I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

If you know the area and traffic patterns you can do that and basically stick to your lane for long periods and just switch a few times. I have something like that on my pre-covid commute for example, where you have to be in the right most lane until between a certain off ramp and the corresponding on ramp. There's always lots of traffic and you go between 10 and maaaybe 40 km/h. There you switch to the leftmost land so that you don't get bogged down by the regular mergers from the on ramp in the right lane and the 'middle lane drivers' who merge into the middle lane right about there too. Then until the next on ramp you stay on the left lane but have to switch over to the right lane again because no trucks allowed on it and most people try to pass on the left lane while everyone else is stuck with middle lane drivers and trucks.

If you know the area in the above example, just choose lane 1 for sanity. If you don't know the area and happen to stick to lane 4,id rather try weaving to be honest.

Asked: "constant time complexity"

Answered: "constant time when averaged over a series of appends"

In an interview, the onus is really on candidate to answer the question as it was asked. Candidate did not answer question, and there was a breakdown in communication. Candidates interpretation is that interviewers didn't know what candidate was talking about. Interviewers could just as easily have been frustrated that candidate did not see significance of the difference.

In my experience, interview technique requires establishing a common ground. As an interviewee, I find that the first step of answering a question is to first go through a number of possibilities starting with the most obvious first. They were most certainly looking for a linked list. This is a simple question with an obvious answer. It would have been good practice to start with the answer they obviously wanted, and then try to broaden their minds. Instead, candidate willfully derailed the interview.

To me this looks like a classic breakdown of communication with a root cause of hubris (quite possibly on both sides).

While both sides failed in this account, only one has the benefit of hindsight in writing about it here today. Time has offered an opportunity for reflection. What has candidate learned? "[look how clever I am] so joke's on them"

"few" and "lone sections". As in statistically irrelevant. The assumption is that people 'get' for example (and its being taught over and over in driving school too) that if you speed to get through one traffic light in the city you'll not make it through the next one anyway and thus not really be faster. On the highway if you only speed once or twice for a short lone section you won't really notice in the end.

You don't even have to come at it with a nerd mathematicians mind and play tricks like Max speed near zero (not a realistic scenario so not something a driving exam would ask but definitely a fun scenario in a math lecture at university maybe). I can think of multiple sections in my city where speeding through the right traffic light when it's "cherry green" will net you a significant advantage because of the awful street and intersection layout and traffic light phases in that area. If you do the same just one traffic light after it though it won't help you at all because the next light will catch you unless you really want to cause an accident.

And if you are driving a 500km+ route and you can "speed" through it at 160+ km/h for a significant portion of it vs. going 120 that will save you a noticeable amount of time on the journey. This assumes something like Germany and your route being in parts with not many speed limits and not too much traffic so that you can comfortably cruise at 160 to 180 vs. arriving as a nervous wreck close to a heart attack because of all the near crashes from slowing down for the grandma going 100 switching to the left lane a few car lengths in front of you.