skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think your anecdotal 2nd hand experience is at odds with lostcolony's point at all.

As much as people say they don't care about the answer and suboptimal is okay, generally it isn't, there's very often a very specific answer they want you to arrive at or you are some version of wrong; so the interview is either failed or succeeds on whether or not the interviewee has seen this problem (or one close enough to be virtually indistinguishable from it) before and can remember how to monkey dance through the steps of it again. So a suboptimal answer ends up being approximately the same as a wrong answer which fits into lostcolony's narrative perfectly well.

So basically you have a few different types of possible interview outcomes with these puzzle-interviews:

#1 Candidate who isn't a good fit (lacks experience, maybe just plain not that bright) fails because he or she is just not a good logical thinker and thus not a very good programmer.

#2 Candidate who is a good fit (has plenty of experience and practical programming knowledge) fails because social anxiety kicks in when confronted with a puzzle they don't recognize at first glance, making it difficult to figure out a solution that they may very well be able to knock out in 15 minutes if they were sitting at home with Google, some books, and nobody (who has important fate deciding power over them) looking over their shoulder.

#3 Candidate who is a good fit who recognizes the problem from having seen it and worked through it before, "solves" it, maybe even solves it in a suboptimal way at first in order to avoid looking like they knew the solution all along because they saw it yesterday on some interview quiz website, then busts out the optimal solution as if it came fully formed from their glorious brain box.

I've been both #2 and #3 plenty of times each and know lots of others in the field who will admit to being both of those people at different times and different places in different interviews. Occasionally you can be a partial #2 and still make it through and get an offer because you already had a bias working in your favor (recommended by someone the interviewer trusts), so the interviewer can start to believe the claptrap that the process is important and not the answer. But with no such bias working in your favor, you're done for!

I'll accept there may be a #4, super genius who can really figure all of these puzzles out on the fly from first principles, but that's like a 0.001%er and even if they exist, it is ridiculous that people are looking for that person to write code for their relatively straightforward CRUD app or social media webwhozit thing.

Ultimately, IMO, the whole system is fucking stupid and everyone who isn't a complete jackass realizes it but nothing ever really gets done to fix it on a systemic level.
"304a554a310c7e546dfe434669c62820b7d83490" (160 bits) was reportedly worth millions of dollars https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/06/17/critical-update-re-dao-...
> I'm dumb and worthless.

No you are not. You passed the interview and you are working at one of the "Big 4" tech. It's a great achievement there.

> I'll never get a job again because I can't solve the puzzles.

Don't worry those skills are trainable. There are several online resources to improve your puzzle solving skills[0],[1],[2]. It takes time but it's definitely doable. Beside having the current company name on your resume is a really big plus.

If you are too stressful, go our with your wife do something fun with her, visit your friends or your family members. Don't forget to LIVE YOUR LIFE.

[0] - https://www.careercup.com/
[1] - http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/
[2] - https://leetcode.com/
Is it just me or does anybody else feel like China will be the most important threat for U.S in the next 5-10 years? I am talking w.r.t trade, cyber security, etc.
How's this any better than https://trollingeffects.org/
I don't see any grounds for your statement that they scraped
the content.

I appreciate you looking over my shoulder and giving your take. I'm using (maybe misusing) "scraping" interchangeably with "plagiarizing."

In fact, both the OP and your linked article clearly cite the
exact same paper that they both took your referenced content
from.

Citing the paper isn't the concerning bit. Did you find the full example phrase I mentioned anywhere else[0] on the Internet (aside from the blog)? From what I could tell, the phrase isn't in the research paper. That and other phrases seems like OC that was lifted without citation.

[0]https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&output=search&s...
It sounds like you are not a good personality match for the other people on the team (and vice versa). Some people are very facts / decision driven and will push their opinions a lot more, whereas you sound like someone who is more receptive / consensus driven. If one team accumulates people who work in one way, anyone who doesn't fit that mold could struggle on the team since the behavior expected of them does not come naturally.

How would you feel about being more pushy with your methods / opinions? You can always push back on feedback in pull requests if you feel your contributions are being suppressed. It sounds like your manager might approve of you being "less nice" this way.

The most important thing to remember is that the intelligence you feel you had is still there in exactly the same place. Just because you cannot show your ability on your current team, it doesn't mean the next team won't think you're amazing.

Have you tried moving within your current company?
Whether or not you pass job interview with company X or company Y says precisely nothing about your value as an employee or as a person.

It's like dating. Either the fit is there or it is not. In most cases not (for most people). Just keep dating till you find there's an easy fit. Same with job searching.
Ignition is great in theory but worryingly slow in tests I've run on Canary. I'm hoping they catch up to JSC's interpreter soon.
> so getting a "pure" interpreter might be much more work.

