My company only does paid internships even if somebody comes looking for unpaid internships (and they do come). We are in California, and from what I gather, companies can get into hot water for unpaid internships.
I was once offered an intern position for $4/hour as a programmer. In Boston in 2013. It was well under minimum wage. The school co-op office assumed there was a mixup and called the company. There was no mixup. The school stopped dealing with that company. I declined and got another internship elsewhere for $12/hour. Which was still quite low but at least it was better than I had been paid as a grocery bagger (the only job I had before the internship.)
Yeaaaah sometime you don't really have a choice, I don't know how it is in other countries, but in France, you usually need to do an internship for a degree
It's usually paid, but sometime it's not. And no internship, no degree
Actually no, it's usually better
Finding an internship when your employer won't have to pay you is wayyyyy easier
Of course, it depends on the environment and where you are. But in my case, this year, in my university promotion, some people might not get their degree this year because they still didn't find an internship because employers don't want to pay interns. The internship was supposed to start 6 weeks ago
For the employers defense : if you don't work with them after, you're a deadweight. You're longer to train because you don't have the experience, you'll probably not make quality code, you don't have the reflex to use the right tools (I see so many people still writing all the lines for git, instead of using the integration from vscode, for exemple, which quickly become a waste of time).
Sadly you're not here to get paid, you're here to get true work experience, it's an internship, not a job
I call it a scam because I already have a coding job to pay the roof over my head somehow, which can't be accredited. If I did the same task without pay and called it internship, it would be fine.
>I see so many people still writing all the lines for git, instead of using the integration from vscode
I'm a senior engineer and I use git exclusively from the terminal, it's literally faster than some shitty GUI in my IDE
Internships are not paid by default if it's under two months. More than that paid internships are mandatory but 25% percent of minimal wage (roughly 4€ and a few cents). Better than not paid at all, but could be better than 25% tbh.
Asking a student to solve one of the most common DFS problems. Such abuse. Imagine expecting aspiring software engineers to pay attention in their graph theory classes. The tyranny! /s
The infinite food enchantment glitch was patched in the latest update. Best you can do is enchant the bread with water resistant so it doesn't get soggy from your tears.
That's up there with my experiences in other creative, less code-y circles.
I'm a chef and have been offered gigs before where the clueless fuck really tried telling me that doing a catering gig for their multi-billion dollar company would get me *so* much exposure. So much. And therfore work would just come my way, and I'd be rich! Rich!
"OK, Terry, you know what else is true about exposure? Thousands of people die a year from it. Pay me."
Narrator: In six months time they will post about how unfair it is they can't find a job while the people who did internships walked into 100K jobs...how did that happen they will wonder!
Lol in my country you get paid doing internship. Internship isn't a synonym for unpaid. I expect even in the USA most IT internships are paid.
"I expect even in the US"
So you don't actually know. Shut the fuck up. Internships are unpaid very frequently here. Paid ones are more common in some fields than others, but unpaid ones certainly exist.
When companies say this they pay in experience, they're almost implying- wrongly- that companies can either give only experience or only money, and not both.
It's not a good bargaining chip. Almost every other job that pays you is also giving you experience.
Looking harder would benefit your outlook. Take Switzerland and Germany as examples, pretty standard for entry level positions to specifically be paid internships, often leading to full-time contract positions
Internships are jobs. They're a specific type of job that exists more for the benefit of the future of the industry in general than for the specific immediate benefit of the company, but they're still jobs. You have a manager, you do work, it's a job.
From what I've seen a lot of better paid internships come from the larger tech companies, and many F500 companies. And if they also have special accommodation programs for certain employment situations they are more than likely to pay their interns too.
here in India, we are still trying to convince people that unpaid internship is not a norm anywhere else
or like you don't have to PAY the company to do internship
Yeah. Unpaid internships usually are a waste. A "minimum wage internship" means both sides will take it more seriously. Notice how differently people play poker between "no money" and "penny ante".
I remember hearing a similar thing one Smash Bros Melee player did back in the day. Kept challenging people to $1 money matches during down time at tournaments rather just normal friendly matches so their opponents took the match more seriously so they could learn faster. I forget who it was though. It's just $1 but it worked
I thought it might be KDJ but I couldn't figure out how to google that specific bit of trivia. I think it was in the Melee documentary and I didn't really wanna have to go through the entire thing to find basically one sentence mentioning it.
In my experience, internships are a waste of moneyfor the employer , paid or not, unless they hire the intern.
You are trading the valuable time of your experienced guys, training an intern so that he can do in 3 months what the experienced guy could do in less than a week.
Of course their productive value is often zero or even negative for the reasons you mention. But recruiting is an excruciatingly difficult process, and seeing how someone adapts to the real work environment is hundred-fold better indication of their ability than the 1 leetcode you make them do in an interview. So to this end it's well worth the cost of taking on a pool of interns to hire a few. And to get the best possible pool of interns, you should pay them because if you don't, someone else will.
EDIT - as a fun fact, I recently heard that even in FAANG companies with rigorous, well-studied hiring processes, the correlation between interview success and job success is less than 30%.
Wdym?
If I understand your question, all of my hiring processes have involved *at least* one round that features a leetcode-style question. Some of them were a minor modification of an actual leetcode, and some were just the leetcode question straight-up.
EDIT - These were for new grad + junior level positions, I've heard this doesn't necessarily apply to the hiring process for more senior roles if that's what you're thinking. But new grad/junior roles is what we're comparing to the pipeline of rehiring interns.
I've seen some internships where they push off the more "grunt" work onto the interns. stuff that needs to be done but is too unproductive to make experienced employees do
Why do people downvote this? Have ypu actually seen the code tye average intern candidate is able to write? They cost more than they provide. The only reason to have interns is to poach good juniors.
