skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A list of companies to avoid for sure.

Take home challenges are terrible. The worst I had was the following. I was given the following prompt (translated into English):

"Please write a line-by-line sort of a large text file that doesn't fit into memory. To test the functionality also write a generator of such files [...]. Programming language doesn't matter. It is recommended to spend no more than 4 hours on this task"

I quickly whipped up a solution (in like 1.5 hours) based that you can see here [1] and sent it in. Obviously not "production-ready" solution, but it uses the optimal algorithm and satisfies the sparse requirements that were given. It didn't get accepted and the feedback was:

* the solution doesn't work with very long lines because CHUNK_SIZE is constant

* the solution stores the name of each chunk which technically makes it O(n_lines) in space (though the constant is very small)

Both of these are really uncharitable nitpicks, since the algorithm could be trivially adjusted to take these into account were it a whiteboard interview.

And people are complaining about having to invert a binary tree? Get a grip.

[1] https://gist.github.com/tshatrov/3c862eced64b25dd4256c02e985...
Golang has solves this problem amazingly well. I only focus on writing code. Everything else gofmt takes care of. The best part is that since all Golang code is formatted the same way its quite easy to see if something is messed up simply by the code structure.
Do you have the same opinion about e. e. cummings?
I agree with you, but I am not the manager.
Subscription Mooching: An Examination of Who Really Pays for Video Streaming
> Only universities in the United States

Not strictly speaking true. Univeristy of Toronto (Canada) will give you a toronto.edu email if you're a CS student (even undergrads) or faculty.
I've only just skimmed the first section, and already I feel like I'm in for a trip. The math is indeed as approachable as you suggest. I'm only a philosophy major (though our logic department is seriously the bees knees, shout-out to Tennant!) yet I'm still able to pick up what you're putting down. Very fascinating paper, thank you for sharing.

Also, one of the many nerds across the street in University Hall says hello :)
> There's a reason [basic CS algorithms and data structures] are considered the fundamentals in CS, even if they are baked into most languages nowadays.

A linked list is such a fundamental piece of technology, and so obvious to anyone that's been working in a language for a while, that I feel it's perfectly acceptable to rule out a candidate who cannot write one.

It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to have all of the optimizations and utility methods that you find in the standard libraries, but the ability to understand and work with a node that has a value and a pointer to the next node is kind of bare-minimum competency, isn't it?
I think take home assignments could be done well, but I've never seen it happen. You often need to spend time setting up which is a total waste of time for a throwaway project.

You should provide the candidates with a starter project in their language of choice, already set up and ready for them to start working. And you should give everyone at least some time limit (maybe one or two hours at most) so everyone is on equal footing.

And the worst part is, all the take home assignments I've done are just used as an initial filter, not as a final check in the interview process. I'd have maybe one phone conversation beforehand, spend hours working on the take-home, and then get a short rejection email with no useful feedback.
When I worked as an independent consultant I'd get clients who needed fast turnaround on designing new feature architecture to a product I had not seen before, which is the closest analogy to the interview whiteboard design that I've experienced.

Even then, it's completely different. I'll first spend a couple hours with someone senior who can fill me in on all the relevant context. The dynamic is different because they need my help and are paying for it so they are highly motivated to give me all the context I need to help them. Only after that we go to the step where I whiteboard a few proposals and then we collaboratively decide which way to go. I'm quite good at this.

Interview whiteboard design is a different skill entirely, one which I don't believe has any relevance to job performance. Might be a good way to hire improv theater actors, but not engineers. Having to go from zero to solution in 45 minutes or less is not how it works in the real world. And doing so while being nitpicked by an interviewer more interested in showing off doesn't help. Instead of collaborating, the interviewer is there to grudgingly drop the occasional hint and then count it against you.
Cross-Compiling Scala 2.12 and 2.13 with the Collection Compatibility Library
> We can find ever single one whether they are sitting in Cambridge or Congo and lay out a subject before them and yet we haven't got that to work right.

I think if you asked most academics their opinion on this (in math/CS at least), they'd tell you they think the system works fine. They don't really have problems collaborating - their universities send them to conferences where they meet people working in the same (narrow) subfield as them.
Is there an executable available somewhere?

