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Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

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Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#141

Post by whichdan »

corey_moncure wrote: post #128
8_hours_ago wrote: post #123

I recently interviewed at Apple and one interviewer caused me to decide to never work there. I was put into a conference room and had 8 people over 6 hours come in and interview me one after another. Each person asked me about my background and then jumped into a whiteboard coding problem. Most of the interviewers were understanding of the fact that writing code on a whiteboard is nothing like writing code on a compu…

So you met 8 people, and one of them was a jerk? I'd say that's a pretty acceptable jerk coefficient for a workplace. I've been in places north of 0.5.

If 12.5% of people in an office were jerks, I'd consider that a very toxic culture.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#143

Post by 01100011 »

8_hours_ago wrote: post #123

I recently interviewed at Apple and one interviewer caused me to decide to never work there. I was put into a conference room and had 8 people over 6 hours come in and interview me one after another. Each person asked me about my background and then jumped into a whiteboard coding problem. Most of the interviewers were understanding of the fact that writing code on a whiteboard is nothing like writing code on a compu…

I'm nitpicking, but yes sometimes you do have to code under pressure. Yes it can result in bad code but it can also save millions of dollars as production lines are allowed to run, ecommerce is allowed to happen, or important contractual obligations are met.

That said, you generally do not write that code on a whiteboard with no access to the internet.

It sounds like you just interviewed with a dick. That happens.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#144

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

framebit wrote: post #69

I had one of these brainteaser questions in an interview once, and I liked my mathematician friend’s answer to it the best. Q: Given infinite setup time and infinite money, how would you fill the inside of a 747 with ping pong balls as quickly as possible? A: Define the inside of the plane as the exterior. Now, by definition, all ping pong balls are inside the plane. QED.

All ping pong balls may now be "inside" the plane, given this approach, but he's done a horrendously poor job of filling the plane.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#145

Post by 8_hours_ago »

corey_moncure wrote: post #128
8_hours_ago wrote: post #123

I recently interviewed at Apple and one interviewer caused me to decide to never work there. I was put into a conference room and had 8 people over 6 hours come in and interview me one after another. Each person asked me about my background and then jumped into a whiteboard coding problem. Most of the interviewers were understanding of the fact that writing code on a whiteboard is nothing like writing code on a compu…

So you met 8 people, and one of them was a jerk? I'd say that's a pretty acceptable jerk coefficient for a workplace. I've been in places north of 0.5.

Your jerk tolerance is higher than mine. I really really don't like to work with people like that.

There were other reasons why I decided that Apple was not for me, but the jerk interviewer definitely tilted the scale from "yes, I could see myself working there" to "no, I will never work there".

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#146

Post by bordercases »

jf- wrote: post #42
riyadparvez wrote: post #26

My issue is more with tricky algorithmic questions. I faced these tricky interview questions, where you either have to know the trick beforehand or there is NO way you can come up with a solution in an interview. I never understand the point of these questions. Because these esoteric hypothetical questions will almost never come up in real-life. They don't test someone's skills, because these problems don't follow an…

Most algorithms questions only prove one thing: whether a candidate has brushed up on algorithms beforehand. That has some usefulness, being a proxy measure for conscientiousness, but offers little beyond that. Maybe that they’re able to follow the reasoning, but it could just as easily be learned by rote and parroted back. The fact is that no one comes up with a from-scratch efficient algorithm for doing anything in…

The test lost its validity over time, but how many people care about their craft enough to know how to write software without using a library, and be willing to reason about it from first principles? Or with systematic method? They would be capable of doing original work. The rest I'd give CRUD tasks to.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#147

Post by jlarocco »

8_hours_ago wrote: post #123

I recently interviewed at Apple and one interviewer caused me to decide to never work there. I was put into a conference room and had 8 people over 6 hours come in and interview me one after another. Each person asked me about my background and then jumped into a whiteboard coding problem. Most of the interviewers were understanding of the fact that writing code on a whiteboard is nothing like writing code on a compu…

I had a similar experience with a Google phone interview once.

The interviewer asked me about a technology I knew almost nothing about, and I told him right off the bat that I didn't know much about it but I would explain what little I did know.

But then he spent the next 20 minutes asking me more questions about it, how I'd use it, how it could be implemented, etc.. It was so frustrating I should have just ended the call early.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#148

Post by bordercases »

nicoburns wrote: post #138
Timmah wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a cpp and java programmer for 12 years and not once needed to use algorithmic complexity on the job. The fact that so many places focus on this baffles me. Big-O questions should be reserved for system architect positions only. Out of all the arbitrary topics, I think they should focus on pedantic syntax questions for whatever language they use. Show snippets of code and ask "what's wrong with this picture?…

I don't really believe this. You use algorithmic complexity every time you choose between a HashMap and an Array. I'm a javascript developer, and I make that kind of choice several times a day. Having said that, I've never once needed to know the kinds of questions that the ask in these interviews off the top of my head. And I highly doubt google engineers need to often either.

Since Google is such a well-spring of computational resources and have incredible scalability requirements, I'd question your claim that they don't use algorithmic thinking regularly.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#149

Post by jkingsbery »

expertentipp wrote: post #71
titanix2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Estimating it from the taxes paid to the state, I would say 0€." (Yes, that’s not the kind of expected answer)

Satisfacton from saying this during an interview at Google would be worth not getting the job:)

TRUE STORY:

I interviewed at Google earlier in my career. In one of the interviews, the interviewer asked me to recite/reconstruct off the top of my head the convex hull algorithm. I remembered the lectures in undergrad algo class where the professor talked about it. I remembered where in CLRS it was covered. I remembered the general outline (efficient algorithms are O(n log n), because you have to sort the points as one of the steps). But I was struggling to remember the details, because, you know, I hadn't worked on that sort of thing in several _years_.

So, the interviewer started pacing around the room, impatient that I couldn't remember the details (or recite in 10 minutes what it took a professor with notes 2 lectures to go through). He told me finally "We expect Google engineers to be able to solve problems. What if you were a Google engineer, and you had to solve this problem, what would you do?"

There is, of course, only one right answer to that question, which I provided: "I would look it up in a book. I know exactly where to find it." I wouldn't spend time trying to reinvent an algorithm that someone else had already thought of.

The interviewer did not like that answer. I did not get a job offer. Now that I interview candidates at a different large tech company, I make a point to not get hung up on things that are easily researchable.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#150

Post by stcredzero »

pinewurst wrote: post #29
01100011 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the interview process is hard Nah. I've interviewed at a lot of places where I sort of enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate my soft skills. I can't say I'm looking forward to my FB & Google interviews(quite the opposite). My Amazon interview experience absolutely sucked(not a single question relating to the job, stupid algorithm gotcha questions). Most companies, IME, are much easier. For instance, there is a large…

Many interviews are hard, but there's a distinct difference between good hard and bad hard. My current gig interviews were all deep storage strategy conversations and hard in the sense of needing to show a lot of knowledge articulately. I left there feeling really good if exhausted. My Google interviews were hard in the sense of embarrassing regurgitation and thinking nonsense on one's feet. Hard was being made to fe…

Hard was being made to feel inferior.

I had an interview experience, where the interviewer was looking for a particular answer. I give him 3 answers to his design issue. Then the interviewer says he was looking for the 2nd answer I gave him, as if I didn't just say it.

It's one thing to reach and fail. It's another thing to be in a context where the truth of what you know doesn't even matter.

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