In this case, we were able to extract a solution to a complicated problem and keep our OO domain-specific logic clean. Simple. This article is part of Engineering at Betterment. I didnt know 401(k)s were employer-sponsored. Download results for local analysis: From S3, we could download the summarized results of each of our simulations for analysis on a "regular" computer. Putting it alltogether Our configuration generator is doing a lot more than just taping together jobs in a workflowwe evaluate dependency graphs and only run certain jobs that have upstream changes or are triggered themselves. These in turn led to lengthy investigations that consumed a lot of valuable development time. https://www.youtube.com/embed/F32QhaHFn1k. Commercial Customer Service Representative. The sample code below illustrates how we generated the constraints for our model. But this article is not about the relative merits of these popular modern solutions. These arent necessarily true-to-form SLOs but engineers can use this framework and tooling provided to collect data around how their systems are operating and have conversations on prioritization based on what they discover, beginning to build a culture of observability and accountability Conclusion Betterment is at a point in its growth where prioritization has become more difficult and more important. At a high level, these cops track user input (via params.permit et al.) We also have a few heftier integration tests to confirm our expectations. Normally wed consider opting out of security analysis to be an unsafe thing to do, but we actually like the way RuboCop handles this because it can help reduce some code review effort; the first solution eliminates the vulnerable-looking pattern (even if it wasnt a vulnerability to begin with) while the second one signals to reviewers that they should confirm this code is actually safe (making it easy to pinpoint areas of focus). To solve this problem, we developed WebValvea tool that allows us to define and register fake implementations of HTTP services and toggle between real and fake services in non-production environments. However, in Airflow we reversed our thinking to embrace DMS, using Airflows sensor operators to wait for rows to be pushed from DMS before carrying on with dependent tasks. There is still one single point of failure left in our Airflow architecture though: the scheduler. Opens the Fishbowl by Glassdoor site in a new window. All of the things that we were testing in controller specs can instead be tested by some combination of system specs, model specs, and request specs. The team uses R to rapidly prototype financial simulations and visualize the results, taking advantage of Rs built-in statistical functions and broad set of pre-built packages. Therefore, we can calculate our bounds with, defcalc_bounds(): bounds=[] forsinstores: foriiningredients: bounds.append((0,store_inventory[s][i])) returnbounds Guess Providing a good initial guess can go a long way in getting you to a desirable solution. Controller specs are notably absent from our guide. Shortening the feedback loop with notifications is only one small, but rather important, part of our CD platform. I made sure to keep in touch because I would be interning in the Bay Area, where shes located, and weve been chatting ever since. Below is a table summarizing Joes holdings: Account Type: VTI (U.S. Total Market) VWOB (Emerging Markets Bonds) Account Total Taxable $5,500 $5,500 $11,000 Roth $2,750 $2,750 $5,500 Asset Class Total $8,250 $8,250 $16,500 To begin to construct our model for an optimal asset location strategy, we need to consider the relative value of each fund in both accounts. This was essentially a map for us engineers to be able to reference and go update those old usages in our codebase whenever we wanted. When a PR is merged, our team takes care of redistributing the new version of the library so engineers can update their configuration. I know I can handle the work its just the matter of receiving the opportunity to do so, Anyone here work at Prudential Financials in Newark, NJ? Betterment, I like your company and I will continue using your products, but your onsite interview isn't a test of tech skills, it's a test of Ruby knowledge. These tests are pretty easy to write (just as easy as regular widget tests) but hard-ish to debug and very slow to run. We employed the m1.small instances, relying on the quality of quantity. Make a feature or two. Further, because all three schemas live in the same MySQL server, client_analytics becomes a central hub from which our colleagues can join tables that have not yet been modeled in the warehouse with key dimensions that have been. Betterment is a great company to work for culture wise (as I mentioned) but unfortunately the total comp is not very competitive. Its all about the customer This is where the philosophy of defining and keeping track of SLOs comes into play. In addition, weve consistently received high marks from candidates and interviewers alike, who prefer our revamped approach. However, I'm here to tell you (or maybe just remind you) that tests and test coverage aren't the goal in and of themselves. We're always searching for extraordinary people to join our team. Engineering the Trading Platform: Inside Betterments Portfolio Optimization To complete the portfolio optimization, Betterment engineers needed enhance the code in our existing trading platform. School has taught me nothing. Sops encrypts and decrypts your secret values using your cloud providers Key Management Service (AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault) and PGP as a backup in the event those services are not available. Process consisted of a phone screening with a recruiter, online tech assessment, and 2 video call interviews. ;) IDE of choice? Make sure that the bulk of the logic youre testing in a model spec is in the method youre exercising (unless the underlying methods are private). The bottlenecks in business analytics had been the speed of human arithmetic or the hours available on corporate mainframes operated by only a few specialists. First, lets take a look at the underlying framework we use for enqueuing and executing said jobs. By partnering with Peoplism and building a long-term, action-oriented plan, were working to create real change in a sustainable fashion. One next step were excited