The Problem with Occupy Wall Street - and What It Can Learn from Wall Street

Liberals and conservatives alike are looking over their shoulder and laughing at the "Occupy" movement. It's not because of what their demands are, but rather because of their demands are everything and nothing at the same time. Fundamentally, their core frustration is not a political one, but an emotional one. They're sick of feeling ignored by the wealthy and they want to be heard.

And heard they are - on every last demand. Even the crazy ones.

Let's take a look at some of their most popular demands, according to the votes on OccupySeattle.org.

Allow Everyone to Vote (136 votes)

Who is this for? Ex-cons? Immigrants? Children and teenagers?

Corporate Accountability (495 votes)

Corporations are already overflowing with paperwork. It's one of the things that makes it really hard for "regular people" to start a business. Maybe more accountability would be good, but they need to say what exactly this means.

End privatization of the commons (natural resources, education, healthcare, etc.) (139 votes)

The US already has both private and public education. And private education is, without doubt, far superior to public education. Would they like to terminate private education? Why? And if that's not what they're talking about, what does this mean?

Tax the rich and big business (285 votes)

Obviously the US already does. The rich and big businesses pay a much greater percentage of their income than the poor do. Would they like to raise the tax rate? To what? For whom? Or end some of the tax loop holes? Which ones?

I'm sure there are answers to these questions. But is there a consensus on these answers? And who will deliver the answers, when there is no central voice?

So what will happen to Occupy?

#1 They'll get a voice, but they won't get anywhere.

Everyone has gripes about the country, so they'll get plenty of members. They may even have politicians pander to them - their sheer numbers will do that. But how can anyone meet their demands, when there's no indication of what's important or how they would like Washington to "end the greed"?

#2 The crazies will come - and will belong.

As long as Occupy lacks a focused voice and set of demands, every demand can be "one of theirs." There's no one to disavow the really crazy demands, and there's no methodology by which to disavow them.

And if you give the media the choice of talking about the boring ol' reasonable demands and the crazy ones, guess what they'll pick?

#3 They'll be the left's Tea Party.

Sure, they'll say they aren't affiliated with a particular political persuasion. Tea Partiers say they aren't affiliated with the Republicans. But when the vast majority of their members are part of a particular political party, people won't distinguish.

Occupy will fuel Republicans' worst fears about Democrats (even the Occupy logo looks communist!) and will hurt the democrats. And let's face it - the vast majority of folks in the Occupy movement would much rather see a Democrat in power than a Republican.

It boils down to this: Occupy needs to learn what every business leader already knows. To effect change, you need to have a central voice and focused, reasonable vision. Without that, you're just a bunch of kids throwing a temper tantrum.

Okay, folks, here's how the Google interview process really works

Somehow, many candidates have gotten the impression that the interview process is some elaborate system, and if their process is different from their friend's, it must be a reason for it.

The truth is so much more straightforward than that, and once you get, everything will make sense. Or that's my hope, anyway.

Here's how the process works at Google for software engineers. We'll look at this from the interviewer's side and from the recruiter's side. Although this is technically just about Google and Software Engineering, the advice / structure is largely universal across tech companies.

What Your Interviewer is Doing

This is more or less how an interviewer becomes an interviewer:

1. Training: Your interviewer takes an interview training course to teach them how to interview. Actually, they're really just told things like, "Don't ask the candidate if they're married," and "Don't ask where their accent is from." In other words, don't do anything that's going to get the company sued.
2. Shadowing: Next, they "shadow" two interviews... you know, in case they didn't get enough of Google interviews when they were a candidate (yep, your parents were once children themselves, and your interviewers were once candidates). This lets them see the process again, freshly, and chat with the "primary" interviewer about what they thought.
3. Instruction: Then... they're thrown into a room and asked to interview a candidate. Where do their interview questions come from? Well, where would you come up with interview questions if you were in their shoes? You'd probably bring them from you own interview experience or find them online on sites like CareerCup.
4. Evaluation: Interviewers evaluate how well you did relative to other candidates. (This point is so important that I'm obnoxiously bolding and highlighting it. If there were a <BLINK> tag still, I'd use that.) There are two interesting parts of this statement. (1) It's "how well," not "% correct." It's a multifaceted, qualitative evaluation that takes into account how you solved the problem, how long it took you, how many mistakes you made, how much help you needed, and how optimal your solution was (note the "hows", not the "ifs"). I've never once made a simple statement like, "the candidate got this question correct," because that statement doesn't make sense for anything other than simple factual questions. (2) Performance on a question is judged in comparison to other candidates on the same question. Taking 10 minutes to solve a question optimally may be great performance on one problem, but horrible performance on another. How do you know if you did well or not? You don't.

Note that no one here has told them what to ask, or given them a list of potential questions, or asked them to focus on a particular topic.

In other words, they have about as much interviewing training / instruction when they're getting started as any candidate does.

Think about this. There is no system. "Recent Google onsite interview questions" are no different from "old Google onsite questions," or, for that matter, from old Amazon phone interview questions. When interviewers ask more or less whatever they want, there's little consistency* across a company, interview type (phone vs. onsite), or timeline.

