Most of them are students from North American universities seeking an internship with us. Some were in their third year of undergraduate studies while others were completing their Ph.D.

For each position we post, we receive hundreds of such applicants. Their profiles are impressive (at least on paper) so we can afford to be highly selective and make the students jump through hoops. But we don’t.

My Interview Process

When I first started I used to ask tough algorithmic questions. What I learned pretty quickly was that you don’t need gruesome interviews to separate the most talented candidates from the rest.

This goes against my instinctual bias as I love algorithms and mathematical problems. But I also found a tenuous correlation between those who could make a Red-black tree twerk to their command and great web developers.

Of course, teams working on implementing database engines instead of web development, might benefit from said twerk masters.

At any rate, in most cases, if your candidates need to study a book specifically on how to pass interviews to survive your tech interview, your process might be broken and you might be missing out on a lot of great candidates who didn’t spend the past three months optimizing for the interview on Leetcode.

Now, I conduct a quick 30-minute interview asking questions considered basic by most. Candidates who do well during their first interview and are likely to get the job are promoted to a second interview.

This second interview, conducted with my manager and me, is not technical at all. It’s mostly about explaining what we do, selling the candidate on the idea of joining us, as well as answering questions they might have. In essence, the “hard” part is the first interview.

During that technical interview, I don’t ask tough questions. The questions I ask are arguably very basic.

What I do, however, is ask questions that give away one’s experience with web development. I also really pay attention to the answers I get. I don’t need hard questions, because the answers to these basic questions are extremely telling.

A Basic Question Example

I’ll give you two examples of basic questions I ask. The first one is, what are your two favorite programming languages? Let’s say that the candidate replies, “Python and JavaScript”. I will then ask them what they like about each and list some technical differences between the two.

Guess what? Great candidates will give away in their answers a deep understanding of types. Less strong candidates will confuse dynamic typing with weak typing and struggle to mention any difference between languages that are quite different. If they do, to rule out nerves, I’ll drop hints to see if the poor answer is due to a lack of knowledge.

From here, we turn it into a conversation from which other questions arise. Asking you about your design choices for a particular project you’re passionate about tells me a lot more about you than reciting the solution to an A* problem.

Here is another one. What are some differences between a GET and a POST request?

A weak candidate will not be able to name any differences. That’s an easy way to weed out people who put React and Redux on their resumes but don’t have any familiarity with web development in practice. Or people who followed some tutorials on YouTube without actually understanding what’s going on. Résumé inflation makes this occurrence sadly common.

The most frequently mentioned difference is the data submission method (URL vs body). Generally speaking, that’s what I expect to hear given the lack of seniority of prospective interns.

However, even with such a basic question, stellar candidates will start talking about idempotence, caching, security concerns, data size limitations, ASCII vs binary, conventions within the REST paradigm, etc.

Now, some candidates are more loquacious than others so I tend to ask follow-up questions to fish out knowledge of other differences if that knowledge is there.

For example, if the answer is, “POST submits the data with the body while GET puts it in the query parameters”, I might ask them in which scenarios that can be problematic. Or even, “Why is it a bad idea to use a GET method for a login form?”

The question is as simple as they come for web developers. But the answers can be very telling.

I often hear from candidates who didn’t make the cut that they still enjoyed the interview process and remark on how they found it less stressful.

Does It Actually Work?

In case you’re wondering, the success rate of this approach has been remarkable. So much so that I have other teams reaching out asking us about our secret sauce.

BTW, I think recruitment is only one ingredient of the secret sauce. Another substantial ingredient is our stellar senior developer team members who are paired with new interns to mentor them, as well as other initiatives we have to train them effectively.

On that note, a telling sign that this approach works is that the candidates we select grow quickly when they join us.

The aforementioned senior developers were interns hired with this process years ago and they are simply amazing. Even when I look at the LinkedIn profiles of former interns we couldn’t keep on our team once they graduated, I see impressive careers at some of the best companies (and a few who founded their own successful companies).

And finally, the interview is only one data point in the many factors I consider when evaluating a candidate. Past projects carry a lot of weight too, for example.

