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I know, but I'm saying that what bothers me in the grand scheme of things is the fact that I might already be in my late 20's by the time I have a good job and can feel confident and start to live life, whereas lots of people I know are getting right out of college at age 21 and they have their dream career and it must be such a consoling feeling. Like I can't really "live" life until I get a decent job. My life is on hold until I find one.
In the grand scheme of life, you are really young. And just think, at least you have a degree/are in a field that is in demand by employers not a generic liberal arts major. You are better off than many.
Well, I have friends who are graduating college at 22 and moving right into good jobs. In the event that I get a good one soon, I'll still feel like they're getting an extra 2 yrs to live life.
You should write that down on an index card or something, and file it away somewhere where you'll find it in 20 years. At 44, you'll think it's hilarious that you thought a slower 2 yrs between ages 22 and 24 was going to sink your life path. Trust me, time flies and life is full of little surprises that crop up over decades...
Hubby got home late from work and now our young children are resisting bedtime [], so it will probably be a while longer before he can answer. I'll ask him to look over the thread once the kids are finally quiet and asleep!
Ok, I want him to check my solution to a problem. For a question at another company I had to make a function that returns the mode (most common element) of an array, and this was my best way of doing it:
Hey GP- this is LOL_Whut's Hubby
Slightly off reply- at 24 you're not behind You're right on track. FYI: I didn't get my first real coding job until I was 36; full disclosure, I was spending the time in Grad School
Looking at your solution (my C++ is a tad rusty), it looks like you're essentially creating a binary tree to hold the data, giving a natural sort by the binary representation of the number. What you have should be an adequate solution to the problem. You have the major problems ironed out: you want to keep track of the occurrence of each number in the array and you want to access it quickly. Yes, there might be problems with this IRL- does it handle negative numbers correctly, how about super- large numbers, etc. But as an interview question (where I'm expecting to give you more questions), my only comment would be that it was a bit complex a solution- the binary rep tree is nice, but why not make it a binary tree based on normal tree sorting rules?
Slightly off reply- at 24 you're not behind You're right on track. FYI: I didn't get my first real coding job until I was 36; full disclosure, I was spending the time in Grad School
Looking at your solution (my C++ is a tad rusty), it looks like you're essentially creating a binary tree to hold the data, giving a natural sort by the binary representation of the number. What you have should be an adequate solution to the problem. You have the major problems ironed out: you want to keep track of the occurrence of each number in the array and you want to access it quickly. Yes, there might be problems with this IRL- does it handle negative numbers correctly, how about super- large numbers, etc. But as an interview question (where I'm expecting to give you more questions), my only comment would be that it was a bit complex a solution- the binary rep tree is nice, but why not make it a binary tree based on normal tree sorting rules?
Hope this helps!
Thanks.
That was my redone solution. The question had a 30-minute time limit and I had to also explain the complexity and yada yada. So, my actual solution was the O(n^2) one that just goes through every element in the array and counts its frequency, updating a variable maxCount if the frequency of the current variable appears more frequently than maxCount. I'm pretty sure they didn't like that lol.
I know, but I'm saying that what bothers me in the grand scheme of things is the fact that I might already be in my late 20's by the time I have a good job and can feel confident and start to live life, whereas lots of people I know are getting right out of college at age 21 and they have their dream career and it must be such a consoling feeling. Like I can't really "live" life until I get a decent job. My life is on hold until I find one.
Ok- you are actually at a perfect phase in your career. You don't have a decent job right now; this gives you the perfect opportunity to explore the various technologies out there on your own at your own pace and time.
There are many different skills out there that you can work on gathering some basic skill using: for example, it sounds like you have some experience with Java: you should work on that, plus some of the optional frameworks supporting it, like Spring, Hibernate, JMS, various Web Services (I'm partial to REST frameworks, but there are still some using SOAP, so investigating building services from WSDL's wouldn't be amiss), Tomcat, JBoss, JSP, JSF....