about is an examination of our mentorship program to make sure that everyone at Betterment has access to mentors. By knowing that the Coach app is aruby_appwe know how many jobs will need to be run and when. More generally, how do we take an inflow of money and allocate it to weighted buckets in a fair, penny-precise way? ): The New World is cleaner, easier to grok, and more immediately helpful: The link title to GitHub is the commit diff itself, and it takes you to the compare URL for that changeset. For example,secreteditorsensitive_coachwhere coach is the name of the repository. The best way to avoid legacy code is to make a best effort at not writing it in the first place. The lead designer for this project, Crys, did a lovely job of incorporating compassionate design into how we show the user which legal name we have on file for them, without confronting that user with their deadname every time they go to change their settings. Ruby on Rails developers have the choice of resque, sidekiq, que, good_job, delayed_job, and now delayed, Betterments own flavor of job queue! A couple of hours of focused conversation defined a six-month tactical focus for the team. In my experience, the best approach was to jump in and rewrite a small piece of code that was not tested, and then add tests for the rewritten portion appropriately. Jesse Harrelson: Seriously though, it was the combination of all that plus so many other things. After graduation from Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics High School, I completed a semester at Lehman College before unfortunate family circumstances required me to go back to the Dominican Republic. When jobs run, they emit ActiveSupport::Notification events that we subscribe to and then forward along to a StatsD emitter, typically as distribution or increment metrics. We decided to allow candidates the choice of using a whiteboard if they wished, but it would no longer be the default method for presenting ones skills. Then we figure out which bucket deserves the leftover pennies. The switch to Julia has allowed us not only to optimize and speed up our code by multiple orders of magnitude, but also has given us the environment and ecosystem to explore ideas that would simply not be possible in our previous implementations. We provide a class that exposes the developer-friendly configuration API for fake responses, and we implement the HttpClientAdapter interface provided by dio. Technical problems really felt more like they were grounded more in learning your thought process and general development style. We recently re-optimized our portfolio to include more complex asset allocations and risk models (and it will soon be available). Since these contexts change, we found ourselves either altering the partials or copying and pasting their code into new views where additional context-specific code could be added. Manual updates to this file allow the configuration for infrequently-modified projects to drift. I have been interviewing Software Engineers for over 25 years and in my current role as CEO of Solution Street, I conduct, on average, two interviews a week. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 1 file inspected, 1 offense detected The model initialization was flagged because it was seen using create_params, which contains user input. The process took 7 weeks. We think engineers should focus on what they care about the most, shipping great features quickly and reliably. For example, customers could set up a Roth IRA with a portfolio of 90% stocks and 10% bonds to save for retirement. Such linked websites are not monitored, investigated, or checked for accuracy or completeness by Betterment. To do good data work today, you need to use a system that is reproducible, versionable, scalable, and open. All it took was 1 week. Lets plug in some balances to see what the expected value of V is with Joes current holdings: V=0.07*5500+0.04*5500+0.06*2750+0.05*2750=907.5 Certainly, we can do better. We look forward to continuing to build upon Airflow and contributing back to the community. The second one has the syntax youd expect to execute the test itself. The name Betterment jumped out at me on a job listings page because it sounded like it would make my life better. Betterment is a financial technology, or fintech, company; while it provides financial services, its an engineering company at its core. Lots of STAR method and cultural fit questions. For us, speed is important as we need to be able to provide real-time advice to our customers by incorporating their most up-to-date financial scenario in our projections and recommendations. Where engineers can experience feedback about their code with delight and simplicity. Awesome, now that we have an app and a harness we can use to test it, how are the tests actually written? Felt as if it was waste of my valuable time, not just with the interviews but for case study as well. This employer has claimed their Employer Profile and is engaged in the Glassdoor community. Some of the topics that came up were - implementing a http endpoint, writing code to make a rspec pass, active record operations. iOS had a larger unit testing suite than android did, but neither had integration tests. A good analysis excludes them based on objective rules from the beginning and then tests for sensitivity to these exclusions later. It's a joke feed, but they have some great tech and security points and articles shared there. 