Thursday, March 2, 2017

Google: Average person can make it?

March 2, 2017

Julia choose a topic to study:

Read the article how big the odds to become a Googler, and a Quora post, and one more article.

Read the discussions on quora:

One answer provided by a Ph.D., Miguel Andres.
Read Moishe Lettvin's quora answers here.

32 answers how to prepare on quora.

Actionable Items:


Do more research on this topic.

Read top coder tutorials.

Read Google interview article written in 2015.

Google hiring 2015

Google wiki

How Google Keeps the Best and Brightest employees - Bloomberg

Smart people are everywhere, and we have to find them. Not just those graduated from ivy school




Leetcode 162: Find Peak Element

Problem Statement

Study the blog.




Leetcode 279: Perfect Squares

Problem statement

Study the solution.


Leetcode 386: Lexicographical Numbers

Problem statement

Study the solution and discussion written by Marcelo.


Leetcode 41: First Missing Positive

Problem statement






Leetcode 506: Relative Ranks

March 2, 2017

problem statement

Relative Ranks: an NLogN solution

Leetcode 53: Maximum Subarray

Problem statement


Leetcode: Maximum Subarray


Leetcode 526: Beautiful Arrangement

March 2, 2017

Problem Statement

Study the blog: Classic recursive backtracking problem and solution




Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Interview cake - a new school?

March 1, 2017

Interview cake - 42 questions


Hackerrank contests - performance review (II)

March 1, 2017


Richness of learning experience


Julia also learned to take those contests seriously, because only if she put all the efforts she can, then she may see some growth over the time. 

First contest she did by her habit, not seeking excellence. And then she noticed that she will have problems to stay that way. 

Week of Code 29               4395/ 9216     Feb. 2017 *
World CodeSprint 9         2164/ 7284     January 2017**
Week of Code 28               2915/ 10421   January 2017***

ACM ICPC Practice Contest 2016   787/ 925            November 2016 ****
Women's CodeSprint 2                     505/ 1882          November 2016 +

University CodeSprint             2081/ 5552     November 2016 ++
WalmartLabs CodeSprint        3226/ 4392     Oct. 2016 +++
World CodeSprint #4               2271/ 5258    June, 2016 ++++
101 Hack Feb 2016                  481/ 723        Feb. 2016  -
Week of Code - 19                    2693/ 3204   Feb. 2016 --


Analysis



Week of Code 29               4395/ 9216     Feb. 2017 *



*( Julia did not work on until last 2 days, and the Sunday she went to church and played tennis, went outdoor from 11:00am - 6:00pm) 



World CodeSprint 9         2164/ 7284     January 2017**



** if Julia started to work on the problem early, same score people had bronze medal. 


Week of Code 28               2915/ 10421   January 2017***



*** very close to top 25%, need to look into the issues 

ACM ICPC Practice Contest 2016   787/ 925            November 2016 ****

**** the algorithms are more difficult to solve, the time is short than other contest.  Julia spent 3 hours in 
the contest.


Women's CodeSprint 2                     505/ 1882          November 2016 +



+ Julia stumbled on a simple recursive algorithm, maximum score 50, she ended up score 0. 
She posted the question on algorithm "stone division" with her C# solution after the contest on codereview.stackexchange.com. 


University CodeSprint             2081/ 5552     November 2016 ++



++ Julia never had chance to work a hard algorithm over 10 hours, so she gambled her luck and 
tried to do some research and problem solving on maximum score 80 - hard algorithm, she ended 
up score 0. 

She learned the lesson of Hackerrank, hackerrank holds high standard on hard algorithm. 


WalmartLabs CodeSprint        3226/ 4392     Oct. 2016 +++



+++ Need to look into the issues, concerns, will come back to add more notes here. 
Julia spent over 10 hours on a 24 hours contest, one hard algorithm called "Interesting Fibonacci Sum", maximum score 100. She tried to submit more than 18 times, but she ended up scored 0 on the algorithm. She did not read medium algorithms problems very carefully, no time to work on. 

After the contest, Julia studied those players good at the hard algorithm, wrote a blog as well. 


World CodeSprint #4               2271/ 5258    June, 2016 ++++



++++ Julia did not know that she can manage to win a bronze medal, at that time, she did not know bronze medal - top 25%. 