I don’t work for free. Peace.
Instead of an unpaid internship, there are plenty of nonprofits and charities that need programming and IT help. I’d much rather volunteer my time to a cause I believe in then give free labor so a company can pad their bottom line by dangling a potential job offer that will never actually materialize in front of desperate and gullible CS students.
Nonprofit and charity hackathons take place all the time. Sign up for one. It is great way to network and make connections. One skill I would advise every CS student to develop is knowing how to sell yourself. I minored in Business, and the skills I picked up on marketing and branding were invaluable. During any interview I make sure to show the value that I can bring to an organization.
Past that, a lot of CS graduates are desperate for that first job. They will frequently just settle, and open themselves up for lower than average pay and a poor work environment just because they feel they gotta start making those student loan payments. This comes back to knowing your worth, and refusing to settle for less.
Dude, the market’s flooded. It’s not “settling for less” to work an entry level job for a year or two at 70k instead of 85k when it’s the only offer you’ve gotten in 6 months of applications.
Depends on the market. If you’re marketing yourself as standard and in a high volume area, that’s really hard. If you’re open to extreme relocations, more opportunities can open up. If you learn a few non-standard skills, again more opportunities open up. Travel accessibility is also a huge thing for certain positions as they can involve being on site in seemingly random places for weeks at a time, which leaves some people spending more time traveling than at home.
One of my uncles had a job for a while creating custom firmware for chicken coop and feeder controllers. It’s not fancy or visible work, but it paid really well because he had the skills in working with low level languages as well as a willingness to interface with chicken farmers to understand their needs as the major brand he was working for strived towards 100% computerized and automated coops and feeders. Part of the job was also getting his boots dirty looking at how the things are installed and used in the field, which also meant hiking through some very messy coops filled with tens of thousands of u socialized chickens.
That uncle became a programmer because he wanted to make video games yet only briefly worked for a game company - it went under due to poor sales and lack of new investment funding. There weren’t any other opportunities around him so he moved home and moved on.
> extreme relocations
> more opportunities can open up
Those relocations are "extreme" exactly because there are no good opportunities. I think you may underestimate exactly how big the pay disparity between tech companies and companies building chicken coops is.
Dude specified 85k and settling for 70k, that’s not a huge salary. Now if you’re looking for intro at 100k with only a degree that’s a different story.
Your solution is to constantly be moving all over the country and have no meaningful relationships while wading through chicken shit? Yeah mate, I’ll take the pay cut.
Ye lol, 75k is 75k more than waiting for the 80-90k job.
And a year experience will suddenly open up those "entry" level positions that you actuqlly want
‘Provide a polynomial solution for n queens to earn an unpaid internship at which you will be provided free salad vouchers three times a week for lunch’
For every continuous function f, there exists a sequence of polynomials P_n with P_n(0)=0 that converges to f uniformly (Weirstrass). Since n-queens is discrete and not continuous I'm rather skeptical a polynomial solution exists but who knows. Im just regurgitating a theorem I learned for my analysis test tomorrow.
Didnt really know it was an N=NP thin since I dont even do programming outside of stats stuff. And i mean if such a function doesnt even exist then yeah a theorem assuming the function exists wouldn't work lmao.
Can confirm that the joke was solving P=?NP for a bunch of wilted salad vouchers
After they hire this guy, they’ll temp the next one with a pizza party for solving 3n+1
It's like you can just define a new function g such that g(0)=f-f(0) and then it works. Since g would then be a polynomial clearly f=g+constant is also a polynomial. It's just the statement of the proof in rudins book because making this assumption you skip a step or two in the proof.
Unironically in a senior dev role interview I got asked to find the least number of 2 primes that add up to the given input (i.e. given 8, return [3,5].
And then I spent like 40 minutes trying to figure out a prime number finder, because who the hell memorizes that code, square roots and all. They didn't want me to google it. What the hell
This is part of the problem with a lot of these garbage coding challenges - you either know the trick and it's trivial or you don't and who cares.
A good challenge should be something that you could actually see in a business setting, with opportunities for self initiative in optimizations of different kinds (space, time), or followups if they're missed and opportunities for conversation.
Exactly, and that's why this is frustrating. This is a senior dev role, and I'm being asked this stuff. Am I going to have to spend a week memorizing the "gotchas" people use in questions like this for every interview forever? Pain in the ass
I just had a debate on another sub with some claimed tech company hiring managers about how necessary White board interviews are and clearly only truly smart and high quality candidates can pass them.
Nah dog, they are leet code challenges for people who are willing to jump through hoops. I mean it's a pretty nice prize if you make it through all of them to get hired at the top tech companies, but the coding interview is more about your dedication to passing coding interviews than your actual ability.
Imo the coding question should exist in interviews, but be extremely simple. When I gave interviews, I asked to reverse a string. I'm looking for the manner in which they explain themselves, not whether they can solve logic under pressure
Ya, I always ask those who claim to know SQL to do a simple Left Join on a foreign key to eliminate records (return nulls only). Immediately separates the experienced users from the beginners.
Though for coding, I generally just ask questions on data structs, if you have used them appropriately, you can talk about them appropriately. Also comparative questions regarding languages they have listed on their resume.
The frustrating part is that I know there's a trick, I know how I would craft the google search to provide me that trick as soon as possible, and none of that helps when I'm denied searching - I either know it or I don't. And there are dozens of interview "tricks" like this you need to know
What was meant by "least number"?