[* There are some differences, but most of these are minor. Phone interviews will generally focus slightly less on coding, though there is still coding.  Non-web based companies aren't likely to ask about scalability, unless it's relevant for their team. And some companies have a slight preference towards certain topics, such as Amazon's focus on object-oriented design. The differences between Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Apple are covered more in Cracking the Coding Interview, 5th Edition.]

What Your Recruiter is Doing

You might not know this, but your recruiter is a person too.

Ideally, your recruiter wants to usher you through the process efficiently. If you are going to get you an offer, they want to tell you as quickly as possible. If you're not going to get an offer, they still want to tell you as quickly as possible.

But, that doesn't always happen because stuff comes up - reorgs, vacations, general life / work busyness.

Next time you ask why your recruiter took a while to respond, ask yourself why you sometimes take a while to respond. More often than not, it's just that stuff came up that has nothing to do with the other person.

----

So with all of that as preamble, let's see if we can answer some quick questions.

I made a mistake in coding. Am I going to get rejected?

See above. Do most other candidates make that mistake (or similar mistakes)? [FYI: on a medium difficulty or higher problem, very few people solve the problem "perfectly."

I'm preparing for a Microsoft phone interview. What should I focus on?

See above. The fact that it's a Microsoft interview, or that it's a phone interview, is mostly irrelevant. Look at software engineering interview questions. If there are particularly points of knowledge you're struggling with (e.g., you forgot how to traverse a binary tree), you should study those. You shouldn't worry too much about who is giving the interview.

How long do I have to solve an interview question?

This is sort of like asking how long you have to solve a math problem. Arithmetic problems are solvable in seconds, basic calculus problems in minutes, and complex theory in hours, weeks, or even years.

For a specific interview problem, taking "too long" might indicate poor performance, but that amount of time varies significantly across problems.

When my buddy interviewed with Apple, he was asked to solve 3 questions in 30 minutes. I didn't even finish one problem in that amount of time. Do I have any chance?

My imaginary 10 year old niece solved 5 math problems in only 10 minutes, while my math professor has been working on this other math problem for a year now. My imaginary niece, therefore, is smarter than my math teacher.

The above question makes about as much sense as this statement.

Unless you and your friend were asked the same interview questions, you really can't conclude anything from your experiences.

My friend heard back from Google the day after his interview, but it's been five days and I haven't heard a word. Is this just Google's way of rejecting me?

Nope. Doesn't mean a thing.

I am an experienced candidate. Will I held to the same standards and asked the same kinds of questions?

More or less, yes. Depending on who you talk to, experience either helps you on standard coding / algorithm questions (since you've been coding for longer) or hurts you (since you're further away from these academicy topics).

The slightly unfortunate reality is that interviewers tend to repeat their favorite questions across candidates, so, all else being equal, someone with 30 years or experience will probably be asked the same things as a recent graduate.

However, there will probably be somewhat higher expectations when it comes to behavioral / resume questions.

How long does Facebook take to respond after an interview?

See earlier section about recruiters. Asking how long they take to respond is like asking how long you take to respond to an email. The company may target responding within a week (which is a fairly standard amount of time), but delays can happen for all sorts of reasons.

---

I hope this little window into the interview process helps you next time you wonder why something happened the way it did. Mostly, it's just people running around doing whatever they want. Yep - that's it. There is no system.

Shameless plug (but, hey, lots of candidates swear by it): Just because there's no grand, overall system doesn't mean you can't prep for your interviews. You can and you should. Check out Cracking the Coding Interview, 5th Edition: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions. Lots of advice, and none of the fluffy "be the best you can be!" stuff. Straight, to the point, and lots and lots of cool coding problems.

Officially on sale! Cracking the Coding Interview, 5th Edition

The 5th edition of the best-selling programming interview prep book, Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Interview Questions and Solutions, is officially on sale. And even better - Amazon is currently running a 20% sale on the book!

Now, I know you're used to new editions being a couple little fixes here, packaged in a shiny new edition probably for no other reason than to get you to buy your own copy rather than borrow your friend's. That is not what this is.

The fifth edition of Cracking the Coding Interview is a massive expansion of the fourth edition. It added 200 pages of content, growing the length of the book from 308 pages to 508. A more complete description of the many, many changes are below.

As before, Cracking the Coding Interview focuses on software engineering interviews. If you're looking for a start-to-end guide on how to get a job a tech company, pick up my second book, The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company. The book is rated 4.5 stars after 22 reviews and can be purchased from Amazon or any Barnes and Noble store.

Massive Expansion of Introductory Chapters

The book opens with about 70 pages of content you need to know before diving into an interview question. This includes:

• How do companies evaluate you?
• How do you prepare for behavioral questions?
• What happens behind the scenes at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Apple and Facebook? How does the process work? Who is evaluating you?
• How do you write a great resume?
• How do you tackle tricky technical questions?
• What happens when you get a question wrong?
• What should you evaluate in an offer?
• How do you negotiate an offer?

