Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every solution is at least O(n).
Wrong, calculating n(n-1)/2 is O(1)
[deleted]
I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
451–460 of 503 posts
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
You provide anecdata of your experience but no evidence of substance really. Which is fine as an opinion, but not when you make claims about others like > the people know who espouse all this "the system is rigged, everything sucks, full communism now" stuff never had any drive or patience to do or learn anything and just want to put in the least effort possible to smoke weed and sit around like a vegetable all day.
> You provide anecdata of your experience but no evidence of substance really. If you are a brilliant programmer in the US what short of a crippling health/personality/relationship issue would prevent you from landing a highly paid job?
Curious what you would have those of us IN that group do?
I'm far from a brilliant programmer, but I did start as a 4-year old back in the 90s and I'm competent. I also got MS in my last semester of grad school.
Why is the grandparent commenter's experience a worthy anecdote and my is not? In order to know, we'd have to somehow control for inborn programming ability and run a large study comparing career/material results after several decades, which clearly we (currently) can't do.
(And this is without getting into other factors you can't control: There were plenty of people who were happy to accept help and do projects with me until they found out I was a.) female and b.) a teenager at the time.)
I ask because the answer seems to be 'sucks for you but the system is designed for the average person'. Okay, so why are we assuming the average person has no uncontrollable roadblocks?
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#453I actually cheated on an online assessment for one of my first programming jobs. It was my dream job and really wanted to get into that company. Under the pressure, I just couldn't figure out the solution to the last challenge which was a recursive algorithm. Normally, I would be able to do this but I just got stuck and in a moment of panic, I StackOverflow'd the question on a secondary device which provided me the e…
People who get "recommendations" don't feel guilty at all for their unfair advantage. So please, more of this! Let the kids know that we don't live in a meritocracy! Otherwise, the good ones will become discouraged and we will all lose.
Remember, if you're not cheating, you're not really trying.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#454Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, this is definitely not cheating. This is interview preparation. When I prepared for my FAANG interviews I googled so many questions that I couldn’t find another blue link, they were all purple. I prepped for them all. The more you want the job, the more you prep
The only mistake the OP made was in acting like they hadn’t seen the question before, but other than that everything was fine. These code screen questions are usually a basic gut check and the real evaluation comes later at the on-site. Honestly the interviewer did a bad job though because the question clearly gives an advantage to someone who has seen it before. Once I had a candidate struggle with my screening ques…
> The only mistake the OP made was in acting like they hadn’t seen the question before
This. Everyone in the thread is claiming no wrongdoing on the part of the author. If I was in this position, I would excitedly inform the interviewer that I had seen the question before and then quickly write down the answer. But that would look be a lot less impressive than OP’s acting as he pretended to come up with the perfect answer on the fly.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because you made it in your specific case (however you seem to define this) doesn’t mean we have meritocracy.
Tech is one of the biggest success stories, if not /the/ biggest, of upwardly mobile meritocracy. Anyone with an internet connection can learn what they need on their home computer and probably make it if they have the ability and time. I hate this idea that everyone who succeeds does so only or even primarily by chance and privilege. Obviously those things will help you, but everyone I know who's tried in life has s…
> Anyone with an internet connection...
More like 1) Internet connection 2) [cognitive] ability 3) time
Add 4) physical health and safety 5) mental health 6) a job market that would actually hire you
You can imagine tossing a dice for each requirement. Is that meritocracy?
> I hate how these people try to take my accomplishments away from me
This is a good example of self-serving bias.
"self-serving bias as a phenomenon in which we credit ourselves for positive occurrences (our successes) but blame others or external factors when adverse events (our perceived failures) happen"
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#457Earlier 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
An issue is that one person's trick question is another's straightforward problem. My college algebra students thought that every problem was a trick question, and that the only strategy for passing exams was memorization.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not disagreeing with your points. > Preparing for this kind of question isn't cheating as long as you understood the answer. TFA notes that because of lack of interview prep material in 2004, even when the author knew the question before-hand, it took them days to arrive at an optimal answer. And then it dawned on them that everyone else at the job fair, who may be seeing a question for the first time, only had 15 mi…
I understand that I just don't consider it cheating despite their reaction during the interview. I'm not going by any formal definition of "cheating" here. But this person took the question as a practice question, not with the knowledge that it will be asked. They also did the work on proving and understanding it. Let's put it another way. If you take an exam after practicing with any kind of practice questions (some…
Gotcha. Btw, I'm personally in agreement with you, as that's how I think about it all, too. TFA wasn't, and I merely attempted to point out why.
GP's claim that TFA might be over-exaggerating it a bit for marketing purposes may also be correct, given that it was authored by an exec at a recruitment firm.
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The author spent days thinking about it, whereas sorting is the immediate obvious answer. Developer time is massively more valuable than computer time by a factor of 1000
And the clever approach only works on data that is perfect, and that’s extremely rare in the real world
This is a hypersophomoric question
Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
I come from a worse environment than you and have risen to a higher position. (I was making $1m/yr last year - if you want any kind of token) I still don’t think tech is a meritocracy and will continue to know that. Do not buy into this delusion. Just because you made it - meritocracy it does not make.
What's your definition of a meritocracy then? There's going to be nepotism and other unfair advantages anywhere in life, but I'm only interested in where a natural born programmer with a computer, some time after school, and not much else can end up. I think in the majority of cases this person can at least get an in somewhere, and once you have an in in tech, you'll be recognized by your team/manager if you do great…
> you'll be recognized by your team/manager if you do great work
Why are you so sure of this?