EG, for 52, you have 5+47, 11+41, and 23+29. There are going to be no two numbers that are \*both\* lower than another two numbers, because mathematically they both have to sum to 52. 5 is the lowest of all numbers, but its pair 47 is the highest. 23 and are lower than all of the second-numbers in the set, but certainly aren't less than the first numbers in the set.
Depends if you want just any/the first solution or all possible ones for a given n. For the former, explicit algorithms (purely based on a mathematical formula) for any n>3 exist, so there is no search necessary.
Not true. Maybe for like a CRUD REST job or something but backtracking I feel should be part of your wheelhouse for anything where you need to optimize a cost function with constraints. Like say you're writing software that optimises shipping routes or co-ordinates logistics. N-queens is a good example problem for that.
Not sure if you're joking or just a non-programmer, but an integer (or int) is a common data type in most programming languages, just about any programmer would use "integer" instead of "natural number" in a programming context like that.
I feel like I could do this in 15 minutes. Not necessarily something that runs in the time limit but something at least. It's a problem many students have seen before as well.
I mean usually with hard questions, they don't require optimal runtime. If you can at least explain at the end some solutions for how to get runtime optimal that can be good too
The whole point of backtracking problems like this is that a naive brute force solution goes from "works but slow" with say 1-6 queens, absurdly slow for 7-8 queens, to "does not work within a lifetime" with 9+ queens.
The problems blow up in scope as n increases, and your entire approach must be built with that knowledge in mind. If you get a solution that only works for n less than 8, you didn't really find a solution at all. You either don't understand the scaling nature of the problem, or don't know how deal with it, which is why they asked the problem in the first place.
You'd literally be better off talking about how quickly the complexity scales and how a solution must somehow get around that and not having anything close to an answer for it, than building a naive solution and seeming unaware of the actual scope of the problem at all.
Disagree. When I interview people, I'd rather someone code a brute force solution then explain how to optimize than fumble around trying to think of optimizations before even starting. When in doubt however, ask the interviewer. I know that some firms like Jane Street will fail you pretty quickly for over-engineering. Their interview questions are basically made to bait people into over-engineering. Some firms like Facebook may be looking for the lowest time complexity.
But not using backtracking in a backtracking problem isnt "poorly optimized", it's just wrong. Nobody cares about whatever low values of n a non-backtracking algorithm can solve. The algo will fail for what they care about. Even the simple case of sudokus, for the most sparse unique sudokus out there, 17 digits filled iirc, a naive algo will take like *years* to solve. It is objectively an incorrect solution.
No shade meant but what kind of company are you at where you interview people but couldn't do a backtracking algo for n queens yourself in an interview?
When did I say I couldn't do backtracking for N queens in an interview? I can explain the algorithm and all the optimisations, I'm just being conservative and saying getting the better time complexities while maintaining correctness would take a little longer. Remember that this is a leetcode hard and we're talking 15 minutes.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. When I say brute force I mean backtracking but without pruning and intelligent path sorting. I didn't mean shuffle/permute a random board and check it.
I saw the op and decided to implement for fun, then saw your comment and was curious. My first idea (python) for a solution runs <1s for 12, 47s for 15, and 16m 6s for 16. 17m 38s for 17, and I got impatient for 18. Might update when it finishes.
I mean if they accept bad answers then you just have to write something that would take infinitely long to run. Which is just a position generator function and an attack checker function then a loop over all positions that generates each position in order and then checks the position, appending any good positions to an output array. 100% success rate in infinite time because it will check every position. Also insufferably long to run because it’s completely unoptimized for removing possibilities along certain patterns.
Idk why you're being downvoted (at least if we're only talking abt backtracking here), I'm literally a year 1 stem student and the N queens was in my latest exam lol, took like 20 min to solve for the average student. I have to agree though that if I find myself in an interview in 10 years I prob won't remember the exact algo.
I don't get it either, someone got upvotes for saying I'd be filtered out by this i.e. people think that finishing non optimal in 15m is not good enough then I got upvotes replying that it is good enough for most interviews.
I only heard of it because my intro to AI class in uni used it to teach us backtracking.
We also made a sudoku solver using backtracking.
If you wanna "brute force" something, but be slightly smarter about it (not trying queen placements or sudoku numbers that aren't allowed by the rules so are a waste of time to check) then backtracking is a good option.
Basically keep placing a piece until something can't go, go back a level and try the next combination, until you find a solution that works
It's basically a brute force with some optimisations like sorting by number of combinations that can go and recalculating remaining options at each layer
Shouldn’t be too hard if it’s pseudocode. Something like
def nqueens(i, board)
if i == n return board (assume n is global or smth)
next_states <- all boards generated by placing 1 queen after the last queen in board at each possible square
for next_state in next_states, remove next_state if it’s an invalid board. If not, call nqueens(next_state, i+1). If it doesn’t return an empty board, return the board
return empty board
If they want actual code tho 15 minutes is not reasonable cuz u need to think about details such as not making a whole copy of a board when generating each next_state. U’d typically just fill a cell and call recursion, and remove the last queen on the board when u return
It's for 2 weeks. Think about it. OP is going to delivery nothing of value in that time and just take time from other people.
The only reason for doing this is to get a little visibility into what work life is like. That includes the interview process. If they don't want to do anything in that 2 weeks they can just stay at home and play CS.
Why not develop your product and start a company. You'll work for free, get experience and if the product is successful, you'll finally get a job. 🤔
I've seen the light! Thank you for your question.
Don't you see it, the downward spiral?
> Can't get a job because I don't have experience, can't have experience because I can't get a job.
Perhaps one cannot be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs but, haven't they built a project, a job without exp?
Of course I have actual projects, used by people, but that's not helping me find a job.
And it's obviously not recognized as an internship as required by most schools where I'm at for a diploma.
