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I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

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Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#431

Post by throwaway09223 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #421
throwaway09223 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a quiz. There's no questions. You could call it a free-form interactive essay interview. Pick any subject and converse on it however you like. If it's not going well, pick any other subject.

Is there that much difference between a series of questions and a series of subjects ? I am assuming it's not really "pick any subject you like" , because most subjects are going to be absolutely useless to ranking the candidate -- it's going to be "pick a subject from a list of these subjects". And there is a reason most _interviewee_ guides tell you to always be honest and say "I don't know". That's to kickstart th…

> I am assuming it's not really "pick any subject you like"

It appears your apparent confusion is due to this assumption. It's the opposite of the process I described above.

I meant exactly what I said. The candidate can pick any topic they like. I trust the candidate to pick a topic to showcase their own skills -- and if they don't, that's another useful datapoint for the hiring process.

There's a huge difference between using a predefined process vs letting the candidate drive. It guarantees we won't waste time talking about subjects the candidate isn't familiar with, and that we will focus on their strengths. Figuring out a candidate's strengths is the entire point of interviewing!

It's also relevant to the "fairness" issue mentioned above, for the same reason.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#432

Post by belter »

IshKebab wrote: post #386
belter wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not what is happening, when the candidate pretends he never seen the question during the interview but in reality he practiced it before on LeetCode :-) And I mean a different question.

Ohhh you mean the candidate should just be able to test the interviewer if they want, to see how technically capable the interviewer is? That's an interesting idea. I'd support that as an interviewer - I think the question candidates ask would also give you some information about the candidate too. Sadly I doubt that sort of thing would ever become normal. Plus interviews already take enough time. Not sure I'd really…

Yes that is what I meant.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#433

Post by franga2000 »

neilv wrote: post #419
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…

I had a bit similar story, though it went a different way, and prompted a few other thoughts... Earlier in my career (a few years before Google seemed to start the current techbro rituals), I went to an interview at a big-name CS dept. spinoff company which had the same problem: CS students and professors with no professional software engineering experience deciding what's most important for professional software eng…

> the current techbro rituals

As someone who's never interviewed at FAANG and only ever gotten either relevant (paid!) take-home programming assignments or the CS101 bullshit the author talked about, what do you mean by that?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#434

Post by yobbo »

Karliss wrote: post #190
yobbo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a quiz problem, and it's supposed to have "trick" solutions. However, if he wants to play that game, he should provide proof of his solution, not fiddle with syntax or error checking. That's why discussion is more important, and how he can show that understands what he's doing and not just memorizing tricks. (... none of which matters for his future role anyway.) The formula "falls out" naturally if you're used…

In my view the trick in this question is to think about adding up numbers not how you add them up.Since this was a programming question you don't need to know the formula you can add up the numbers in a loop. It wouldn't even be much slower since you need a loop of size N anyway for the purpose of adding up numbers in the input. Xor solution and adding solutions are the same solution it's just a matter of what binary…

xor will not overflow and is obviously correct.

I'm not sure modulus-addition would be correct.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#435

Post by TheRealNGenius »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #233
TheRealNGenius wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but that doesn't matter at all given reasonable values of n. The number is in the range of n^2, but the algorithm is in the range O(1). Question is not that bad, my first thought was to use hash table to store what you see, then return when duplicate occurs. Don't like hash table fine, set an array of size n storing TRUE when you see the number. Notice it twice, then you've found the duplicate. No need for math…

Every solution is at least O(n).

Wrong, calculating n(n-1)/2 is O(1)

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#436

Post by fartcannon »

Agamus wrote: post #359
bricemo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, this is definitely not cheating. This is interview preparation. When I prepared for my FAANG interviews I googled so many questions that I couldn’t find another blue link, they were all purple. I prepped for them all. The more you want the job, the more you prep

As the adage goes, success is all about luck. Oh, and hard work. And the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Its just luck. What you worked hard at is also luck.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#437

Post by jasonladuke0311 »

franga2000 wrote: post #433
neilv wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a bit similar story, though it went a different way, and prompted a few other thoughts... Earlier in my career (a few years before Google seemed to start the current techbro rituals), I went to an interview at a big-name CS dept. spinoff company which had the same problem: CS students and professors with no professional software engineering experience deciding what's most important for professional software eng…

> the current techbro rituals As someone who's never interviewed at FAANG and only ever gotten either relevant (paid!) take-home programming assignments or the CS101 bullshit the author talked about, what do you mean by that?

Probably Leetcode stuff. “You have 45 minutes to solve these two problems that were doctoral theses of famous programmers. Go.”

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#438

Post by croo »

not2b wrote: post #403
codechicago277 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only mistake the OP made was in acting like they hadn’t seen the question before, but other than that everything was fine. These code screen questions are usually a basic gut check and the real evaluation comes later at the on-site. Honestly the interviewer did a bad job though because the question clearly gives an advantage to someone who has seen it before. Once I had a candidate struggle with my screening ques…

There's a famous story about Gauss as a child (age 7 in some accounts) figuring out this trick when a teacher who probably wanted a break had the students add up the numbers from 1 to 100. He saw that you could combine numbers from the ends: 1+100=101, 2+99=101, and there are 50 pairs, so the answer is 5050.

Gauss was cheating since he was born! He fixed math errors in his father accountant stuff at age 3.(according to wikipedia) if thats not an unfair advantage i dont know what is ;)

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#439

Post by JoeAltmaier »

cntainer wrote: post #371
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just the first question. The follow-on is, if you add 6 feet and put your finger under the rope and pull up until it's tight again, how far have you raised your finger? 1ft? 10ft? 100ft? 1000 miles? The answer to that is very difficult. There are several approaches.

Yes, but that's still a geometry problem. Don't get me wrong, geometry was my favorite branch of mathematics in school, but I don't see how this is relevant for most software engineering jobs. I guess this type of question might serve the purpose of finding like-minded people with similar interests (in your case geometry or puzzles) but it might alienate others.

Most folks require calculus to solve it. Give it a try!

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#440

Post by JoeAltmaier »

freedomben wrote: post #374
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, we questioned a candidate the usual way with pertinent technical challenges and so on. Then when driving in a van to lunch (our habit was to do a social segment as well as technical) I asked some puzzle questions - add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be? and suchlike. He was charmed, we brainstormed some answers and had a fun lunch. Years later,…

Was this a situation in which you were asking the candidate while everybody else either already knew the answer and was listening to the candidate think? Or was it more like everybody was discussing (and explicitly or implicitly through discussion) admitting that they don't necessarily know the answer (while assumedly is an engineer in good standing on the team), and the group is working together to solve it? Because…

It was new to the group, if I recall.
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