When you get a job, you'll be expected to learn these and similar frameworks and how they are used. You have the time right now to explore them; you should take advantage of it..
Oh, I don't know what type of computer/environment you have- I'd set yourself up something with a Linux environment. I prefer using VMWare to create virtual machines that I can run Ubuntu on- that way I can simulate a multi-machine cluster if I need to. You do have to pay for it, though: I forget the price.
EDIT: Oh, forgot some of the NoSQL techs: Hadoop, MongoDB.. And Source control (Git, SVN)... you see, there is a lot of things out there to look at. You shouldn't be expected to know them all, but the more you can touch, the better you can sell yourself.
God ..... that was awful. I got completely drilled by two different technical interviewers, one after the other, and then the recruiter lady came in the room next and told me they were gonna cut the interview process short because I had failed.
I have no idea what I did wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The second guy asked me how to find the median of two sorted arrays. I described two different procedures and he told me I was "completely wrong." He was like staring at me with embarrassment. What the ****? I don't think there's any way that the other interviewees had a better answer than I did. I have no idea what they were looking lol
Hmm, my programming is a bit rusty, but AFAIK, if the arrays are sorted in ascending or descending order...
--if you know how many elements are in each array (say "max") and the first index is 0, then?:
max / 2;
* don't know if it's an even number. AFAIK, there is no median if the number of elements are even?
.
Anyways, my worst interview was a phone interview. She calls me up 5 min. late, says that she'll need to cut it short b/c she has a meeting at ___ (25 minutes later). Asked about stuff like could I be a consultant, blah blah blah, how my IT skills are. Towards the end, I asked her for her contact info, and she said she knew what I was doing... I don't have to follow up with a thank you email. I laughed a little (I couldn't help myself ) , and the interview ended. I didn't even bother to follow up to ask if I got it... I've interviewed with this company x2 before, and I don't think I ever want to be involved with them anyways.
Another one, I got nervous that I left later than I wanted to, got lost getting to the place. I answered a lot of the questions OK, but one of them, I trailed off, noticed it, tried to wrap it up, and did eventually. During that time, the interviewer visibly cringed. I got the job anyways, but it turns out they had a harder time getting people... it involved a security clearance and drug test and AFAIK, I may have lowballed myself compared to what they thought was OK. It turned out to be a bad deal, as a coworker made many of our lives either unpleasant to downright miserable, and we couldn't speak out against him because he's well connected.
God ..... that was awful. I got completely drilled by two different technical interviewers, one after the other, and then the recruiter lady came in the room next and told me they were gonna cut the interview process short because I had failed.
I have no idea what I did wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The second guy asked me how to find the median of two sorted arrays. I described two different procedures and he told me I was "completely wrong." He was like staring at me with embarrassment. What the ****? I don't think there's any way that the other interviewees had a better answer than I did. I have no idea what they were looking lol
please post your experience on Glassdoor as well. it helps prevent other candidates from wasting their time with the company or at least warns them on what to expect
please post your experience on Glassdoor as well. it helps prevent other candidates from wasting their time with the company or at least warns them on what to expect
They'll know it's me lol. I just went to Glass Door and here's someone else who applied for the same position title:
Phone screen in which they asked about my resume, then invited me to the office for an in person interview. First, two interns interviewed me, both nervous and not well prepared. It was awkward because they kept seeming overly impressed by my experience. Then the head of the department I was applying to came in, talked to me disinterestedly for five minutes, was totally unfriendly and insulted the university that I go to. They might have a "cool" office but they need to work on their professionalism.
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Trust me, time flies and life is full of little surprises that crop up over decades...
], so it will probably be a while longer before he can answer. I'll ask him to look over the thread once the kids are finally quiet and asleep!
You're right on track. FYI: I didn't get my first real coding job until I was 36; full disclosure, I was spending the time in Grad School
) , and the interview ended. I didn't even bother to follow up to ask if I got it... I've interviewed with this company x2 before, and I don't think I ever want to be involved with them anyways.