She also wrote a lovely blog to document her interest and curiousity. So amazing, like bible verse, Mark 4:8, Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times. 

All she has to do is to give herself time to develop skills, play more contests in the future. She documented her 12 hours labor and score 0 on AorB algorithm. Celebrate the hard work! Post AorB to code review. 

Her blog shares her journey from 40 to 100, won her first bronze medal in her third contests in the row.

More detail see Jianmin Chen hackerrank profile 

The Google Diet: 'Nudge' health choices

March 1, 2017

Introduction


Julia took notes for the study of interview 15 minutes conducted by business school of Wharton, and then she did extra look up google about "google nudge research". So she watch the 5 minutes video of Google diet, and then read the article of the google diet - nudge research.

First round of reading the article 


here is the notes:
R - rumor - guess what? never more than 150 feet from some kind of food at Google's New York City offices - the writing is kind of light, start with some humor, a number of distance 150 feet, 50 meters.

24/7 - time, micro kitchen, called scattered micro kitchen, free food

U - unwanted pounds - Google has put itself on a diet.

H - hyper-analyzed and re-engineered to be loaded with "nudges" intended to lead people towards healthier food choices.

F - first things they see, so salad bar was moved to a prime real estate spot by the front entrance.

T - tags - food tags - green tags - indicate low-calorie food, yellow tags for moderate-sized portions and red tags for pastas and desserts.

U - unlimited - unlimited food perk - side effect - more and often

S - smaller sizes - containers - sign - people tend to eat more who take big plates.

F - far - far away - desserts - diet buster - craving - satisfy a craving, not gorge

P - people - people analytics - crunch the number - eating habits - overhaul - overhaul how food was presented around the building



Hackerrank contests summary - Feb. 2016 - Feb. 2017

March 1, 2017


Summary of Hackerrank contests - August 2016 - March 1 2017


Julia won 4 bronze medals in last 12 months, and also played a few other contests as well, here are the details: 


4 bronze medals: 



university codesprint 2  (1247/ 6587) Feb. 2017
Week of Code 27             (1643/ 7476) Dec. 2016
world codesprint 7         (863/ 5649)   Sept. 2016
world codesprint 6        (1168/ 5270)  Aug. 2016


contests doing very well: 


Woman CodeSprint#3      (440/3537)   March 2017, Score 116.82/ Rank 3 in Canada 
NCR CodeSprint                 (479/ 2617)   Nov. 2016
OpenBracket CodeSprint  (482/ 2448)  Oct. 2016
Stryker CodeSprint             (174/ 1929)   Sept. 2016



Detail is available on Jianmin Chen's hackerrank profile. 


Entertainment video:


How to celebrate win?

How Google's Rules Can Work in Your Office

March 1, 2017

Study 14 minutes talk, How Google's Rules Can Work in Your Office, interview conducted by Cade Massey, Knowledge@Wharton.

First round notes: (March 1, 2017 9:00pm - 9:15pm)


Project oxygen - people treat employees better, Google shares their secret

What principles?
Make work meaningful.
Take power from the managers. Manager can not hire, can not ...
Apply science to make better decisions

Can Google's ideas apply to other companies?


Why the company choose not to do?
Limit the power of the manager - ?
The hiring committee - every one writes the comment
the only job is to make sure that hiring bar is high. All about quality. Less bias

Transparency - lead or follow other things
To be transparency, it is in DNA. Who we are, what we do.
Every quarter he shares all things in board meeting. Build trust.
Feel less scary. Benefit that people feel trusted, make better decision, build better product.

Sense of improving, 2 - 4 generation of ...
Run the program   vs    do a stunt ?

Share what is not in the book?

Nudges - what can you change the environment around some one to make better decision?
without removing the options

Two of good things:
weight loss - paid candy, less visible, New York office, healthy snack no need to pay

savings
wealth accumulated by people
power of compounding - talk about retirement

Second round notes (March 1, 2017 9:15pm - 9:30pm)


Manager cannot decide who to hire, who to promote

The hiring committee only job is to keep the hiring bar very high - extremely hire (Julia, figure out how high it is!)
Go to the same school, both have same interest - remove all those bias

Give people little, and share about more. Road map of project, etc., ....

