This is the third day of my participation in the August More text Challenge. For details, see:August is more challenging

A few big names from Microsoft and Google have organized an interview question brushing group. You can add the administrator VX: SxxZs3998 to participate in the discussion and live broadcast

“Flax overtime, Google pension, Facebook collection open black.” Does work Life Balance still exist?

If there is a list of big factories working overtime in North America, the one that is pushed to the first place must be flax. The flax employees said that they have been so busy with daily overtime, and if it is their turn to “on call”, it will be even worse. Daily status: overtime to the early morning, the dawn only sleep, round round on call weekend good not about to the sister but to carry a computer. Except for very busy projects, it’s normal to be on call at 3 a.m. to fix bugs.

I used to joke with my friend who worked in linen: “Isn’t your beeper working today?” This was actually in 15 years when linen gave its staff beeps for on Call convenience and it also became a meme in our chat most of the staff sang xin bing warm as it kuang.

On the other hand, G’s family is really the immortal code farmer with no problem of work life balance, and it will be the last place according to the ranking of overtime. I once had an afternoon tea with two friends of mine, one of whom happened to be in Google and the other in linen. The following dialogue suggested that you swallow the food or water in your mouth.

Q (linen) : the most satisfactory place in G’s house?

A (Google) : Good internal tools, good technology, good work life balance.

Q (linen) : Do you have any new plans in the near future?

A (Google) : the group that wants to go to Google to be busy and tired.

After hearing me and my flax friend: That I go??

Relative to flax and Google, Facebook is relatively optional, the recent wind has been relatively big, today give you a dry goods | Facebook full range of face.

The old rules first introduce the following from: Jasper graduated from the University of California, San Diego, majoring in computer science, and got acquainted with Teacher Justin when he participated in the Kaggle Big Data Competition (Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other well-known technology enterprises went to seek gold). Originally, I wanted to go to Microsoft, but I failed to get the internship offer because I was stuck with an interview question.

Jasper’s level is above the average, and he is easily confused when he encounters the real problems of some enterprises. After graduation, he stayed in a private enterprise in North America, but he was constantly under pressure and worked overtime for nothing, and his monthly salary was only 720 yuan. Finally, he turned his back and left in a plan discussion meeting.

After coming out, I always wanted to impact big factories, but it was a waste of time to go back to China. I was not very familiar with the current situation in China. There were only a few big factories available in North America, during which Microsoft and G also tried, and there was no follow-up. Therefore, with the mentality of trying, Jasper consulted with Teacher Justin. Upon learning that Teacher Justin had returned to China, Jasper sank in his heart and thought that there was no hope. Unexpectedly, Teacher Justin took the initiative to ask for a resume and directly proposed that he lacked experience in large projects and deep understanding of data structure and other analysis.

Jasper autobiography:

The first reinforcement is the data structure, data structure can be said to be the cornerstone of the algorithm, if there is no solid foundation of data structure, want to learn the algorithm is very difficult to even integrate through, and good algorithm often depends on which data structure you use.

I can understand data structures like lists, queues, and stacks because they logically have a starting point and an end point, but when it comes to trees and graphs, it’s always confusing. Because they are not linear, they all have their own specific ways of storing data. Later, Justin likened the tree to my family tree (with a wry smile), and led me to slowly understand the tree. He told me the origin of the structure of the tree, and compared with the linear data structure and the advantages of the tree, I gradually understood.

I could understand the algorithm, but I couldn’t use it myself. Justin gave an example later (a little genius). The algorithm is like syntax, such as rhetorical questions and interrogative questions, and the language is like words. Syntax can be the meaning of the words more clearly, the algorithm is to let the program run more efficiently, like primary school to learn Chinese, not to use a rhetorical question, can understand more practice, behind their practice for several times, really to feel (merely), like the backtracking algorithm is actually a similar search attempt process of enumeration, mainly in the search to try to find problems in the process of solution, When it finds that the condition is not met, it “backtracks” back and tries another path.

General steps to solve a problem with a backtracking algorithm:

  1. For the given problem, define the solution space of the problem, which contains at least one (optimal) solution of the problem.
  2. Determine the structure of the solution space which is easy to search so that the whole solution space can be easily searched by backtracking method.
  3. The solution space is searched in depth first and the pruning function is used to avoid invalid search.

I think the biggest help to me is the real question (project content)

I have done several projects, which not only deepened my understanding of algorithms and data structures, but also made me understand the process, work and specifications of software development of a real project. There was a face recognition project, some of which used fuzzy recognition algorithm, and many bugs were found. Justin led me to find them out one by one. Although the process was very painful, when I saw the successful operation of the project, I felt that everything was worthwhile and I had a great sense of achievement. Feel this life for code farmers do not regret (facepalm).

At present, Facebook is the most attractive place for me, AND I tried to deliver it, but I didn’t expect to receive an email from Facebook HR. After receiving the email, we made a phone call to communicate. HR briefly introduced the current situation of Facebook and told me that this position was in the headquarters of Menlo Park. Let me make sure that if the interview goes well, I would like to live closer to the company, because The headquarters of Facebook is in the west of the US, which is a little far away from where I am now.