Expanded Chapter Intros

Each chapter opens with a discussion of core skills and technique for solving each type of question. This ranges from 3 to 10 pages, depending on the complexity of the topic. As always, we assume that you know the really basic stuff, so you don't need to wade through stuff like what a tree is.

Rewritten Solutions (+ 24 new questions) Every questions has been carefully reviewed and the vast majority have been partially or fully re-written. New solutions were added to existing problems, and 24 new questions were also added.

As before, fully compilable Java solutions (ready for import into Eclipse) can be downloaded. The download is hosted on CrackingTheCodingInterview.com.

Website / Forum (CrackingTheCodingInterview.com)

Interview problems are best with some discussion, so we've created a website / forum built around the book. If you have questions or additional solutions you'd like to consider, post them there to discuss them with other readers. The java solutions can also be downloaded from there.

Buy it now:

• Cracking the Coding Interview, v5 [Amazon]
• The Google Resume [Amazon]
• Cracking the Coding Interview, v5 [India / Pothi]
• The Google Resume [India / Flipkart]

The 5 Big Questions You Need to Ask about Your Resume

Through CareerCup's resume review, my time at Google and other companies, and the occasional favor for a friend, I've seen hundreds of resumes. Each time, I see the same mistakes. I'm not talking about subtle little wording tricks; I'm talking about the massive issues that all too many resumes have. Think your resume is "good enough?" Check it against these five big questions.

#1. Is your resume one page (or at most two pages for 10+ years of experience)?

Did you know that longer resumes usually make you look less experienced?

When you include just one page of content, you’re including, by definitely, the “top one page” of experience. Less impressive accomplishments just don’t make the cut. But when you expand into two or three pages of experience, the quality of the average item on your resume drops substantially.

And since resume screeners only skim your resume for 15 – 30 seconds, it’s the “average” that matters, not the sum of all your accomplishments.

(Still disagree? Read Less Is More: Eight Reasons Why You Need a One Page Resume.)

#2. Did you use a resume template, or did you build your own?

If you’re opening up a new page in Microsoft Word, bolding some headings for your job titles, and typing your accomplishments under them in bullets, you’re almost surely making a mistake.

Your resume will wind up looking sloppy and unprofessional. And, perhaps even worse, you’ll probably waste a lot of space. Resume formats are often designed to fit as much as possible on the screen while still being clean and well-organized.

Unless you’re a whiz with Word and with design, you should just use one of the many resume templates out there.

(Here are the two resume templates that I use.)

#3. Are your bullets too long?

As mentioned earlier, resume screeners don’t read your resume; they skim it. The process takes about 15 – 30 seconds per resume and is designed to decide on interview / no interview. Bullets that look like a paragraph are skipped in this process. They take too long to read and too long to really digest.

If you want to make sure your bullets are read, keep them to a mix of one line and two line bullets.

#4. Is your resume accomplishment-oriented or responsibility-oriented?

The work you were assigned to do is sort of, well, boring. I want to know what you actually accomplished.

Consider the difference between these two bullets for a Program Manager:

1. Design features for Amazon S3 and oversee development of the features across software engineers and testers.
2. Designed the SS Frontline feature, managed its development, and led its integration across three products, leading to a $100 million increase in revenue.

The first one doesn’t tell me much more than what I already knew from the job title. The second bullet, however, shows me that you had an impact.

#5. What did you not include?

When I’m reviewing a resume, one question I like to ask is if there’s anything (major or minor, professional or academic, serious or “just for fun,” coding / PM / etc focused or not) that they didn’t include. All too often, the person cut something that’s pretty major – possibly what would have been the “wow” part of their portfolio.

Last month, I was reviewing the resume of a PM at Microsoft who had neglected to mention on her resume that she’d started a video gaming company “on the side,” where she hired and managed several testers and developers. Why didn’t she mention it? Because they hadn’t launched yet.

The belief that you can only list something on resume if some requirement or other is met is common.

When I reviewed resumes after the PennApps hackathon, about half of the CS students left out a major project. Of those, half thought that they couldn’t mention a project because it was for class, and the other half thought that they couldn’t mention a project because it wasn’t for a class.

Ultimately, forget the rules of what does and doesn’t belong on a resume. If it makes you look better, include it.

............

Want more guidance on how to improve your resume and land a job at a great tech company? Read The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company.

Get your free, advanced, signed copy of Cracking the Coding Interview, v5

UPDATE: Share this with your friends to improve your chances at winning a free copy!

UPDATE 2: Raffle has completed! Thanks for playing :)

Since everything is best in rhyming form, I will open this with a poem from an anonymous (and awesome) reader:

If you've ever wondered how to navigate the Amazon forest,

Or pondered how at a Google or Microsoft interview to do your best;

If you think that being at Apple means biting more than you can chew.

Then sit back, relax, and say, "Yahoo!"

For the fifth Edition of Cracking the Coding Interview,

Is on well on its way to being out, so, "Phew!"

Countless hours have been poured into the book,

The new version is much-improved, so pray, take a look.

