Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=ubuntu&c... It's off-line for me and asking something about installing a server.
Yeah, Kite is being very unreliable :( I keep manually restarting the server.
I failed a Twitter interview
11–20 of 86 posts
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#12No offence to Twitter, but this is a seriously bad way of hiring developers. What are you trying to recruit mathematics scholars as developers? When will companies like Twitter learn not all great developers are math geniuses? I didn't even get a college education to get where I am, I failed maths in school as well, but I can code, so what does that mean? I think it means nothing in the greater scheme of things. By the sounds of it the author got a better position in the end, I'd rather be working at Amazon who are solving much better problems than Twitter ever will likely solve anyway.
If a company (no matter how great they were) tried asking me these kinds of questions, I would immediately stop the interview and thank them for the opportunity.
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#13This question involves an "a-ha" moment (for the linear-time solution) and was thus banned from interviews at Google last year. Don't use questions involving eureka moments. They reveal nothing about the candidate. Edit: It should be noted that this question was used for a long time at Google, Microsoft, and many other places. It's a terrible question.
Is there a definition of ah-ha moment? Seems like what strikes one person as an "ah-ha" insight might be a baseline assumption of another person's thought process.
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#14you could solve this with a simple state machine; there's no reason to resort to parlour tricks... https://gist.github.com/igor47/7228586
oops, sorry! i meant the "parlour tricks" part in response to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6640033
not in response to the author!
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#15you could solve this with a simple state machine; there's no reason to resort to parlour tricks... https://gist.github.com/igor47/7228586
try this test case ([5,1,0,1],1)
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#16This question involves an "a-ha" moment (for the linear-time solution) and was thus banned from interviews at Google last year. Don't use questions involving eureka moments. They reveal nothing about the candidate. Edit: It should be noted that this question was used for a long time at Google, Microsoft, and many other places. It's a terrible question.
Is there a definition of ah-ha moment? Seems like what strikes one person as an "ah-ha" insight might be a baseline assumption of another person's thought process.
> Is there a definition of ah-ha moment?
Not an exact definition, no. But if a question is exceedingly simple after one tiny bit of insight that doesn't require much analytical thinking to arrive at, that certainly falls into the category.
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#17So glad Twitter is continuing the tradition of useless interview questions.
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#18This question involves an "a-ha" moment (for the linear-time solution) and was thus banned from interviews at Google last year. Don't use questions involving eureka moments. They reveal nothing about the candidate. Edit: It should be noted that this question was used for a long time at Google, Microsoft, and many other places. It's a terrible question.
Is there a definition of ah-ha moment? Seems like what strikes one person as an "ah-ha" insight might be a baseline assumption of another person's thought process.
It means (I think) that the trough between the "good answer" and the "bad answer" is too big. So basically either you know it or not and can't "grow" toward a solution easily
I hate this kind of problems.
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#19No offence to Twitter, but this is a seriously bad way of hiring developers. What are you trying to recruit mathematics scholars as developers? When will companies like Twitter learn not all great developers are math geniuses? I didn't even get a college education to get where I am, I failed maths in school as well, but I can code, so what does that mean? I think it means nothing in the greater scheme of things. By t…
Well, you may want to hire math scholars. I think it's important to have some in your team.
But it's also important to focus on other aspects as well.
Re: I failed a Twitter interview
#20Did they actually call you back with a rejection? Sorry if I missed that in the article. Anyway, at the end of the day, what matters is that you solved it on your own :)
Yeah, I received a rejection letter the next day. Solving it on my own definitely made me feel better though!