21–30 of 91 posts
My first job, I had an hour or so to learn vi, and show what I'd learned, then write a basic program (not much more than hello world) in C, of course using vi. Second job similar actually, only this time it was their awful proprietary word processor (a Wang clone I think) and it's macros ans PL. Then for a big-name computer company, a full day of IQ tests, personality tests, 3-4 interviews, whiteboard pseudo-code, te…
The thing is that at the time there were no books around commonly asked interview questions, online leetcode lists, etc. so the assumption was that the applicant was basically going in cold, and that there wasn't an expectation that they would be able to instantly solve the problems.
It was more important for them to talk out loud so that the interviewer could observe their thought process.
We had algorithm questions, but they weren't absurd. Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now -- which should be a dead giveaway that the candidate has memorized the answer -- back then you'd maybe get one question that peaked out at about medium. That's about the practical limit for a competent (but exceptional) mortal who hasn't simply memorized a book of trivia. (And yes, we di…
The other 1/2 quickly solve it and we move on to better stuff.
My first job, I had an hour or so to learn vi, and show what I'd learned, then write a basic program (not much more than hello world) in C, of course using vi. Second job similar actually, only this time it was their awful proprietary word processor (a Wang clone I think) and it's macros ans PL. Then for a big-name computer company, a full day of IQ tests, personality tests, 3-4 interviews, whiteboard pseudo-code, te…
What would they have done if you already knew vi? Make you use ed?
We would give interviewees a little sample of code (e.g, a minimal string copy function using a loop in C) and ask how they would make it better, without defining what better meant. Some developers would try to optimise it, others would point out the bad variable names and lack of documentation, or talk about unit tests. It was a starting point for a discussion.
But the cargo cutled nonsense before leetcode were the brain teasers. "How many ping pong balls can fit into a 747?".
Also nonsense.
We had algorithm questions, but they weren't absurd. Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now -- which should be a dead giveaway that the candidate has memorized the answer -- back then you'd maybe get one question that peaked out at about medium. That's about the practical limit for a competent (but exceptional) mortal who hasn't simply memorized a book of trivia. (And yes, we di…
> Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now Where are you seeing LC hard questions? I’m in a fairly big Slack where people have been comparing notes on interviews for years. The number of people who actually get LC hard problems is extremely small. A lot of people will claim they got LC hards immediately after an interview when they couldn’t solve them, but when you ask them to des…
We had algorithm questions, but they weren't absurd. Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now -- which should be a dead giveaway that the candidate has memorized the answer -- back then you'd maybe get one question that peaked out at about medium. That's about the practical limit for a competent (but exceptional) mortal who hasn't simply memorized a book of trivia. (And yes, we di…
> Whereas you'll routinely run into leetcode "hard" questions in interviews now Where are you seeing LC hard questions? I’m in a fairly big Slack where people have been comparing notes on interviews for years. The number of people who actually get LC hard problems is extremely small. A lot of people will claim they got LC hards immediately after an interview when they couldn’t solve them, but when you ask them to des…