One five zero problems and tons of useful advice,

On how to, in the technical hot seat, be like ice.

Folks, from the author of The Google Resume,

Comes another gem this Fall your way!

So if arrays have you feeling out of bounds,

And you're pointedly null on how "linked list" sounds

If  your worst character is brought out by strings

And recursion, tears to your eyes, repeatedly brings.

If trees and graphs along with stacks and queues

Push you to the edge, make you pop, or perturb your views

And bit manipulations along with the byte-sized brain-teaser,

Have your brain locked up - like it's in the freezer,

Then ladies and gents do pickup this hot paperback,

For it's sure to thaw you and put you on the right study track!

Yep, that's right. The long awaited Cracking the Coding Interview v5 is almost out. And we're going to be giving out a limited number of free, signed copies to lucky readers.

Want to snag your copy? Enter here for your chance to win a copy.

What's Changed?

To be succinct, a lot! This is not your "I want people to buy a new copy, so I'll make a few quick changes and call it a new edition" sort of thing. This is a totally re-written, much expanded, new edition.

• Grown to 506 pages in v5, up from 308 pages in v4. (And no, I didn't pull the ol' college make-the-margins-bigger trick.) The images on the right are not to scale. :)
• Much expanded sections on resume design, interview prep, behavioral prep, mastering technical questions.
• More complete sections introducing each chapter.
• 24 new questions.
• Plus, many many additional / alternative / rewritten solutions.

The focus of the book is still Software Engineering interview prep. If you're looking for a more general start-to-end guide to getting a job at a tech company, check out my second book: The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company.

Enter here for a free, signed copy of Cracking the Coding Interview.

Why I Don't Support "One Laptop Per Child"

Recently, during a five week trip to Africa, I got the opportunity to visit a school and a hospital in Mayange, a rural town in Rwanda. Mayange is a beneficiary of both the UN's Millennium Villages Project and the One Laptop Per Child program. The Millennium Villages Project is an effort to eliminate poverty in which the UN selects 12 of the poorest villages in different climates in Africa to improve education, healthcare, agriculture, business and other key components of a thriving society. These 12 towns acts as pilots in a greater poverty elimination effort. From what the people we met told us, the impact of Millennium Villages has been striking. The impact of One Laptop Per Child, which aims to put an ultra-cheap ($165 + training and maintenance costs) laptop in the hands of each child (not family, and not school), has been a bit more questionable. This is particularly true when you look at its per-dollar impact.

The School

It was around noon on a Tuesday when we arrived at the rural school. Today was a half day, which they do twice a week to keep costs low. The morning students were returning home as the afternoon students were arriving to take their places. Each kid was carrying his or her papers or books. No one had their laptop. Where were these $165 laptops? Left at home. Even if they wanted to use their laptops, they couldn't do much with them. As is common in this town, the internet hadn't been working for several days.

The teacher who showed us around was proud to show off the gadgets. Apparently the kids love taking pictures of themselves with the built-in camera. That was as far as the "impact" he mentioned went.

The school lunch program, however, he praised. By giving otherwise hungry students free lunch at school, attendance had increased dramatically. You want kids to get an education? Feed them.

The Hospital

The true lost opportunity for OLPC funds really hits you when you go to the hospital. This town, as a beneficiary of Millennium Villages, was one of the lucky ones. They had adequately trained nurses. Refrigerators to store medicines. Equipment to test people for malaria and HIV, and the drugs to treat them. And, perhaps most significantly, birth control.

Our guide was nearly boastful about the family planning clinic, and he awkwardly  pushed us through the crowd of women awaiting treatment. He whipped out a packet of birth control pills and explained to us how they worked: "Green pills for three weeks. Pinks pills for one. Don't get them confused. Is very bad."

In just a few years, the usage of birth control pills had increased from non-existent to over 60%. When families have just two extra mouths to feed, instead of seven or eight, children have more food, more clean water, and more medicine.

Healthcare premiums are just $2 per person per year (true cost is $10 - $20), but most people still can't afford that.

The Impact

No doubt, OLPC has added value to the students it has reached. The question though, is how much? Is this really the best use of limited resources?

Education is critical to reducing poverty, and certainly, technology is a means to access nearly infinite educational resources online. But if we give one laptop per family, or set up a computer lab in each school, we would touch far more people for far less money.

The choice comes down to this: do you give a family with six children six laptops? Or do you give them one laptop to share, and then cover the healthcare premiums of another 500 children?

How to Get Beyond the Black Hole - and Land that Interview

We call it many things - online job applications, the resume database, etc - but perhaps the most applicable is the "Black Hole." Thousands of job seekers submit their resumes each year, hoping to get the chance to interview. But the reality is that standing out from a stack of resumes is extremely difficult. So how do you stand out in a stack of hundreds of resumes? Ideally, you don't. Instead, you find more creative avenues in.

I wrote an article for CNBC offering suggestions on how candidates can land an interview with their dream company. Read it here.

Reneging on a Job Offer - Is It Ever Acceptable?

