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That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

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Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#191

Post by kontain »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #184
ninkendo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First one depends on the bowling ball. Most alleys have balls ranging from 7lb to 16lb, all the same volume, and the crossover point where they’d sink is 11.6lb. If it was a floating bowling ball, the lake water level would stay the same when you toss it from a boat. If it were a sinking one, it would decrease.

I think you're counting the overall sphere as the volume, but water would leak in through the finger holes so only their actual material counts. I suspect different weight bowling balls generally have different volumes.

Also if the lake is a mile deep it would pressure the ball more than the air do.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#192

Post by xeromal »

moron4hire wrote: post #111
benrutter wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those kind of abstract CS interview questions never feel that helpful to me, but in all honesty, your story sounds like a job of the interview working. You were able to demonstrate that you were enthusiastic and knowledge about programming as a whole, which is probably more helpful than what they were originally trying to test for.

What is "abstract CS" about binary trees and serialization?

I think it's because most of us don't do CS once we graduate. We build APIs and websites which don't involve CS at all. It barely involves engineering. lol.

No one uses binary trees or some manual form of serialization.

They use "superlib.search(arr)" or (seriliazer.parse(thingy)" and that's about it. No one cares about what it does. They just know it does it faster than something they could write. The only places that care about it are at the utmost peak of scale.

Heck, I run an API that gets tens of millions of reqs a day and I'm an idiot that couldn't computer science their way of of a paper bag.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#193

Post by kontain »

RealityVoid wrote: post #130
anonym29 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You drop a bowling ball off a space boat into a black hole. Has the amount of mass inside the universe increased, decreased, or stayed the same, ignoring the effects of all other changes?

The amount of mass inside the universe has stayed the same, it just moved from the boat into the black hole. You're really bored at work one day so to entertain yourself you create 1kg of antimatter along with 1kg of matter. Has the mass in the universe increased or stayed the same?

The mass of the observable universe has probably changed a lot by the time the bowling ball hits the bottom.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#194

Post by steveBK123 »

One thing I've taken away in my career, interviewing every 3-5 years is that difficulty of interview & difficulty of job are uncorrelated. Often they are inversely correlated.

Possible reasons.. Sometimes a team is growing so fast / or turnover is so high / everyone is so busy / etc that they cannot really stand up a proper interview process .. and/or they just need to get people into seats, and are happy to fire fast later.

Sometimes a job is so boring and team leads have so much time on their hands that they can construct immaculate interview processes and spend hours grilling candidates.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#195

Post by [deleted] »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #121
a-french-anon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very easy to solve some of these physics questions by thinking about a degenerate version of it instead, with exaggerated parameters (since these physics phenomenons are described by continuous/monotonic functions). So for the bowling ball, I replace it with an imaginary marble weighing 1 ton and the answer is now self-evident.

Will a one ton marble embed into the lake bed?

[deleted]

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#196

Post by steveBK123 »

fenomas wrote: post #186
modeless wrote: post #65

Once long ago when I interviewed at Apple I was asked the classic "fork in the road, two guys, one always tells the truth and one always lies" riddle, with complete earnestness as far as I could tell. Possibly the single worst interview question I've ever been asked. Of course I told the interviewer I'd heard it before and then gave the correct answer. In my case we just ended up chatting about previous experience in…

This reminds me of the weirdest interview I ever had (boutique software agency, maybe 30 devs). I walk in, and the CEO's secretary hands me an IQ test and says I have one hour. I do the test, then I meet the CEO and we chat about general topics while she grades the test nearby. Then she announces my IQ, and the CEO says "hmm, yes, that's above the minimum I'd consider for a developer." Then for the last few minutes h…

Thats a particular type of insane that might have been fun to take the offer

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#197

Post by aquariusDue »

pjmlp wrote: post #169
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you expect Leetcode-style problems in the interview and are actually interested in doing your best there, why wouldn't you prepare for that?

That is the thing, I don't expect them, other than for newly graduates without anything else to show their value for.

Yeah, it's weird (to me and you at least) why people bother quizzing industry veterans. After 10 years in the workforce you should be able to talk shop about various experiences you had at work (NDA permitting) and drop down to technical details where appropriate. Yet some companies or interviewers insist on techniques that could be replaced with asking the potential hire to eat boogers on camera for a stronger signal of what they're actually looking for.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#198

Post by wavemode »

paulluuk wrote: post #147
ventana wrote: post #81

Just don't ask brain teasers when you conduct an interview; I believe they give no valid signal at all, and I also believe Microsoft does not ask them anymore. The coding questions that require an "aha!" moment are very similar to brain teasers, and should also be avoided. When I conducted interviews for FAANG, I asked somewhat simpler coding questions, something around DFS and/or topological sorting (without calling…

I had an interview with Google about 10 years ago. Everyone said "Google doesn't ask brainteasers or leetcode-challenges any more". The interview was literally nothing but back-to-back brainteasers and leetcode-challenges for 3 hours straight. I didn't get the job even though I only failed to solve one problem, and looking back I think that the problem was in fact unsolvable and they wanted me to come to that conclus…

Haven't encountered "marbles in an airplane"-style brainteasers, but leetcode challenges are definitely still the norm at Google and other big tech. Not sure who was claiming otherwise.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#199

Post by arcfour »

xelxebar wrote: post #11
arcfour wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed with which I can remember some obscure AIX partitioning-related fact during an incident, for example, is orders of magnitude faster than the speed with which I would figure out which of 12 marbles is slightly heavier than the others.

> I can remember some obscure AIX partitioning-related fact Now you have my attention. I'd love to read about some of these trivia.

Gah, I can't remember what the specific trivia was now (ironically), just that some disk wasn't mounting and something in the fstab stuck out to me that I then looked up in the manpages and confirmed was wrong. (I wasn't even the AIX guy, I was just the sysadmin of an app that ran on AIX.)

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#200

Post by Otterly99 »

modeless wrote: post #65

Once long ago when I interviewed at Apple I was asked the classic "fork in the road, two guys, one always tells the truth and one always lies" riddle, with complete earnestness as far as I could tell. Possibly the single worst interview question I've ever been asked. Of course I told the interviewer I'd heard it before and then gave the correct answer. In my case we just ended up chatting about previous experience in…

I've always wondered about these brainteasers: do interviewers really expect people to solve them? The truth/lie one is pretty well known so either:

A. You answer it from memory. B. Have to actually solve it, which from my experience requires a bit of time.

It just seems awkward to have somebody look at you while they wait for you to solve some riddle.

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