How to keep improving? No outside consultant comes in to do it one time.
More time on academics instead of ...
long term perspective

doing the stunt     vs    repeat things, experiment

Share more not in the book.
chapter about nudges - a nudge, not forcing, change environment to make better research
weight loss experiment:
New York office - put candy in paid container
think about home - immediately at home

importance to saving

research about wealth people accumulated in life time

social security, medicare - $100,000, power of compounding

math, compounding, big impact to read the book - work rules

Third round notes (9:30pm - 9:45pm)


Google is good place to work, open source to share, state of the world

triat? freedom, transparency,
what makes the manager work well?
main principle? a few, meaning at work; connect work to something meaningful, increase 30% - 40%
house cleaning? meaningful

take power away from managers - people like to have a freedom
only process 40 out of billions of information, make decisions wrong without knowing

How to apply other companies?
Go over examples, bakery store in north east

India a texile factory -
Teach woman entrepreneurship

Do not do the stuff? Not intuitive, micromanage
People perform better when managers are taken away the power

Committee - hiring committee, those people are important -
manager and other people do not have incentive to keep the hiring bar high
remove those factors, same school, etc., less bias
transparency - necessary conditions, among those factors, transparency - how important it is?

chairman shares after board meeting - big step, first step, build trust,
simple like notes about board meeting, could-be anything, trust to build, and share a lot of more
they know what is going on, make better decision

How much research you do internal?

Actionable Items:


Google search and continue to study.
micro kitchen - GE micro kitchen

Google search: google nudges research

healthy snacks in Google

The Google Diet: Search Giant's Revamped Eating Habits

people analytics - behavior science - do not take away, but New York's Google office consumes less calorie - data driven company

Get work done - food less than 120 feet away - put water bottle up -

Google talks: how to get hired and achieve career success

March 1, 2017

Watch 30 minutes video - a talk by Laszlo Bock, Google talks: how to get hired and achieve career success.

Money, content and lifestyle, every job has at most 2 of them are very good, rarely 3 of them are very good.


Monday, February 27, 2017

Practice Makes Perfect

Feb. 27, 2017

Continue to study Google, watch one hour video "Practice Makes Perfect" loaded by Peter Norvig on Apr 20, 2012.

6 minutes talk, Peter Norvig: The 100,000-student classroom. 

Are programming competition a good use of time?

Feb. 27, 2017

Introduction


Julia came cross the article after she studied hackerrank university codesprint #2 leaderboard.

Argument No. 1 in the article  

Competitive programming promises even more glory. Win enough contests, and you get an interview at Facebook or Google, where they ask you… you guessed it… more algorithm coding questions!


Argument No. 2 in the article 


By doing programming contests, you gain an intimate understanding of data structures and algorithms and their complexities. While your colleagues vaguely know the difference between a depth-first versus a breadth-first search, you develop a much deeper intuition. You will never forget that one contest where you used DFS instead of BFS, causing your solution to time out.

Fact 1 to share 


Julia won 4 bronze medals in last 12 months, and also played a few other contests as well, here are the details: 

4 bronze medals: 

university codesprint 2  (1247/ 6587) Feb. 2017
Week of Code 27             (1643/ 7476) Dec. 2016
world codesprint 7         (863/ 5649)   Sept. 2016
world codesprint 6        (1168/ 5270)  Aug. 2016

contests: 

NCR CodeSprint                 (479/ 2617)   Nov. 2016
OpenBracket CodeSprint  (482/ 2448)  Oct. 2016
Stryker CodeSprint             (174/ 1929)   Sept. 2016

Fact 2 to share

Julia worked on the queue and caused a big issue like timeout, she wrote a blog talking about sinking sand - a test case is rock to build on algorithm. She learned the lesson of BFS using queue, over 4 hours work ended up scoring 0.   


Argument by Google director of research - Peter Norvig

Is this a valid argument? Winning at programming competitions is a negative factor for being good on the job.


Argument 3 in the article

Given the amount of time it takes to master competitive programming, one naturally wonders: is this really a good use of time? In a contest, you are ultimately solving problems that other people have solved already, so nothing new is being produced. Although solving a contest problem is satisfying, I find it a lot more rewarding to build projects or apps with my novel ideas.