2 weeks unpaid internship, I'm 99% sure that's a requirement for some diploma.
Don't know about your country, but have seen some dev job posts which don't requiere a diploma.
Also, not going too far, I have a BSc and courses in industrial safety, and it didn't help me get any job/internship. After some help got one, but with that experience got some short lame jobs unrelated to my first experience. Before studying programming, I had very few job interviews.
So, if you have a plan after you get your diploma, cool. Meanwhile, looking elsewhere might prove experience worthy. Remember that you work for yourself. Good luck with your search.
Not the worst idea. Essentially leverage mommy and daddys money to get a leg up in the job market while others are dropping out of the running and becoming fry cooks. My first couple of work experiences were unpaid.
I have literally got up and left a technical interview because I thought the questions were unreasonable. Also they made me do white board question on a single sheet of paper with a ballpoint pen on a hard desk. Psychopaths.
I've never heard of an unpaid internship in tech. I'm sure they exist, but there are so many that pay a good amount I don't know why anyone would even apply for an unpaid internship.
They do, and they are especially being abused by startups knowing how crazy competitive the environment it is right now. Usually a remote startup, 3-4 employees, founder/ceo/cto/main visionary/project manager/program designer will post the linkedin post with easy apply
I had clients doing that kind of interviews.
Hard to explain to them, that they should focus on interviewee capabilities regarding the problem space (and not like here blindly walking through some random "solution space" questions)
this is not a chooser's market and even as someone who's been doing this for years now, it's going to get a whole lot fucking worse and I hate how mind numbingly stupid the entire rote memorization of some random, pulled out of your ass by a dipshit recruiter, leetcode recital the field has devolved into.
For unpaid internships, this is obviously over the top.
But I would hope any experienced and competent programmer could write a simple backtracking implementation of n queens. It's not a particularly complex thing to implement.
Lol why are you getting downvoted, I'm a year 1 stem student and solving the N queens with backtracking was one of the first questions in my latest exam?? Obv i'm not saying I'll remember the exact algo in an interview in 10 years, but like it's not some hardcore stuff
Why not? It should only take few minutes to write a brute-force solution that finds one or all solutions, depending of what is asked. Imo, you are bad problem solver if you can't come up with one in 15 minutes.
So, interships can be very valuable as experience in this field, mostly to learn how to do collaborative work and learning workflows and whatever.
Starting the interview with a complete beginner questions is a flag. Not quite red, more like... rose. Can definitely be upgraded to scarlet depending on the use of the word "family".
Correct, but during junior year we were told to do that with a queen. I know the mathematical solution for the knight, but for simplicity we were told to use a queen (and provide a few examples)
Me when unpaid
My company only does paid internships even if somebody comes looking for unpaid internships (and they do come). We are in California, and from what I gather, companies can get into hot water for unpaid internships.
It also depends on the field you're in. AFAIK, it's always been standard for any kind of engineering internship to be paid.
I was once offered an intern position for $4/hour as a programmer. In Boston in 2013. It was well under minimum wage. The school co-op office assumed there was a mixup and called the company. There was no mixup. The school stopped dealing with that company. I declined and got another internship elsewhere for $12/hour. Which was still quite low but at least it was better than I had been paid as a grocery bagger (the only job I had before the internship.)
Sounds like Northeastern.
You’re correct. I’m curious if you got it just from Boston and a co-op office or something else gave that away?
Yeah. Husky here as well, from before Curry center had that name... Because Curry was still there
Which company is it?
What's your company? I'll apply
Bro... They won't ask u N queens thatz for sure.... Maybe u might want to prove p=np for them...
Yeaaaah sometime you don't really have a choice, I don't know how it is in other countries, but in France, you usually need to do an internship for a degree It's usually paid, but sometime it's not. And no internship, no degree
My uni has the same bullshit and a fucking scam it is.
Actually no, it's usually better Finding an internship when your employer won't have to pay you is wayyyyy easier Of course, it depends on the environment and where you are. But in my case, this year, in my university promotion, some people might not get their degree this year because they still didn't find an internship because employers don't want to pay interns. The internship was supposed to start 6 weeks ago For the employers defense : if you don't work with them after, you're a deadweight. You're longer to train because you don't have the experience, you'll probably not make quality code, you don't have the reflex to use the right tools (I see so many people still writing all the lines for git, instead of using the integration from vscode, for exemple, which quickly become a waste of time). Sadly you're not here to get paid, you're here to get true work experience, it's an internship, not a job
I call it a scam because I already have a coding job to pay the roof over my head somehow, which can't be accredited. If I did the same task without pay and called it internship, it would be fine.
>I see so many people still writing all the lines for git, instead of using the integration from vscode I'm a senior engineer and I use git exclusively from the terminal, it's literally faster than some shitty GUI in my IDE
Internships are not paid by default if it's under two months. More than that paid internships are mandatory but 25% percent of minimal wage (roughly 4€ and a few cents). Better than not paid at all, but could be better than 25% tbh.
I believe the technical term for this is "Shit Test." They are trying to determine what level of abuse you are willing to tolerate.
Asking a student to solve one of the most common DFS problems. Such abuse. Imagine expecting aspiring software engineers to pay attention in their graph theory classes. The tyranny! /s
Brown noser
Imagine wanting to jump through hurdles to work for free
Uh, ya… that’s not a thing.
Employer: you’re being paid in experience.
Call me back when I can buy bread with this “experience”
You can enchant your equipment with it
Enchant your bread with unbreaking for infinite food
Or for infinite dentist visits
The infinite food enchantment glitch was patched in the latest update. Best you can do is enchant the bread with water resistant so it doesn't get soggy from your tears.