This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, but if you post simple, standalone code you really ought to post the compiled executable(s) as well. I don't currently have a C compiler installed on my home Windows box.
That hasn't been my experience at all. The opposite in fact.

Sure the biggest problems aren't solved in 5 minutes at a whiteboard, but they are solved by people who are able to think on their feet at a whiteboard discussion.
I just have no interest in sharing the room with most people, and I also don't feel like the world really needs me to do the things that I do, to the point that I literally face eviction, starvation and ultimately a slow, miserable death from exposure, if I don't do the things I do.

These things, which I've just outlined in broad strokes, are the things I despise, when contemplating what my existence really amounts to.

No amount of job hopping will fix this. No office environment will cure this animosity that brews deep within me. No hiring process, no software development lifecycle, no production support and site reliability operations plan will prevent it all from seething to the surface of my personality and manifesting as some perceived schizophrenic, sociopathic, narcissistic malignancy.

You can bikeshed all you want, but the truth is we're all tired of playing this game that never really adds up.

This economy of real estate, food security and status symbols is a joke. You know it. I know it. We all fucking know it.

How about fixing this fucking travesty of a "civilization" instead?
The Scala community celebrates their Scala 2.x History and soon Scala 3 Future
Quite possibly; this is not my idea, I definitely read about this before, likely several times.

Direct references would be welcome.
I have decades of experience with my preferred editor. That has more value than your whitespace preferences, even if they were incompatible (which isn't true).
If you do the math on the high capital costs to install and FAA certify the satellite equipment, then the ongoing transponder costs, then the low conversion rate, and finally the fuel costs due to the protruding bubble for the antenna...they are lucky if it breaks even.
>And whiteboard interviews are discriminatory towards people with anxiety who have trouble thinking clearly when they are in the spotlight with all eyes on them, no? Where does the microaggressions game start and end?

So Gender/Age/Disabilty discrimination are now microagrssions? It seems from your description of your hiring practice, someone has thought of the implications of take home questions given the choice between live and take home.

My point is, replacing white board questions with entirely take home questions is probably discriminatory.
> Any source for that?

Does it need a source? I mean, can't it just be taken as trivially true, in the sense that "some people like sex and money" ought just to be taken as true?

Are you claiming that no-one on the left wants, for example, censorship of individuals such as Tommy Robinson? It is trivial to prove otherwise, for example this tweet from Tom Watson, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, stating:

> I have written to Google CEO @SundarPinchai calling on him, as a matter of urgency, to remove the YouTube page of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson.

-- https://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/1101931566387941376
There are a few tweaks I made along the way while tightening it up, but here's the readable original I started from:

https://gist.github.com/munificent/ce8f7a9e6b09938ca8d2d43fa...
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“Good” depends on the use case. I used Oracle once, about ten years ago. The client library was so big and bloated that just loading it took the majority of the total running time of my not-terribly-long-running program.

Not to mention that figuring out the connection strings is so miserably complicated that you basically need a trained expert to figure it out. The docs were worthless.

I think I can spin up an entire blank MySQL instance faster than I could connect to an existing Oracle database back then.
I honestly can't see Apple making this work.

Health is a diverse, messy, market. Apple's schtick has always been making devices that make computing magical, and health would be a huge shift away from that.

IMO the market is really looking for a a powerful all-in-one diagnostic health appliance - something like the analyser Theranos was pitching for, but which actually works, and is more comprehensive.

De-industrialising health and making the personal equivalent of a diagnostic lab that could keep track of key markers, watch nutrition, exercise, and supplements, and transfer information to doctors - AI or human - would be a major breakthrough.

But the technology for that doesn't exist yet. And even it becomes available it may not be affordable or portable.

And because bodily fluids are involved it conflicts with the Apple image of clean minimalism.

That leaves health as set of tentative fragmented tools and services which provide reassurance here and there - like the fall notification in Watch - but are a long way short of a comprehensive service.

The fitness market is a more obvious choice. But if you look at Apple's record, it's not inspiring. Fitbit is a strong competitor, because Watch hasn't lived up to its potential - possibly because Apple can't decide if Watch should be a fashion statement or a personal fitness device. It doesn't really make sense to consumers to try to sell it as both.