This overall approach works for us. I’m not claiming it will work for everyone but perhaps a different way is possible within the industry.

The post I Ask Basic Questions During Technical Interviews appeared first on Programming Zen.

My team at IBM is offering a range of internship positions starting in January, and we want you to be a part of our team. This isn’t just another internship; it’s a life-changing opportunity that comes highly recommended by every intern we’ve ever had.

Internship Requirements

Before you get too excited, let’s make sure you meet the following criteria:

• You must be a student in Canada.
• You must be legally allowed to work in Canada.
• Your educational institution must be okay with long-ish internships.
• You must be willing to relocate to Markham/Toronto for the duration of the internship.
• You must be passionate about technology.

Application Process

Here’s how to get started:

1. Apply for one or more jobs listed below.
2. (Optional but recommended) Send me your resume and a message on LinkedIn once step 1 is completed.
3. I will shortlist the most promising candidates and schedule interviews with them.
4. Those who do great during the first 30-minute technical interview will move to a second interview.
5. This second interview is not technical at all and it’s mostly about you learning about our team, what we do, why we do it, and what the job will look like. It’s also an opportunity for you to ask as many questions as you wish.
6. We make our selection. That’s it. No gruesome rounds of interviews. No questions about an arcane algorithm you learned 3 years ago and no stupid questions about golf balls in New York City.

Internship Opportunities

• Software Developer (January – August 2024)
• Software Developer (January 2024 – May 2025)
• Data Scientist (January – August 2024)
• UX Designer (January – August 2024)
• Growth Marketer (January – August 2024)

Conclusion

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to work at IBM, where your contributions will be used by millions of people worldwide. Apply now and take the first step towards a fulfilling and impactful career!

The post Internship at IBM: A Life-Changing Experience Awaits You appeared first on Programming Zen.

Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just curious about AI, this course is designed to change the way you interact with conversational AI.

Why Prompt Engineering Matters

I remember the first time I used an LLM (Large Language Model). I was amazed but I also quickly realized that my input had a profound effect on the quality and accuracy of the output.

It’s not just about asking; it’s about asking the right way. That’s the essence of Prompt Engineering, a fancy term that essentially means communicating effectively with AI models to optimize for the desired results.

Whether you like AI or not, whether you think it’s useful, scary, or both, AI is here to stay and it will revolutionize many fields, including our own. I think it is wise to get familiar with it and this prompt engineering course should give you a gentle introduction.

What You’ll Learn

My prompt engineering course is jam-packed with insights and practical skills.

You’ll learn how to craft compelling prompts that make your AI interactions more accurate, meaningful, and ultimately useful.

It is all delivered in plain English and it doesn’t take a data scientist or developer to use the tips shared within.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

• What Prompt Engineering is and why do we care about it
• The limitations of naive prompting
• Common mistakes
• Optimizing your prompts to extract the maximum value from AI
• The Persona pattern
• Getting the AI model to interview you
• The Chain of Thought approach to prompting
• The revolutionary Train of Thought technique
• Controlling the verbosity of the output
• Advanced techniques such as the Nova System
• Watson X Prompt Lab

Plus, you’ll get a certificate, such as the one below (provided you obtain a passing grade).

Ready to Dive In?

So, are you ready to improve your AI interactions? I invite you to join me on this exciting journey. Enroll in Prompt Engineering for Everyone and let’s make AI communication as useful as it can be.

The post Prompt Engineering for Everyone: My New Course appeared first on Programming Zen.

It’s been a while since I last posted on this blog, but I’m back and ready to write about all things related to programming, technology, AI, and of course, everyone’s favorite tool ChatGPT.

There have been quite a few “events” in my life since we last chatted (including separating, selling the house, and moving to a new city). But through it all, I’ve remained passionate about technology and the ways in which it can change our lives for the better.

Speaking of change, as an engineering manager for IBM’s Skills Network team am excited to announce that we’re currently offering four new internships for Canadian students (six positions in total). These internships are an incredible opportunity for those looking to break into the tech industry and make a real impact. Here’s a quick rundown of the positions available:

• 3 Software Developer positions
• 1 Data Scientist position
• 1 UI/UX Designer position
• 1 Growth Marketer position

Our past interns have had amazing experiences working with our team, learning a lot, and many of them have gone on to have career-changing roles in the industry. We’re dedicated to helping our interns grow and develop, and this internship is a great opportunity to do just that.

