokes a different picture. I don't think racism or sexism or anything needs to be cited. Sure, you can point out that he seems to be writing from the default perspective of a white Caucasian (assuming everybody else is also a white Caucasian, unless mentioned otherwise). Is that a crime? I think not. If you are from a different background and curious about the "race" of the guys, just ask.

Gygash• 13 years ago

Because white and male are the default assumed race and gender[1].

[1] http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/why-is-white-male...

tedks• 13 years ago

You realize that your link argues against this social reality, right?

But now we have female doctors, lawyers, professors, and presidents. In fact, we have so many of them (even in heavily male-dominated areas like the physical sciences) that it’s no longer fair, or correct, to assume that the person in question is male. So how about we just collectively get over gender-stereotyping truck drivers, cardiologists, and pre-school teachers? I’m not saying we should aim to stop using gender qualifiers right this second. But it might not be a bad idea to pause and ask yourself why you think you need to specify that the doctor is female and the teacher is male. Is it important? Or is it just not exactly what you would expect?

Tichy2• 13 years ago

I looked on Wikipedia, apparently Asian Americans comprise 5.6% of the population. Perhaps that is low enough to not be the default assumption about somebody, warranting special mention? Also according to Wikipedia "White Americans" are 72% of the population.

static_typed• 13 years ago

Do you have a strong shoulder? From carrying that rather large chip on it?

Just curious?

smtddr• 13 years ago

You need to chill out. That is a seriously gigantic leap & stretch of logic to bring the word "racism" into. You do nothing but harm the foundation of the people pointing out real racism/sexist incidents. CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING(I'm saying that a lot these days), this is a satire story about a start-up's interview process. Good Story-telling causes the reader to bring up images in their mind. Simply mentioning a race isn't racism in this context. The story wasn't even using it in a negative way or anything.

snake_plissken• 13 years ago

It's story telling; trying to tell a good story with the use of certain specific descriptions the author feels reflect the environment. The use of 'Asian Lady' invokes imagery of a stoic, calculating, strictly business and slightly mysterious entity, which may or may not exercise some large degree of control over the situation.

hackinthebochs• 13 years ago

That actually stood out to me as well, but I disagree with the others that the detail was meaningless. Of course, the detail we choose to convey has very specific meaning, sometimes unintentionally. The point of "asian lady" does paint a specific picture, but to me it conjures an image of an older, motherly/grandmotherly image (no one refers to a woman in their age/social/cultural group as 'lady' these days). The point was likely to describe a very unusual group of people: "Two Daves, one in a T-shirt, and an [old] Asian lady". The lack of racial details of the Daves indicates that they're the typical archetype of a young startup programmer. They could essentially be any race, so it didn't matter to point it out. The asian lady was meant to be the oddball, so that specific detail was necessary to paint that picture.

bliti4• 13 years ago

I see. Your interpretation makes sense. I did not take into account the word lady. I now understand the implication of her being mentioned. Normally, I use lady to refer to every, well, lady. It was my own habit that kept me from understanding the context behind the words.

sgustard2• 13 years ago

There's not a good term for a female peer. Lady or woman tend to imply someone older. Girl or gal are insulting. What's the equivalent for "guy" that means "just this female dude, you know?"

talmir• 13 years ago

In reverse, why would it be such a bad thing that he mentioned that she was asian? Is then not as offending that he referred to an individual purely by an article of clothing.

PC, while good when faced with derogatory remarks and such, can be overused.

I did my bachelors degree in a pretty small school which was mostly filled with white teachers and students (I live in the north), and on staff there was only a single black man. It was quite interesting repeatedly seeing PC conscious people looking for him:

"Is Andy here?" "Which Andy are you referring to? We have three," "Oh.. erm.."

I am not saying "Oh, lets all be non-PC", but if the only defining feature about a person is being asian I dont see why it would be any worse than saying "dark haired woman".