A candidate recently came to me seeking the advice for the following situation: A few weeks after accepting a software development position with Dell, he received an offer from Microsoft as a Program Manager. This was his dream job, and his dream company, but he would have to turn it down. Or would he? I wanted to tell him to do “the right thing” and turn down the dream offer, but I couldn’t. Why? Because, about seven years ago, I was in a nearly identical situation. And I did the so-called “wrong” thing.

In 2004, I was interviewing for an internship. I didn’t want to go back to Microsoft – three internships there was plenty. Google and Apple had both rejected me, though Apple told me that I was their “#2” candidate for this position. So, though I was pretty lukewarm on the position and would never join there fulltime, I accepted the IBM position. I had stopped all other interviews and had every intention of completing the internship.

Then, six weeks before the internship was supposed to start, I got an email from the Apple team. Their #1 candidate just reneged. Was I still available? This was my dream job. I loved the company. I loved the product. I loved the team. So I said yes.

The After Math

Here’s where I’m supposed to say that it caused some horrific impact on my career. Recruiters no longer trusted me. I got blacklisted. And ever since then I’ve regretted my decision, or something like that.

But the truth is that none of that happened.

IBM was annoyed, but they replaced me. Word didn’t get out about that awful thing I did. Even the other IBM recruiters had no idea what had happened. And why would they? It’s a huge company and one candidate reneging is just not that big of a deal.

But it was a big, big deal to me.

Should you renege?

I can’t – and won’t – advise anyone to renege. It can certainly hurt your reputation. You may be seen by others as unreliable. People who know about the situation may hesitate to recommend you to a company in the future. And, of course, there is definitely an unethical component to it. You’re breaking a promise, and a promise you made in a professional context. That’s never good.

At the same time, I do feel that much like an awesome sales person will recommend a competitor’s product if it’s clearly a better fit for you, an awesome recruiter should understand the position you’re in. This is your dream job – you don’t just walk away from it. (And, in fact, the Apple recruiter was supportive when their original candidate reneged – and would have eagerly interviewed him in the future.)

Additionally, unless the original offer was from a very small company or for a very high level position, the impact on the company probably pales in comparison to the impact on you. Is it really so wrong to renege?

Rather than the knee-jerk “ZOMG-it’s-wrong” response, think seriously here. What is so special about committing to a job offer?

So, what’s so special about this promise?

You shouldn’t promise to see a movie with friends, but then shop around for better plans. You shouldn’t get engaged if you’re not sure you want to get married. And you shouldn’t offer a friend a ride to the airport if you don’t have a car. But, sometimes your parents unexpectedly come to town, sometimes relationships fail, and sometimes cars break down. Life happens.

So let’s all move away from this absolutist “it’s always wrong” mindset and be honest: we break promises all the time and we’re okay with that. Life happens, and things come up. And sometimes that thing is your dream job. Why do we accept broken promises in other cases, but think that it’s always wrong for a job offer?

Why Your Interview Performance is Impossible to Judge

When I was at Google, I referred a number of candidates, and ran a little (informal) experiment. How well could people judge their performance? After each candidate completed their interview, I’d ask them how they did. Then, I’d look up their actual performance. And guess what? There was no correlation. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

[Update: here's some more data on this.]

Why is it so hard to know how you did? The answer comes in how candidates try to judge themselves, which is typically one of two ways:

Method #1: “I know I did well / poorly because my interviewer was friendly / unfriendly.”

One guy I knew, Alex*, told me he was sure he bombed his interview because the interviewer seemed so unhappy with him. Later, he discovered that he would not only receive an offer, but he was the best candidate that the interviewer had ever seen.

What Alex didn’t know is that this interviewer was not what we’d call a “smiley happy” person. And that’s the problem with interpreting performance from a stranger’s attitude. You’re comparing them to what you’re used to, not to how the interviewer usually acts.

Additionally, a good interviewer should be friendly to anyone, even a poor performer.

Method #2: “I know I did well / poorly because of how slowly / quickly / correctly / incorrectly I solved a problem.”

Imagine a professor passes back a test and you see in big red ink the score “45.” Did you do well or poorly? You have no idea, of course, without knowing how the rest of the class did. The same goes for an interview. You can’t assess your performance on a question without knowing what’s “normal.”

Interviews are not evaluated on an absolute basis with respect to either speed or correctness. Struggling your way through one problem but eventually getting the right answer might indicate that you did extremely well, or poorly. It all depends on how other candidates did (which, of course, you don’t know).

Note: this only applies to “skill based” questions, like programming and algorithms. We’ll discuss behavioral questions later.

So how can you evaluate your performance?

As we’ve discussed, you can’t interpret much from the interviewer’s reactions. However, if you could gauge how difficult a question is, you might be able to guess at how you did. One way to do this is to ask a number of friends the same questions. If they solve it in half the time that you do, then you might be able to conclude that you did poorly.

What about behavioral questions?