Competitive programming 

whole weekend one medium algorithm

To play a contest on Hackerrank, Julia calculates some math. She has to dedicate herself whole weekend in order to get a medium algorithm done. She has to entertain herself first, play some music, lookup her ideas by Google, write some simple idea to play against hackerrank test case, until she warms up with the algorithm. Sometimes, it takes 5 - 6 hours until she failed so many times and then she understands the problem - what is the real challenge in the problem statement.

code review catching up more

All those hours and labor build up her character, she never experience this kind of research before. Over 10 hours, she makes something happen, solve a medium algorithm. Sometimes a medium algorithm can take her a few days after the contest. Since Nov. 2016, a few times, she has to continue to catch up more research after the contest, and then work on codereivew.stackexchange.com, get some help and find something more interesting to continue.

Julia learns to work on one algorithm a time, and also has to learn to let it go one a time. She knows that she will forget the algorithm completely, it does not matter how hard she intensively trains herself in the contest/ after the contest, and she needs to relearn it one day. Only thing left is something surprising, her new character still trying to mold, the strong determination to solve the problem. The will, or the intuition to try new ideas, relentlessly. That is something different she could not find in the training of Leetcode algorithms. Julia was surprised that she continuously improves over last few months.


Hackerrank contest  algortihms 


Things Julia should have done are to evaluate those easy, medium algorithms in past 10 contests on Hackerrank; Do those algorithms shape her very well as a sports programmer,  what are atlernatives? Julia does not like the inactive learning, by memorizing, she likes more about competition, with time limitation. 


Google's secret to hire the best

Feb. 27, 2017

Introduction

Julia continues her study on Google, read an article: Google's secret to hire the best. Last week, Julia did not dedicate the whole weekend to hackerrank week of code contest, instead, she started to work on the study of Google.

To play a contest on Hackerrank, Julia calculates some math. She has to dedicate herself whole weekend in order to get a medium algorithm done. She has to entertain herself first, play some music, lookup her ideas by Google, write some simple idea to play against hackerrank test case, until she warms up with the algorithm. Sometimes, it takes 5 - 6 hours until she failed so many times and then she understands the problem - what is the real challenge in the problem statement.

All those hours and labor build up her character, she never experience this kind of research before. Over 10 hours, she makes something happen, solve a medium algorithm. Sometimes a medium algorithm can take her a few days. Since Nov. 2016, a few times, she has to continue to catch up more research after the contest, and then work on codereivew.stackexchange.com, get some help and find something more interesting to continue.

Julia learns to work on one algorithm a time, and also has to learn to let it go. She knows that she will forget the algorithm completely, it does not matter how hard she intensively trains herself in the contest/ after the contest, and she needs to relearn it one day. Only thing left is something surprising, her new character still trying to molded, the strong determination to solve the problem. The will, or the intuition to try new ideas, relentlessly. That is something different she could not find in the training of Leetcode algorithms, not time pressure of Hackerrank contest, and no ranking or coding sharing procedures.

Julia likes to read, write and also learn, Google's secret to hire the best. Given a math, 1000 people from phone screen, 4 of them are finally hired. If each 1000 people spend 10 hours time to work on research of Google, that is 4000 hours labor. Julia thinks that it is better to invest time on those 99.6%, share what she studies and help others to move forward on this research.

Study


Read the article - Google's secret to hire the best.

Actionable Item


Google search keyword:
 qdroid 




Sunday, February 26, 2017

Pluralsight: provable code

Feb. 26, 2017

Provable code

Learn the concept:

Predicate Calculus

Predicates - True or false, Can take variables, Applied over a range, Higher order, First Order
Inference
Induction
Axioms

Design by Contract
Cache and Query
Preconditions
Eliminating Preconditions
Postconditions and Invariants
Strict Preconditions
Strength



pluralsight: Code Contract

Feb. 26, 2017

Study the course: Code contract.

Take some notes and do some research on the topic.

Read the website: Simple Programmer.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Elina Svitolina - top 10 debut

Feb. 25, 2017

Julia is a big fan of tennis, and she studied one tennis star a time. So, today she will spend 20 - 30 minutes to learn a new player, she never remembered her name before, called: Elina Svitolina.

Julia will study some statistics of the player, the coach, and the player's practice, the player's interview.

Here are videos she watched.

top 10 debut

WTA Can Challenge

August 7, 2015 14 minutes press conference - WTA - Bank of the West Classic Est. 1971

Julia's note

6:30 / 14:32 - it takes her time to move ranking to top 10. Not just go upward directly. Step by step, not rushing myself.