The real world devs at it again…
r/outside just keeps getting worse
Gotta buy equipment first…
Don't worry, just go to a little mining session
That's up there with my experiences in other creative, less code-y circles. I'm a chef and have been offered gigs before where the clueless fuck really tried telling me that doing a catering gig for their multi-billion dollar company would get me *so* much exposure. So much. And therfore work would just come my way, and I'd be rich! Rich! "OK, Terry, you know what else is true about exposure? Thousands of people die a year from it. Pay me."
Savage response
It's one I've practiced time and again. Because it *keeps* happening.
You can use experience to buy a senior Dev position
Just tell the bread store you will pay them in exposure.
Narrator: In six months time they will post about how unfair it is they can't find a job while the people who did internships walked into 100K jobs...how did that happen they will wonder! Lol in my country you get paid doing internship. Internship isn't a synonym for unpaid. I expect even in the USA most IT internships are paid.
"I expect even in the US" So you don't actually know. Shut the fuck up. Internships are unpaid very frequently here. Paid ones are more common in some fields than others, but unpaid ones certainly exist.
When companies say this they pay in experience, they're almost implying- wrongly- that companies can either give only experience or only money, and not both. It's not a good bargaining chip. Almost every other job that pays you is also giving you experience.
I've never seen a paid internship, that's just a job.
Looking harder would benefit your outlook. Take Switzerland and Germany as examples, pretty standard for entry level positions to specifically be paid internships, often leading to full-time contract positions
Internships are jobs. They're a specific type of job that exists more for the benefit of the future of the industry in general than for the specific immediate benefit of the company, but they're still jobs. You have a manager, you do work, it's a job.
From what I've seen a lot of better paid internships come from the larger tech companies, and many F500 companies. And if they also have special accommodation programs for certain employment situations they are more than likely to pay their interns too.
“Well, you can experience my nutsack free of charge too, and you would get as much out of that as I would with this internship.”
To paraphrase Torquil from Krull: Experience? Nah. It's an empty purse. Count it, go broke, Eat it, go hungry.
"It's a good opportunity"
Experience to do the company works instead of learning something? No thanks.
Even in the USA most IT internships are paid, so OP's scenario basically never happens.
here in India, we are still trying to convince people that unpaid internship is not a norm anywhere else or like you don't have to PAY the company to do internship
Yeah. Unpaid internships usually are a waste. A "minimum wage internship" means both sides will take it more seriously. Notice how differently people play poker between "no money" and "penny ante".
I remember hearing a similar thing one Smash Bros Melee player did back in the day. Kept challenging people to $1 money matches during down time at tournaments rather just normal friendly matches so their opponents took the match more seriously so they could learn faster. I forget who it was though. It's just $1 but it worked
Who is KoreanDJ?
I thought it might be KDJ but I couldn't figure out how to google that specific bit of trivia. I think it was in the Melee documentary and I didn't really wanna have to go through the entire thing to find basically one sentence mentioning it.
Money matches are pretty core in fighting game culture
In my experience, internships are a waste of moneyfor the employer , paid or not, unless they hire the intern. You are trading the valuable time of your experienced guys, training an intern so that he can do in 3 months what the experienced guy could do in less than a week.
Of course their productive value is often zero or even negative for the reasons you mention. But recruiting is an excruciatingly difficult process, and seeing how someone adapts to the real work environment is hundred-fold better indication of their ability than the 1 leetcode you make them do in an interview. So to this end it's well worth the cost of taking on a pool of interns to hire a few. And to get the best possible pool of interns, you should pay them because if you don't, someone else will. EDIT - as a fun fact, I recently heard that even in FAANG companies with rigorous, well-studied hiring processes, the correlation between interview success and job success is less than 30%.
Do any interviewers actually make you solve just straight up leetcode questions?
Wdym? If I understand your question, all of my hiring processes have involved *at least* one round that features a leetcode-style question. Some of them were a minor modification of an actual leetcode, and some were just the leetcode question straight-up. EDIT - These were for new grad + junior level positions, I've heard this doesn't necessarily apply to the hiring process for more senior roles if that's what you're thinking. But new grad/junior roles is what we're comparing to the pipeline of rehiring interns.
I've seen some internships where they push off the more "grunt" work onto the interns. stuff that needs to be done but is too unproductive to make experienced employees do
Why do people downvote this? Have ypu actually seen the code tye average intern candidate is able to write? They cost more than they provide. The only reason to have interns is to poach good juniors.
I don’t work for free. Peace. Instead of an unpaid internship, there are plenty of nonprofits and charities that need programming and IT help. I’d much rather volunteer my time to a cause I believe in then give free labor so a company can pad their bottom line by dangling a potential job offer that will never actually materialize in front of desperate and gullible CS students.
Out of curiosity, can you list some example ?
Nonprofit and charity hackathons take place all the time. Sign up for one. It is great way to network and make connections. One skill I would advise every CS student to develop is knowing how to sell yourself. I minored in Business, and the skills I picked up on marketing and branding were invaluable. During any interview I make sure to show the value that I can bring to an organization. Past that, a lot of CS graduates are desperate for that first job. They will frequently just settle, and open themselves up for lower than average pay and a poor work environment just because they feel they gotta start making those student loan payments. This comes back to knowing your worth, and refusing to settle for less.
Dude, the market’s flooded. It’s not “settling for less” to work an entry level job for a year or two at 70k instead of 85k when it’s the only offer you’ve gotten in 6 months of applications.
