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Gaming CS Interviews

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Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#91

Post by markisus »

bradlys wrote: post #73
saagarjha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some very bad interviewers that will fault you for non-perfect solutions, but most will have some sort of reasonable leeway in what they will take as a solution.

This experience varies too much for the individual. I've been given almost no leeway with all of my interviews. Most of my peers are in a similar bucket but I will admit - I seem to get some of the worst experience out of my peer group. I am often given more LC hards than my peers and still rejected even if I give multiple solutions with optimal complexity. At this point, we all suspect it's due to superficial factor…

What is URT?

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#92

Post by LtWorf »

thallium205 wrote: post #53
Eleison23 wrote: post #51

The first time I encountered a "riddle" type interview question, I'd already held 5+ jobs and I nominally had 8 years' experience in IT. The job was for a Unix sysadmin job in academia. The interviewer described a room with two lightbulbs in it, and a room down the hall with two switches, and I was supposed to figure out which switch controlled which bulb without going back-and-forth so much. I was stumped & didn't r…

Bulbs nowadays are LED and don't get warm.

You never touched a LED light bulb uh?

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#93

Post by Planktonne »

shxdow wrote: post #79
Planktonne wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be the only other option? That's exactly the same kind of hoop-jumping, perhaps even a little more honest. This is exactly what I was talking about above. The solution for a known-to-be-broken system isn't another known-to-be-broken one, and it isn't keeping the broken system because it's already in place. Development isn't about rote memorisation or slavishly repeating past mistakes. Knowing the Voigh…

The question I have in regards to your suggestion is, how scalable is it ? Can/could it be applied to a FAANG-sized company ? I'm not rejecting any of your points, its just that every time someone critiques the current hiring practices they fail to provide an alternative system that does not introduce other problems (the first and most notable one is scalability, but there are many others)

I think a conversation is eminently scalable. If an organisation cannot devote 30 minutes to checking if someone they're about to hire is at all competent, then that organisation has much, much bigger problems than hiring.

The current process also requires dedicated employee time to administer, after all - this takes no more time, involves less employee prep, and (crucially) might be valuable.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#94

Post by ramesh31 »

>Many companies in the tech industry have started moving away from traditional, technical whiteboard interviews, because they tend to bare little relevance to an employee’s day-to-day work

What companies? I have literally never interviewed anywhere that didn't run the standard cargo cult gamut.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#95

Post by bogomipz »

parimal7 wrote: post #38
IshKebab wrote: post #25

Hmm I feel like the best way to "game" these interviews is just to learn solutions to the top 100 leetcode questions and then act as if you're figuring it out on the spot. That's what I started doing in preparation for a Facebook interview but I think that's not actually going to happen in the end anyway due to the hiring freeze and also the ridiculous H1B situation.

Recently gave an interview where they asked me to open my Leetcode profile, and checked if there are any prior submissions to the asked questions. ¯\(ツ)/¯

I sincerely hope you walked out of that interview without accommodating that request. Would hope you mind naming the company only so others can avoid it?

Treating a candidate as suspects seems to be a new low, even for the tech industry.

An interview is a two way street. That person probably did you a favor though by letting you know what your potential coworkers and/or company culture was about.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#96

Post by pclmulqdq »

newshorts wrote: post #72
leetrout wrote: post #2

> Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer. I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance. And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said "nothing" and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions.…

My google coding interview was much l33t. He asked me a graph search question. However at the time I didn’t know what a graph was. I’m self taught. But I did understand the ask, which was to find a path through a series of locations. I also happened to have some experience with slime mold finding optimal paths and once even tried to simulate it using a genetic algorithm. That was the best solution I could come up wit…

It's also not about thinking creatively all the time. When I did interviews at a FAANG, there were many interviewers whose questions ranged from understanding basic CS to inventing new algorithms in specific circumstances. Generally, the second set of questions rarely had optimal solutions that took longer than O(n), and the first set of questions had answers that come out of a CS textbook.

In other words, the first set of questions is about doing normal tasks in the normal way, and the second set of questions is about solving relatively simple problems in a way that scales up massively.

When you are doing something that has a well-known optimal solution, your colleagues will expect it to be done in the well-known way. They don't want to have to read through your "creative" code to determine that you are just doing a graph search in a different way than they are used to. Engineering at a place like Google isn't about doing cool things: it's about doing things that are kind of cool in a way that a mediocre CS grad from a high-ranked school can understand and extend your solutions.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#98

Post by confidantlake »

thallium205 wrote: post #53
Eleison23 wrote: post #51

The first time I encountered a "riddle" type interview question, I'd already held 5+ jobs and I nominally had 8 years' experience in IT. The job was for a Unix sysadmin job in academia. The interviewer described a room with two lightbulbs in it, and a room down the hall with two switches, and I was supposed to figure out which switch controlled which bulb without going back-and-forth so much. I was stumped & didn't r…

Bulbs nowadays are LED and don't get warm.

Turn on one. Wait a few years. Turn on the other. The one that is off has burned out so it is the first one.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#99

Post by pclmulqdq »

manfre wrote: post #88
ZiiS wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whist number theory may never come up in Django tooling. "Something you don't know" always will; it is valid to try and determine how people respond to questions they don't know the answer too.

If the candidate says they don't know a topic, that is a valid response. It's not worthwhile to ask detailed questions about the topic. That's a sign of an inexperienced and/or unprepared interviewer.

Asking someone "how many prime numbers are there?" seems pretty valid to me. It's an easy question. The two valid answers are: "a lot" or "infinite" (with "more than 10" also being a fine answer IMO). I'm not sure the interviewer was expecting the actually correct answer here (infinite) - lots of programmers don't know that there are infinite prime numbers - I think he was trying to set up for an explanation of an algorithms problem.

By saying "Optimus Prime," OP has shown that he prefers to cover up gaps in his technical knowledge with snark and being an asshole rather than taking a stab at it and working in good faith. That answer would have disqualified him in my opinion. Even respectfully saying "I thought I was intervieweing for a Django tooling position" would have opened the door to further conversation.

Re: Gaming CS Interviews

#100

Post by DonHopkins »

atoav wrote: post #20
leetrout wrote: post #2

> Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer. I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance. And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said "nothing" and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions.…

In such situations I tend to ask that question directly: "It was my understanding that you looking for someone who will help you with Django tooling. I can do that. Although number theory sounds interesting, I never felt the need of diving into it in order to solve any Django-related issue. I would be happy to learn more about how you think number theory relates to Django tooling should I start working here." When pe…

Tell him "I use Django Modules, not Django Modulus."
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