30 min recruiter screen - talk about your experience and why you are a good fit Technical interview (computer science fundamentals), Technical interview (modelling and app design), Ask the candidate to describe a recent technical challenge in detail, Introduce the pair programming problem and explore the problem, Pair programming (optional, time permitting). Think of something like Heroku, but for engineers here at Betterment. Shh Its a Secret: Managing Secrets at Betterment Opinionated secrets management that helps us sleep at night. For this we used a modified version of Very Good Venture's robot testing pattern that would allow us to reuse screen interactions across multiple tests while also making our tests very readable from even a non-engineering perspective. When were communicating with external services, we have less control, but HTTP is the protocol of the web and REST has been around since 2000the dawn of modern web applications so the majority of integrations we build will use them. Unfortunately, if it were so simple we wouldnt be here, several paragraphs into a blog post on the topic. It gets you both vulnerable, which helps you build a relationship that can lead to a stronger team overall. To avoid time-consuming manual processes, and the human error typical of that approach, analytics has become a programming discipline. Tax efficiency is a key consideration of Betterments portfolio management philosophy. According to LinkedIn Dan Kubb started working on 1999, then the employee has changed 7 companies and 5 jobs. These are REALLY basic things that you can do if you have some rails experience, but if its your first time looking at it, you're SOL, and your interviewers will at best try to nudge you to the right documentation page to read mid interview. Interview questions for Junior Software Engineer will help you succeed in your interview. 4 Betterment Staff Software Engineer interview questions and 1 interview reviews. Throughout this journey, we learned many things along the way. What are "end-to-end-ish" tests? As such, our technical interviews switched from whiteboards to computers. Heres what we considered: We made sure we knew its purpose. They were very rude. The view (the structure): a familiar html.erb file that looks very similar to what would exist without a component but a little more flexible since it doesnt have its content hard coded in. We were able to overcome this and begin filling out the middle level of our testing pyramid by adding structure on top of the widget testing API that allows us to test full flows from start to finish. Sharing code in a common environment also enables the reuse of modular analysis components. The test runner will print the seed it chose at the beginning of test execution, and you can reliably use that seed to reproduce the failure and be confident in your fix once the test begins passing. Was able to accommodate and expedite the process relative to my timeline. Excel 2013 is capped at just more than 1 million rows. We included realistic dividends at an asset class level. See your immediate impact on our company. For these things, we are using HTMLdata elements to specify behaviors. If Betterment has a relationship or affiliation with the author or content, it will note this in additional disclosure. This way, if we cant achieve perfect allocation, we have a buffer that we can fillalbeit at a penalty. However, a user transaction object contains a host of data that isnt relevant to the trades that will eventually be created, and is associated with other objects that are also not relevant. These questions open up an entirely different can of worms, one that we would prefer remained firmly sealed. Engineers and designers can be confident theyre using something thats been tested and validated across browsers. In that case, we would just need to define the secrets that have different values in a separate secrets file likedevintest.ymlbelow wheredevintestis the name of the ecosystem. Interviews are now more prescriptive regarding non-technical questions. LABiometryType Since weve beensecurely using Touch ID for years, adapting our existing implementation to include Face ID was a relatively minor change. This allows the view to be reusable. We run millions of these so-called background jobs daily using a SQL-backed queuenot Redis, or RabbitMQ, or Kafka, or, um, you get the pointand weve very intentionally made this choice, for reasons that will soon be explained! Using UJS patterns, our view can live completely on the server. This means any unhandled exception occurring in your Julia code will result in a segmentation fault. Process consisted of a phone screening with a recruiter, online tech assessment, and 2 video call interviews. Write some jobs, pick a queue backend with a few desirable features (priorities, queues, etc), run some job worker processes, and were off to the races! CI plays an important role in all of our teams workflows. On top of being less impactful, these sad paths usually give feedback on the same screen as the input, meaning those sad path cases are usually better tested at the screen test level anyway. When I returned to the United States, I worked in the retail sector for a few years. Lets assume we already know that VTI has a higher expected value in Joes taxable account, and that VWOB has a higher expected value in his Roth IRA. Unfortunately integration_test was very similar to flutter_driver, in that it took the same UI/E2E approach, which meant that it had the same benefits and drawbacks that flutter_driver had. For example, we follow a set of pragmatic design principles drawn from SOLID (also created by Michael Feathers) to help ensure code quality. Someone asked for my help on something, and then I discussed something with him, and suddenly I just felt so much more secure in my job. I had a very pleasant experience interviewing with the team at Betterment. Once we migrate to Rails 5, we should even be able to easily take advantage of Turbolinks 3, which is a conventionalized way to do regional AJAX updates. Defining the Interface In order to generate the.circleci/config.ymlthat details which jobs to run and what code to execute we first needed to determine what our acceptance criteria was. There, we have built in automated testing that resolves the version of the package that is being tested, looks up any reverse dependencies of that package, resolves the compatibility bounds of those packages to see if the newly registered version could lead to a breaking change, and if so, runs the full test suites of the reverse dependencies. We can also set a warning threshold if we want to be notified earlier when were using up our error budget. How did you overcome that feeling? Answer Example: "As a junior software engineer, I believe the most . Heres the optimal solution: Managing Engineering Complexity Reaching the optimal balances would require our system to buy and sell securities in Joes investment accounts. When theres no more work to be had, the worker shuts itself down. This employer has claimed their Employer Profile and is engaged in the Glassdoor community. Glassdoor users rated their interview experience at. After flipping the feature flag and establishing rebrand as the permanent variant context, all that remained was to destroy the