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An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

malisper.me

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Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#101

Post by mrkentutbabi »

malisper wrote: post #32
avl999 wrote: post #12

I would also add heaps/priority queues to this list. They don't come up as often as HashTables/LinkedLists but come up often enough. If you wanna be thorough (esp if you are applying at companies known for harder interviews) I would add practicing backtracking problems where you are doing a full exhaustive search of the problem space as well (often O(k^n) or O(n!) complexity). Yes these are often mostly just DFS + Re…

There's a specific reason I didn't mention priority queues in the post. In most cases, anything you can do with a heap you can do with a binary tree instead! A binary tree has O(log(n)) insert and deletion which is the same as a traditional heap. The only advantage a traditional heap has is you can construct a heap in O(n) time whereas a binary tree takes O(nlog(n)) time. Of course there are even more niche data stru…

But heap gives you O(1) max/min and Binary tree gives you O(log(n)) of max/min. Am I wrong?

Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#102

Post by nomy99 »

o10449366 wrote: post #95
arduinomancer wrote: post #5

Interviews are really a dumb game these days so if you want to really game it you can go with a statistical approach: * Practice questions by company on LeetCode, sort by frequency of last 6 months and work down the list, do maybe 75-100, the list updates once a week * Search for the company on the LeetCode forums and sort by most recent. If a question is not on LC yet it will likely get posted there, so you can get…

No, if you really want to game it you sign up for membership on Chinese forums where people post the questions word for word minutes after completing the interview. That or work exclusively with private recruiters that tell you the questions verbatim because they have a vested interest in you passing. Interview questions don't rotate that frequently, especially for smaller companies or more specialized roles, and a $…

can you give me a link to one of these forums?

Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#103

Post by GistNoesis »

sk5t wrote: post #22
bonoboTP wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elaborate?

The solution described in the article is likely to be extremely wasteful in both time and memory, by allocating a queue entry for each call, and then O(n) scanning and dropping stale entries on each successive call. Tabulating call count by division(s) of time would be less obviously problematic.

How bad is the code I want to write even though I know it is wrong :

initialize : double credit = N

At every request :

penalty = (elapsedTime / window_size) - (1/N)

gain = N* (elapsedTime / window_size)

credit = min( credit + gain - (penaltyif( credit < 0 ) throw exception

Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#104

Post by jackblemming »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #10

Before people start complaining about leetcode and how it doesnt exemplify skills: its a proxy for a combination of: intelligence and how hard you are willing to study the computer science knowledge shown is just a bonus EDIT: One last thing to throw in, its pretty clear that theres a correlation between the top software companies and how hard their leetcode interviews are. You can claim all you want it doesnt work,…

>You can claim all you want it doesnt work, but facebook and google have very hard leetcode interviews and are known for the best software

Really? Google APIs I've used have been 70% crud, 30% great. Facebook has been consistently good, eg PyTorch and React.

Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#105

Post by o10449366 »

andrew_ wrote: post #99

Or don't agree to interviews that include algo challenges, leetcode/hackerrank nonsense, array shuffling shenanigans. Choose companies that put thought into their evaluations.

Just my $0.02: I'd much rather spend a few weeks refreshing basic data structures and algorithms than doing the "non-algo" challenges I've gotten because they feel way less objective than getting questions where there's a correct answer.

Most of the time the alternative to non-algorithm questions is some form of take home assignment that's usually multiple hours long and that you get no feedback on or chance to correct.

For example, I interviewed with a company where they asked me to design a program to parse some CSV data and I was told in the next round I would pair with an engineer to go over an expansion of the code. The parsing was trivial in Python and I submitted my solution with full unit tests and what seemed sensible to me, but it was as useless of an exercise as asking me algorithm questions because on a job I'm almost always going to adjust my coding style and paradigm to the context and needs of the company.

I commented my code as such to explain that if there were different constraints on the data size or API I would make different design choices than the one I submitted, but it didn't matter - I submitted and received a rejection less than 24 hours later and never got to the next round where I would actually walk through the code with an engineer. It was a complete waste of multiple hours of my time trying to produce thoughtfully designed code - I'd much rather bang out a breadth first search in 45 minutes.

Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#107

Post by o10449366 »

nomy99 wrote: post #102
o10449366 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, if you really want to game it you sign up for membership on Chinese forums where people post the questions word for word minutes after completing the interview. That or work exclusively with private recruiters that tell you the questions verbatim because they have a vested interest in you passing. Interview questions don't rotate that frequently, especially for smaller companies or more specialized roles, and a $…

can you give me a link to one of these forums?

1point3acres is the most prolific, but there are many others.

Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#108

Post by dnpp123 »

malisper wrote: post #77
dnpp123 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That means the number of elements scanned is proportional to the number of elements inserted. And the number of elements inserted is in the worst case N, hence the proposed solution has a worst case complexity of O(N)?

> hence the proposed solution has a worst case complexity of O(N)? Worst case yes, but the question is concerned with the average case.

It's not specified in the article?

Do that for rate limiting and it'll be super easy to DoS you - just show how fundamentally you can't brute force your way out of algorithmic questions despite the article suggestion (or how interviews are fundamentally flawed, but this is another debate ;)

Re: An Algorithm for Passing Programming Interviews (2020)

#110

Post by benlivengood »

mrfusion wrote: post #56
arduinomancer wrote: post #5

Interviews are really a dumb game these days so if you want to really game it you can go with a statistical approach: * Practice questions by company on LeetCode, sort by frequency of last 6 months and work down the list, do maybe 75-100, the list updates once a week * Search for the company on the LeetCode forums and sort by most recent. If a question is not on LC yet it will likely get posted there, so you can get…

I’ve gotten interview questions I’d recently solved and my problem was it was too easy. I had trouble acting like it was the right amount of struggle. Is there a trick for that?

I've interviewed folks for FAANG roles. If you know how to solve the problem already, just tell the interviewer up front. Either they have another question or they will go deeper into a discussion about why and how you solved it the way you did, testing it, other approaches and why they are or are not good tradeoffs, etc.

It's pretty obvious to interviewers if you've solved a problem before, and we appreciate the honesty. Interviews are not adversarial; they're to see if a candidate is a good fit for the role and dishonesty is never a good fit.

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