EBoard 06: Exponent and Preamp (and Debugging)

Approximate overview

• Administrivia
• Exponent and Pramp
  • Overview from Dr. Barks
  • Discussion of your experiences
  • Side notes: Intellectual property
• Steps for success, revisited
• Reflections on practice (or non-practice) interviews, if there were any
• Debugging strategies (if time)

Administrivia

• Attendance.
• As you’ve likely discovered, my plans for the course have not quite matched what is actually happening.
  • The best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley
  • I hope that you’re still finding what we do valuable.
• Depending on what next week’s alum plans, I’ll probably send you some pairings and questions to do practice interviews.

Exponent and Pramp: Some Background

Welcome to Sarah Barks from CLS

• Directs the STEM Learning Community.
• Responsible for helping people get jobs in tech, data science, plus those other STEM subjects (except for health sciences)
• Unfortunately, they cannot run a mock tech interview for you; they are not a coder.
• Exponent helps prepare you for tech interviews.
  • Courses
  • Sample interviews you can watch
  • Practice questions
  • Etc.
• Also a question bank: Real questions that companies have asked.
  • Helps with inside knowledge.
• Connects you to peers to do mock interviews.
• There’s an extra feature that lets you pay to do a real mock interview.
• Seems like a nice “all in one package”.

How big is the question bank?

• They claim 2424.
• It’s not all tech stuff.
• We will have an event with Exponent on October 26 at 7pm on Webex.
  • It’s on Handshake
  • It will also be on career.grinnell.edu
  • It will be recorded

Is a “mock tech interview” one in which you mock technology?

• “Can you believe that the designers at Microsoft are so incompetent that …”
• No.
• In reality, it’s a practice interview to help make you better in prepartion for your real interview.

What’s Handshake?

• A platform that CLS uses as a job board and as a scheduling platform.
• https://grinnell.joinhandshake.com/login
• Handshake vets each job on handshake.
• LinkedIn will also give you jobs, but they are for all levels.
• The more you give your data freely to Handshake and LinkedIn, the more they give you back.
• Dice is also good. Once again, not vetted.
• Data Jobs.
• Tech Crunch.

Back to Exponent

• This year is a trial. Please try it out and let Dr. Barks know what you think.

Experiences with Exponent and Pramp

Lessons and Courses

• There are sample solutions.
• Videos may be helpful as well.
• There are classes on what to do once you have the offer or once you’re in the work environment.
  • Advisors in the CLS will also talk to you about negotiating offers (salary, benefits, etc.)
  • It’s good to get info from a variety of areas.
  • Don’t forget about GlassDoor as a way to check current salaries.
  • Exponent seems to be a vetted source.
  • Historically, places will lowball people from historically underserved groups.
  • Once they’ve made you an offer, they’ve decided they want you. It’s fine to negotiate.
• Seems to have courses targeted toward a wide variety of areas.
• Certificates might be useful for those who didn’t pursue a CS major or who are early in their careers. Tells employers that you have skills that they can trust.

Pramp

• Part of exponent, but something different.
• A channel through which you can connect with someone elsewhere to do a practice interview.
  • We hope that you’re at the same interview.
• Answering questions for people you don’t know is a good way to to practice for real interview, which will be someone you don’t know.
• Perhaps it’s easier to get things wrong in front of someone you don’t know.

Coaching

• You can apply for CLS professional funding.
• You could also consider our friend Anthony D. Mays

Tell us about CLS funding

• CLS has lots of funding sources.
• There is internship funding for people who have UNPAID internships (or a stipend that ends up being less than minimum wage).
  • Unpaid internships should be at non-profits.
  • For-profit companies should be paying you.
• There is professional development funding
  • Certification
  • Professional conferences
• There is also a professional attire grant
• And a CLS clothing closet (basement of the JCC, by appointment)
• Senior interview grant (travel to job interview or grad school)
• Grad program application feeds, test prep, etc.
• See details at career.grinnell.edu
• In general, higher need students get more funding
• “Spend our money, it’s there for you.”
• But it’s limited. E.g., our professional development funding is limited to something like $500.
• Use it or you lose it.

What resources are available to alumni?

• You can still meet with CLS advisors.
• Alumni are welcome to attend on-campus events.
• Alumni can attend virtual meetings.

What are your favorite resume questions?

Why aren’t the apostrophes in resume?

How do you set a right tab?

Should you have a gpa on a resume?

It’s optional. It’s subjective. Most employers don’t care.

Most want to see the skills you have. What will you do for them.

IP and Exponent

Is it ethical to post the question you were asked on an interview?

Yes.

No.

It depends. What did the company say about the interview? Many say “Don’t discuss your interview questions with other people.”

Privilege is at play.

Steps for Success, revisited

• I’ll use the schedule as our starting point.

Testing example: Determine if a string of all lowercase letters is a permutation of a palindrome (it contains nothing other than lowercase letters; no spaces)

Let’s look at some examples.

• Palindomes should be permutations of palindromes

    pp("abccba") -> true (1)
    pp("abcba") -> true (1)
  

• Permutations of those should be permutations of palindromes

    pp("aabbcc") -> true(1)
    pp("aabbc") -> true(1)
  

• Some things that are not permutations of palindromes

    pp("abdcba") -> false (0)
    pp("ab") -> false (0)
  

• We can turn those to printfs at the end.

    int pp(char *str) {
      // Build an array of counters
      int counts[26];
      // The following may not be necessary in many implementations
      // of C, which will zero out memory for safety.  But Sam is old.
      for (int i = 0; i < 25; i++) {
        counts[i] = 0;
      }
  
      // Add to the counts
      while (*str) {
        int pos = *str - 'a';
        if ((pos >= 0) && (pos < 25)) {
          counts[pos]++;
        }
        str++;
      } // while
  
      // Make sure all the counts are even
      for (int i = 0; i < 25; i++) {
        if (counts[i] % 2 == 1)
          return false;
      } // for
  
      // If we made it this far, they are all even
      return true;
    } // pp
        
    int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
      printf("abccba: %d\n", pp("abccba"));
      printf("abcba: %d\n", pp("abcba"));
    }
  

Reflections on interviews

Behavioral interview

• 30 minutes long (it feels long)
• Let’s talk about your resume.
• What conflicts do you have and how do you resolve that?
• How do you keep up with what’s current with tech?
• Recommendations: Practice on these, keep eye contact, …
• How do you react in team settings?
• What do you do when you have a difficult teammate?
• Use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) approach.
• Prepare stories ahead.

Technical interview (60 minutes)

• Also included some behavioral questions
• System design, very open ended, not many parameters, not many constraints.
• Limited options: Python or Javascript (no advance warning).
• Debugging: Solve using print statements.

BBM Technical Interviews

• Done on shared coding platform.
• Interviewer walks you through the question.
• Follows the “traditional” interview process we talked about (you should be asking questions, etc.)
• Practice decreases stress.

Behavioral interviews

• Similar questions
• Also “What do you do outside of CS?”

Debugging strategies

If we have time.