[bitL]

Elite schools do that in undergrad; e.g. as an initial scored lab exercise, write this recursive fractal shape using Logo, parallel Delaunay triangulation with prefix sums , dynamic programming solving oligopoly problem or single-value Paxos pseudocode on a piece of paper in 10 minutes (I am being serious). If you can cope with it, it immediately shows up in the interview and you are considered a member of the club, a person worthy of having conversations with.

[aphextron]

>f you can cope with it, it immediately shows up in the interview and you are considered a member of the club, a person worthy of having conversations with.

This is the best part of these interviews. The utterly dehumanizing nature of it. You aren't even treated as a person until you've uttered the correct series of phrases that signal you are a member of the right class. Every word that comes out of your mouth, and everything on your resume up until that point is completely disregarded and treated as a lie.

[peter_l_downs]

Which elite schools? I went to MIT and didn’t have to do any of this.

[chollida1]

https://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/materials.php

[neilv]

Just to add context: MIT Interim Activities Period (IAP) is a "winter break" few weeks in which anyone can lead classes/sessions on any topic: http://web.mit.edu/iap/about/index.html

MIT CSAIL is the research lab joining of the legendary MIT AI Lab and MIT Lab for Computer Science. People who work hard and win the lottery to do research at CSAIL (or other prestigious lab) shouldn't afterwards be looking for entry-level coding jobs for which a whiteboard code monkey dance interview/hazing would be appropriate, IMHO.

(For different reasons, people who are in programmer career tracks, with verifiable industry track records and/or open source involvement, also shouldn't be put through the entry-level hazing. Claims that the ritual gives certain companies metrics or somesuch would carry more credibility, had those companies not been caught brazenly colluding, at the CEO level, to systematically suppress wages and mobility of their own employees, with presumed spreading market effects throughout industry.)

[Dangeranger]

The course you linked to doesn’t cover any of the algorithms mentioned in the grandparent. It does however cover about three dozen common interview questions. The course is also from 2009.

[MRD85]

That seems really easy for MIT. I'm towards the end of my 2nd year at a regional university in Australia and nothing there seemed that bad.

[marquis-chacha]

That's a student taught class. Not really policy-defining.

[natalyarostova]

It's a Caltech and Stanford thing. MIT isn't really elite.

[fenomas]

Oh not in Utica, it's more of an Albany expression.

[natalyarostova]

I see.

[jjoonathan]

Sure.

[mattkrause]

I’m having a hard time believing this is true....

If nothing else, Logo? In 2019?

[tamrix]

Hackernews has its own instagram reality to it.

[bitL]

I think the term "Logo" stands on a perfect abstraction level that in reality could have meant "using turtle.py you programmed last week with turn, move etc. commands", don't you think? Do we need to be super-precise down to minutiae when discussing informal stuff? Moreover, it's on paper, so who cares what syntax is the pseudocode, it could be even Logo itself.

[mattkrause]

> Do we need to be super-precise down to minutiae?

No, but we also don’t need to make up ridiculous lies, especially ones that aren’t particularly funny.

[bitL]

Alright then. Believe as you wish.

[buckhx]

Course numbers or it didn't happen