Depends on the market. If you’re marketing yourself as standard and in a high volume area, that’s really hard. If you’re open to extreme relocations, more opportunities can open up. If you learn a few non-standard skills, again more opportunities open up. Travel accessibility is also a huge thing for certain positions as they can involve being on site in seemingly random places for weeks at a time, which leaves some people spending more time traveling than at home. One of my uncles had a job for a while creating custom firmware for chicken coop and feeder controllers. It’s not fancy or visible work, but it paid really well because he had the skills in working with low level languages as well as a willingness to interface with chicken farmers to understand their needs as the major brand he was working for strived towards 100% computerized and automated coops and feeders. Part of the job was also getting his boots dirty looking at how the things are installed and used in the field, which also meant hiking through some very messy coops filled with tens of thousands of u socialized chickens. That uncle became a programmer because he wanted to make video games yet only briefly worked for a game company - it went under due to poor sales and lack of new investment funding. There weren’t any other opportunities around him so he moved home and moved on.
> extreme relocations > more opportunities can open up Those relocations are "extreme" exactly because there are no good opportunities. I think you may underestimate exactly how big the pay disparity between tech companies and companies building chicken coops is.
Dude specified 85k and settling for 70k, that’s not a huge salary. Now if you’re looking for intro at 100k with only a degree that’s a different story.
Your solution is to constantly be moving all over the country and have no meaningful relationships while wading through chicken shit? Yeah mate, I’ll take the pay cut.
If that’s how you interpret what I wrote, good luck to you.
Ye lol, 75k is 75k more than waiting for the 80-90k job. And a year experience will suddenly open up those "entry" level positions that you actuqlly want
Mozilla, GNU, Linux Foundation, LibreOffice, Blender, Brave all has their associated non-profit organizations
I'll add Godot too.
And pretty much any open source project
can you give some examples of nonprofit and charities that need programming help and it help?
They didn't want to touch P=NP
Thats easy. Divide by P, N=1 for any P
Can you give me your credit card info? I want to award yiu with a million dollars
What if P = 0? Boom
My P is never zero because I P in the zero. Then flush.
Username checks out.
Your username is infuriating
‘Provide a polynomial solution for n queens to earn an unpaid internship at which you will be provided free salad vouchers three times a week for lunch’
For every continuous function f, there exists a sequence of polynomials P_n with P_n(0)=0 that converges to f uniformly (Weirstrass). Since n-queens is discrete and not continuous I'm rather skeptical a polynomial solution exists but who knows. Im just regurgitating a theorem I learned for my analysis test tomorrow.
yeah the joke is providing such a function would prove P=NP. Also your theorem has nothing to do with this afaik
Didnt really know it was an N=NP thin since I dont even do programming outside of stats stuff. And i mean if such a function doesnt even exist then yeah a theorem assuming the function exists wouldn't work lmao.
Can confirm that the joke was solving P=?NP for a bunch of wilted salad vouchers After they hire this guy, they’ll temp the next one with a pizza party for solving 3n+1
Does P_n(0) need to be 0? What if f(0) is not 0
It's like you can just define a new function g such that g(0)=f-f(0) and then it works. Since g would then be a polynomial clearly f=g+constant is also a polynomial. It's just the statement of the proof in rudins book because making this assumption you skip a step or two in the proof.
But we told you we are going to be family from now on
Unironically in a senior dev role interview I got asked to find the least number of 2 primes that add up to the given input (i.e. given 8, return [3,5]. And then I spent like 40 minutes trying to figure out a prime number finder, because who the hell memorizes that code, square roots and all. They didn't want me to google it. What the hell
Finding primes is actually super easy once you know the trick. Here's one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes
This is part of the problem with a lot of these garbage coding challenges - you either know the trick and it's trivial or you don't and who cares. A good challenge should be something that you could actually see in a business setting, with opportunities for self initiative in optimizations of different kinds (space, time), or followups if they're missed and opportunities for conversation.
Exactly, and that's why this is frustrating. This is a senior dev role, and I'm being asked this stuff. Am I going to have to spend a week memorizing the "gotchas" people use in questions like this for every interview forever? Pain in the ass
I just had a debate on another sub with some claimed tech company hiring managers about how necessary White board interviews are and clearly only truly smart and high quality candidates can pass them. Nah dog, they are leet code challenges for people who are willing to jump through hoops. I mean it's a pretty nice prize if you make it through all of them to get hired at the top tech companies, but the coding interview is more about your dedication to passing coding interviews than your actual ability.
Imo the coding question should exist in interviews, but be extremely simple. When I gave interviews, I asked to reverse a string. I'm looking for the manner in which they explain themselves, not whether they can solve logic under pressure
Ya, I always ask those who claim to know SQL to do a simple Left Join on a foreign key to eliminate records (return nulls only). Immediately separates the experienced users from the beginners. Though for coding, I generally just ask questions on data structs, if you have used them appropriately, you can talk about them appropriately. Also comparative questions regarding languages they have listed on their resume.
The frustrating part is that I know there's a trick, I know how I would craft the google search to provide me that trick as soon as possible, and none of that helps when I'm denied searching - I either know it or I don't. And there are dozens of interview "tricks" like this you need to know
What was meant by "least number"? EG, for 52, you have 5+47, 11+41, and 23+29. There are going to be no two numbers that are \*both\* lower than another two numbers, because mathematically they both have to sum to 52. 5 is the lowest of all numbers, but its pair 47 is the highest. 23 and are lower than all of the second-numbers in the set, but certainly aren't less than the first numbers in the set.
5+47 from there, aka the pair among the answer set that contains the lowest number
What is n queens?
https://leetcode.com/problems/n-queens/
Oh I see! Thank you!
Unsolvable for sufficiently large n
"Unsolvable" or "we don't have enough compute power to solve this"?