The top 5 or top 10 has more confidence to play against top 20 or 30, even she loses the first set, she does not show any emotion, wait for the chance to get back.

3 minutes video - know about Elina Svitolina - The move through Mutrid Madrid

Notes she took for the training, competing:

Always give your 100%. No matter how you feel, etc.

Actionable Item:

Spell error of word Madrid, Julia, spend 20 minutes to read the city of Madrid.

Julia's Ph.D. study

Feb. 25, 2017


Julia's Ph.D. study 


First time in long time, Julia was told that she had very good education from the most important person in her career in 2017. She could not believe that she got so good education and richness of experience of industry and academic fields, even though she quit in 2011 without a Ph.D. degree.

So many good experience through her Ph.D. study spanning whole 10 years from 2000 to 2010. She could name 10 of them in a row:

1. Two years intern at Motorola iDen group, city of Plantation, Florida from 2000 to 2002
2. Teaching assistant work on introduction to programming, logic design and micro process lab.
3. Network research
4. Freedom to choose several graduate courses: education leadership, biology statistics, introduction to cryptography
5. Write one book chapter
6. Intern at a startup company called Siva near 1 year and then full time work less than 10 months at Par Tech
7. Start a Chinese living water bible club around 2004
8. Go back to Ph.d. study in 2007
9. Write one book chapter and one conference paper, supported by National science foundation, supervised by Professor Jie Wu.
10. Work on research on anonymity protocol research, advised by professor Hanqi Zhuang, Mihaela Cardei.


Graduate study 


Julia took one graduate course in education department when she worked on computer science Ph.D. in 2005, and also she took "biology statistics" mathematics graduate course by mathematics department professor Lianfen Qian as well, Introduction to Cryptography by mathematics department professor Markus Schmidmeier. She learned so many things through the mathematics courses, the way to prove things, reasoning and hard-working spirit to work on the math problems.

She tried to innovate her Ph.D. study on computer science, and also tried a lot of ideas, for example, she worked as a teaching assistant in information technology department to grade C# programming course a few semesters, teaching assistant of the information department professor Qing Hu. She attended so many talks provided by visitors from the world, and she had chance to learn and be a classmate of so many people in Ph.D. study, more than 5 of them are computer professors right now in United States (Bing Wu, Feng Li, Wei Lou, Quan Yuan, Shuhui Yang, Xiuqi Li).

Education leadership


Most of her classmates in her education leadership class were the teachers in elementary school or other similar institutions. She enjoyed the structure of class teaching, around 10 of us were sitting inside the classroom, study and communicate through the whiteboard. The course name is "education leadership". One of Julia's concerns is how she can relate education leadership to herself, help herself to locate her next move in her career, go back to China or stay in USA or immigrate to Canada.

Innovation is hard, Julia worked on her computer science Ph.D. program, and then she tried so many things but she had a lot of success and a lot of failures.

To be continued 


After 10 years ph.d. study, Julia started a new career in Canada, Vancouver city. She is kind of going back to old route, lack of innovation and motivation to push forward from 2010 to 2015. But Julia learned something through the involvement of the community, tech community and other activities, she sets a goal to attend the hackerrank programming contest and continuously improve the performance starting from April 2016, and also document great things daily in her life through up-and-downs.

Julia likes to set some goals to learn courses on pluralsight.com about C# programming courses.

Learn from WTA association and tennis professional players


My most favorite teaching of leadership is this one, NO FEAR, feel at home, Kristina Mladenovic. Through hundreds of hours training and matches, tennis professional shows us how good they are to be inspiration of hard work and no fear spirit.

Linkedin public profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jianminchen
Coding Blogs: http://juliachencoding.blogspot.ca/
HackerRank: https://www.hackerrank.com/jianminchen_fl
Code review: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/users/123986/jianmin-chen?tab=profile
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=RKTRNtwAAAAJ

Coding practice is like sports - I don't feel fear when I am on court. That's where I feel at home.

Laszlo Bock on Google's Approach to HR

Feb. 25, 2017

Introduction

Thinking about real world, Google tries so many ways to innovate, the human resource management is really great idea to brand the company and help the company go succeed. Julia listened the video this Saturday morning 4 or 5 times while she did house cleaning over 1 hour period, clean bathroom, living floor, and oven and sink etc.