Behavioral questions are a bit easier to evaluate performance for two reasons:

• Interviewer Attitude: The interviewer’s attitude is a bit more meaningful here, but you should look for changes in their attitude. If your interviewer gets more engaged during your responses, or less engaged, then that might be an indicator of performance.
• Response Quality: Unlike programming questions, behavioral questions don’t vary drastically in difficulty. Struggling to respond to several of them is an indicator of poor performance. You may recognize when you really bombed a question. But, even there, I would be cautious about making assumptions.

Remember this when you’re walking out of your next interview, or when a friend tells you they did horribly. Be cautiously optimistic, because you won’t know until you know.

10 Secrets To Getting A Job At Apple, Google Or Microsoft

Forbes recently posted an article by me called "10 Secrets to Getting a Job at Apple, Google, or Microsoft." Here are three of my favorites:

Start Something: Launching a small tech company, or just a project, can demonstrate virtually everything a tech firm wants to see: field expertise, passion for technology, initiative, leadership and creativity. Don’t have software development experience? Not to worry – you can hire an outsourced development team from sites like odesk and elance

Create an Online Portfolio: Almost everyone can benefit from a portfolio. A simple web site with a description of your major accomplishments (both inside and outside of work) can provide more context than what your resume can provide. Recruiters may reference this after seeing your resume, but they might stumble across your portfolio online and give you a call.

Rehearse Your Stories: One of the best ways to improve your overall interview performance is to practice your “stories.” For each major accomplishment, brainstorm ways that you showed leadership, demonstrated influence, or overcame challenges. Rehearsing these responses aloud will help you to more effectively discuss what you did and why it mattered.

Read the rest of the article for the full list. Or check out my book, The Google Resume, from which each of these tips were borrowed.

As an addendum to this, I'd like to add: ask for help. There are people in your field (or your desired field) who can help you. They can suggest ways to get relevant experience through projects, volunteer work, or starting a part-time job. They can help you craft your resume to bring out your best accomplishments. And they can help you prepare for the interviews. Don't do it alone - ask them for help.

Why the US can only have two parties (OR: why democrats should support tea party candidates)

Every election day, people love to proclaim their frustration with this dirty-awful-horrible two party system, and insist that what we really need is a multi-party system.   And every election day, they're dead wrong.

Let's take the following hypothetical election with candidates A, B and C.  30% of the population votes for A, 30% for B, and the remaining 40% of the population of the C.

C is our victor.  The As and Bs will be upset, of course, but there are always winners and losers in every election.  We've done the best possible job at abiding by the will the people, and we've made as many people as possible happy.  Right?

Wrong.

It turns out that while A and B are individually less popular than B, they're very similar candidates.  Everyone who voted for B would have much rather had A over C.  The anything-but-C voters got split between A and B, and C ended up winning.  Put another way, if you only had two parties, only A or B would have run and people would have been happier.

The more parties the worse this problem becomes.

Potential 8 Party  Scenario:

W1 wins with 18% of the vote.   However, if we group people by similar values / goals / populations / whatever, we'd see that the L's have 42% preference, C's have 32% and W's are trailing with 26%.

But is this realistic? Yes.  Not only is it realistic, but it's already happened.  Remember 2000?

And if tea party candidates run separately, it'll happen again:

So next time someone is advocating for a multi-party system, remember this.  With its current election structure, the US can not support more than 2 parties. If we want more parties, then advocate for the necessary changes to the voting structure: rank order candidates, run off elections, etc..  But don't advocate for a multi-party system without those changes.

Blame Men - And Women: A response to TechCrunch's article on women in tech

Michale Arrington unleashed a fury of attacks - pro-women, anti-women, pro-Arrington, anti-Arrington - this week with his post "Too few women in tech? Stop blaming the men. Or at least stop blaming me."  The assumption, of course, is that you should blame the women. The gist of Arrington's post is this: Stop blaming us for the lack of women as speakers / subjects of articles.  We try, but there's just not as many women.  And don't blame the men either.  Silicon Valley is a true meritocracy, and women have a ton of advantages in tech / entrepreneurship.  Women are not pursuing this field, and it's probably something innate.

He's partially right, and I can understand his frustration.  TechCrunch probably tries to attract female speakers, and it must be frustrating that, despite all that effort, people are criticizing them for not having enough women.  I get that.

The rest of the article is where Arrington goes wrong.

1. Silicon Valley is a not a full meritocracy.

Your network is incredibly important in getting press, attracting employees, getting funding, etc. Can people assume you're less technical, less credible because you're female? If you're female, do you have to do more to prove your credibility? Absolutely.

2. Women have many disadvantages as entrepreneurs.

He states that "statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs". He makes a common mistake here. Yes, women have some advantages. Are there disadvantages to being female? Of course. I've had so many people comment on my desire to start a company and ask, "what will you do when you have children?" If people are directly asking me that, I can only assume that VCs, potential partners, etc, will be wondering the same thing. And somehow I don't think my fiancé John would get the same questions. I can tell you countless stories from business school, tech environments, etc about people making assumptions. I do get some advantages from being female, but I also have to work harder in some respects. And I, unlike Arrington, would not be so presumptuous to assume that it falls so heavily on one side or the other.