legacy files that were no longer being rendered and remove the variant name from the file extension of the new primary view template. At no point did I feel the pressure thats normally associated with landing a job. Following their apprenticeship, they joined us as full-time Junior Engineers. Great office dogs. Everyone was really nice and thoughtful and genuinely wanted to know about me. While we love the concern that our engineers show toward solving these problems, these deviations became problematic for applications of the same runtime that should abide by the same set of rules; for example, all Ruby apps should runRSpecandRubocop, not just some of them. 2 Alex Hidalgo, Implementing Service Level Objectives. I stayed there for several years until last May, when I uprooted my life to New York for Betterment, and I havent looked back since. Controllers should pass ActiveRecord models, rather than ids, into the model layer. In planning out integration testing, we had a few key requirements for our integration testing suite: Easily runnable in CI upon each commit An API that would be familiar to developers who are used to writing flutter screen tests The ability to test the integration between features within the system without needing to set up the entire app. The simulations were detailed enough to replicate how theyd run in our live systems, and included, for example, annual tax payments due to capital gains over losses, cashflows from dividends and the client saving or withdrawing. Engineers' productivity and happiness decrease as even the smallest tasks can be frustrating and time-consuming. Currently were focusing on building more intricate and and interactive components using React. Give a solid implementation of your solution rather than focusing on the testing/description. CI/CD: Shortening the Feedback Loop As we improve and scale our CD platform, shortening the feedback loop with notifications was a small, effective, and important piece. Had one interview for a temp customer representative position. And then were back to square one. And therein lies the rub, because whether or not our job queue is colocated with our application data will greatly inform the way that we write any job-adjacent code. Its delightful and easy to parse and has just the right amount of information. While S3 is great for production, its a little difficult to work with in development and testing where we prefer to use the local filesystem. In the process of adopting sops and building sopsorific, we discovered the welcoming community and thoughtful maintainers of sops. But I really liked how "organic" these problems were since I got a sense of the actual challenges I would be facing as well as the tools and practices used by the team. They look just like widget tests (because they are just widget tests) but they boot up our whole app, run all the real initialization code, and rely on all our real injected dependencies with a few key exceptions (more on that next). A little bit of disclaimer here before we start digging in a little more: I can barely scratch the surface of how solvers work. Late one night, we started bouncing ideas off each other on how to pull it off. While we didnt run a scientifically valid split-test for the new process versus the old (it wouldve taken years to reach statistical significance), our hiring metrics have improved across the board. (Were also assuming he only wants to make at most one visit to each store.) It is a historical archive and is not intended to be updated. We decided it was necessary to be told onlyoncewhen everything ran successfully. HR screen followed by a technical phone screen and final round. -> % coach create project --type ruby_app 'coach.yml' configuration file added -- update it based on your project's needs When you run that, the CLI creates the smallcoach.ymlconfiguration definition file discussed earlier. Recently, however, weve invested significant resources in modernizing this research pipeline by converting our codebase from R to Julia and were now able to ship updates to our quantitative models quicker, and with less risk of errors being introduced in translation. One path through this flow contains a screen for changing your name and byline, then it bounces out to picking and cropping a profile image, then allows you to choose a preset border to put on your profile picture. This dedicated MySQL instance consisted of three database schemas we now refer to as our Triumvirate Data Warehouse. Deadnaming is when, intentionally or not, you refer to a trans person by the name they used before transitioning. People nationwide have chimed in on the conversation. It is notoriously hard to estimate the complexity of a task when it needs to be built into or on top of a legacy system. Secrets management does NOT mean attempting to write our own crypto libraries or cipher algorithms. We want them to be able to work without an internet connection, and if we do want to integrate with a real service in local development, we should be able to do thatmeaning we should be able to test and integrate locally at will, without having to rely on cumbersome, extra-connected services (think Docker, Kubernetes; anything that pairs cloud features with the local environment.) So, at the very least, we need the guarantee of at-least-once execution. Like with the other cop, this would fail the build and prevent the code from making it to production. Then, we need a route in our frontend for navigating to this page. Form small groups: People are more open to talking closely with smaller groups than a large discussion roundtable. Build extra time into project estimates Legacy code can also be tricky when it comes to project estimates. Back in the Day Heres how our interview process once looked: Resum review Initial phone screen Technical phone screen Onsite: Day 1 Technical interview (computer science fundamentals) Technical interview (modelling and app design) Hiring manager interview Onsite: Day 2 Product and design interview Company founder interview Company executive interview While this process helped in growing our engineering team, it began showing some cracks along the way. For example, an engineer on a backend or data-engineering team provides services that a user-facing component consumes indirectly.
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betterment software engineer interview