[nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews

Tue Oct 4 03:22:55 UTC 2016

Unfortunately and fortunately, I have been deeply entrenched in the "real" world for the past thirty years!  I have had many jobs over the past thirty years in engineering and in research facilities.  I have two Engineering degrees, a degree in Engineering Psychology (Human Factors), a master's in Human Computer Interaction and am nearing my dissertation proposal for a PhD in Human Centered Computing.   My supervisor sent me back to school to get a PhD for succession trading.  I have a principal investigator research scientist position waiting for me if I want it next year.  I diagnosed my own eye disease of Retinitis Pigmentosa, after I had turned down my college football scholarship offers.  I used my educational training to start doing accommodations for myself even before I knew devices existed.  I have   worked as a rehabilitation engineer and can solve almost any problem that I encounter.  The issues are that there are only so many hours in the day and you don't always have access to what you need to do to do so.  We don't always get access to fix what we need nor the tools to do so.  The vast majority of the problems we will encounter are literally social and not technical problems.  
I literally had to contact the main office of a Federal agency in D.C. to get a Braille display installed.  It only sat next to my desk for eight months and then took a grand total of ten minutes to install.  That is what happens when you don't get administrative rights to your machine and the IT department will not come and install it.  At one place, I had my brother show me how to write a script that made the USB drive look like different peripherals temporarily.  That is how I was able to hook up my Braille Note to it to use.  I had been requesting access for six months.  
The world is not always that fair and not that accommodating, but what would be the use of the Rehabilitation Act of the Americans with Disabilities Act if no one ever utilized it?  The laws were put there for a reason.    
What do you do when you are a legally blind woman with six degrees that gets lured from your Federal position where you are permanent to an agency headquarter in the D.C. area because they want you so badly?  The agency allows the supervisor to use Schedule A hiring authority without your knowledge or consent and then the supervisor fires you later because you won't bow down to or sleep with the misogynist?  Thankfully, she had filed a harassment suit two days before this all occurred.  She won a settlement and the prick had to resign his $115,000 a year job!  She actually just started a new position today here at Georgia Tech at a research center and is considered research faculty.  
What do you do if you have Lupus and you are a Presidential Fellow hire with a Master's in Public Health and your agency won't grant you tele-work privileges or alternate work hours because you don't look that sick to them?  What do you do when you are this person, are 27 years of age and then has a stroke as a result of the stress?  She found another position with another agency, but we sued the hell out of them and she got a nice settlement.  She currently has memory issues and will probably have some the remainder of her life.  That is the real world, but do your best not to let them get away with it. 
  I have an even better one.  What if you are a newly married, Suma Cum Laude graduate in electrical Engineering and end up having a blood clot burst in your head as a result of medical malpractice and you have to have brain surgery and lose ninety percent of your vision at the ripe old age of twenty-two?  After you get out of the hospital, vocational Rehabilitation says they can't make your job accessible, so you  go into a depressed state.  If it weren't for the blind engineer who knows the system inside and out you lose your job.  When You do go back to work, you get recruited by the same blind engineer to come and work as a research engineer with him.
 After a few years, you feel much better, get in great physical condition and then decide to have a child and be a stay home mom for five years.  In year three, you start to work on your MBA as well.  As soon as the daughter gets into first grade, you are offered a position as a six figure a year salaried, senior manager for a Fortune 25 company.  Then your job offer gets cancelled and you can't find out why.  It requires inside help from other employees to find out that another female manager blocked it to protect her power base.  The reason that was given to her turned out to be illegal and the Department of Labor has filed a grievance against the company and she is now suing them.  She finally was able to tell me what her title was when she was working in the summers for the CIA.  She was a missile analyst and wasn't even allowed to tell anyone this until she had been out of the agency for fifteen years.  Some of her old contacts are the ones that also assisted in getting the information for her suit.  It was the CIA, talking to the FBI, who talked to former agents that work for private investigative companies that work in the real world that got the inside information. 
I can keep going and going, as I have been involved in about fifty cases the past fifteen years.  I know all about the real world as I had my first job rescinded by Monsanto in 1987 because I found out I was going blind.  There was no ADA then and I had no recourse.  The real world meant that my then fiancé left me as she thought I was not really going blind.  When I left her that day, I did not speak to her for two years.  
I say all of this to show that no matter where  you are, you may not be able to "solve" your problem or to even deal with it.  I serve as an expert witness for Discrimination lawyers and some of the cases I have heard are truly horrendous.  I have seen employers fire people with disabilities just because a person did not want them on their team because of how they looked.  
The "real" world can be vicious, but it can also be extremely rewarding.  Being able to determine what situation you are in may be what lets you succeed at work or what leads to you losing your job, savings, home and virtually everything else.  Knowing how to navigate situations like this can be the most important thing you may ever do.  You may have to "take" some things, but it might be to your benefit to also fight back and hit them in the mouth! 

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of david hertweck via nfbcs
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2016 9:45 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: david hertweck <david.hertweck at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews

What you went through is extremely tuff to deal with, but welcome to the real world.  Every thing can not be made perfect.  When you have a real job outside of the university there is no time to deal with these things.  You must find fast efective and non complaining ways to deal with these problems.