If that's the case I'd have to take their word for it.. it's their code so they know the pitfalls. It still surprises me though: if I was developing a feature like that it would be the first thing I'd want to get working so I could try all of my test cases on interpeter-only mode.

Maybe there are some types of code that the interpreter just can't handle and always fall back into the JIT?

> The ecosystem has not settled on V8

Sorry, I probably didn't express myself wall. I personally am excited about the development of other js engines, and I also home that continues.

For non-browser js, though, node is the 800lb gorilla. I'm hoping that the (apparently reborn?) Spidermonkey or node-chakracore really take off to the point they're first-class options for using with node. However, I am not sure if that will ever happen.

I personally think duktape gets a lot of things right with its lua-inspired API and easy portability. However, it will probably never have a JIT available.
Public utilities are regulated, which require them to make their case in front of a judge for price changes.
I was under the impression that they had already started doing that ;)
> It wouldn't be an example of undefined behavior as given at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undefined_behavior : "undefined behavior (UB) is the result of executing computer code that does not have a prescribed behavior by the language specification" because Python prescribes that behavior.

But the C spec doesn't prescribe any behavior in this case, and the code that is running in this case is C, not Python! It was written in C, it was compiled by a C compiler -- it's C! Whether or not the behavior is undefined for anything a C program does is determined by the C spec only. The Python spec is not relevant. Any C program that overflows an int has done something undefined, whether or not that C program happens to be a Python implementation.
Do you really not see the difference between military blockade and randomizing CSS classes?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12347100 and marked it off-topic.
It's common in high performance code to use spin locks (also called busy waiting) to reduce latency. In some circumstances it's better to do nothing and be available almost immediately to do some work than to naively context switch away and pay the penalty of context switching back later. Check out how futexes are implemented in Linux for an example - hybrid mutex and spin lock.
I really wish that there was some statistics out there that supported your claim. It would make the interview process seem a lot more sane.
I am not sure if this is scientifically proven or not but I have seem people who stay off sugars, starches, and alcohol look atleast 10 years younger.
I wish everyone would start 120 FPS/4K(downscaled to 4K). That would be great.
Feel free to email me. I care.
I Quit My Job and Started My Own Business, Taoist Style
That's seriously out of line. Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News, regardless of how wrong someone is. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it. Instead, please re-read the following, and post civilly and substantively, or not at all, from now on:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345209 and marked it off-topic.
I see that Pro is more costly too now. IIRC, it used to be $5.
All good - I think the initial short comment and the subtle "hypothetically" really just obscured what you were trying to say in response to the parent's "entirely subjective" comment - that some languages are objectively technologically superior to some others.

I do agree with that. I can think of various languages over ColdFusion as an example. Python versus PHP is not so clear cut if you look at the modern versions.

Anyway, I do think we should be more welcoming to those that use other languages though as the article recommends. It's possible to make a LOT of money these days doing simple CRUD apps. It's a great time to be a developer. We're all very blessed. So shouting about how one language is superior to another is meaningless to a lot of people. Even if you're right, people will feel like you're telling them they wasted their time with the others language(s). And that approach won't convert them if that's your goal.

Many of us also partake in business decisions so even if you think Python is technologically superior to PHP as an example, it won't make sense for many projects. Depending on your client base and/or your in-house skill-set - it may rarely make sense.

After you factor in things like total cost of ownership, what a client's current tech team is capable in, hosting costs, etc, technologically superior can be meaningless in many situations.

Enterprise systems are usually technologically superior and clients often only need or use 25% or less of the capabilities. Most of us could care less about enterprise systems.
Another trick: You can hover over elements in chrome with F12 and the inspect tool, then right click > copy > copy selector and chrome will generate one for you that way you don't have to actually do any work.

With a selector it's easy to grab data, here's a linux command that gets every user that posted in this thread:

lynx -base -source 'https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345693' | hxnormalize -x | \
hxselect -c -s '\n' "td > table > tbody > tr > td.default > div:nth-child(1) > span > a.hnuser"

Here are the most frequent commenters:

27 cookiecaper
22 franciskim
6 fake-name
4 niftich
4 flukus
4 elmigranto
4 downandout
3 tedunangst
3 siegecraft
3 muglug
3 minimaxir
3 madamelic
i am a decidedly non-morning person.

i wake up at 4 am everyday because i need to get into the office by 5, and lots of things needs to be done by 7.

by noon my productivity falls off a cliff and I am a zombie by 6 pm but the social life begins at the time when friends and family get off work. you can choose to cut that out of your life... but that's a huge sacrifice.

