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CoronitaParticipanthttp://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-lineup-pricing-confirmed-8-cores-low-320/
That’s gotta hurt (intel)
As if those figures aren’t mind boggling enough, this chip is listed at less than $320. Which comes in at one fourth the cost of its Intel rival, which regularly retails for over $1100. To put the enormity of this into perspective, you would practically be able build an entire high-end gaming machine around the Ryzen 1700 for the same money that would cost you just to get an i7 6900K chip on its own.
AMD’s highest performing Ryzen CPU, the 1800X will retail for less than $499. A piece of information we made public nearly three months ago in our exclusive Ryzen report. So we know that much hasn’t changed since November. What was a bit of a surprise however is the fact that AMD’s 8 core flagship will boost to a whopping 4.0Ghz right out of the box despite a frugal 95W TDP.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=no_such_reality][quote=flu][quote=ucodegen]It sounds like interviewers are going to have to come up with another test… One of the links you provided for the ‘FizzBuzz’ test had a bunch of solutions, and I could just believe someone not good with writing programs would try to memorize one of them in planning for a tech interview.
One of the things that does surprise me is how far some of these people get when there is no technical interview questions. In a previous job, I had to deal with someone who was supposedly senior to me working on the same project I was. The project was broken down into applications (C++ network comm/data processing and ‘rendering’ code for various parts of the system). The project this person was working on was not getting anywhere. The Proj Mgr put an additional senior person on the that particular application – and still no forward movement. I got thrown into the mix by the Proj Mgr to try to figure what the heck was going on and found out that the person who was supposedly senior to me was loosing track of code changes made by himself, was not coordinating with the other person he was to be working with, was not integrating the other persons changes (they were getting dropped on the floor) and that was literally having problems programming basic algebraic equations.[/quote]
There’s a solution to this. You tweak the problem slightly so that if the candidate gives you one of the canned answers on the internet, you know that in addition to the person not being able to write any code, the person is also dishonest with trying to cover it up.[/quote]
You work in a tech company, if your HR can’t source a basic skill, they should be replaced.[/quote]
HR usually don’t do recruiting except for interns. Recruiting is usually farmed out to recruiters. Either way, I have never met anyone in Hr or recruiters that have technical knowledge to ask these questions . If they did, they wouldn’t be in HR or a recruiter…
What one company did that I interviewed for was interesting. They made candidates take an online test. Interesting idea.
CoronitaParticipantIntel might be in trouble for another reason too…. AMD….if these leaked prices are true…
benchmark says the processors are comparable. Price looks 50-70% cheaper than Intel comparables. we’ll find out in a few weeks.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=ucodegen]It sounds like interviewers are going to have to come up with another test… One of the links you provided for the ‘FizzBuzz’ test had a bunch of solutions, and I could just believe someone not good with writing programs would try to memorize one of them in planning for a tech interview.
One of the things that does surprise me is how far some of these people get when there is no technical interview questions. In a previous job, I had to deal with someone who was supposedly senior to me working on the same project I was. The project was broken down into applications (C++ network comm/data processing and ‘rendering’ code for various parts of the system). The project this person was working on was not getting anywhere. The Proj Mgr put an additional senior person on the that particular application – and still no forward movement. I got thrown into the mix by the Proj Mgr to try to figure what the heck was going on and found out that the person who was supposedly senior to me was loosing track of code changes made by himself, was not coordinating with the other person he was to be working with, was not integrating the other persons changes (they were getting dropped on the floor) and that was literally having problems programming basic algebraic equations.[/quote]
There’s a solution to this. You tweak the problem slightly so that if the candidate gives you one of the canned answers on the internet, you know that in addition to the person not being able to write any code, the person is also dishonest with trying to cover it up.
CoronitaParticipantfixed :)…
I normally don’t ask those questions, but for this specific role, the candidate in question was an embedded SW guy…And they were open ended questions, not some brain teaser textbook type of question. What led me to ask this question was he couldn’t even answer the previous easier questions we asked. That called into question his credibility and what he put on his resume.
He brought up that he was very experienced in Android O/S framework (not many people are, I’m one of them), and I asked a few questions as to the APIs he’s designed on the Android framework. He couldn’t answer. They weren’t even tough detailed questions: there were open ended questions like what part of the Android O/S where you working on, and can you explain to me what were some of the components you added/modified to support this….Dead silence. Strike 1….
