I gave my first job interview today...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Scientists are even worse. (I'm looking at you, KH!)

Whatever. My stuff works. That's all I care about.

[Kuciwalker]

Think of the poor summer interns who have to look at your code, though

[KrazyHorse]

**** 'em

[rah]

Agree with Solver. I usually set my alarm to go off 20-25 minutes in so I have an out. And if I like the candidate and keep them after the alarm they even feel good that I thought the interview was important enough to take precedence over whatever the alarm was for.

Otherwise, it's "hmm, we seem to have run out of time, thank you very much"

[KrazyHorse]

I turned over 800 lines of code to another grad student to work with. 4 lines of comments.

[Jon Miller]

I know what all that stuff is and I am (it seems) a pretty poor programmer.

JM

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I've never heard of one phrased quite that way.

My roomate is an Electrical and Computer Engineering major. At MIT CS and EE are lumped together IIRC. But I don't think there's a CS + "generic engineering" (is there such a thing) degree anywhere.

I should have phrased that better. A better wording would have been "Computer Science Engineering".

But over here, the first year is common to all engineering disciplines, so every degree gives you a minimum understanding of engineering in general, and fits that "Specific discipline" + "Generic Engineering" thing you brought up. The ten (or fourteen) subjects we study in the first two semesters are:

Semester One

Basic Civil Engineering
Basic Electrical Engineering
Basic Mechanical Engineering
Mathematics I
Applied Science I
Engineering Graphics I*
Workshop I*


Semester Two

Basic Electronic Engineering
Mathematics II
Applied Science II
Engineering Graphics II
Engineering Mechanics
Computer Fundamentals*
Workshop II*

The ones marked with a * don't have a theory exam, they consist entirely of term work.

The workshop is all the standard stuff - carpentry, blacksmithy, welding (just basic arc welding with a simple joint), fitting (drilling, tapping, hacksaw operations), tin smithy (soldering and riveting), pipe joints (bending, threading, and welding), and plastic moulding (using an injection machine).

Engineering graphics covers the standard - projections of lines, planes, solids, sections of solids, development of lateral surfaces, and intersections of surfaces of solids, plus the standard orthographic projections and isometric projections of complex objects.

Computer fundamentals pretty much covers the basics of procedural programming - it's meant for the non-computer people who will probably never see the subject again. The real stuff starts in the second year.




The whole first year is a pretty thorough course. The idea is to provide the student the tools to understand all the fundamental engineering disciplines, so that later, he will have the ability to work through the smaller practical problems he faces himself. The first year is considered the toughest year from a student's point of view.


The degree covers all the standard programming and computer science mathematics (I checked and compared it with other universities), but also has a very heavy dose of electronics and the fundamentals of microprocessors and assembly language.




I've just realised how differently we cover the same syllabus. We cover all the same stuff you do, but from the second year on. I wonder what effect having such a syllabus in the first year has on students?

[Asher]

Originally posted by rah
Agree with Solver. I usually set my alarm to go 20-25 off minutes in so I have an out. And if I like the candidate and keep them after the alarm they even feel good that I thought the interview was important enough to take precedence for whatever the alarm was for.

Otherwise, it's "hmm, we seem to have run out of time, thank you very much"

Was my first interview, why not practice? Today is a slow day anyway.

Plus he had some real gems.

Q: "Can you explain the purpose of the heap in C++?"
A: "Sorry man, again, I thought this was a Java interview."
Q: "It's the same concept in Java."
A: "Oh. In Java huh. Um...er.....I've never actually used that in Java. I'm actually best prepared to talk about data structures."
Q: "Okay...can you please describe a heap as a data structure?"
A: (silence)

[Pekka]

KH, that's nice, I got this application, with no documentation what so ever. It was done in another Uni (foreign), and the dude who did it had gone underground, I don't know if he is even alive. And I was supposed to fix it, evaluate it and give it to people who will sell it directly. Almost no comments, and even they were in foreign language. No idea of naming conventions what so ever to help with the project. I turned it down.

[Pekka]

Asher, why did you keep interviewing him? Did you want to be nice to him, or were you just being a sadist?

You should have asked him about data structures in general and see what he would have answered. "Well, there's data here and data there. It can be fragmented."

[Asher]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
I turned over 800 lines of code to another grad student to work with. 4 lines of comments.

That's not that unusual. Investment banks in the US have lots of software like that...awful stuff.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Asher
It's fine to learn it informally, but philosophy taught academically by people like Agathon is a huge joke.

Philosophy is part of everyday life, not something to be lectured and quized on.

That's not really true. There's a whole lot of bull**** academic philosophy, about which you'd be correct, but much of academic philosophy (unfortunately, the less visible part) is very rigorous.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Pekka
Asher, why did you keep interviewing him? Did you want to be nice to him, or were you just being a sadist?

Bit of both, plus for the experience.

You should have asked him about data structures in general and see what he would have answered. "Well, there's data here and data there. It can be fragmented."

I did at the end to try to make him feel better. He was freaking out. So I asked simple questions about linked lists...drew a linked list on the board and asked him to use pseudocode to derive an algorithm to delete a node in the list. Was awesome, didn't even do that right.

[Cort Haus]

Asher, you should have denounced him for being a fraud and a cheat, promptly showing him the door.

[Solver]

But geez. How the frak do people get any technical degrees and end up not knowing the simplest things. Okay, the description of a heap as a data structure is, at least, a somewhat theoretical thing. I can understand how people don't know those - but inheritance is so practical that you just don't get any more practical...