The minute we assign some kind of shame in either direction when it comes to pointing out race, disabilities or any other defining features, that is the moment we are steering in the wrong direction.

redcan• 13 years ago

What was the closed form expression for the number of rabbits?

anvarik• 13 years ago

Am also curious.

benjaminwootton• 13 years ago

I've made a good living as a programmer for a decade now, and I'm not afraid to say I don't even understand the question.

It's a silly question unless it's for a quantitative role.

duiker101• 13 years ago

Thank god I am not alone...

agibsonccc2• 13 years ago

Edit: Redacted: left for consistency. Had him confused there.

A closed form expression is basically just a mathematical function used to model a potentially infinite series.

Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-form_expression

Look at the first and second examples.

You'll see the big summation sign (for loop: i to infinite) and then an explicit function.

If you want to think, what the heck is this math crap used for: think about a more basic everyday concept like recursion. How do you know it will terminate?

tjbiddle• 13 years ago

Good to hear. I'm working as a Jr. Software Engineer now, and I don't consider mathematics one of my strong points. Do many positions actually expect people to know these kinds of questions? I'd crash and burn here.

peter-fogg• 13 years ago

It's underspecified anyway -- we need to know about the motion of rabbits, the troll, the density of black holes, etc.

arethuza2• 13 years ago

In that context I'd be really tempted to ask why they needed a closed form expression for the number of rabbits...

raverbashing• 13 years ago

Yes

But my bet would be zero, if the troll has infinite time

dferlemann• 13 years ago

I don't think the question is complete... otherwise I probably just give: x => Num of Rabbits, y => Num Holes x,y,x+y=[0,m*n-1]

konstantintin• 13 years ago

probaby not right...

E(number_of_rabbits) = rabbits_in_last_turn - prob(land on rabbit) - sum_i_to_infinity(prob(land_on_blackhole)^i*prob(land on rabbit))

pmelendez2• 13 years ago

This is not a closed form thought... (although it sounds about right)

kdavis• 13 years ago

My guess is that you'd model the troll as a 2D simple symmetric random walk with the rabbits and black holes stationary and distributed randomly with some densities R and B.

As a first go I'd assume that the topology was that of a torus, so as to not deal with the boundary. Now, as the exact definition of a "round" wasn't specified, I'll just assume the troll can walk forever.

Now, it's been proven that a simple symmetric random walk on a 2D lattice has probability 1 of reaching any given point as the number of steps goes to infinity. So, ignoring the teleporting, the closed form answer for the number of rabbits eaten is mnR.

With teleporting, I'd guess the Markov chain would mix better. So, the closed form answer would again be mnR.

mattemattematte• 13 years ago

I'll give it a try...

The number of rabbits at the (i+1)'th step is equal to the number of rabbits at the i'th step minus that one rabbit which is /maybe/ being eaten. And the "maybe" I think can be quantified as the probability the Troll has to find a rabbit at the i'th step. So:

R_(i+1) = R_i -1 * P(Troll finds a rabbit)

And now we have to calculate the probability of the event "Troll finds a rabbit" (i'll call it event A). There are 2 cases: * the Troll falls into a black hole (btw, i'm gonna assume the blackholes teleport to any cell with uniform probability); * the Troll does not fall into a black hole;

I'm going to call these two events B and not(B).

So:

P(A) = P(A given B) + P(A given not(B))

Well, P(A given B) is the probability that Troll is being teleported to a cell with a rabbit in it, that is number of rabbits over number of cells: R_i / (nm)

P(A given not(B)) is the probability that Troll will step on a rabbit in a nearby cell which is: rabbits' density over 8: R_i / (8nm)

So:

R_(i+1) = R_i - ( R_i/nm + R_i/8nm ) = R_i * ( 1 - 9/8nm ) = ... iterating ... = R_0 * ( 1 - 9/8nm )^i

R_0 being the initial number of rabbits. I'm not sure all this is correct, but that formula confirms the following intuitions: * The number of rabbits is monotonically decreasing at every step; * The bigger the grid, the slower the decrease.

edit: The closed formula would be:

int numOfRabbits(int numOfSteps) {

    if (numOfSteps == 0) return R_0;

    else return R_0 * (1 - 9/8nm)^(numOfSteps-1);

}

tharshan09• 13 years ago

the guy is exaggerating right?

basicallydan• 13 years ago

Um, I'm not sure what the point of this post was apart from an mildly interesting story, well told. I enjoyed reading it, thanks.

facorreia• 13 years ago

Wait, it's on production? What is this, Ender's Game?