To be eligible for this opportunity, you must be currently enrolled in a university or college, reside in Canada, and be able to commit to a full-time 8-month internship starting in May and ending in December 2023. Please note that NO EXCEPTIONS will be made for these requirements, unfortunately.

Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity to learn, grow, and start your career with IBM. Apply now at the links provided above. And if you’re not already a subscriber, be sure to subscribe to this blog in the blue box below, so you don’t miss out on any future posts.

Best of luck to everyone who applies!

The post New IBM Internship Opportunities for Canadian Students appeared first on Programming Zen.

When I asked for quotes from our current interns on the team, here is what they had to say:

“Why are you wasting time writing a post.” — John

“I’m debugging here.” — Samantha

“For Pete’s sake Antonio, it’s 3 am in the morning.” — Tyler

Jokes aside, our current (and past) interns absolutely love their experience in our team at IBM.

In order to make this as clear as possible, I’m going to explain things in a FAQ format.

Q: What are the requirements?

You must be:

• Based in Canada;
• Legally allowed to work in Canada without a sponsorship;
• Enrolled in college or university.

Q: What roles are available?

• Software Developer (4 months) (Closed, as we received 400+ applicants for this position.)
• Software Developer (8 months)
• Data Scientist (4 months) (Closed, as we received 400+ applicants for this position.)
• Data Scientist (8 months)
• UI/UX Designer (8 months)

Apply by clicking on the links above.

Q: Can I apply for more than one position?

Yes! For example, if you are fine with both 4 and 8-month development internships, you can apply to both positions.

Q: How many positions are available in total?

We are hiring 10 interns in total.

Q: Do I have to be enrolled in a co-op program?

No. Despite what the job postings say, co-op enrollment is preferred but not required.

Q: Is this going to be a remote position?

It’s hard to predict the future when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic. These internship positions will definitely start off remote, but there is a small chance (for the 8-month positions, at least) that you’ll be required to go back to the office when it’s safe to do so. The office is located in Markham, ON, Canada. If it comes to that, at the time, out-of-province students will receive relocation assistance.

Q: Who are you looking for?

We are looking for enthusiastic students who are passionate about technology. In my experience, the most successful candidates are resourceful and will employ all tools available to succeed in their job (including mentorship and support from our senior developers and data scientists).

Q: How big is the team?

We currently have about 20-25 people on the team, divided for the most part between data scientists and developers. Half of our developers and data scientists are interns, so we put a lot of emphasis on growing interns into fully qualified developers and data scientists. Most of our full-time regular team members were interns in our team at some point in the past.

Q: I don’t have all the skills listed in the job posting, can I still apply?

Think of the “preferred” skills listed as a wishlist for the perfect candidate. The perfect candidate might not exist, however. So apply if you have an interest in the job and you have at least one or two of the required skills listed.

Q: What’s the hiring process like?

• You apply for one or more positions.
• If we think you’re a good fit, we’ll schedule a 30-minute web interview with me and one of my developers (or data scientist for the Data Science positions). This is a technical interview. You won’t be solving algorithmic puzzles or anything like that. Sample question: What are some of the differences between GET and POST requests?
• If you do well in the first interview, you’ll be scheduled for a soft skills interview with me and my manager (an IBM CTO). This interview is even less stressful than the first one. It’s mostly about getting to know you better, your interests, ambitions, etc. Above all, it’s an opportunity for you to learn much more about our team, what we do, and for you to ask questions freely.
• If you did well in both interviews, we’ll inform HR that we want to proceed with you. So the rest is just paperwork.

We don’t have a whole lot of time. May is coming fast. So if you are interested, seize the opportunity and apply now for an internship at IBM! I look forward to speaking with you.

The post Get an Internship With My Team at IBM appeared first on Programming Zen.

This is an amazing opportunity if you meet the following requirements:

• You are legally allowed to work in Canada.
• You are enrolled in university or college.
• A start date in May for 16 months (or in September for 12 months) works for you.

