I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#211

Post by Kim_Bruning » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #154

lrvick wrote: post #134

One time a company I interviewed with asked me obscure algorithm questions about playing card shuffling. As a former professional magician I knew the optimal answers instantly and could jot them down straight away. They had allocated an hour for answers I wrote in a few minutes. I could have told them I had a massively unfair advantage, but I did not bother. They were visibly impressed and told me I was moving on to…

Can you elaborate on what made the question obscure? I'm asking because I used the question "print out the first 52 numbers in random order"in interviews before, and the answers seemed to give a good hint about understanding of basic CS concepts.

Interesting, what CS concepts were you looking for?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#212

Post by grog454 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

buran77 wrote: post #84

ignoramous wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's harsh because TFA does mention that they feel outright uncomfortable (even after 18 years!) how big a role luck played in them clearing that fizzbuzz interview question: > I've struggled with this a lot over the years, but I finally decided to share my story. I don’t think I would have made it past the first round of interviews at Microsoft if I hadn’t gotten so lucky. So pretty much, my entire career is built…

Out of pretty much all the people I know, I can't think of any successful career not pivoting on one such fateful moment of "luck". One lucky question/answer, one fortunate encounter, one near miss. Of course we'll never know how the road not taken looks like. Any moment could actually be a pivotal one but most are very unassuming and only the memorable ones stick with us, making them feel more important. Also, as so…

If you like this kind of intuitive problem solving you might like "Proofs without Words". It was one of my favorite "math" books in highschool.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#213

Post by muststopmyths » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #5

He cheated more on writing a clickbait title than actually "cheating" on the interview. This is the same thing as when a kid in class thought studying was a way to cheat.

Exactly. Since he went through the much tougher full interview loop just fine apparently. The bar for that filter test is probably not super high

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#214

Post by rhexs » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

playbooks wrote: post #114

The arms race of coding interviews legitimately keeps some of the best most experienced candidates out of the candidate pool, replacing them with newbies who have time to make cheat sheets with every new type of leer code question, and maybe that’s the goal. When question lookup, exchange, cheating etc happens, it makes interviewers pick and design increasingly harder questions over time. That makes it impossible to…

That’s exactly the point of the interviews. Companies are looking for some combination of dedicated enough to grind endless problems, moderately high IQ, not “old”, willing to sacrifice for the company, etc. On top of this, managers are often looking for cultural similarity, same educational backgrounds, and more.

If you want a company to have to take on and train engineers, well, that ship sailed in the 90s.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#215

Post by pfooti » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #210

dekhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would have lost me (principal engineer) with those questions.

Really? You don't like to socialize with peers, with puzzles or tricky problems? Enough to make you refuse to join a company? Discussion has gone off the rails here. Maybe I didn't make it clear - the puzzles were during casual conversation at lunch. Rebutting something I didn't say, is not fair.

I think there's a pretty clear difference between chatting about interesting puzzles between friends and asking annoying puzzle questions in a job interview. The power dynamic is very different, although honestly I don't often like those socially either. They can be deployed to trip other people up, make them feel small, etc. Can cause social anxiety.

As with most things, it depends a lot on the history you have with those people and the psychological safety you feel, so it depends? Definitely not with someone I just met and is interviewing me for a job.

And FWIW I also don't interview anywhere there are questions like this.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#216

Post by 908B64B197 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

steelframe wrote: post #198

I've got a story of my own that has some remarkable similarities to this one. When I interviewed with Microsoft, they asked me to write a program that detects whether the stack grows toward lower address or higher addresses. Since I had studied computer engineering with an emphasis on CPU architecture, this was trivial for me, and I got the job. A few years later I interviewed with Google, and they asked me the exact…

> they asked me to write a heap allocation algorithm for the Linux kernel, and since I had recently written some kernel code, I happened to know (at the time) exactly how to use the kernel linked list manipulation macros from memory, which really impressed the interviewer.

> seem to give enough momentum to make mediocre coding performance a non-issue.

These two statements contradict each other.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#217

Post by enumjorge » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #210

dekhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would have lost me (principal engineer) with those questions.

Really? You don't like to socialize with peers, with puzzles or tricky problems? Enough to make you refuse to join a company? Discussion has gone off the rails here. Maybe I didn't make it clear - the puzzles were during casual conversation at lunch. Rebutting something I didn't say, is not fair.

Happy to chat about puzzles when we really are peers. In an interview setting that’s not the case. For some candidates there could be a lot riding on the outcome of that interview and grading them based on puzzles that don’t really reflect day-to-day work is IMO kind of rude.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#218

Post by 908B64B197 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

nahshon wrote: post #131

One of my friends cousin immigrated to Canada recently from India. They both are shady and like to use shortcuts to reach success. Few years back, she rang me up at 12am in the night. She sent me a link asking me to solve a coding assessment for her. I was naive and idiot. I spent 2 hours on the test and submitted it. After that, both of them did not contact me for year. A year later, I came to know from him that her…

> Few years back, she rang me up at 12am in the night. She sent me a link asking me to solve a coding assessment for her.

> A year later, I came to know from him that her cousin passed that coding assessment and secured a full-time job with top 10 tech company for $140k/yr. She bought a house in one of the most prestigious community in Canada after probation.

It seems everyone not qualified enough to pass an RFE ends up north. This isn't the first time I hear that story.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#219

Post by nprateem » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #210

dekhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would have lost me (principal engineer) with those questions.

Really? You don't like to socialize with peers, with puzzles or tricky problems? Enough to make you refuse to join a company? Discussion has gone off the rails here. Maybe I didn't make it clear - the puzzles were during casual conversation at lunch. Rebutting something I didn't say, is not fair.

There's nothing clever in Googling some obscure fact just to feel intellectually superior in an interview. Red flag here too.

Didn't you have anything more interesting/relevant to talk about?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#220

Post by Tyr42 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

On one of my programming courses, while studying for midterms, I was reading a alternate textbook which covers similar material to our course, and I noticed that question 1 and 3 from the textbook had already been used on our homework.

So I was like, excellent, question 2 is a good practice question for studying. I even called my roommates over and got them to study it too.

Turns out it was the bonus question on the exam.

I was surprised, but my roommates were pretty happy with me.