11–20 of 169 posts
For an excellent discussion of the approaches outlined here and problem solving heuristics in general check out Polya's How To Solve It , it's a classic ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It )
Also, learn to code the basics so well that you can do them by hand on a basic text editor or whiteboard. Get so good at it that you can write code that has a very good chance of running if it were actually compiled/run. I found that it's very different to code on a whiteboard than it is in an IDE or text editor. When my first interview came up, I struggled to write down things with a dry-erase that would have taken me seconds on-screen.
One strategy that I liked to see an employer use was homework. That might make some job seekers cringe, but gave me a chance to write real code like I would for a job. It was also a filter for how badly I wanted a job. There were jobs I didn't complete the homework for just because the location or employer wasn't something I was genuinely interested in.
I did homework for the position I landed and they did a code review as part of my interview. It went well, because I got to see how my future co-workers would handle giving feedback, and some comfort on my end that this employer actually cared enough to do code reviews.
>Given a whiteboard and one hour, determine whether the person across from you is someone you’d like to work with, in the trenches, for the next n years. If we ignore the requirements of one hour... Brute force: Hire a random candidate that hasn't been hired by you before. Fire them when you get fed up with them. Hire a different candidate. Repeat. Greedy Algorithm: Develop the model for an ideal candidate, assign th…
>Given a whiteboard and one hour, determine whether the person across from you is someone you’d like to work with, in the trenches, for the next n years. If we ignore the requirements of one hour... Brute force: Hire a random candidate that hasn't been hired by you before. Fire them when you get fed up with them. Hire a different candidate. Repeat. Greedy Algorithm: Develop the model for an ideal candidate, assign th…
Two more approaches: 1) There's the well-known Secretary (or Marriage, or Sultan's Dowry) Problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem ). It has three caveats, though: * Solution assumes that you have a lot of (e.g. ~20) candidates. * It is assumed that you can sum up each candidate's ability in a single number. This is the hardest part, since the human mind works relationally and assigning absolute numbe…
2) The secretary problem DOES assume you can't go back once you've evaluated a candidate. This is not the case for prospective employees.
Edit: s/passed on/evaluated/
Needless to say I didn't join them. The startup also went belly up about 6 months after I interviewed there. How do guys like this get funded?
"Error establishing a database connection". heh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two more approaches: 1) There's the well-known Secretary (or Marriage, or Sultan's Dowry) Problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem ). It has three caveats, though: * Solution assumes that you have a lot of (e.g. ~20) candidates. * It is assumed that you can sum up each candidate's ability in a single number. This is the hardest part, since the human mind works relationally and assigning absolute numbe…
1) The secretary problem does NOT assume a large number of candidates. In fact, your odds go down as the number of candidates go up. 2) The secretary problem DOES assume you can't go back once you've evaluated a candidate. This is not the case for prospective employees. Edit: s/passed on/evaluated/
I don't get your second statement, though, what do you mean by the "odds"? The 1/e solution is asymptotic.