Behind all of that, I just can't see the current management team having the skill or imagination to make it happen. I think health is going to remain a side interest - a nice add-on, but not a huge new core market that Apple can expand into.
Samsung DeX provides an easy way to turn the S10+ from a phone to a desktop
Nah formatters are a must. If a standard isnt automatically enforced, its not enforced period.

Mix format

Go fmt

Prettier

Etc
If you're testing for their coding process, why do you make them write it out on a whiteboard? Why not provide them a code editor or at least text editor?

I like whiteboard interviews, but they should be testing high level design ("describe solution in words / detail in pseudocode"), not coding skills.
Yeah but the /r/math subreddit is already very good for that, and is well moderated. There are plenty of tenured professors from excellent math departments around the world contributing to discussion there.
How many of the concurrency bugs in this paper trace to the combination of "share-nothing" designs (channels) with mutable global variables in the standard library? If the answer is "none", what evidence does this paper present that mutable globals in the standard library are a practical impediment to "share-nothing" designs in real programs?
How does a black person become and remain the leader of a Neo-Nazi group? Is it a group of blind and deaf individuals who don't read the news?
Dear App Stores: Don’t Block Apps – Lead with the Carrot Instead
Honest question: what are the parameters for a 'white genocide?' To clarify, what would have to occur for you to believe that title is appropriate?
Python/Full-Stack Engineer | Industry Dive | ONSITE | Washington, DC

Industry Dive is looking for a full-stack engineer who is curious and motivated to join our product development team. We use a variety of open-source technology, and our core application is written in Django. We spend most of our time building Industry Dive's main product — a series of business news sites with an internal content management system — by adding new features, fixing bugs and improving performance. We are also cross-functional, so you'll have the opportunity to work on many other projects, including data products, mobile applications, and devops. This job reports to the VP of Engineering.

Industry Dive strives to provide an inclusive and welcoming environment. One of our core values is for employees to bring their unique perspective and personality to a variety of projects. Your voice and the work you’ll do here matters to your teammates, other teams within the company and our customers and readers.

More at https://www.industrydive.com/job-listing/full-stack-engineer... or I'm happy to answer any questions by email eli-at-industrydive-com
Thanks for this! ”We’re looking to start crew trials as early as 2015.” :)
Yes really.

When I have to work on N platforms that are constantly shifting, I don't want to spend the overhead and mental effort to reconfigure the ones that can be reconfigured, and eat nameless dread on the ones that can't.

When you view code across dozens of platforms, across dozens of machines, your perspective on "high maintenance config" everywhere changes a bit.

If you can't be effective with default configs, you lose efficiency to config maintenance.

Really, the last thing I want to deal with while I'm triaging some critical issue is dependency management for N code viewers.
How Asana Hit $100M
Perhaps rather fittingly, Virginia Woolf's essay "A room of one's own" is an absolutely brilliant read on _why_ precisely women are and were so often neglected and left out of the cultural conversation and literary landscape.

One of the cruxes being that opinions matter and the reinforcements culture (such as the compilations of widely shared lists like these) provides sustains their exclusion.

I'd give it a look, it's not preachy and it's thoroughly entertaining.

http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/PikliNatalia/Virginia_Wo...
Not at Facebook. Yes elsewhere
An interview is a special scenario where the pressure is several orders of magnitude beyond anything you'll usually encounter in the work environment. Some folks' reasoning skills utterly fall apart in such situations. Without understanding that, you may miss out on some stellar performers who have no issues reasoning or solving problems when left alone to work.
You underestimate the value of uniformity and group pressure. Everyone gets used to the one environment in the end. How did you pick up a programming language and editor in the first place? How did you pick up a new one? It was fine.

If people are using different environments, people are still able to wank and bicker over differences in environment.

By the way, it’s not just about code style and editor. By sharing the same environment, people can share build tools and other tools much more easily.
How am I supposed to work this? I am using Firefox 60 and when I input a magnet or torrent link and press the play button... nothing happens?
Utopian: Empowering Open Source Innovation
> We can have a discussion about censorship when it's relevant. What has to do your comment with the post?

Facebook's business model involves violating people's privacy.

