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I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

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Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#491

Post by sk0g »

blagie wrote: post #86
sk0g wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explanation of the name somehow is a lot better than what I assumed it was referring to. The phrasing on the second sentence is... unfortunate.

I think you missed the point of the second sentence. It's like saying the phrasing on the Chinese Exclusion Act is unfortunate. It's not the phrasing that's unfortunate, but the history of excluding Chinese. These questions were designed to allow screeners to discriminate, and were named after the group designed to be kept out. edit: If you edit a comment in response to a response, it's polite to say [edited]. Otherw…

I didn't edit my comment, at least not from what I remember. May have been a typo fix in the first few seconds though, which I do a bit too often.

Not sure if my comment was clear, but I was referring to "hard problems with trick solutions were called Jewish Problems", which sounds like it's referring to the Final Solution.

Reminds me of a funny anecdote, I was staying with a friend of mine in Berlin and asked her what the second most common religion was in Germany. She casually said "used to be Jewish, but not sure now..." She was of course referring to the influx of refugees from Africa, but for a very brief moment it looked like her life flashed in front of her eyes.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#492

Post by sk0g »

Znafon wrote: post #49
sk0g wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explanation of the name somehow is a lot better than what I assumed it was referring to. The phrasing on the second sentence is... unfortunate.

I’m referring to the easy looking, tricky to solve problems. I’ve heard them referred to by that term because they have been used at Moscow University to discriminate against Jewish students but I don’t know if they have other names. There is some discussions and examples of such problems at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf and http://3038.org/press/shen.pdf .

Of course, just the phrasing made me think the "trick solution" was eugenics, not a university admission trick. Unfortunately, historically "Jewish question" or "Jewish problem" has referred to these concerns [0]. Of course, following your first link it seems like the native phrase for it is in no way better, but that seems predictable as it's stemming from a racist premise in the first place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_question

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#494

Post by technofiend »

hirvi74 wrote: post #489
giantg2 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you are fortunate (?) to be around in the entrepreneurial world long enough, you will realize that intelligence, hard work, good time management etc are not adequate." Not just as an entrepreneur. I have found that these traits don't guarantee a reward for ICs, or anyone really. I used to work hard. Now I just work hard enough. Pays the same either way.

What does IC stand for?

Incentive Compensation. It's a fancy way of saying bonus.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#495

Post by mewse »

lapcat wrote: post #176
mewse wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once worked at a tech-focused games company (sadly no longer existing) which had the best interview process I’ve ever seen. They had this massive programmer test. It was something like 40 pages long, hardcopy, double-sided. With answers needing to be written on the test generally in essay format; no computer allowed (and so no real coding involved; it was all about concepts and not about syntax). It covered everyth…

> caveat: I wasn’t hired using that test; I had been hired as a junior long before, based on my portfolio and a short interview That's always the catch. The founders and initial employees of a company never had to go through the crappy hiring process that the company adds later as it gets bigger. And then we claim that the tests make tech a "meritocracy" and "objective", but those at the top are exempt from the tests…

This is all true, although note that I was not a founder or initial employee; I definitely arrived during the second half of the company's decades-long lifespan. The test was just developed years after I was hired, and I was not involved in its development in any way (except for once taking it to act as a baseline for what a senior programmer's answers might look like).

I just thought it was a really neat and kind idea to let the applicant choose what question or questions they wanted to discuss and in what order, instead of forcing them to answer a single pre-defined high-pressure coding question and hang the whole interview on that.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#496

Post by ohmahjong »

samsa wrote: post #206

"So pretty much, my entire career is built on one amazing stroke of luck." This, to me, is the buried lede. Much of success is due to luck. Not all; some people on balance are more talented and persistent and hard working than lucky. Others have more luck (a referral, inside info for helping them prep, etc.). I just landed a new job that I am quite confident I would not have been considered for without a referral fro…

