PengsenMao's blog

By PengsenMao, history, 4 years ago, In English

Dear Codeforcers, I am an international student who is currently studying at UNSW Sydney. I am doing a double degree of advanced maths and computer science. I have been doing informatics Olympiad in my high school and ACM-ICPC atm. As Summer(for Australia) holiday is approaching, I am really interested in finding a software engineer internship at Sydney. However, I did some research and without exaggeration, every company requires residency(permanent residency or citizenship). Some companies only hire graduating students. Is there any suggestion you guys can give me? That would be very appreciated!

Kind Regards

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +122 Vote: I do not like it

If you cannot find internship in Australia, why not try other countries?

Big companies like GG, FB should be able to help with visa. Problem is it's probably too late now to apply for end of year internship. You can apply for 2021 mid year internship though.

P.S. Message me if you want referral for FB.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +44 Vote: I do not like it

    Now lot of people will ping you for referral

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
    Rev. 5   Vote: I like it +40 Vote: I do not like it

    As I'm receiving lots of messages, I won't be able to reply to everyone. Also if you're messaging me, please be specific and provide at least link to your resume + link to positions you want to apply (at most 3; can search from https://careers.facebook.com).

    Edit: CF limit that I can only send message to 2 unique people per hour, and 4 unique people daily, so I won't be able to reply to many messages.

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -22 Vote: I do not like it

I can tell you about the internship process in India. For the summer internship after 3rd year, companies like Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Amazon etc come to campus at the start of 5th sem(3rd year). They take an online round which mostly consists of 2 coding questions and some MCQs of core CS subjects like Database, Computer Architecture etc. The technical coding round is very easy. I am green and I was able to go to the 3rd round(last round) of GS. Finally, I got an internship at Deutsche Bank. CP does not help much even a basic coder would be able crack the technical interview flawlessly.

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    4 years ago, # ^ |
    Rev. 3   Vote: I like it +76 Vote: I do not like it

    Checkmate.

    Spoiler
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      4 years ago, # ^ |
      Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it
      I would like to change "CP does not help much" to "CP helps a lot but the time you need to devote to CP is A LOT".By a lot meaning atleast a year or more. I didn't do LeetCode or InterviewBit. Throughout my second year I have done only CodeForces, just pure CodeForces. But from my experience, I cleared Goldman Sachs OT,Microsoft OT and Deustche Bank OT and not in one did I find questions related to CP. Just basic DS and Algo.
      
      Of course, there are companies like Google who have the bar for coding set very high. Every company does not have such a tough OT.In fact in GS interview they asked me puzzles and reasoning type questions.
      
      Define "basic coder" -- I am a basic coder. I know basic data structures-stacks,queues,linked lists,binary trees,BST,heaps and I know basic algorithmic techniques-greedy,two-pointer,dp(very noob),binary search,dfs,bfs,dijkstra. I dont even know PrimKruskal or any fancy other name.
      
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      4 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +26 Vote: I do not like it

      I agree with you. In the recent Google internship hiring coding round some guys got "not-Basic-DSA" problems. And didn't manage to solve it within 1 hour time and hence didn't get chance to go further.
      But even though I managed to solve both problems in coding round, I still didn't get a chance to go further. :( :( :( :(

      Why the heck do these companies not reveal the reason for rejection? I mean they don't need to reveal for everyone ( ex- those who didn't solve even 1 problem) , but there are people like me who solved both problems and yet didn't get any chance. Was there any problem in my resume? Was it because of my cgpa or college? How am I supposed to know what I should improve?

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
          Vote: I like it +28 Vote: I do not like it

        [user:@pritishn] Hey I can feel you. In my college they shortlisted people who didn't even solve a single problem completely(I am excluding the tough questions like Bitwise XOR one) . Google has a pretty randomised selection process and there were quite a lot of biases in their selection.