I’m certainly biased, but I believe these are some of the best tech internships you can get in Canada.

We treat interns as peers and invest in their development. Previous interns rave about their experience and how it enabled them to grow professionally.

The best interns often end up coming back to us as full-time employees upon graduation. So this is a great way to get your foot into the industry.

Apply for the internship positions

Please use the following links to apply for the position. If you think you qualify for more than one role, feel free to apply for more than one:

• Back-End Developer
• Front End Developer
• Cognitive Data Scientist

If you want to speed up the process, after applying, send me an email with your resume attached.

How the interviewing process works

I will review all the applicants and select the most promising ones, scheduling a first video interview via web. This interview is with me and, usually, one of my developers (or a data scientist in the team, depending on the position).

We will ask you about your past experience as well as some technical questions. There will be no brain teasers or anything like that. The interview will last between 20-50 minutes.

The questions I tend to ask are foundational in nature. I might ask you about the difference between GET and POST requests, or 400s and 500s HTTP status codes, but not what 508 is used for. You don’t need to brush up on your Algorithms and Data Structures book either.

If you don’t know the answer, we change the subject. I’m hoping to surface your strengths during the interview, not drill you on your weaknesses.

As far as technical interviews go, this will likely be one of the least challenging and stressful you’ll encounter.

After this first interview, the most promising candidates will be invited to a second web interview with myself and my manager (an IBM Director). This second interview is much more focused on your interests and ambitions.

It will also be an opportunity for you to ask questions and learn more about our team and the work we do.

What we value

We love to have a diverse pool of interns.

If you are an amazing coder with weaker communication skills, that’s alright. Less technically strong but are an amazing communicator? That’s great. If you are keen on teaching others difficult technical concepts, we have room for you, too.

We value all the skills you can bring to the team, not just your ability to code. Above all, we value attitude and passion over raw experience.

If you are looking for a great internship opportunity, give this one a chance. I look forward to working with you.

The post IBM Summer 2020 Internship Positions appeared first on Programming Zen.

We’re hiring a few backend developers, frontend developers, as well as data scientists (interns). The internship will start in January, last 4 months, and take place at our Markham, ON, Canada Software Lab location.

You must be enrolled in a Co-Op program at your university/college and be eligible to work in Canada to be considered for this position.

IBM internship positions

To apply, please use the following links:

• Backend Developer Intern
• Frontend Developer Intern
• Data Scientist Intern

You can apply for more than one position if you wish.

What to expect from our interview

Interviews are scary, amirite? Lucky for you, I perform the technical interview. I don’t ask brain teasers (i.e., how many useless interview questions are currently being asked in New York City?) or algorithmic questions.

I also do not ask you to solve anything on a virtual whiteboard, code anything on the fly, or expect you to remember specific details you can easily Google while performing your job.

Instead, we’ll have a technical conversation about your previous projects, and I will ask you more general questions that tend to reveal with greater accuracy your current understanding of software engineering (or data science).

For example, if you list REST APIs on your resume, I might ask you what’s the difference between 400s and 500s errors. I’m not going to ask you what a 413 error represents.

The most promising candidates will proceed to a second interview with me and my manager.

This second web interview has little to no technical questions and it’s just an opportunity to learn more about you and your ambitions, and for you to learn more about our team and ask questions.

At that point, we’ll decide who to hire. That’s it. No gruesome six rounds of interviews. Easy peasy.

This easy-going interviewing method has enabled us to hire great candidates with virtually no false positives.

What we value

It’s worth noting that we value cultural contribution over cultural fit. We don’t need clones of our existing team members, as excellent as they are. We need people who add something to the team and bring fresh new perspectives.

Also, don’t doubt yourself. If you are interested, apply. We value passion and attitude over raw experience. A bad hire is not someone who doesn’t know much but is willing to learn. A bad hire is someone who knows everything but can’t work in a team.

If you apply, feel free to email me your resume as well so that I can speed up the interview process.

Our interns tend to love the experience in the team and will often come back for another internship or as regular employees once they graduate.

Talk to you soon.