3. When you say "women have it easier," you're also usually saying "I assume women are worse."

Here's a conversation I've had many times with different people:

Person: "Oh no, I'm not sexist, but come on, women have a lot of advantages getting a tech job or doing other stuff. There's so much pro-women stuff."

Me: "So you're saying that it's easier to get into, say, Google if you're female?"

Person: "Of course. Look at what they do to recruit women."

Me: "I see. So then if it's easier getting into Google as a woman, then you must believe that the average woman is less qualified?"

Person: "Well, right, that's true."

Me: "So when you see a woman in tech, you assume she's worse than the average man? Even though you know that she's at Google, she would probably have to more to prove her credibility?

This is the point where the person usually stutters.   (The "person" can be either male or female. Men are not necessarily any more sexist than women.)  Arrington introduces this conversation with a comment about how he assumes that the acceptance rate for women-founded businesses in Y-Combinator is higher than that of men-founded businesses.  Does the rest of this conversation follow?  Most likely.

4. Early sexism is relevant.

There's everything that happens before people become entrepreneurs. All the implicit sexism. The high school teachers who think maybe you want to be careful before taking that college level calculus class over the summer - it's really hard, you know. The people who aren't surprised when you struggle in math and science - who don't expect as much of you. Young girls looking around and seeing the people like them working "normal jobs" rather than having super-successful careers. Arrington suggests that women are just inherently less inclined to be entrepreneurs, and completely ignores that maybe someone's childhood affects their goals and values.

5. Women are genetically less and more inclined to be entrepreneurs.

Ok, Arrington doesn't directly say this, but he certainly suggests it as a theory.  People have been asserting things like "oh women are just inherently less inclined to do X," only to have it equalize later on in life. I also know that there are just as many female math majors as male in the US, suggesting that it's maybe not that women are inherently less quantitative.

Virtually every time people introduce some study to show why things are just as they should naturally be, the reasoning is flawed.  It usually goes something like: "A study showed that men are better than women at X.  X is a component of Y.  Therefore, men are just inherently better at Y than women."  That only follows if X is the only component of Y.  Let's find some reasons why women should be naturally more inclined to be entrepreneurs, shall we?

• Women are better multitaskers.  [study]
• Women make better managers. [study]
• Women, more often than men, have a secondary source of income (yes, their spouses).  Thus, a women pursuing entrepreneurship is less likely to be gambling their child's education, family well-being, etc.

Now, those top two are according to just one study / article.  There may be studies that contradict it.  That's part of the problem, after all.  People bring one study to suggest that women are inherently less inclined in one aspect of entrepreneurship, and use it as a comprehensive explanation of a very complex problem.  It doesn't work like that.

I don't know why there aren't more women in tech or more women entrepreneurs.  But I do know that it's a really, really complex problem, and there's a lot men and women can do to help solve it.

Debunking the Google Interview Myth

Years ago, rumors used to circulate about Microsoft interviews.  They were the hot, new company that everyone wanted to work.  With envy came the urban myths.  These rumors have since been transfered to Google, and will surely be transfered to some new company in due time. Bloggers - always desperate for links and traffic - have capitalized on this, with scary articles about their "nightmare interview" and "crazy questions".  Let's just stop this right now, shall we?

Google's interview process is really no different from its competitors. An engineer does a phone interview or two, where they're asked standard coding and algorithms questions.  Sometimes they're asked to code via Google Docs, because evaluating phone coding isn't easy.  Then, if all goes well (it usually doesn't - that's just how it is at any company), the candidate is brought in for a full day of interviews.  Candidates are asked a mix of standard coding and algorithms, and are asked to code on the whiteboard.  Coding on the spot might seem surprising to those outside of the software industry, but it's standard practice.  After the interview, Google's process is a bit different from Microsoft and Amazon's: a candidate's feedback is submitted to a hiring committee of engineers who makes a hire / no hire recommendation.

(FYI: I served on Google's hiring committee for 3 years, and interviewed 120+ candidates.)

IQ Tests? I've never seen these. Ever.

Brain teasers? Banned.  (Of course, everyone has a different definition of a brain teasers.)  If an interviewer were to ask a candidate a brain teaser, despite the policy, the hiring committee would likely disregard this interviewer's feedback and send a note back telling the interviewer not to ask such silly questions.

That whole "Google cares about GPA even for people years out of college" thing?  I supposed I can't speak for every hiring committee, but I never remember my hiring committee discussing the GPA of a professional candidate.  For that matter, we were never even given a candidate's GPA unless he/she elected to put it on their resume.

Now, let's look at the very widely circulated "15 Google Interview Questions that will make you feel stupid" list.  You want to believe these are real questions, given that Business Insider feels like such a reputable source.  Except that they didn't get this list from a direct source.  They borrowed their questions from some blogger (I won't link back here) who was posting fake questions.  Now, I don't know that said blogger was intentionally lying - he probably borrowed them from someone else.  Whatever the original source is, these questions are fake. Fake fake fake.