when the weekend comes around, i'm in bed until noon, and then by sunday i'm back to ready to hit the sack at 2am again, except that work starts in 3 hours.

every week this cycle of absolute torture goes around, and has been my life for the last 5 years.

but what this article is not about is the time you wake up, but the quality, quiet time you put aside for important things, before work starts. for me, that would be 2 to 4 am before i go to work, but obviously that's not happening. so just because you wake up at 4 doesn't obviously mean anything on its own, the important thing is waking up at 4 when your workday begins at 7.
Do your research, don't ask me to do it for you.

https://wiki.freebsd.org/qemu

qemu runs on Linux, OSX, Windows, and various smaller Unicies.
Accusations/insinuations of shillage are not allowed on HN without evidence. An opposing view is not enough to count as evidence. I agree that that changes if someone uses HN exclusively to push a certain line, but that isn't the case here.

Playing the "you're shilling" card (or insinuating it, which amounts to the same thing) is a huge breach of civility, so the bar needs to be high—high enough to exclude it as an internet trope or argument tactic—and I don't think you cleared it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345189 and marked it off-topic.
Depending on how the battles with his wife go, it could get a whole lot colder!
Ask HN: Is the future of server-client communication gRPC or GraphQL?
This is similar to the comment I was looking to make. That many of us look to YC batches for innovative ideas, the things no one had thought of yet. YC is likely simply looking for the angles that will make money, and sometimes it's just doing something normal but in a slightly new way.

So many of the comments are then about lame ideas.
I vote to keep it.
2.5 seconds 0-60 with the kids in the trunk doesn't add anything new?

Tesla already has liability with the push of "auto-pilot" as a marketing term. Boats have auto-pilot. Tesla's do not.
I very much recommend trying to move within your current company, in addition to other strategies.

The Big 4 are, by definition, Big. They are filled with many different teams with many different personalities and team functioning.

If you have non-bad performance, changing teams may be much easier than going through interviews at another company.
Loomio co-founder here, happy to answer any questions.
The point usually isn't to convince the haters, it's to convince the bystanders who might've been swayed by the haters' arguments.
I've had this happen regularly enough that I developed the habit of finding a fare in the morning and then returning at 11pm ready to buy.
Show HN: Zen List – Queue-based task management app to prevent context switching
There have been a couple points in my life where I felt like you describe. I felt worthless and was experiencing suicidal ideation. The way out for me was challenging assumptions I had been living under.

One thing I suggest for you is to challenge the assumption that working for a Big 4 company equals success. There are a lot of alternatives out there. A lot of people find success and value working for companies that produces things they are into, that may not be traditional tech companies. These places tend to have a lot of trouble finding technologists, because everyone wants to work Big 4, at an established unicorn, or at a hot, rising pre-unicorn. There are companies out there that don't do puzzles. As a hiring manager, I think they're worthless.

When I was in a dark place, I didn't seek professional help, but I'd recommend it to anybody who is depressed. I think I was playing with fire struggling to fix myself. I got lucky that I found my way out. I don't suggest taking that chance.

I also suggest seeking couples' counseling to help you and your wife get on the same page. It truly sounds like some time off to regroup could make a massive difference. Having someone help you two unpack your underlying goals and help you think outside of the box could be very helpful.

It's not an accident that you got your job. You are smart. Hang in there. Take it from somebody who's been there, there is light down the tunnel, and there's so much joy to be had on the other side.
Is there any reason Go couldn't allow defining methods on types defined in another package? It seems like you could allow that, gain the property you want, and still have structural typing.

The confusing thing about this if you did implement it, is if you import a package B that implements more methods for a type in package A, do those methods magically become available to you?

One of the nicest properties about Go currently IMO is that it's always very, very clear where things are defined.
This is exactly my response to "you can't legally scrape my site because of TOS." I don't think anyone has a legal right to tell me HOW I use their service. Making "browsing my website using a script you wrote yourself" illegal is akin to "You cannot use the tab key to tab between fields on my website, you must only use the touchpad to move the cursor over each field individually."

It's baloney.
Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?
Deep Thought told me it was 42.
This is the kind of stuff companies should get tax breaks for.
Allegedly, yes. But the person who has seen it before is able to arrive at an answer, have it be ideal, and justify it, a lot more readily than someone who has never seen it before. That's what the OP was even saying; if he's seen it before he does fine, if he hasn't he struggles and freezes up. That describes a LOT of people. It's also why I tend to interview with trivial questions, things that algorithmically have no trick at all to them (or we give them the algorithm).
> The real winner in this whole situation is Nintendo. Niantic has effectively given their entire userbase over to Nintendo -- and even though Nintendo's doing very little to attract or keep them, they'll probably still get some extra 3DS + game sales as a result.