The talk is called Google's approach to HR, 9 minutes.

Human resource study 


Will come back to write down the idea adopted by Google.


perks, like massage programs, dogs, dry cleaning etc. - create community,
informal place to have a meeting, come together
drive innovation - listen conversation among those places
efficiency - gas change etc. onsite

focus on data, experiment and users

Engage the employees - Top 4 places to work
freedom and transparent to the information

3 models - ? HR hiring and team build
traditional one - outstanding benefit plan
not HR consultancy, but other things

put the following two skills together:
Great problem solving skills
Deep business sense

statistics and Ph.D. etc.

Advanced degree of people with analytical skills - raise the bar of ...

Long term people challenge?
big company, how to motivate people to volunteer ideas, less conscientious
keep the connections close and tight
downtown

Economy slowdown - how to handle from HR?
Salary increase, bonus
particular careful - when people leave Google, the severance benefits

retention study - annual employee survey
upward management feedback as well
annual survey - 96% ?

executive team goal - real, tangible and follows-up.
say somethings, it matters - positive.

middle managers skills?
credit ability -
ability to articulate situation

Cost of switching jobs is low compared to the past - tap in the talent, open offices in the world
mobility is the central
create an environment
people will go away to express themselves

Statistics

vocabulary: perks - benefit
severance pay - spelling check, google it and spell correct
first time to use list box option - heading, minor heading, subheading provided by blogger



Recursive function code review

Feb. 25, 2017

Introduction
Julia reviewed 2 years ago in 2015, how she wrote a recursive function in less than 15 minutes, in the important meeting. She was never a manager before, image that she met 2 years ago herself, and read the code, how she thought about the learning style. So many issues in her writing, she found out by herself that there are 5 problems at least, but there are more. Here is ternary tree preorder traversal, middle, left and right in that order, and here is the blog she wrote.

Code review

It is important to take pluralsight.com courses about C#, and take down some notes, and learn one thing a time. 

Here is C# version Julia wrote on Feb. 25, 2017. 


Here is the C# code review on stackexchange.com.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

code review - Hackerrank stone division

Feb 23, 2017

Introduction

Julia always chooses a topic to study, today her topic is about Google recruiting.

She came cross the article on Hackernews about Google interview, and she likes to put some number together to help her analyze the situation: (hypothetical skills)

Recruiter goes over millions resume, and start from 2000 people, try to fill 3 positions:

1: 2000 for 3 positions 

resume screen - 100,000 resume -> 2000 resume
phone screen   - 2000 people, each 30 minutes 
code screen     - ?
phone screen   - ?
in-person interview - 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 from that point
hire


and then read the comment from an ex-googler 1825 days ago, probably in 2011: 

With all that said, I haven't found any degree (at least from any school I've interviewed applicants for) to be a reliable signal for programming. Even if they went to a really good school, there's a good chance that they spent all their time learning network protocols and low-level mechanisms, and will happily write up a sliding-window implementation for me, but will stare at me blankly when I ask for a simple recursive algorithm. It's just tough to find people that spent time studying and practicing general-purpose computer science.

An googler's comment on onsite interview more than 5 years ago, Julia is the first time to get the idea:
"So what you are saying is that for me to not have made it through I must have equally messed all my interviews or at least a majority of them. I surely didn't feel like that after the interview, but who knows, since I still don't have a way to know if that is the case. Then this really sucks."
Just a comment from another Google engineer who does interviews (and didn't do yours, since I haven't done any for a couple months now): your own feeling at the end of an interview may not at all reflect your actual performance in the interview, because you have no visibility into what questions weren't asked.
I like to interview candidates by asking them to solve a simple programming problem and then modifying the specification little by little, having them adjust their solution to implement new functionality. There are about 8 steps in my question, and frequently I'm gauging the quality of the candidate by how long it takes him to get through the first N stages; we fix bugs in earlier stages before moving on to the next stage. To calibrate myself, I've tried this question on several of my coworkers, and they were universally able to get about halfway through the question with bug-free code in about 10 minutes. Only one required prompting on my part to fix a bug. Most every candidate I've interviewed has taken 20-30 minutes to get to the same halfway point; by that time I've only got 15-25 minutes left in my interview, and the candidate seems so far like a "no hire", so I move to a different question to find out if the candidate has other strengths to counterbalance his weakness at solving this (simple) coding problem.
From the candidate's perspective, he only sees me ask a series of programming questions which he answers satisfactorily with a little prompting from me. If he answers another question or two satisfactorily, he may think he's done well, but he doesn't know that I wanted to delve more deeply into every question I asked him, and just didn't have time because the pace of his solutions was too slow.
I wish I could give this feedback to the people I've interviewed, but sadly, I can't.