Great description of surprise push-to-production.

kazagistar• 13 years ago

So much so that I feel the birth of a new slang expression.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

Does this make Facebook the ultimate expression of Ender's Game?

lucianomt• 13 years ago

I actually LOL'd, which is rare.

pc86• 13 years ago

Telling us about it should be even more rare :)

dylangs1030• 13 years ago

It's like something out of a hacker action flick.

"You have 60 minutes to code a security patch for a vulnerable payment processing app."

"Congratulations, you shipped to a million people and saved the company from hackers."

I laughed pretty hard at that, and the "aggressive integration bit"...I'd probably leave if a company decided to ship something I coded in an hour in an interview.

jzwinck• 13 years ago

This happened to me once, as in my first month at a new job, I came in one day to find I had caused a bug in production. But I hadn't deployed any software!

It turned out that the department had carefully orchestrated a system whereby all checked-in code would move automatically to alpha the next day, then beta, then production the next week. But nobody told me.

A manager there later told me, "If the code we write is strong enough, it does not need to be released--it will escape."

And the student understood.

enry_straker2• 13 years ago

What did you understand?

- That the manager decides what gets pushed into production?

- That the manager decides not to inform the programmers concerned?

- That you have a clown for a manager?

- That it's probably time to quit the company?

infinite8s2• 13 years ago

Was this at a company owned by the richest man in NYC?

alexmorse• 13 years ago

I'm looking forward to the collected essays "Somewhat verbatim guide on how not to run a company."

advisedwang• 13 years ago

Verbose.

Verbatim means "in exactly the same words as were used originally."

redfhendrix3• 13 years ago

I think that's what the "Somewhat" is for. It's supposed to enhance the satirical qualities of the pieces.

i.e. "This is exactly how I perceive start-up interviews but I've taken some creative liberties to drive my point home."

ulisesrmzroche• 13 years ago

Verbose means a shit-ton of words so that's not the right usage.

memsom• 13 years ago

Doesn't it just mean "word for word" or "exactly the same as"? I don't think the extra words in your explanation really need to be there. One can use the term in general, such as "copy an essay verbatim" or really any type of work or performance (e.g. musical recording), even if it is non verbal.

jaredstenquist• 13 years ago

I'd look at this as a positive experience. You were able to realize in an hour or two, with one visit, that XYZ company was not a good fit for you.

There's a good chance the next company will suck for some reason or another. On to the next one.

ryandetzel• 13 years ago

Sounds about right. You forgot the ridiculous comp sci question that you'll never use (or you could lookup easy enough) but they want to make sure you paid attention in class 5 years ago.

redfhendrix3• 13 years ago

It seems that 90% of the comments have missed the fact that this is obviously hyperbolic satire....

riggins• 13 years ago

yep.

In light of this being satire, the HN news comments are 10x funnier than the article itself.

Some unsolicited advice (you're lucky, you found out it was a crap company in 2 hours) and some PC outrage (why does it have to be an Asian lady).

infinite8s2• 13 years ago

And an unnamed Asian lady at that.

philangist• 13 years ago

It's not really that hyperbolic. Only thing that clued me in was surprise push to production.

redfhendrix3• 13 years ago

After staring at the rabbit, black hole, and troll question for a few seconds and going "WUT?" I started to get the feeling this didn't actually happen.

arethuza2• 13 years ago

A few years back I joined a company that was doing really interesting and very highly technical stuff only to discover that the only bit of that hyperbole that didn't match their antics was the fact by saying "push to production" sort of implies that they are using a revision control system. Which the lot I joined didn't....