Some governments might not want FB to do this. So FB are lobbying them to allow them to violate privacy.

Might it not, therefore, also be the case that FB will do other things to allow them to violate privacy?

And one of these things might be censoring politicians who want FB to respect privacy.
Coping with Feedback
AOT Compilation of JavaScript with V8
Grandparent's argument is that scales are irrelevant when talking about human rights.

Similar positions have in the past been held e.g. by the German supreme court: In a landmark ruling, it barred authorities from shooting down planes with terrorists. The department of defense argued that shooting down a plane that is headed e.g. towards a stadium would save many more people compared to the number of civilians killed. The court dismissed that opinion, arguging that killing civilians is just something you ought not do.

I think it's the same here: When you deny even just one person a fair trail, you're setting a dangerous precedent that can and will be expanded upon.
See “team”.
This is definitely one of strengths of American culture. I had a long conversation with my grandfather about it a while back. He studied and worked in the US during the 40s and 50s. While I did my MS and worked there just a few years ago.

Both of us agreed that people aren't afraid to question things or think different. Whether it is to a prof or a boss or an authority figure. It's not just a lack of fear, but people are encouraged and expected to speak and respected when they do it.

The internet/consumerism and the media have taken those strengths to an extreme is what I feel is happening today. That hopefully will correct itself as you pointed out as with McCarthyism.
In at least 20 interviews over the years I've never had a white board interview, I assume that's mostly a west coast/SV/startup thing.
Human Mind Control Rat Cyborgs Continuous Locomotion with Wireless B-B Interface
I expected to at least be entertained by the article but it's so full of faulty reasoning I stopped reading about three quarters of the way through. It's full of platitudes and has little critical reasoning to support such a broad statement as its title.

>> "If you possess a good eye and steady hand, you should feel compelled to create something that looks pleasing"

Okay.. Goes on to include a big picture of Michelangelo's "David" to suggest that designers should strive to create masterpieces in the same vein...?

>> "People use applications because of their purpose, not because it is pleasing to the eye."

Another baseless generality. The first part is obviously true, but it doesn't follow that people don't care about appearance.

>> "The only time a UI should be updated is if it impacts the ability of a user to actually use your application."

Another unsupported opinion phrased as an absolute.

>> "It hurts retention"

This would have been a natural point to include actual data. Nonetheless the article falls back on making generalizations about people's behavior.

>> "Does it really add up, or are you just giving designers busywork that doesn't amount to anything in the end? Do we have concrete evidence that what we are doing will provide benefit to the company or users, or just feel that it would be better if the UI was redesigned? Take a minute, think about that one."

There's not a single piece of concrete evidence in this entire article.
Lyft S-1 Analysis – Is Lyft a Software Company?
Have you actually tried this, and how did it work out on the team?
If anything, my interviews are less tense and stressful than my meetings. On both sides of the table.

(If anything, this is probably not what meetings should be like. I wish to god my coworkers would have real agendas for meetings — and a one-sentence subject does not count as an "agenda", and ideally, written material detailing any proposal that will be proposed, s.t. I can arrive at the meeting already understanding what it is that someone wants to do.)
I was going to make a less general comment along these lines, that I have put models to production with GitLab CI, Make and Slurm, and it keeps us honest and on task. There’s no mucking about with fairy dust data science toolchains and no excuses not to find a solution when problems arise because we’re using well tested methodology on well tested software.
"Why not flip your point on its head: can you show me a model of discrimination that focuses purely on the social component, and shows that the results we see with, eg, the wage gap result purely from social components — or have a social component at all?"

This can be argued to be possible, and have at least one social component. [1][2]

1. https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 (The widely known paper describing racial callback differences in resume submission)

2. http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact... (The widely known phenomenon describing blind auditions in applying for orchestra employment)
I'm pretty sure the generally accepted meaning of an 'engine' in the context of powered flight is 'a thing that provides thrust' and not 'anything that consumes fuel'
Don't you mean that OS is Emacs and the editor is evil... :)
I hear Visual Studio Code is all right at doing compile stuff with C++

But more seriously, this is a toy implementation and the value is in reading it to see how it works, not in seeing its output
SQL Server now uses the same licensing strategy as Oracle in virtual environments.