So, Julia searched her blog using keyword: recursive function, and then she read the first blog through the search results, and the blog is about the fact that she failed to deliver recursive function design, code in Nov 24, 2016, after so many years Ph.D. study and 7 years full time work in the city of Vancouver, and then she did some research to catch up. 

More detail, she worked on stone division more than a few hours in the contest - hackerrank woman codesprint, a medium level algorithm, maximum score 50, Julia overcooked the solution, had weak muscle on recursive thinking, and out-of-her-control, scored 0. The algorithm is called stone division.  

Here are five blogs about stone divisions, documented her experience in the hackerrank woman codesprint, series from 1 to 5, failed to score any thing from a medium level algorithm, maximum score 50, over a few hours (5 hours?) in the contest in Nov. 24, 2016, and then she took action to do some research on recursive function, and then she found code review on stackexchange.com. As a matter of fact, she got used to isolate herself so long, and in order to improve hackerrank contest performance, she seeks the change. From a lone coder, work ass off, she barely stays afloat (not in financially), so she decided to find her new schools one by one, the 3 months old new school is called codereview.stackexchange.com, she found the site just after the Nov. 2016 woman codesprint contest. 

So, she spent one hour to review the algorithm, wrote a more readable C# version this time, with 3 months experience with the code review school, with top-rated teachers from JavaScript, C#, algorithm help her to code review her code line by line, debate on basics - hash function, coding style, API design, and numerous rich experience. 

Code reivew

C# code for stone division is ready to be posted to stackexchange.com for a review. And code review link is here. 



Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Blitzscaling 08: Eric Schmidt on Structuring Teams and Scaling Google

Feb. 22, 2017

Watch the video, 1 hour 22minutes.

Ask five-year question
14 years Java
-> Novell
-> Understand the cash, revenue, from Novell

150 people when Schmidt joined Google
-> same professor 18 years difference - two founders hired the CEO
-> 18 months plan, no deliverable, like a graduate school
-> raw talent matters ?
-> Talk about playboy interviews
-> professional vs. founders
-> 100 > 60 plus thousand
-> 3 of you read every resume
-> cautionary tale: no product should ship before it matures
barely work,
debate, operation and
performance of firefox -> invent Chrome -> 10 more people
Bought Android -> 1.4 billion operating system
Big management of lesson - Eric is wrong all the time (?)
compound value of decision

Recruiting
Sell the dream ? (20:00 - 25:00)
hire incredible intelligent people - debate
hire people who can get job done -
lesser universities/ not your friend/
controversial -
glue people -
Let us all reviewing all hiring, smell like glue people
Huge argument - we never fire anyone, hiring is crucial
normal people who have done something special
hire generic people, CFO who goes to bankrupt
Review all packets - how to score the people 1-5 bias - average weight - future performance
unconscious bias - understand bias
interview 16 time, this gentleman, cannot interview people more than 8 times -> 5 or 4 times
simple techniques -> analytical bias

Management
Be a disruptive and be a good way
Chrome - 20 people 40:00
120 engineer works for one manager - run that in 2 years
CEO is to manage the chaos.

Not to do and move fast? No.
Keep Google innovative - don't be evil and 20% time

How did you end up growing managers?
business analytical skills -
you should hire divas - drive culture of excellence

the attitude: "Just start it and make it work out "

Excellent talk - finished 85 minutes one time.


Eric Schmidt & Laszlo Bock talk at re:Work

Feb. 22, 2017

Watch the video 28 minutes, and take down some notes.

Establish trust and ...
Use humor ...
appeal to high power vs customer is a judge

Laszlo Bock - a pioneer to decide with data
here are the facts

incentive and intent -

Read the article about re:work book.