That led to the easier basic question: “in all the Android framework projects you worked on, you mentioned you created public APIs and libraries for clients/users… Can you give me examples of when you designed interfaces and abstract classes, what led you to chose one versus the other?” I asked this question, because we need people to design APIs for our development kit given to customers, and wanted to see how he went about designing customer facing APIs..Again, it was an open ended question, not those stupid brain teaser question.. The guy didn’t know the difference between the two…Hello? Someone working with java for 13 years, and claiming to have worked with Android since the first 1.0 beta release, and you can’t say 1 thing that’s different between an interface or abstract class, or show me examples of when you used both in all the libraries you claimed to have created? Strike 2
He finally said “well I don’t really work that much at the Android java framework layer, I’m more at the hardware HAL layer on Android O/S, and Bluetooth stack layer and kernel drivers”, despite what his 1.5 pages of resume says…..That lead to him bringing up how he worked with memory management, and hence my very basic question what is heap and what is stack and what are they used for…(because I had a suspicion he didn’t know that either)….And he didn’t.
We ended up terminating the interview 15 minutes into it, because none of us had any confidence anything on his resume reflected what he actually knew.
If all we needed was a programmer to implement a well defined/well designed/already spec’d out module, where all the integration and touch points to our hardware was already done, and the only remaining work was to implement a function or method or two to implement some basic logic that was already well speced out, we could use guys in Bangalore or China to do that at a cheap cost., so we could focus on the really difficult parts to do. That’s not what we needed.
I was annoyed.
And you would be surprised how many people can’t even code a simple program. The guy who wrote this. is pretty accurate…We’ve personally have seen this time and time again.
http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest
The “Fizz-Buzz test” is an interview question designed to help filter out the 99.5% of programming job candidates who can’t seem to program their way out of a wet paper bag. The text of the programming assignment is as follows:
“Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.”
Source: “Using FizzBuzz to Find Developers who Grok Coding”http://tickletux.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/
CoronitaParticipantSpeaking of hiring and contract workers… I just experienced this just today….
We were phone screen a candidate for a Senior Software Engineer. The candidate had over 13 years of experience, and currently is working at a electronics company. I’m not sure how me managed to get through our pre screening for a mobile software apps position, because the guys experience was completely at the low level/kernel level work.
Anyway, the person’s resume looked doctored,and it had all the right buzzwords. But I noticed the guy has never held a job very long at a reputable US company. All his experience has been at a contracting shop, based out overseas, doing like 5-6 months assignments here and there….And guess what the bulk of his work was for as a contract developer? Yup. Qualcomm, TI, Samsung, LG, Intel.
And the guy’s fundamental knowledge and experience was just terrible for someone who’s been in industry for 12-13 years. The guy, claiming to have OO knowledge, have no idea about object oriented design. He didn’t know the difference between stack versus heap wrto memory allocation. Claiming to be an Android develop, he couldn’t pass basic java general know-how questions. And when I delved into his experience, it came to light at these chop shop contracting companies, they run them like assembly lines, in which each engineer has a tiny little code function/procedure they work on, and that’s all they know. They don’t need to know/learn anything else, threading, framework, stack, system. Just the little tiny piece(s) they are assigned.
Absolutely awful. So like I said, these contracting shops are really shady, but it’s completely different from the sort of H1-Bs at reputable companies. And these aren’t the type of people that end up getting hired for the full time positions requiring a lot of technical experience. At all the job functions I’ve interviewed candidates for at all the past companies, this guy would not have gotten hired for any of the opportunities.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=TeCKis300]All great advice thanks.
My wife is thinking about giving her notice in that we’ll be giving her this months check, and letting her know this will be the last month with her. Letting her know that we are just looking for a different perspective.
Though I’m thinking this may make for an awkward next couple lessons?[/quote]
When an employer gives you a pink slip and asks you to work until the end of the month to finish up, chances are, your mind really isn’t going to be there, because that’s just human nature.
Imho, a month’s notice seems like a long time.. Two lessons prior is probably more reasonable. If there is any emotional attachment to students, the teacher would have that for students that’s been with them for many many years. Many parents are just getting their kids to “try out” different things, so the turnover is expected. Chances are, she’ll find another student to occupy your kid’s time slot, if she’s really popular anyway.
My kid’s violin teacher has a waiting list, unless you want lessons at a really odd time.
February 6, 2017 at 4:40 PM in reply to: When should you cancel a life insurance policy, if at all? #805395CoronitaParticipantSo some things I left out….
1. The life insurance was for $500k. It’s portable policy independent of my employer. The purpose was originally to cover a $500k mortgage on a primary home that existed 12 years ago. There’s no longer a mortgage balance on that.
2. The policy is a 20 year term, finishing in 2025.
3. Employer provides a $300k life insurance policy: but that is NOT portable. I probably will stay working for another 2-3 years, maybe longer if I’m employable and feel like working.
I still think I agree with AN on keeping it. I have a habit of cheapening out on things at points I shouldn’t be, and deep down I think insurance isn’t one such area to go cheap.
