I realize the notes are for preparing a potential employee for a Google-style job interview. I am curious if there are any employers out there with tips for follow employers about how to screen candidates. I find that a vital skill is understanding good code design, that is, placing the responsibilities with the correct code, keeping dependencies down to a minimum, proper encapsulation of the complex stuff, separatio…
Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#12They get the definition of polymorphism wrong, because their definition ("ability of one method to have different behavior depending on the type of object it is being called on / object passed by parameter) is also met by compile time function overloading. Their example, where you have a customer integer class that is capable of dealing with both other integer arguments and floats is pretty poor. Any definition of po…
Any definition of polymorphism should at least mention something about the method that is invoked depends on runtime data, and is not resolved (or known) at compile time.
At least in C++ world, it's not true. There things like compile time polymorphism, and run-time polymorphism.
And by the way, why do you think polymorphism should be based on run-time data? simpler things can be achieved at compile time with static analysis, which many OO languages do [C++, and Java for sure].
Just because it's simple to do, you don't have to declassify it from being polymorphic.
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#13Are there any MIT students who would not know these things? Big-O notation etc?
The purpose of mentioning the Big-O in that document wasn't to inform about what it is. Rather, it was to note to the candidate not to go into technical detail during the interview (i.e. we like the intuitive version).
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#14Are there any MIT students who would not know these things? Big-O notation etc?
From their introductory page:
It covers time complexity, hash tables, binary search trees, and some other things you might learn in 6.046. However, most of the time is devoted to topics you won't learn in class, such as crafty bitwise logic and tricks to solving problems.
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#15I realize the notes are for preparing a potential employee for a Google-style job interview. I am curious if there are any employers out there with tips for follow employers about how to screen candidates. I find that a vital skill is understanding good code design, that is, placing the responsibilities with the correct code, keeping dependencies down to a minimum, proper encapsulation of the complex stuff, separatio…
Complexity can sometimes be a perspective thing. I recall a discussion at one point with a co-worker were we were each arguing that the other persons approach to a particular problem was more complex. After much contemplation I was able to see both perspectives. Also with some problems there seems to be a conservation of complexity notion. It's inherent in the system and depends on where you push it. For the book, yo…
Yes, I agree that a lot about how to structure code is subjective, which is also why I am very interested in having better terms to describe this — thanks for the book suggestion!
Giving it some more thought, I think it boils down to realizing when one is solving more than one problem, and then being able to write the code so that each problem is solved in isolation, yet without introducing complex APIs between the different pieces of code.
Often though the sub-problems are subtle and hard to predict, plus realizing that two problems are being solved is not in itself enough to figure out how to actually split it up (sometimes splitting things up contributes to the perceived complexity)…
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#16Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#17I realize the notes are for preparing a potential employee for a Google-style job interview. I am curious if there are any employers out there with tips for follow employers about how to screen candidates. I find that a vital skill is understanding good code design, that is, placing the responsibilities with the correct code, keeping dependencies down to a minimum, proper encapsulation of the complex stuff, separatio…
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#18I've interviewed with Google, Apple, and Microsoft. It always strikes me that the questions they ask you during interviews are not at all representative of what you need to be able to do on the job. That's why these course materials are incredibly valuable.
You have a better shot at these types of interviews coming straight out of college than you do after X years of job experience. The interviewing mindset is very different from the working mindset. If you want to do well, you should study these PDFs for a few weeks (repetition is the mother of learning) before your interviews. I did exactly that before my last round of interviews, and it made a huge difference.
I didn't post them on HN because, honestly, I don't want them to be too publicized. These are the exact questions that you will be asked at these types of interviews. It's borderline cheating.
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#19The article is totally fine for HN. However, I don't think it's "hacking" a test if I study for it, so why "Hacking a Google Interview"? Is "hack" the new "pwn" or something?
Re: Hacking a Google Interview - MIT's guide to Google interviews
#20The article is totally fine for HN. However, I don't think it's "hacking" a test if I study for it, so why "Hacking a Google Interview"? Is "hack" the new "pwn" or something?
I guess in this case hacking is tantamount to optimization by restricting the types of problems you'll study (if you believe the guide).