I've been explicitly told on a phone interview that "we really wouldn't be considering someone of your experience without the referral". Nailing the technical interview and getting the job felt amazing, but that referral came in _clutch_.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#497

Post by sarchertech »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #389
sarchertech wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but given the choice between someone who needs time and space to think, and someone who doesn't. I’ve worked with people who needed time to think, but at the end of that time came up with better solutions than the people who were quicker. High pressure leetcode tests select for a specific type of thinker who may or may not be good at solving the problems you’re actually hiring them for. > but are there better optio…

> I’ve had success pair programming together on a problem you both don’t know the immediate answer to. This is not different to what is being described in TFA -- you do discuss with the interview in order to reach the solution, and as many have said in these comments already, if you just lash out the solution without revealing your thinking process, many interviewers get disappointed and may throw you another problem…

>This is not different to what is being described in TFA -- you do discuss with the interview in order to reach the solution

It's very different. If the interviewer already knows the answer and is careful not to give it away, it creates an artificially adversarial process that is completely divorced from the reality of the job.

Working together to solve a common problem is a much more accurate work sample test.

>if you just lash out the solution without revealing your thinking process, many interviewers get disappointed and may throw you another problem.

Knowing the answer upfront makes it much easier to explain your thought process in a way that makes you look smart. Many (most?) companies doing leetcode interviews are more interested in you correctly solving x number of medium-hard problems than they are in hearing how you think.

>They are also not very fair -- they are skewed towards people with more free time at home

That's why I've given them as one alternative among several.

>so you have do the whiteboard discussion afterwards.

You can talk to them about the problem and ask them to explain their decisions. Also if someone cheats and the result is that you hire a fake programmer, fire them.

>this is practically the opposite of fairness

Leetcode interviews aren't more "fair" they just test a different skill than other types of interviews. The hope is that the skill they test is more correlated with job performance than other types of interviews. I don't think that's true.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#498

Post by CoastalCoder »

buzzdenver wrote: post #330
CoastalCoder wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd start with, "What do you mean by 'random'?"

What is the catch here? In multi dimensional and infinite cases it can be a little tricky, but in this one is there more to it than "all permutations should have the same probability"?

I'm not an expert, but here are a few of the things that come to mind for me:

- One conception of random is subjective: the pattern must not be predictable by a particular person/entity. E.g., the Fibonacci sequence may seem random to a person with IQ 3, but not IQ 1000.

- I think related to that is the concept of cryptographically random: [0]

- Random numbers can have different statistical distributions. You referred to uniform randomness, but depending on the application, that's not necessarily what you want. E.g., [1] Especially for statistical / Monte Carlo modeling.

- Depending on just how random you need something to be and to whom, you may or may not need specialized computing hardware. [2]

- Sometimes people kinda want random, but they also want reproducibility if necessary. Think randomly generated unit test input, or randomly generated game levels. For those applications, it's helpful to know that most software uses pseudo- -random number generators (PRNG's). If you can remember the specific number used to seed the PRNG stream, you may be able to deterministically re-execute the code at will. Alternatively, if you want to (nearly) guarantee that subsequent runs of the program aren't the same, you'll want to somehow ensure that a different seed number is used for the different program runs.

So if anything about the job opening depends on this kind of stuff, IMHO it's a great interview question.

[0] https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/39186/what-does-i...

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37828955/what-is-the-dif...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(computing)

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#499

Post by Agamus »

fartcannon wrote: post #436
Agamus wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the adage goes, success is all about luck. Oh, and hard work. And the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Its just luck. What you worked hard at is also luck.

I tend to think that fate and free will work like electricity and magnetism. I call the combined result 'destiny'.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#500

Post by nerdponx »

klyrs wrote: post #304
nerdponx wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully you told them why you declined, otherwise they will just keep asking those questions of other people.

If companies told candidates why their applications were denied, sure, I'd be inclined to share my side. They don't, so fuck 'em. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

It's not for the sake of the company, it's for the sake of the other candidates.
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