HR then asked me two very basic CSS questions:

1. What is the difference between display block and inline?

2. What are the values of position?

I am also very surprised, do HR now have to have some basic engineer? But this also really let the engineers behind very cool, at least to prove that I am not a small white.

HR then proceeded to ask me: Why do you want to choose Facebook? I see you have no previous experience with a large company? Although you have relevant work experience but your project experience is not very rich? (In fact, I was in a panic at that time, but considering that Teacher Justin has been studying with me for so long, I should have confidence.) To tell you the truth, the reason why I want to choose Facebook is to realize my value on a bigger platform and improve my value. Secondly, I have no experience in large projects, but I have been learning and improving recently. The level has also been greatly improved compared to before.

After the answer, HR introduced me to a middle-aged man. Because of the distance, we finally decided to have a video interview, which was also the first round of formal interview. In fact, I did not expect that the interview in G’s house before is about 45 minutes to end, the first time on the phone for 90 minutes I was not only worried.

This middle-aged man is quite handsome, wearing long frame glasses although the lens is not thick, but it looks very has the aura field seems to have a certain rank of people, there is no nonsense, directly told me to introduce myself and read the resume, need to ask me some basic theory also need to do two questions.

Searches

Columns:. check 1point3acres for more.

date STRING date of the search,

search_id INT the unique identifier of each search,

user_id INT the unique identifier of the searcher,

age_group STRING (‘<30′, ’30-50′, ’50+’),

search_query STRING the text of the search query

Sample Rows:

date | search_id | user_id | age_group | search_query


‘2020-01-01’ | 101 | 9991 | ‘<30’ | ‘justin bieber’

‘2020-01-01’ | 102 | 9991 | ‘<30’ | ‘menlo park’

‘2020-01-01′ | 103 | 5555 | ’30-50’ | ‘john’

‘2020-01-01′ | 104 | 1234 | ’50+’ | ‘funny cats’

Table:

search_results

Columns:

date STRING date of the search action,

search_id INT the unique identifier of each search,

result_id INT the unique identifier of the result,

result_type STRING (page, event, group, person, post, etc.),

clicked BOOLEAN did the user click on the result?

Sample Rows:

date | search_id | result_id | result_type | clicked


‘2020-01-01’ | 101 | 1001 | ‘page’ | TRUE

‘2020-01-01’ | 101 | 1002 | ‘event’ | FALSE

‘2020-01-01’ | 101 | 1003 | ‘event’ | FALSE

‘2020-01-01’ | 101 | 1004 | ‘group’ | FALSE

  1. Over the last 7 days, how many users made more than 10 searches?

  2. what percentage of users have conducted searching with more than 100 search result?  

The second interview lasted about an hour and 30 minutes, and the next day I received an email from HR inviting me

Onsite, I thought it would take a day or two for this process to be normal, but I didn’t expect all the processes to be so fast. I made an appointment in the afternoon on the day of the interview because I was far away, because I was afraid of being late in the suburbs of America, and because the buses in the suburbs of America run every hour.

When I arrived, HR greeted me, brought me some food in the Micro-kitchen, and told me that Facebook allowed up to $75 a day for food expenses. Let me have a seat while he asks the interviewer. After two rounds of interviews, he took me to the Facebook restaurant to get something to eat. He took me straight into the conference room without a break.

This was the last interview, and the man was a little weird: he asked me a very weird CSS question, and then he talked to me about a programming question that was unrelated to the front end. The second problem is also very much like his whim, because he himself did not know what the optimal solution is, just wanted to discuss with me how to optimize, I discussed with him several possible optimization methods. So he says what if I change the constant k to something that can be arbitrarily large n? I said that n problems can be decomposed into n over 2 problems, and therefore can be optimized by dichotomy.

At the end of the long shopping trip, HR introduced me to the graffiti on the Facebook wall, took me to the runway to see Hacker Square in full, and told me that every time a hackathon started, everyone would gather at Hacker Square. In addition to HR, some interviewers mentioned the Facebook features they liked. Subconsciously, I realized that there were a lot of people at Facebook who liked the company.

When I left, HR also talked with me about the materials I need to prepare if I can get the offer smoothly, Balabala. After returning home, I caught Up with Saturday and Sunday, and I received the offer from Facebook in my email at around 4pm on Monday. First of all, I didn’t expect such a quick efficiency, since IT was time for me to get off work after the interview. The offer was sent to me on Monday afternoon, which surprised me.

Second is the overall feeling Facebook candidates to the company’s care or to do good, after entering the FB also think people are more harmonious, although there will have to work overtime, but relatively is acceptable, also with the various aspects of welfare, the only drawback is: company meeting too. Without communication, programs and software need to be discussed and debated, not simply written. It’s crazy to write and ship code at breakneck speed. There were so few meetings that there was even a “no meetings On Wednesdays” meme.

In fact, I didn’t expect that I could get the offer from a big factory in North America so soon. I just want to say that the house I rent near FB is the one that a normal person lives in. Everything is getting better and better. I would like to express my special thanks to Teacher Justin and several other mentors who led me to sprint to the shore. Without those days and nights to accompany me to review the project, I am still far from the shore.

A few big names from Microsoft and Google have organized an interview question brushing group. You can add the administrator VX: SxxZs3998 to participate in the discussion and live broadcast