CoronitaParticipant[quote=AN]flu, here’s the data from glassdoor for Software Engineer with <1 year of experience. I.E. fresh grad: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Qualcomm-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E640_D_KO9,26.htm?filter.experienceLevel=LESS_THEN_ONE
So, a Sr. Software Engineer on H1B gets paid less than your average Software Engineer with < 1 year of experience at QCOM in SD.[/quote] We don't know who is posting on Glassdoor, or what dept they are in. On the other hand, the h1b website data is vetted. There's a huge variation among different departments at QC, even if the title is the same, and years of experience is the same....even within Corp R&D, depending on the group. There's even pay discrepancy among senior engineers with a bachelor, versus masters, etc. And there's variation due to negotiating abilities of the individuals wit the job in hand. Perhaps people who are really good have multiple offers like during the old Nortel days, and had a lot more leverage. Maybe some with lower comp packages didn't have as many options elsewhere. Perhaps foreigners tend to be more timid when it comes to pay negotiations, and while QC tries to undercut everyone, many of the foreigners culturally aren't accustomed to ask for more....There's so many variables at a large company, that I've seen during hiring, it's not a slam dunk QC intentionally trying to undercut all H1Bs, but all employee prospects (some in HR even have pitched to me the "sunshine tax" of San Diego versus the bay area... In addition, during the semi annual performance reviews, at least in most of Corp R&D, there were attempts to normalize comp packages within the dept for same title, performance rating, years experience, as managers would say, to account for market variations at the time of hiring, especially for older folks where their annual pay increases were lower than the prevailing new wages of new hires. And this applied to all employees, H1-B or not. So by the time of the 3rd or 4th performance review, huge variations if any (at least in Corp R&D) was minimized.. Does a large body of workers not willing or courageous enough to ask and negotiate better comp packages keep wages lower on average? Perhaps....But, unless companies really offer a non negotiable comp package across the board, you can't really prevent this..(Non-negotiable pay packages are pretty stupid imho...Top talent will just go elsewhere). At any instance of time during the prescreening process of a candidate, at what point does salary requirements come up as a condition of employment for a QC job in corporate R&D, in all the interviews we've done for candidates? Not many. That was done after a decision was already made to hire or reject a csndidate based on his or her technicsl merit. After engineering determined the candidate was a hire, it was then HR that gave out the comp packages. Do Hr Dept try to totally undercut candidates? Of course they do.. the more they can save the company money the bigger the company appreciates it! BUT, they do that to everyone, even some us non H1Bs... How many times have HR asked you if you currently have a job or not during com package negotiations? They want to know if they can undercut you or not based on how desperate you are for a job. The only difference is probably some of us feel we have to take shit a lot more than others, depending on our situation at that moment in time.
CoronitaParticipantI don’t think you need to worry about it. Most teachers are pretty professional about it. As long as you are professional and courteous at what you say, you’re fine. You could just say, my kid would like to try other things and we are taking a break… It’s the easiest thing to say, and everyone knows what that really means when someone says that.
Besides, 2.5 years is not really that long enough such that a teacher would be butt hurt, especially when a student is only age 7. Many of the young kids aren’t really going to be interested moving forward anyway, so teachers already expect a turnover at this young of an age.
Also, the relationship between the student and teacher, in many cases is two way. My kid’s violin teacher has emphasized many times that he will let students go at age 12 if they aren’t performing at a certain level by then, and he doesn’t take any new students older than 12.
So again, it’s unlikely your teacher would be offended or upset about it, because even teachers know that not every student and teacher match up is always optimal. And teachers are also looking for students that match well too for the long term.
CoronitaParticipantBTW… The times when QC wanted to save money and not pay prevailing wages usually resulted in no hiring at all, H1B or not.
It usually resulted in them contracting the work out to someone like WiPro where WiPro would do most of the work out of India and fly people.in and out of the US. That happened a lot in QCT and their connectivity subsidiary.
That’s a completely different problem, unrelated to QCs H1B hiring practice domestically.
That’s why if you go through resumes of people with connectivity experience, many of them say “worked on QC Atheros connectivity implementation” but their employer is WiPro.
Some contracting companies do tend to be shady..
February 6, 2017 at 9:13 AM in reply to: When should you cancel a life insurance policy, if at all? #805383CoronitaParticipantOk, good points…… I use to be one that felt don’t skimp on insurance. But the assumption was that insurance was there to fill a gap. And maybe I was just thinking that there was no longer a gap that needed to be filled. Perhaps I’m overlooking things…
CoronitaParticipant[quote=AN]flu, I’ll be the contrarian here and stick my neck out there. I forecast this market will go higher and housing will go higher and all the market timer this time will stop calling you a market timer :-). I also believe we’ll see inflation again. So, I’m fully invested in the market. Been fully invested since the day after the election as I said I did.[/quote]
You are probably right imho.
CoronitaParticipantbut but but…. the Patriots won the Super Bowl!!!!! 🙂
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