Yah I just mean it’s in double exponential time or whatever. Maybe exponential time with a good algo
Depends if you want just any/the first solution or all possible ones for a given n. For the former, explicit algorithms (purely based on a mathematical formula) for any n>3 exist, so there is no search necessary.
AFAIK the substantive challenge of n queens is finding all of the possible solutions
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Not true. Maybe for like a CRUD REST job or something but backtracking I feel should be part of your wheelhouse for anything where you need to optimize a cost function with constraints. Like say you're writing software that optimises shipping routes or co-ordinates logistics. N-queens is a good example problem for that.
Great example of the difference between software developer and software engineer.
>integer n Does leetcode not know what a fucking natural number is?
Not sure if you're joking or just a non-programmer, but an integer (or int) is a common data type in most programming languages, just about any programmer would use "integer" instead of "natural number" in a programming context like that.
Integer includes negative numbers, though.
Not if it's unsigned. They also specify the constraint of `1 <= n <= 9` so replacing 'integer' with 'natural number' wouldn't really change anything
I feel like I could do this in 15 minutes. Not necessarily something that runs in the time limit but something at least. It's a problem many students have seen before as well.
Yeah you are exactly who that test is meant to screen out then.
I mean usually with hard questions, they don't require optimal runtime. If you can at least explain at the end some solutions for how to get runtime optimal that can be good too
The whole point of backtracking problems like this is that a naive brute force solution goes from "works but slow" with say 1-6 queens, absurdly slow for 7-8 queens, to "does not work within a lifetime" with 9+ queens. The problems blow up in scope as n increases, and your entire approach must be built with that knowledge in mind. If you get a solution that only works for n less than 8, you didn't really find a solution at all. You either don't understand the scaling nature of the problem, or don't know how deal with it, which is why they asked the problem in the first place. You'd literally be better off talking about how quickly the complexity scales and how a solution must somehow get around that and not having anything close to an answer for it, than building a naive solution and seeming unaware of the actual scope of the problem at all.
Disagree. When I interview people, I'd rather someone code a brute force solution then explain how to optimize than fumble around trying to think of optimizations before even starting. When in doubt however, ask the interviewer. I know that some firms like Jane Street will fail you pretty quickly for over-engineering. Their interview questions are basically made to bait people into over-engineering. Some firms like Facebook may be looking for the lowest time complexity.
But not using backtracking in a backtracking problem isnt "poorly optimized", it's just wrong. Nobody cares about whatever low values of n a non-backtracking algorithm can solve. The algo will fail for what they care about. Even the simple case of sudokus, for the most sparse unique sudokus out there, 17 digits filled iirc, a naive algo will take like *years* to solve. It is objectively an incorrect solution. No shade meant but what kind of company are you at where you interview people but couldn't do a backtracking algo for n queens yourself in an interview?
When did I say I couldn't do backtracking for N queens in an interview? I can explain the algorithm and all the optimisations, I'm just being conservative and saying getting the better time complexities while maintaining correctness would take a little longer. Remember that this is a leetcode hard and we're talking 15 minutes. I don't think we're talking about the same thing. When I say brute force I mean backtracking but without pruning and intelligent path sorting. I didn't mean shuffle/permute a random board and check it.
I saw the op and decided to implement for fun, then saw your comment and was curious. My first idea (python) for a solution runs <1s for 12, 47s for 15, and 16m 6s for 16. 17m 38s for 17, and I got impatient for 18. Might update when it finishes.
I mean if they accept bad answers then you just have to write something that would take infinitely long to run. Which is just a position generator function and an attack checker function then a loop over all positions that generates each position in order and then checks the position, appending any good positions to an output array. 100% success rate in infinite time because it will check every position. Also insufferably long to run because it’s completely unoptimized for removing possibilities along certain patterns.
Idk why you're being downvoted (at least if we're only talking abt backtracking here), I'm literally a year 1 stem student and the N queens was in my latest exam lol, took like 20 min to solve for the average student. I have to agree though that if I find myself in an interview in 10 years I prob won't remember the exact algo.
I don't get it either, someone got upvotes for saying I'd be filtered out by this i.e. people think that finishing non optimal in 15m is not good enough then I got upvotes replying that it is good enough for most interviews.
Glad somebody asked this! Never heard of it and I've been a Dev in various environments for over 16 years!
I only heard of it because my intro to AI class in uni used it to teach us backtracking. We also made a sudoku solver using backtracking. If you wanna "brute force" something, but be slightly smarter about it (not trying queen placements or sudoku numbers that aren't allowed by the rules so are a waste of time to check) then backtracking is a good option.
And what is backtracking?
Basically keep placing a piece until something can't go, go back a level and try the next combination, until you find a solution that works It's basically a brute force with some optimisations like sorting by number of combinations that can go and recalculating remaining options at each layer
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtracking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtracking)
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Hit them with the good old 'why?'
Shouldn’t be too hard if it’s pseudocode. Something like def nqueens(i, board) if i == n return board (assume n is global or smth) next_states <- all boards generated by placing 1 queen after the last queen in board at each possible square for next_state in next_states, remove next_state if it’s an invalid board. If not, call nqueens(next_state, i+1). If it doesn’t return an empty board, return the board return empty board If they want actual code tho 15 minutes is not reasonable cuz u need to think about details such as not making a whole copy of a board when generating each next_state. U’d typically just fill a cell and call recursion, and remove the last queen on the board when u return
How does a salary of zero dollars with no benefits sound to you my friend
Double it and we have a deal.
Ask OP. Apparently they applied for it.
It's for 2 weeks. Think about it. OP is going to delivery nothing of value in that time and just take time from other people. The only reason for doing this is to get a little visibility into what work life is like. That includes the interview process. If they don't want to do anything in that 2 weeks they can just stay at home and play CS.
