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Showing posts from May, 2019

Post Processing: Hiring, Microsoft, Einstein, Google Fi, and Linux

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I explored how tech hiring was broken in two previous posts: The Best Selling Tech Book On Amazon Is ...  and  Alternatives to the Whiteboard . An article from CNBC adds to the story.  Historically, the Google hiring process required six to nine months and 15 to 25 interviews, but learning the lesson of diminishing returns, Google has adopted the " Rule of Four ." In the post Git-Hub Hub-Bub , I wrote how Microsoft, under Nadella, is different and better than when it was under Ballmer.  Microsoft continues that trajectory as written in Bloomberg's The Most Valuable Company (for Now) Is Having a Nadellaissance .  Most telling is Nadella's mature reaction to a $1 trillion valuation: "... not meaningful" and any rejoicing about such an arbitrary milestone would mark "the beginning of the end." The figurines Albert Einstein and Homer Simpson sat together on my shelf for a few years.  Every now and then, I wondered what they would say to each ot

Bookshelf Classic: More Programming Pearls

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If you were to judge a book by its cover, you would, from the image of the keyboard, conclude this book is old.  If you were to judge this book by what's inside, you would conclude likewise because the examples are written in C and Awk.  But were you to look deeper, you would see that these are no ordinary pearls. Jon Bentley wrote a regular column for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and his essays were collected into two of books: "Programming Pearls" and "More Programming Pearls."   The first book focused on speed and efficiency, while the second book covered that and more, including debugging, I/O, and enlightening "Aha!" moments. Because these essays were originally written for a monthly magazine, Bentley recommends taking it slow, reading one column per sitting, and trying the exercises.  Thankfully, he doesn't leave you hanging, and provides answers at the end of the book.  Chapters 5 thru 8 are the exception and can be