The post New IBM Internship Positions in My Team appeared first on Programming Zen.

If you are interested and you meet the requirements below, feel free to email me at cangiano@ca.ibm.com with the subject “Joining your team“. I will make sure to forward you the link where you can apply as soon as it becomes available.

The eligibility requirements are:

• You are legally able to work in Canada;
• You live in, or are willing to move to, Toronto, as the job will be located in Markham, ON.

As long as you meet those two hard requirements outside of our control, you get to toss your hat in the ring.

Why should you join the team?

Although our team is unabashedly part of IBM, we tend to operate more like a startup within a larger company than your typical team in a mega-corporation.

It’s a fun, chill team of people who collaborate together and get a lot done. We hail from Russia, Italy, Korea, India, Jamaica, Canada, Brazil, China, Peru… you name it.

Our team is mostly a mix of developers and data scientists, though overlap does exist depending on the project. I can proudly say that everyone is brilliant and brings a unique viewpoint and contribution to the team.

Two things I love about the team is that we treat everyone the same, regardless of whether you are an intern who started yesterday or a seasoned member of this group. It’s not a team of “yes people”. Our manager loves nothing more than good counterpoints to his arguments.

I also love that what we do matters. For such a small team, we make a huge contribution to IBM’s overall results. More importantly, we change lives.

We’ll discuss the specifics of what we do with the candidates during the interviews, but for now, suffice it to say that we are focused on helping people build the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century. Data science, AI, and blockchain all very much included.

What kind of technologies do we use?

We are not dogmatic. We have the freedom to use the best tool for the job, no matter what that is. As a result, we end up using some pretty cool tools and open source technologies (we also contribute to open source).

We use SCRUM and, depending on the project, we tend to use Ruby, Python, Elixir, and JavaScript, rather than Java or C#. For JavaScript frameworks, we tend to like Vue, but again we are not dogmatic, and also have a couple of projects in React.

We face some challenging scaling problems that require interesting solutions, so we tend to use state of the art DevOps tools and containers whenever possible (e.g., Docker, Rancher, OpenShift, etc).

The interview process

Unlike certain other mega-corporations, you are not going to go through 6 rounds of gruesome interviews to land a job.

You’ll formally apply at the link that will be provided to you. Your resume will be considered along with those of the other candidates who also applied. The most promising candidates will be invited to take part in a first technical interview with myself.

Those who fare well will proceed to a second interview with me and my manager (or possibly someone else from the team). Both interviews are essentially conversations. The first one is technical in nature, the second one is more business-oriented (to evaluate interests, ambitions, learn more about what we do, ask us questions, etc).

The good news is that you can put away your algorithms and data structures book. I haven’t asked tough algorithmic questions in almost a decade. I found that technical conversations about past projects with more open-ended questions are a better gauge for talent. Either that or I have been extremely lucky, because out of the dozens of people I have selected over the years, there were virtually no disappointments.

Beside explaining code you might have on GitHub, you can expect questions like, “Could you explain the difference between a GET and a POST request?” or “What’s the difference between an inner and outer join?”.

Instead of asking you what the 413 HTTP response code is for, I might ask you to tell me what the various classes of HTTP response codes are for (i.e., 100s, 200s, 300s, 400s, and 500s).

You get the idea. If the candidate is more experienced, the conversation can then go deeper and the questions can naturally become more challenging. But I’m not going to ask you to write down Dijkstra’s algorithm on a whiteboard.

Who we are looking for

As I said in the beginning, we have a few positions available and quite a bit of flexibility. We are looking for people who can program, solve problems, and get stuff done, rather than specific languages or a set number of years of experience. We have room for talented juniors as well as experienced seniors.

Full-stack skills are welcome, but people who specialize only on frontend, backend, mobile development, data science, or DevOps are more than welcome to apply as well.

Email me if you qualify and are interested in this position. I look forward to hearing from you.

The post Join My Team at IBM appeared first on Programming Zen.

My colleagues and I have another interesting project that I want to introduce you to as well. It’s called Big Data University and is an online educational site that provides free courses on data science, big data, and programming.