Hackerrank - week of code 29

Feb. 22, 2017

Plan to work on week of code 29 later in the week. Do not miss the opportunity to win a bronze medal.

Julia only worked on the first two easy algorithms, she tried to work on medium algorithm in last 4 hours, but she could not perform since she was too tired after 6 hours workout in the day time.

Day of programmer C# code is here.
Big Sorting C# code is here.

Lesson learned:


Julia, please work on the medium algorithm as early as possible. Work hard! It is not easy to score any point on medium algorithm, Julia has to reserve at least 10 hours in order to score any point on a medium algorithm. She tried to work on two medium algorithm in last 4 hours in the contest, but she could not perform any of them.

The day will come, Julia only needs a few hours to figure out one medium algorithm.


A programmer writes her first blog about driving safely

Feb. 22, 2017

Introduction

Julia learned a lesson a long time ago. First year she moved to Vancouver from south Florida in 2010, and then she made wrong U turns in the city of Vancouver. And then she learned her first lesson. And then, second year, she got a moving violation ticket. As a scholar, she knew that she has to study BC driver license book page by page, word by word. She spent one month to study the book, and she just loved to read the book again and again.

And after 6 years, Julia experienced her first car accident in Vancouver, she tried to yield a bus when driving to work, and then, she heard something in the back.

Long story short, it is time for her to find some material to study, and learn how to be a defensive driver, get some statistics update, acquire some new skills.

Remember a bible verse shared from FAU professor, a Chinese living water bible club in 2007, 10 years ago, Psalm 121: 6, the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. 

Accident location: Rupert street near worthington drive, 9:20am, Feb. 22, 2017, city of Vancouver. 

Study

Will continue later.
The idea is to read driver license book again, understand all rules, terminology, and situation analysis, reasoning. Write down some notes here.


Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Becoming a Googler...and Other Opportunities

Feb. 21, 2017

30 minutes video, Laszlo Bock has a conversation with thomas L. Friedman

Take down some notes:

First round, 31 minutes:

You can learn vs you know what you are doing

What google looks for:

1. Learning ability

2. Emergency leadership
team 4 - 6 people, step in/ step out

3. Culture fit - just like us, people are comfortable with ambiguity.
humanity, conscientious

3. Expertise, good engineer, great at it.

5 - 10 times, comes out something new - Look at the problem again and again.

14% percent no college degree - How google selected them?

Online training, self-taught. Pick up a lot of places, how to assess these?

Look at deep, net hire each year 5000 - 8000, 2 million application.

Every day MIT people size of people applies every day, 11,500 students.

Recruiter, screen, assessment - phone screen - engineer, technical coding ability
Come to campus after phone screen
Ask transcript - 15 years out of school - people 1/3, people lies. Small recruiting is making sense.

Performance - 300 independent variables, like school, first two years, velocity - how quickly you get promoted.

Grades are only for first 2 years after the school.
Grades - curve in different colleges.

Recruiter - big mistake in writing job resume/ answer: poorly write what they accomplished.
Give people understand - grow x by doing y based on z

How to avoid big mistakes in the interview? Do not wear suits.
Do not wear suit. Curious, demonstrate interest.

Talk about a candidate, she asked if it is not for interview - authentic interest.

1. Great question, why took hard course and got low grade instead of getting easy course?

Julia should learn how to answer question like this, ask herself: why taking hardest contest on hackerrank, what you learn? your performance can go so low compared to others?

People shy away from pain.
Learn analytical skills - could not get A.
More objective skills ...

The things you learned through those tough classes - grades are tough, professors are not friendly, very valuable in your life.

First you learn analytical skills, very valuable. Most of people do not understand compound interest, pay off high interest rate or student loan.

Second you learn resilience of ..... (17:38/31:23), repeat twice last 5 minutes.

Minority hiring?

2. Cost of education
- advise for parents of young people, college choice.
1. Look for signals, brands recognize, every one else? Write a big check to get the education.
Related understandable - skills are transferable to any environment
fundamental - think of cost

14% vs 86% for big employer - 1/3 goes to college.
Short term is better to assess the people, screening

Push them to take math, physics class

Cultivate people long term - build a relationship first
Related to resume screening as well - certain type

83 years old - look at age, gender, ......
conscience bias - a lot of work to be done

Second round, 30 minutes