I don't understand how that follows. How did Niantic give any of its userbase over to Nintendo? Pokemon Go does very little to advance the Nintendo games - there's literally zero upsell involved (or even any cross-advertising).

You could say that the Pokemon Go brand might sell some extra copies of Sun & Moon in November, but I'd argue that the effect runs mostly in the other direction. Pokemon Go was successful because of Nintendo's Pokemon brand. And to at least a degree, that capital is finite (people's appetite for Pokemon-related games is a finite resource, and it's possible that overexposure to Pokemon Go could make them less excited about the upcoming 3DS games).
First of all, your problem starts before the interview.
Before an engineer, you are a human being. Think about the balance in your life. Once you understand how to balance your life, you can proceed to worry about your occupation.

Think to which extent your external and self criticism is factual and fair. Before dealing with opinions, deal with facts. What are the FACTS behind the opinions? are they true? is the opinion proportional to the fact? And work your way through there.
Don't you have workplace laws which require breaks from using a computer all day? Those breaks are by law paid. Whether you have lunch on top of those breaks or not I don't care.
I was where you are, but not in as good of a position.

You will be ok.

If your current team is smarter than you and you helped hire them, then that should be a feather in your cap. Even if you are on such a smart team, that is a sign that you did something right at some point, right?

Some things you could do:

* Go to a recommended psychiatrist. There are many new variations of drugs, and they should be familiar with them. Don't just go with something because they mention it and don't try too much at once. Make sure they have all the info they need to help you solve things.

* Reduce intake of bread, chips, and bagged snacks. Eat less.

* Go on walks. Get exercise. If you are overweight, decide that you are going to get healthy, and don't diet. Just regularly exercise and eat well in a way that you can sustain.

* Be your best even if that's not good enough for your team. Be a great parent, be a great friend, and be good to yourself.

* Get help from a technical friend you trust with your resume to make sure that it looks great. Do the same with your Linkedin profile, and get a professional photo with you smiling and looking good and put it on there.

* Practice interviewing before you start your job search. Right down every question and answer you can think of. Practice interview problems and puzzles you find online.

* Read whatever you can that will help increase your knowledge in the areas that are relevant to your position.

You will get through it. Don't just quit without another job and use up your savings. First do everything above to get in top shape, then go on vacation, if you can before you get your next job! When you come back, talk with recruiters some more, do some interviews, choose your job carefully- don't take a job unless you and your family are both 100% on it. Usually your company won't fight hard to keep you, because they know you've checked out already- don't take it personally. Don't burn the bridge back by telling them how you really feel, because you might need to go back. Accept the new job. Take a week or two in between jobs to relax some more.

Your life will be awesome. Just don't give up and remember- you have to focus on being the best you can be given what you are and can be, realistically. When you're expectation far exceeds what you can do, you're going to be unhappy.
Which is plenty amusing, until one of those companies is suing you in a court of law for violating said ToS.
There's already a project that auto-generates a normal REST proxy from a gRPC definition: https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway
Lots of good advice so far. I'd add two things:

1) You're already at a top company, so you're way ahead of the game already. You could step down to a less stressful / lower pressure culture company and see if that fits you better. They do exist, and they can be fine if you care about the work and environment more than the prestige. Just having a top four on your resume will may it considerably easier for you to get hired.

2) As above, there are plenty of companies that skip brain teaser type tests (advertising and broadly-defined "digital media" companies are two I have experience with.) Hard technology companies aren't the only option out there; now that software is in every industry, so too are the jobs.

HTH
Here’s how solar roofs fit into Elon Musk’s master plan
May I know what is BIG 4 tech companies is ? I only knew big 4 accounting.
So there's no servers, anywhere in this? You don't run it on a computer or anything?

Clearly I'm being a smart ass, but pointing out that 'serverless' is an idiotic marketing term.
HN users have varying views on what crosses the line into spamming. I think if your comment had done more engaging with what's intellectually interesting in the current thread, instead of sounding promotional, it would have done better. It's also likely that some HN users are sensitive to the issue of profiting from prisons.

It's fine for established HN users to bring up their projects/products in an on-topic way, as long as they don't overdo it participate on HN for more than just that.
Just want to acknowledge how productive/awesome this response is to a very vulnerable HN post.
But it is not magic, though, and surely can be automated.

In fact, I would argue that your time might be better spent on this, instead of randomizing CSS classes. If you end up building something worthwile, that could be a great product too! (Look at all those CDNs / Anti-DDoS platforms, sounds like they could've been started this exact way.)
How do you think you get to success?