As just mentioned, the courses don’t cost you a thing. All you need to do to take them at your own pace, at your place (as some like to say) is register with the site.[1]

Though not an accredited university, certificates of completion are issued, and if you complete a series of specific courses, Open Badges backed by IBM are awarded. They do indeed look good on your site, LinkedIn, or even your resume. 🙂

Above all, you get the education contained within for free and from the comfort of your own home.

We offer a variety of data science and big data courses. The Scala for Data Science learning path includes a handful of courses created for BDU by Lightbend (the company behind Scala). I find those courses to be remarkably good. I do recommend however that you check out all our Learning Paths.[2]

Getting to the point of today’s post title, our ambitious goal is to educate a million data scientists around the world. And we do mean around the world. We are targeting students from Africa, China, India, South America, Europe, et cetera. And of course, North America as well.

At this point in time, we have hundreds of thousands of members, but our aim really is to have at least a million people engaged in learning, taking courses, and practicing data science.

We believe in the transformative power of education, which can truly improve the world.[3] And as such, I want to cordially invite you to join us and help us spread the message.

The post Big Data University: Educating One Million Data Scientists appeared first on Programming Zen.

However, technology changes quickly and so has my job over the years. I’m still a software developer and technical evangelist, but my team’s name, scope, and goals have evolved over the years to keep up with the rapidly changing technological landscape.

In recent times, my attention has been focused on two projects, The first, a tool for data scientists, will be discussed in this post, and I’ll introduce you to the second in next week’s post.

This first project is called Data Scientist Workbench. It’s an all-in-one solution for programmers, data engineers, data journalists, and data scientists who are interested in running their data analysis in the cloud. Oh, and it’s absolutely free, no catches or strings attached.

It includes Jupyter notebooks (often simply known as IPython notebooks amongst Python developers), Apache Zeppelin notebooks, a web version of RStudio IDE, OpenRefine to clean messy data before processing, and Apache Spark to handle large volumes of data.

Being a well-orchestrated collection of Open Source tools, your notebooks and data are not locked and can be exported for offline use whenever you want.

Python, R, and Scala are supported at the time of writing. Your workbench runs in a virtual machine which currently provides you with 100 GB of disk space, and 16 GB of RAM. This leads to processing that is faster than most people’s laptops. Thus you don’t have to mess your laptop up, slow it down, or spend hours installing anything. Instead, everything can be handled conveniently from a browser, from anywhere you find yourself.

Speaking of adding things, many libraries can be installed independently by you within the notebook through a command such as !pip install. If your library has OS dependencies that are not installed within your instance, you can ask our Toronto-based team for help. We are attentive and responsive to user requests and feedback, and will try to accommodate most reasonable requests in a timely manner.

On top of the usual features you might be familiar with, if you have played with, say, Jupyter notebooks, the Data Scientist Workbench adds a host of nice features such as drag and drop to upload of files, sharing of notebooks (including publishing them as Github Gists), the ability to import such links by just pasting them in the search box, and pre-created sample tutorials.

These tutorials can be imported with a single click, so that you can learn not only about DSWB (as we like to shorten it), but also familiarize yourself with the data science, big data, and machine learning technologies covered within.

So far the feedback I’ve received from people at meetups and data science hackathons I’ve been involved in has been universally positive. This is not to say that it’s perfect, of course, but it is a genuinely useful tool that is provided, again, entirely for free.

Above all, our small team launched it as a startup would. We created an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), and set it free, iteratively improving it quickly, incorporating user feedback, including both praise and complaints, as much as possible.

I think it’s a cool product that you’ll enjoy and I would like to personally invite you to try it out. Specifically:

1. Register here.
2. As you use the workbench, please give us feedback. Click on the question mark at the bottom of the page or click on one of the many options we provide for you to contact us (see sidebar, under Resources).

We have big plans for DSWB, so it’s important that we get as much user feedback as possible, and definitely part of the reason why I’m sharing this here with all of you. Stay tuned for next week’s post about my second focus project. Even better, subscribe via RSS feed or by email.

The post Data Scientist Workbench: IBM’s All-in-One Tool for Data Scientists appeared first on Programming Zen.