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2nd technical phone interview

This interview went very differently.

I warmed up by writing qsort beforehand (starting like half an hour before). I was debugging it by the time I got the call. (checking the value at one index while decrementing the other index, as it turned out. Oops). I was pretty technically able, but didn’t do as well on the nitpicky (and sometimes important) details of language questions. (are virtual static member functions legal? What are the advantages and disadvantages of inlining a function? (I had thought he was talking about an inline function declaration in the class description. Afterwards, talking it over with simon, he was thinking it was a function tag telling it to treat the function like a precompiler macro)) And I only know about ip multicasting what may be gleaned from the name, and a few minutes thought about the implications.

But I asked better questions “What skills are you looking for?” These interviews leave me feeling smart-but-ignorant. “What skills would you suggest I work on developing?” Which prompted him to ask me whether I was stronger in math/algorithm stuff or language/software architecture. I responded the former, which, given his response, may save my bacon (since this is a math-heavy operations/simulation group that’s actually useful). And in responding to his question about “why amazon” I was all “location and corporate culture” and that got us into a more casual chat, where friendliness and laughter occurred.

He said if there is another interview it will be on site. Here’s hoping.

“Do you think he will win?”

Where ‘he’ is Dean. Yeah, this question makes me uncomfortable, so it’s time to take a serious look at it.

I think he can win. Okay, in a strict logical sense, I know he can win. Say Kerry died tomorrow, heart attack, or something equally non-blameable. And, even without that absurd example, less than 10% of the delegates have been selected. It wouldn’t take even anywhere near as dramatic a lead as kerry held over dean in iowa & new hampshire for the remaining 90% to give dean the nomination.

I do think Dean’s chances aren’t as good as Kerry’s. In addition to those who, prefer Kerry for what they believe he will do, there are those who want to be on the winning team (heard about several from Luke and others in Phoenix, though I ran into none myself), and those who think Dean’s rallying yelp in Iowa makes him unelectable (though, I bet these same people think that the lack of evidence supporting WMD’s don’t do nearly as much to damage bush’s chances. Perspective, people?)

On the other hand, Kerry had to mortgage his house to finance his campaign. Dean has not. Dean has an enormous network of volunteers. Some are wacky college students. Some are also settled parents, retirees, political campaigners, and a wide variety of other sorts. Be wary of generalizations.

I hope that the unlikely happens, and I am willing to work to shift the probabilities as much as I can. My vote will go to Dean. I encourage you to vote your conscience. Look at what the candidates have actually done in the past. And, if such things are important to you (though I don’t think they should be as important as the other), compare the record to their claims as to what they will do.

And, no matter who gets nominated, I will vote for the democrat. Even Leiberman. That having been said, it is unlikely I will do anything more than vote, should Joe get the nomination (monkeys, flying, my butt, you know how it goes). I’m not sure about Kerry. But, a cursory examination of his record leads me to believe I would be less inspired to campaign for him than for Dean. For whatever that’s worth.

responsibility for my expectations

I cannot fairly, and therefore will not, lay responsibility for the consequences of the mismatch between my expectations and reality primarily on the shoulders of others. If I convince myself that what I want to happen is what is probably going to happen, that’s my responsibility. Only if someone else deliberately misleads me can I place blame at their feet. Resentment under other circumstances is simply not appropriate. Disappointment, perhaps, but not resentment.

Being mature sucks sometimes, but welcome to reality. =)

Umm, whee! =)

So, I had a good time this weekend. Things that were key to the goodness of the weekend: Hanging with and catching up on our lives. Wish we’d had more time, but the time we had was great. He has mellowed, matured, and stayed the same. The other fabu thing was meeting Luke at the very beginning. Like, before we got on the bus, and having him as traveling companion for over 24 hours of busride. We probably played at least 15 hours of euchre, and it seems I’m now a good player. Yay. =) Hopefully we’ll be getting together later this week. Hopefully this will also help with the restless inability to sleep. =) G’night, folks.

Technical interview

I got all nervous & flustered, but then I warmed up….

First he wanted me to talk about a technical problem, and I finally felt like I had something worth talking about. Yay, Ro. But this problem is mostly math and very little architecture, so he wasn’t terribly interested in that angle.

He was like write me a function to reverse strings, preferrably in place. At first I pulled out pen & paper, but it wasn’t coming to me. Then I opened up emacs, & the juice started to flow again. I’m not sure if my function puts the terminating null at the beginning, and I did confuse a variable name, and I forgot to return. Did I mention I was flustered? Fortunately, the confusion was probably unnoticed, and the method was basically sound. Phones, bleh!

Then another one where I was reducing the order of a function from the obvious O(n^2) implementation (well, he didn’t give the O(n^2) implementation, but it was, as I say, obvious. I got it down to O(n*log(n)) with little prompting (sort first, then do something qsort-esque for a linear time implementation), and then, with a moderate amount of prompting, down to O(n) (lookup tables, it’s all about the lookup tables).

Some object oriented design questions. I had the technicalities right, and I gave strong stylistic reasons, and after prompting, gave the technical reasons for a virtual function in a toy example.

For the last technical question, we played with in order and pre order binary tree traversals. My intuition was completely correct, my solution was suboptimal, but good.

He asked about my goal of being a contractor on my resume, and I assured him I was looking for something full-time-ish with them. I asked for the next step, “I’ll give them my evaluation and our people will call you, and possibly schedule an in person interview”, and then asked for the insider’s perspective on what they did. His answer added some to the description, but more by way of flavor than detail.

I think I did well. All the right answers, if not exactly smooth. We shall see what comes of it. Laundry, and work, and stuff. I may not say much before monday. Wish me luck.

Phoenix, Ho!

Confirmation recieved. Getting on a bus this afternoon. And we’re stopping at mcyd’s. Guess who is bringing like 12 clif bars with him. , if I be staying with you, I’ll need some contact info. =) scu @ club dot cc dot cmu dot edu

I should also be getting my old phone, with my old numbers, back this afternoon. Let’s hope I can still find the charger. =)

And t-minus an hour and a half to Amazon technical phone interview. I sense an eventful day in my near future. =)