How can you tell that they're fake?  Because one of them is "Why are manhole covers round?"  This is an infamous Microsoft interview question that has since been so very, very banned at both companies .  I find it very hard to believe that a Google interviewer asked such a question.

As for some of the others - "Explain the significance of 'dead beef'", "A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?", etc - I'm also highly skeptical.  If one's a lie, why on earth would we believe the rest?  Especially if they are clearly in the banned category.

So while I know that "oh my god - Google asks candidates to reverse a linked list?" doesn't make for quite as good SEO-link baiting material, let's stop scaring the candidates with silly stories. And that includes you too, Business Insider. Any Google interviewer could tell you that at least some, if not all, of these questions are fake.

Want to see real Google interview questions, Microsoft interview questions, and more?  Check CareerCup.

Should entrepreneurs get an MBA? Reflections after 1 year at Wharton

Having just finished up my first year in Wharton's MBA program, I often hear the question, "is an MBA worth it?" It's a tough choice: $100k or so in tuition and other expenses, plus the lost salary, plus the loss in possible promotions.

With TechCrunch having just posted an article on this matter, I thought I'd add my take on it.

An MBA offers a variety of benefits, and many people, in discussing this question, just focus on the education. The problem with that is that formal education is an incredible inefficient way to learn. Think back to the 40 or so classes you took as an undergrad. How many of those really made a difference in your life? Couldn't you have learned just the most valuable stuff in a much shorter amount of time? Of course! Yet people would rarely conclude that undergraduate degrees are a waste of time. Note: this applies also to computer science degrees. You don't need a full degree to make you a great programmer. Why then do so many people argue that entrepreneurs should have CS degrees over MBAs?

Like undergraduate degrees, MBAs offer a lot of value beyond the learning. You meet people who mentor you, and you mentor them. You gain lifelong credibility. You gain a lifelong alumni network, offering many many thousands of people who will answer your phone call just because you went to the same school. You can't get these things from a textbook or from reading some "MBA 101 blog."

Is an MBA right for you? I have no idea. There are no credible studies on this, since you can't exactly do a controlled scientific experiment. And the vast majority of people will just tell you to follow in their footsteps.

Here's the advice I will give to prospective MBA students:

• Name Matters: The amount of credibility and the quality / reach of the alumni network varies with the name / rank of the school. There are a lot of people for whom a Tier 2 MBA program will add substantially to their life, but there are also a lot of people for whom it won't. In short: don't just go to "any" MBA program. Go to one that is a "step up" from where you are now.
• Know What You Want: MBA programs are only two years, and you give up a lot in the short term - personally and professionally - to attend. If you enter knowing what you want, you'll be able to seek out the right people and opportunities much more quickly.
• Field Expertise Matters Too: An MBA will probably help you run a better business, but so will many things. Considering padding your MBA with a bit of field expertise, whether that's a tech skills, retail experience, medical background or whatever. The ultimate for a tech start-up is a business skills + tech background + industry / market experience.

And, of course, remember: if you're considering an MBA, you'll probably be just fine whatever you do. Don't stress it too much.

How Cell Phones Fail the Elderly

My elderly (childhood) nanny just bought a pre-paid cell phone and, naturally, I needed to help her set it up and teach her how to use it.  The phone was a great deal, she told me - just $99 for a year of free US and international calling! Cheapest phone plan ever, right?  This is what the plan really looks like:

• She pre-pays an amount, and the money expires after a length of time.  The length of time depends on how much you pre-pay.
• On the days she uses her cell phone, she's charged $0.99.
• If she calls another Verizon user (how does she know?), it's free.  It's also free on nights and weekends.
• Other US calls cost $0.05 / minute.
• International calling costs $1.49 / minute.

Confused?  Here's a convenient map (yeah, you're going to need to zoom in):

Note how there are multiple plans, and she probably didn't select the one that's best for her (Basic).  I'm not sure where she went wrong.  Maybe she couldn't properly evaluate her average talk time, the timing and the density of her calls to evaluate whether the "per day" is offset by the cheaper minute plan and free night time calls?  Crazy!

I declined to get into the complexities of pre-pay expiration, as I'm not sure I understand it myself.  What happens if I buy $20 (which expires after 30 days) and then a week later I buy $50 (which expires in 90 days)?  What expires when?

Lest she might actually wrap her head too soon around all that, her cell phone offers a new source of confusion.  Navigation requires a careful mapping (on very small buttons, despite having purchased the largest phone they had) of on-screen buttons to keypad buttons, while trying to avoid the calendar (who uses calendar on a basic flip phone?), voice daily (oh no the phone is talking to me!), picture messaging, web browser, camera and text messaging (conveniently called "Messages" so as not to be confused with, say, voice messages.)  You try explaining to her that she merely has to map the location of the on-screen buttons to the funny looking dashes and the weird circular button on the phone.

You know what she needs?  A phone.  Preferably one with a dial tone, so that she knows it's on.  Can someone make a flip phone with a dial tone please?  Or maybe a phone with a nice wizard interface?

Email is actually easier for her - at least I can write down instructions for her.