I'd also never seen software deployment by RAID before... (or happily since)

Mind you, they were bought for a pile of money and the people who thought the above were a good idea made out like bandits.

badman_ting2• 13 years ago

Uh, then count me among those who don't get it.

soneca2• 13 years ago

Me too. Just after reading redfhendrix comment that I actually realized "Oh... indeed".

I read it first as a description, not satire.

corobo• 13 years ago

This is one of those blogs that needs an RSS feed or email subscription. I'm interested in reading more from it, however will have forgotten the domain by the end of the day

at-fates-hands2• 13 years ago

One of the reasons HN needs a search function for stories. Don't know how many times I remember a cool story a co-worker would want to read and can't find it for the life of me - even after trying to wrestle the story out of Google.

Also, if there is some decent way to search the links or stories which I don't know of, by all means, tell me.

unimpressive• 13 years ago

https://www.hnsearch.com/

mlashcorp• 13 years ago

Sounds like fiction

untitledwiz• 13 years ago

I thought it was very well written and was quite amused!

dandare• 13 years ago

“If you could change anything, what would it be?”

I want to be smarter.

ramy_d• 13 years ago

Your question.

ianstallings3• 13 years ago

“If you could change anything, what would it be?”

"My honesty"

"I don't see honesty as a problem that needs changing"

"I don't give a shit what you think"

bookface2• 13 years ago

Every "bad interview" story that graces the front page of HN has this common theme that the interviewee is an infallible genius who aces every question.

I know there's a bias here (better engineers are probably more likely to blog in the first place and most people would rather write about an experience where they're the "victor"), but it would be nice to read an article from someone acknowledging their own failure just once.

conjectures• 13 years ago

You've also got to wonder whether what gets voted to front page HN is biased. Could be there's lots of accounts of abject failure out there - just nobody is amused by them.

reikonomusha• 13 years ago

I see what you're saying, but I can provide at least one counterexample. This was on the front page whenever: http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=2055

There were loads of interviewee issues that occurred in the article. Hopefully that balances things a little.

bookface2• 13 years ago

Good read. Thanks for that.

edit: HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6243627

at-fates-hands2• 13 years ago

When I read stories like these, I don' think of it in terms of the interviewee being a genius and "above" the silly questions they ask them. For me, it's a look inside a company who doesn't have their shit together and doesn't know how to properly interview candidates for the position they're hiring.

sgustard2• 13 years ago

See the story of the person who broke down crying at an interview, from last week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6389293

soneca2• 13 years ago

This is the first post of their "saga": http://blog.galler.io/startup-dialog

Maybe it will help everybody understand that this is a satire...

enry_straker2• 13 years ago

The problem with satire is when it hits too close to home - and you recognize it as SOP in many organizations.

ianstallings3• 13 years ago

That's not a problem, it's a solution. To you losing your sanity ;)

Sometimes it's best just to laugh at the sheer insanity of it all. We'll get there guys, but it might take a couple hundred years.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

Ahh... The rabbit hole question seemed like a hint too, but this confirms it. Unfortunately this means that the Enders Game line wasn't said in reality. Though perhaps in the future it will be.

ssw1n3• 13 years ago

Rabbit Hole and Troll .... :)

idProQuo• 13 years ago

Oscar Wilde: I wish I had said that. James McNeill Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

girvo• 13 years ago

I know this is satire... But quite literally, at a place I worked at (for two months, I quit) they actually did push code that wrote in the second interview to production.

mason552• 13 years ago

I was at a talk last week where pushing interview code to production was highlighted as a good lean practice and recruiting tool

Someone in the audience asked if they made the interviewees sign anything since the company was using their unpaid labor and the guy giving the talk was seriously dumbfounded as if the idea had literally never even occurred to him.

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

Sounds like they don't even need to recruit anyone, just continuously hold interviews.

ssw1n3• 13 years ago

On the next episode, I guess the character Mike will get an offer, and will be asked to move-in to the company house where all 5 employees of the whole company live in the same big apartment?

jackmaney2• 13 years ago

And then there will be a reality show called "Six is a Company".

viennacoder• 13 years ago

It's funny because it's true.

My Startup Job Interview

Related Stories