birdymcbird

Music. Learned to play piano. Very relaxing

Why did they rewrite?

>>>> Many interviewers fail to provide enough context and that leaves the interpretation of the prompt too wide open.

yes but this not a defect as youre viewing it.

in real world at amazon, your job to deal with ambiguity. the hand holding phase where youre given or told exactly what to do is maybe 1-2 year for college level hire. you work with ambiguity or you move out.

if you do not want ambiguity challenge then amazon not best fit for you. its not for everyone and amazon certainly has big problems in its culture. not defending any of it but saying to you what it is.

until recently i was a principal engineer at amazon. so maybe my opinion has some weight.

system design interview is more about interviewee asking questions..taking time to understand the problem..ask about product feature or SLA..understand functional and non functional requirement.

then its about candidate showing some knowledge set showing they can think and reason behind some immediate coding task. Demonstrate ability to make judgment..simplify where possible..discuss costs and trade offs.

this interview not about candidate building some system at scale themself. building and supporting has trials and lessons you only learn by doing and failing, not through interview prep or YouTube videos

this is amazon culture since beginning. decision making federated to director level or VP organization and s-team only step in on bigger goal.

rto not even top 3 company problem though. main issue is fast pace culture that had its own problem with retention now turned into lazy, cancerous zombie.

-performance bar lowered at all levels.

-management layers overrun by hires from failing companies.

i left after 10 years. tech stopped hiring innovators. it simply h1b wagon..people who do exactly as told because they afraid of PIP and having to move back to india. the other class of worker is a politician from some company like ibm. from ibm, they bring EXTREME culture of politics and empire building.

my theory that amazon leadership know this biggest business risk. any rto policy to get these people to quit without severance. amazon leadership know problem so bad they will risk strong talent.

article puts goodreads problems on amazon. partially true but lazy journalism.

much goodreads leadership same as when amazon bought them. i know because i work close to them before i leave amazon.

tech was outdated ruby on rails. the engineering org has very low technical bar and love inventing things that amazon already solve at scale. more energy put into resisting amazon than thinking about innovation. lots and lots of waste.

i do wonder how amazon layoffs affected goodreads. i would clean house.

Not sure how far she makes in CS without some high school level math like pre algebra, algebra 1 and 2. remember that actual computer science curriculum have more advanced math like single and multi variate calculus, differential equation, linear algebra, discrete.

Good news: most software engineer not taking derivative or vector calculation like full calculus or linear algebra taught in CS program.

but you need ability to reason about basic maths if your program has any computation at all.

khan academy is good for the math. dont really need much more.

Not a lawyer but if EZInvoice not your trademark then not much you can do.

you see abortion as issue about body autonomy. many see it as issue of murder. it like religious debate.

me not arguing either way. but wonder about “quality” of this journalism. it subtly condition reader to believe one side is correct and other side like some German nazi.

work in tech. not every employee liberal or super progressive.

it crazy to me the bar for what considered journalism. probably many of such “anti-abortion” lawmaker have other policy friendly for business. probably some people in these company even against abortion.

this article written as if supporting law makers is mutually exclusion choice. we must give money to only one side as if those single issue the only issue or even most important issue. subtle way by media of conditioning how we think.

ha! worked at amazon on detail page, cart, checkout.

nothing unparalleled. lots of java and perl mason code. very poor and broken abstractions. missing unit test. missing integration test. poor developing experience. horrible culture of burnout and throwing people under bus, people cry at work. it was H1B train where you over work under threat of being fired and then need to leave country because visa system stupid.

>>> It’s an excuse to underpay and ignore 55% of your workforce.

google isnt walmart or big business killing small store.. this comment like these people have no other job to work if google killed every other company and holding these workers hostage.

I use linked in sometimes. see lots of colleagues suddenly write lengthy motivational or sales post in perfect English.. but worked with them and know they did not type it.

it set expectation on your ability to write clear english and can have wrong consequence.

recently someone respond to my post on HN and accuse me of being some USA person with agenda. they present evidence that they found me older post written in very clear english.

i wrote text..asked chatgpt to clean it for me.. and then posted here. ;]

brave new world. never read it in my country when growing up and friend recently told me it is one of 10 books to read if me want to read english.

do not read books but i could not put it down. had to google some chapters and website called cliff notes was good guide to understand some chapters that were hard for me to follow because me english not that good.