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I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

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Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#281

Post by ralfd »

cntainer wrote: post #273
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, we questioned a candidate the usual way with pertinent technical challenges and so on. Then when driving in a van to lunch (our habit was to do a social segment as well as technical) I asked some puzzle questions - add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be? and suchlike. He was charmed, we brainstormed some answers and had a fun lunch. Years later,…

add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be is this a technical puzzle/question? to me it reads like a middle school geometry question. it would be fun to discuss it with friends/colleagues but I wouldn't expect it during a software engineering interview

https://mathimages.swarthmore.edu/index.php/Rope_around_the_...

> Although finding the answer requires only basic geometry, even professional mathematicians find the answer strangely counter-intuitive.

I guess the more a visual person you are the more counter-intuitive it is. That only 6 feet of rope is needed to widen the radius of Earth at every place at continents and oceans ect at a whole 1 feet seems crazy to me.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#282

Post by msrenee »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #210
dekhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would have lost me (principal engineer) with those questions.

Really? You don't like to socialize with peers, with puzzles or tricky problems? Enough to make you refuse to join a company? Discussion has gone off the rails here. Maybe I didn't make it clear - the puzzles were during casual conversation at lunch. Rebutting something I didn't say, is not fair.

Well, I would have enjoyed that discussion. If the interviewer is capable of taking a break and having an engaging conversation about literally anything during an interview, that's a massive bonus in my mind. I don't need to hear about your plan to shake things up for the 10th time. If you can't see me as a person and not just a potential cog to make your department look better so that you get your bonuses, I don't want to work for you.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#283

Post by Karsteski »

zwkrt wrote: post #94
Longlius wrote: post #89

Every time the topic of cheating comes up on HN, I become increasingly disheartened by the amount of people chiming in who think it's not only alright to cheat but also laudable to do so. Ethics are foundational to engineering. Jettisoning them is a sign of a discipline in decline.

I desperately wish there were some kind of equivalent to the Bar Association for software. A higher power that can punish blatant ethical violations in the face of the relentless greed of an engineer's boss, company, or industry. I think of the Volkswagen emissions snafu and how that might have been handled differently if the engineers had something with teeth to use to push back against unethical and illegal practic…

You want an old boy's club that gatekeeps a profession? I'm extremely glad we don't have that in software, actually.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#284

Post by lapcat »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #113
joeman1000 wrote: post #104

Ok, so how are interviews fair at all then? How do they really tell anything about the person, other than the fact they are good at interviews? How is it fair that all the other people queued up to interview didn’t get a shot because they didn’t do as well in a 5 minute high pressure period? This 5 minutes probably determined the courses of their lives. What the fuck? Does anyone feel as flabbergasted about interview…

I also need "time and space to think" (and so would most people), but given the choice between someone who needs time and space to think, and someone who doesn't (either works well under extreme pressure or is just that self-confident), who would you choose? Sure interviews are unfair (there are many problems like the one described in TFA, as well as people who just practice the skill), but are there better options?

I would choose the thoughtful person instead of the overconfident person 100% of the time.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#286

Post by whiplash451 »

paulsutter wrote: post #61
whiplash451 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe those who care about computational complexity for instance?

Even if you had terabytes of data sorting is still the easiest answer. Especially if you had terabytes of data in fact. Brittle solutions suck Start with what works and then optimize Sophomoric is exactly the word here, and it’s no surprise that the story is about Microsoft

Am I missing something or sorting is n.log(n) when the sum trick is linear time?

In the lack of additional constraint, sorting seems massively overkill.

Not sure why you are saying that sorting is simpler than the sum trick.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#287

Post by msrenee »

LanceH wrote: post #224
lrvick wrote: post #134

One time a company I interviewed with asked me obscure algorithm questions about playing card shuffling. As a former professional magician I knew the optimal answers instantly and could jot them down straight away. They had allocated an hour for answers I wrote in a few minutes. I could have told them I had a massively unfair advantage, but I did not bother. They were visibly impressed and told me I was moving on to…

I answered one of those mind benders nearly immediately in an interview. I figured out the trick as they were telling it basically. They asked me if I had heard it before. I hadn't. A final interview with the CEO and he asked if I had heard it before and I said I hadn't. I later realized based on how they were asking if I had heard it before, they thought I was lying. The question: You get on a ski lift going up. It'…

I assume the answer is all of them?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#288

Post by lormayna »

Something similar happened to my actual job interview: in the preparation I had read a long list of questions and most of them was part of the technical interview. I was able to reply in seconds, just because I already know that. I was very honest and I told them after the 3rd question.

It seems that they appreciate that.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#289

Post by anchochilis »

twodave wrote: post #192
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, this is hard. I bombed an Amazon interview because the interviewer asked me Alien Dictionary, a well known LeetCode problem that I already worked out while practicing. I told her outright that this was a problem everyone practiced, but she still dinged me for already knowing the answer and not going through the “figure this out flow” (admittedly, I could have handled that better, but it is actually difficult to w…

Is the answer to convert the letters to integers, then compare that list of integer strings before/after alphabetizing it? I haven’t studied leetcode (never needed to), but this is the first thing that occurred to me…

The solution I know for this one involves topo sort and a trie, once you have brushed up on those concepts it's not so bad.
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