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Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

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Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#61

Post by cjohnson318 »

banachtarski wrote: post #55
cjohnson318 wrote: post #30

I like using the Blum Mental Hash as an interview question. As far as I can tell, it's not mentioned in any interview cram lists, and it's complex enough to see how candidates split up a problem. https://scilogs.spektrum.de/hlf/mental-cryptography-and-good...

It feels really easy? Or am I misunderstanding the algorithm/question?

It's not rocket science, no. I wanted something that could be done rather quickly, that would generate a fair amount of code, that wouldn't require any recursive tricks or discrete math. From there, I can usually look at their code and make a determination.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#62

Post by collyw »

songzme wrote: post #19
Koshkin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How’s this different from a school exam preparation tool? It won’t teach you the subject; and if it did then what’s the harm?

"The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades." http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html You shouldn't be studying to get good scores. You should be studying to learn and understand.

Grades is what will get you into university.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#63

Post by scarface74 »

songzme wrote: post #12

It pains me to see another Coding Interview preparation tool. It's such a sad situation in the current industry. Students learn to game the system to get a high paying job. Students who care about what they are working on will painstakingly try to perfect their projects. They don't have time to game the system and therefore have a hard time getting a coveted job. Companies want to hire "the best" so they usually hire…

I want to work with people who care about the product they are working on. People who care about building great products are not solving coding interview problems.

Unless you are a founder or have significant equity, why should you “care about the product you are working on” more than enough to get a paycheck? It’s naive to think that a profit seeking employer cares about you. If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, they would send flowers to your funeral and have an open req for your position before you are buried.

While you may want to work with people who care about building great products, most people go to work every day for a paycheck. Why wouldn’t I optimize to play the game in a manner that increases the amount of my paycheck?

That being said, I personally don’t live on the west coast, have no desire to live on the west coast, and haven’t had an algorithm style interview in over 20 years when I was applying for a job doing low level cross platform C. I did get the job and they did need someone with algorithmic knowledge.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#64

Post by scarface74 »

paxys wrote: post #42
songzme wrote: post #12

It pains me to see another Coding Interview preparation tool. It's such a sad situation in the current industry. Students learn to game the system to get a high paying job. Students who care about what they are working on will painstakingly try to perfect their projects. They don't have time to game the system and therefore have a hard time getting a coveted job. Companies want to hire "the best" so they usually hire…

What's the alternative? Useless behavioral interviews? Sit-down exams and outdated certifications? Agents, middlemen and other leechers? Getting hired only through connections or favors? That's how every other industry in the world works, and I am thankful that the software industry has a somewhat-sane interview process based on actual skill.

Crazy idea: sit someone down to an IDE and let them code.

I’ve done this as an interviewer. I’ve created a fairly simple skeletal project with failing unit tests. The coding part of the interview was to make the tests pass by writing the code. It was a pair coding exercise.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#65

Post by scarface74 »

paxys wrote: post #46
mgkimsal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's the companies themselves as much as the recruiters. I've had recruiters pump me for info on the specifics of the question asked, and I obliged. I was younger and naive, and... didn't understand what they were doing. Not until later, when the reverse happened to me - I was given "potential" questions to prep for (which... I already knew answers to because it was my regular day job for) that I unders…

You are implying that FAANG recruiters are doing this without the knowledge or consent of the hiring team, which is ridiculous.

If recruiters are incentivized by a metric of how many candidates get through the process, why wouldn’t they do that without the consent of the hiring team?

External recruiters do that all of the time. I worked with the same recruiter when I was trying to get a job and when I was hiring through him. I knew he prepped candidates so I had to have a different set of interview questions and different coding interview tests (with an IDE on a computer).

I know of one company where the hiring manager had all of the candidates do a merge sort on the board. He used the same interview question for years. All of the recruiters knew what to prep their candidates for.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#66

Post by fuqmachine »

herval wrote: post #34
chris11 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where have you seen that? The most I've been given is a general interview prep guide about how to prepare for an on-site.

2 “FAANG” companies and another one of the top big tech ones. One had a recruiter calling and literally listing all the questions they “could ask”, coding, architecture and all. They asked all of them.

Couldn't that have been a coincidence? or good research by the specific recruiter? or a recruiter that is cheating at his/her job?

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#67

Post by Antoninus »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #43
Antoninus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've been going through for the past 2 months. The last few years I've been contracting with IGOs and VCs. Going through interview rounds with medium-large companies and some FAANG has had me purely doing algorithm problems instead of actually building or writing. But hey at least I can find the common elements between two graphs and return their values as a lowercase string. Something happened betw…

What's IGO?

Intergovernmental Organization.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#68

Post by RangerScience »

Neat. I actually had a coding interview I got to skip because I'd already done the exact same question for another company, and had done my original work in Git+Github :)

Going through these and writing up solutions seems like a decent hobby project, applicable to a lot of situations.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#69

Post by vanusa »

banachtarski wrote: post #10
vanusa wrote: post #5

The fact that one can just ahead and cram for these problems should pretty much... severely downgrade, at least, their usefulness as hiring filters.

Everyone always says this, but the fact remains that it is a filter in the sense that not everyone can learn it, or retain it. People always complain that the techniques requested in an interview are not required for the job. I see it in a different sense. The jobs they ultimately qualify for do not require such skills.

There's now doubt that these tests serve as some kind of "a" filter.

The question is, whether they serve as a particularly good filter.

Re: Coding Interview Problems with Detailed Solutions, Test Cases, Program Analysis

#70

Post by acconrad »

Practicing for coding interviews are to FAANG companies what the SATs were for the Ivy League.

It's not about how smart you are or how well you will do. It's about how good you are at studying interview problems/the SAT. And even then it's a crap shoot if your admission reviewer/interviewer was in a good mood that day.

As much as it's suboptimal/unfair/whatever your objection is, your options are to not play the game (and miss out on the wealth of opportunity or cash) or to dive on in and accept reality.

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