These types of problems are extreamly frustrating but look on them as part of your education, you will have the samp types of problems working and you must solve them on your own.

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin, Vincent F via nfbcs
Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2016 4:41 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: Martin, Vincent F
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews

Unfortunately the following is only about half the crap I have dealt with.
Over the six years I have been here:
Notes provided in actual handwriting!
Getting an accessible copy of text books, Braille or Math ML either never or three months after the course was completed.
Access to PowerPoint files a month after the lecture.
Every professor, including my own advisor, providing me with inaccessible (empty document) each semester for the first two years Inaccessible Learning Management System for classes Having to learn to code in "R" for my Statistics courses as SpSS was not accessible in any manner in 2010-2013.
I have never gotten one tactile graphic since I have been here!
Website for creating IRB protocols was inaccessible.
No announcements on campus buses and passing my actual stop twenty times the first year.
Too many inaccessible syllabi to count
All graduate school applications were inaccessible Employee training for graduate student research assistants were inaccessible and I got my access restricted for not completing it in time Housing applications for on-campus apartment was inaccessible and they tried to evict me for not filling it out.
On-line access to research journals still has serious accessibility issues Initial Employee Pay information was inaccessible and I was subsequently underpaid for two years to the tune of over $8,000 To top it all off, I was given an inaccessible question in the middle of my PhD qualifying exam...
I was actually given a question with a photo graph in it and a url that pointed to an undescribed video!

I was so pissed off that I got up and took my guide dog for a half hour walk.  I then returned and contacted the lead attorney for the Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Education in this sector of the country.
They were and are still totally pissed as the school had just signed an agreement for my second OCR complaint two weeks before my exam.  They violated the agreement in less than a month.

They are on campus now conducting their third investigation in three years and there is not going to be a mediated agreement this time.  I was even advised that I still have the right to sue in Civil court.

If I did not have the technical background I have, I would be one of the many students that fail due to inaccessibility or quit because of the stress.

PS-  The Disability Services Coordinator was amazed when I showed her a signing guide.  She had never seen one.  She also did not know what Orientation and Mobility meant!

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Andy B. via nfbcs
Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2016 3:17 PM
To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List' <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Andy B. <sonfire11 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews

What kind of accessibility problems do you have? The last I understood, I am the first blind person in the history of my school to graduate with a B.S.
in application development, and the first to enroll in a M.S. in IT:
software design.

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Martin, Vincent F via nfbcs
Sent: Sunday, October 2, 2016 12:03 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Martin, Vincent F <vincent.martin at gatech.edu>
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews

My current foray into my PhD program has been a venerable accessibility nightmare.  I am the first totally blind graduate and blind student in the entire history of Georgia Tech.  I have had every accessibility issue you can imagine, but I intend to always be going back to school!  This is my fifth different degree and the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know and what I might need to learn.

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of david hertweck via nfbcs
Sent: Sunday, October 2, 2016 9:58 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: david hertweck <david.hertweck at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews

"never intend to go back to school again, "
You should re-think  this statement.  Even if it is not a formal class to stay violable as an employee in the CS field you must keep learning.

-----Original Message-----
From: Amanda Lacy via nfbcs
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2016 3:48 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: Amanda Lacy
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews

I'm specifically preparing for an online coding assessment on Monday and I'd 
like to refresh my memory and practice a little. Going back to community 
college is overkill and would introduce more accessibility problems. I know 
because I've been there. I just graduated from UT Austin and never intend to 
go back to school again, unless it's an online course that I already know is 
accessible.

On 9/30/16, Andy B. via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I have never been asked questions about coding during an interview.
> Instead,
> the questions ranged from situational to problem solving in the social
> context to personality questions. The interviewer would usually ask
> questions about future goals, leadership skills, successful and
> unsuccessful projects, and how you perceive yourself in conflict. Some
> sample
> questions:
>
> 1. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
> 2. When you failed to meet a deadline, how did you handle the problem
> with group members?
> 3. Tell me about a conflict between you and a supervisor. How did you
> resolve the problem?
> 4. Tell me about a time when you used [insert technology]. What kind
> of problems did you solve?
> 5. What attracted you to [insert company name].
> 6. What are the pros and cons of [insert programming language].
>
> Try telling a short story to answer the questions.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Amanda Lacy
> via nfbcs
> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2016 3:00 PM
> To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Amanda Lacy <lacy925 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [nfbcs] Preparing for coding interviews
>
> How do y'all prepare for coding interviews?
>
> I first tried reading Cracking the Coding Interview, but I can only
> find that book in PDF, and it mangles pretty badly when converted to
> plain text.
>
> I then tried solving challenges on HackerRank, but I have several
> problems with that website. For example, some challenges give me
> incomplete instructions. One has an empty bullet list under
> constraints, so I don't know what they are.
>
> I need to refresh my memory on data structures and practice solving
> problems without worrying about accessibility.
>
> Thanks,
> Amanda
>
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