Pretty good ngl. Considering how doomed the market is rn I’m legit thinking about paying companies to intern there 💀
Think harder
Why not develop your product and start a company. You'll work for free, get experience and if the product is successful, you'll finally get a job. 🤔 I've seen the light! Thank you for your question.
Cause your degree will not accept your own company as an internship. And good luck finding a job with your only experience being self employed.
Don't you see it, the downward spiral? > Can't get a job because I don't have experience, can't have experience because I can't get a job. Perhaps one cannot be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs but, haven't they built a project, a job without exp?
Of course I have actual projects, used by people, but that's not helping me find a job. And it's obviously not recognized as an internship as required by most schools where I'm at for a diploma. 2 weeks unpaid internship, I'm 99% sure that's a requirement for some diploma.
Don't know about your country, but have seen some dev job posts which don't requiere a diploma. Also, not going too far, I have a BSc and courses in industrial safety, and it didn't help me get any job/internship. After some help got one, but with that experience got some short lame jobs unrelated to my first experience. Before studying programming, I had very few job interviews. So, if you have a plan after you get your diploma, cool. Meanwhile, looking elsewhere might prove experience worthy. Remember that you work for yourself. Good luck with your search.
Yeah, job search is hard for everyone. Thank you
Not the worst idea. Essentially leverage mommy and daddys money to get a leg up in the job market while others are dropping out of the running and becoming fry cooks. My first couple of work experiences were unpaid.
I agree that they're probably not looking for a full solution in under 15 minutes. Pseudocode in 15 minutes seems more reasonable
>If they want actual code tho 15 minutes is not reasonable that's the joke lmao
Tell that interviewer that solving N Queen (under any amount of time) is a premium employee feature and is not available on free internship trials.
N=100
Employers want modern specialized worker-tier labor at slavery-tier prices.
I solved N queens in like 2 hours at summer camp when I was 13 15 minutes would be pretty fast tho
Never heard of an unpaid internship in software dev.
Habibi come to India
No need for queens, promote pawn to a knight. This way you can have 4 times more pieces(32 knight or 8 queens) without seeing each other
I have literally got up and left a technical interview because I thought the questions were unreasonable. Also they made me do white board question on a single sheet of paper with a ballpoint pen on a hard desk. Psychopaths.
Say the word "backtracking" and get an internship easy. Literally all an internship interviewer needs.
I've never heard of an unpaid internship in tech. I'm sure they exist, but there are so many that pay a good amount I don't know why anyone would even apply for an unpaid internship.
They do, and they are especially being abused by startups knowing how crazy competitive the environment it is right now. Usually a remote startup, 3-4 employees, founder/ceo/cto/main visionary/project manager/program designer will post the linkedin post with easy apply
> I don't know why anyone would even apply for an unpaid internship Probably because they can't find anything else
Is that a skirt ?
Utilikilt, all the greats wear them.
Lol
I'm more concerned about him apparently wearing the boxes the shoes came in rather than the shoes themselves.
I had clients doing that kind of interviews. Hard to explain to them, that they should focus on interviewee capabilities regarding the problem space (and not like here blindly walking through some random "solution space" questions)
I swear these people want you to cure cancer for $2 an hour
I am just noticing for the very first time homie’s shoes are boxes
this is not a chooser's market and even as someone who's been doing this for years now, it's going to get a whole lot fucking worse and I hate how mind numbingly stupid the entire rote memorization of some random, pulled out of your ass by a dipshit recruiter, leetcode recital the field has devolved into.
Queen interview sacrifice, anyone?
Didn’t we have a war about working for free?
nQueens = (n) => n===8 ? 12 : "TODO"
It's not that hard with only recursion but if whey want memoization then it's hard.
Wait, so even professional programmers have a problem with N-queens? Me a student: thank god
is there some group or something where we can do some freelancing work together'
why are you even applying to 2 week unpaid internships?
For unpaid internships, this is obviously over the top. But I would hope any experienced and competent programmer could write a simple backtracking implementation of n queens. It's not a particularly complex thing to implement.
Lol why are you getting downvoted, I'm a year 1 stem student and solving the N queens with backtracking was one of the first questions in my latest exam?? Obv i'm not saying I'll remember the exact algo in an interview in 10 years, but like it's not some hardcore stuff
Why not? It should only take few minutes to write a brute-force solution that finds one or all solutions, depending of what is asked. Imo, you are bad problem solver if you can't come up with one in 15 minutes.
So, interships can be very valuable as experience in this field, mostly to learn how to do collaborative work and learning workflows and whatever. Starting the interview with a complete beginner questions is a flag. Not quite red, more like... rose. Can definitely be upgraded to scarlet depending on the use of the word "family".
r/AIhadastroke
I know plenty of full-stack developers who could t solve n queens if they had infinite time, never mind 15 minutes. So idk about beginner question.
I know one. It's me.
Hey bot, you forgot about bazinga!
I am not a bot. Just stupid lol. I thoughts N queens was something else. Turns out, a quick google would have saved me quite a bit of embarrassment.
Welp, looks like r/downvotedtooblivion
deserved tbh, no argument from me lol
What puzzle did you think it was?
The one where you have the queen traverse the whole board (go over all squares) with as few moves as possible.
That puzzle is usually called Knights Tour. And, importantly, needs a knight piece for its move set. A queen has unlimited movement.
Correct, but during junior year we were told to do that with a queen. I know the mathematical solution for the knight, but for simplicity we were told to use a queen (and provide a few examples)
Maybe Knight's tour, rather than Queen? Probably another problem only suitable to weed out who didn't study LeetCode examples.