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +17 Vote: I do not like it

          Getting into your college is a bigger achievement than sum of all that I have achieved in my entire life. XD

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it +2 Vote: I do not like it

          I think you are talking about the set in which there was bitwise XOR and LCA problem. So maybe your college guys have partially solved that. In that set many people got 0 points

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        Hmm, even I got 60/60. My questions were pretty simple, one was similar to counting number of increasing and decreasing subarrays and the other was a simple stack problem. Even I have also not heard from them yet, but the best part is I don't know a single person who did both the questions and has heard back from them. The people in my circle who have received the invite for the next round are only those who got a partial score. Can somebody else confirm this observation of mine?

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
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          I know a guy who solved both the problems and received the shortlisting mail from google. Probably it has something to do with your resume too.

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        4 years ago, # ^ |
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        This problem of rejection without reasons has happened in my case too (I am a CS student from one of the top 3 IITs). I had appeared for Samsung Korea's coding test and scored 190/200, with only 2 people with a perfect score and the average being 110/200. I wasn't still shortlisted, despite having an impressive resume (top 20 rank in JEE Mains and Advanced, CPI above 9.5). And people having lesser scores and (very less) impressive resumes were shortlisted. Fortunately enough, one of the top Day 1 companies selected me, so I didn't rant much but this type of closed system selection isn't good. And there is another thing, but people would call me sexist or smth, but it needs to be said. The companies are clearly biased towards women.

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          4 years ago, # ^ |
            Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

          It's weird how you didn't get shortlisted offcampus being a red / yellow coder and exceptional resume. I'm assuming you must have been atleast yellow based on your Adv AIR. By the way this fake id comment is making the authenticity of the data provided by you look a bit fishy, mind commenting the same thing from your original account so that others find it more believable?

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            4 years ago, # ^ |
              Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

            These exams and interviews were conducted in-campus, and I am a low-to-mid purple coder :((. I can't comment from my original account, sorry.

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      4 years ago, # ^ |
      Rev. 6   Vote: I like it 0 Vote: I do not like it

      DISCLAIMER:

      1. i usually dont reply on such topics (because i am a below average student myself and have a lot to learn) but ill make an exception this time.

      2. at_kansal happens to be a good friend of mine and i cleared goldman sachs he is talking about.

      3. i am by no means arguing and just want to share my experience.

      Q. Why do companies judge on ds algo and why not webdev etc?

      => because a much more important job for a student is to have the ability to program. frameworks etc can be easily learnt.

      e.g. i tried to learn javascript when i wasnt good at programming and left it after 4-5 days of trying. i found callbacks, promises etc quite tough to understand. however, when i did a bit of practice of ds algo etc, and got back to learning javascript, i also could appreciate the concepts much more.

      Q. Why cp then?

      => CP IS IMPORTANT — but its objective is much much more than interviews — it gives you the ability to think — a stable expert / candidate master can easily ace interviews but for someone below that, a better option might be practicing on interviewbit and leetcode if he / she has less time. reaching the level as i mentioned above takes time for an average student. you have given 3 dedicated years to reach where you are. its commendable effort some people just cannot...because of a lot of constraints...

      Q. If not CP then what?

      => i happened to practice interviewbit twice and also did quite a few problems on gfg and leetcode and still i found the interview questions very very easy. i cant solve greedy problems of C on codeforces but i could answer as well as code dp questions in interview — why? because they ask easy questions or better STANDARD QUESTIONS.

      e.g. give me problem of binary search i cant solve — give me painter partition problem — i will solve it.

      CONCLUSION:

      someone above average at CP can easily crack interviews. but if you arent and you realise you dont have enough time, its always better to rethink. also, i can guarantee one thing — im not talking about companies like google maybe but for most of the other companies — there is a 95% probability that what you are asked is a direct question picked from leetcode / interviewbit (interviewbit is just a subset of leetcode).

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4 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +21 Vote: I do not like it

I just want to know how many companies care when someone says I do competitive programming, except the medalists.