Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode

Re:Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing ... by photon_lines on Thursday August 17, 2023 @05:40AM (#37159303)

LeetCode has no correlation with great software development. Great development is more about paying attention to the end users, having an eye for usability and design and great communication & the ability to execute. The current LeetCode churning explains why Google hasn't produced anything worth using since Brin & Page checked out and why so much of software today is absolute garbage - but it is what it is I suppose. I suppose its better to screen for IQ and desparation than you know...people who love developing great software. Let them keep doing what they're doing while treating their own people like disposable garbage during hard times (like Google & Meta just did) and we'll see what they'll churn out over the next decade or so (I'm not expecting anything from either of these companies).

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Re:Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing ... by josephg on Thursday August 17, 2023 @01:49PM (#37165503)

> LeetCode has no correlation with great software development. Great development is more about paying attention to the end users

You can’t make blanket statements about software like that. Our field is way too varied.

For example, if you’re doing high frequency trading, then performance absolutely 100% matters. And knowing your data structures and algorithms backwards is part of that. On the other hand, if you’re building the website at a large company, the hard part of your job may be interfacing with the rest of the business. So networking and navigating corporate politics will be an incredibly important part of your job. And if you’re on a small team making a product for consumers, then your work will succeed or fail based on usability.

We could brainstorm dozens of other skills which might be important. Which of these skills matter the most depends entirely on the company and the role.

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Re:Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing ... by photon_lines on Thursday August 17, 2023 @08:20PM (#37170066)

I don't disagree with you and I agree with your take on understanding data structures and algorithms ... it is important, but making 80 to 90 percent of your recruitment process based on this and on playing games with quizzes and LeetCode is idiotic. There are lots of other factors that play a vitally important role in creating great software and most big companies do NOTHING to pay attention to these factors albeit I fully admit to this being hard to test for. That's why I offer every company I'm recruited into to do a paid (or free albeit open source) work sample test if they want to do so. Most don't take me up on this offer and I think its idiotic but it is what it is.

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Re:Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing ... by nonameiguess on Thursday August 17, 2023 @03:55PM (#37167087)

This isn't really fair. All of Android, the Go programming language, TensorFlow, MapReduce, Big Table, Kubernetes, V8, Chrome are all very good engineering, software that stands the test of time and is likely to remain in use for decades. It's not garbage. They're great at libraries, plumbing, infrastructure layer tooling that enables Internet scale.

What they aren't good at is consumer-facing web services with graphical frontends, at least since Gmail or so. Even there, businesses seem to like the G Suite.

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Re:Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing ... by photon_lines on Thursday August 17, 2023 @08:39PM (#37170196)

Google acquired the early android team and they were vital in making it succesful: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-acquisition-...

Chrome: hmm - was Chrome developed after Brin & Page left? I never realized this but OK you got me on that one if that indeed is the case.

Go: I liked it initially and I love the performance, but i don't necessarily love the language syntax and design.

The rest: mostly tools which make scaling Google's infrastructure easier. I don't count these as outstanding accomplishments but I suppose you may have had me here too (albeit the scope I was referring to mostly referred to regular ppl not infra teams but meh I suppose I'll give you this one as well).

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