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I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

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Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#471

Post by spoils19 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #356
akhmatova wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? I can only imagine being "charmed" by a question like if I was much younger in my career, eager to be seen as smart and in the company of like-minded folk. Nowadays... my focus is on solving problems... as in real problems, not made-up ones. Thankfully I haven't heard questions like this in ye…

Yeah it's easy to act all butt-hurt and be too good to even try. But how outrageous is it to imagine that folks who can solve such problems might be able to solve other problems?

This shows an alarming level of narcissism. I (principal engineer) would definitely not want to work with you.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#472

Post by mjochim »

teddyh wrote: post #430
mjochim wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's neglect the horizontal distance the chair(s) travel at the bottom and at the top of the lift. Then the answer is "all of them," which holds true in your one-chair scenario. The question reminds me of "how many groves are there on a vinyl record?"

That depends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monty_Python_Matching_Tie_...

I never knew! Thanks for sharing!

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#473

Post by quantum_magpie »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #277
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,…

Is that a puzzle? Isn't it just 2πr + d = 2π(r + d/2π)?

That is for a smooth sphere, which the world is neither.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#474

Post by nprateem »

robocat wrote: post #417
nprateem wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I see I'm a snowflake for not liking the power imbalance and irrelevance of this sort of thing. TBH I'd just have found it contrived and boring. I wouldn't be excited to have colleagues who couldn't just talk about normal stuff at lunch.

I think you are reading too much into the story. One reason for the lunch is to try and relax a bit and test “cultural fit”, which is more like a blind date between two people to see if there is any spark. Ideally it is a two way conversation, where the candidate and the interviewers get to judge each other. There is a problem where cultural fit “tests” are heavily biased against minorities - for example most any spo…

If that's how you've learnt to understand empathy, then sure, I guess I must be

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#475

Post by cntainer »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #439
cntainer wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

great, now I need a new branch of math to be able to continue, lol!

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#476

Post by HelloNurse »

lelanthran wrote: post #353
HelloNurse wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note, evaluating the quality of tests is even more challenging than writing them. I recently tried interviewing for a growing small company, who nullified the initial good impression with a multiple choice test about certain technologies they were using, administered over the web by some test company. The best questions were "which of these four functions or classes do you use to do $common task with $fr…

>The best questions were "which of these four functions or classes do you use to do $common task with $framework", testing documentation speed reading skills rather than actual coding skills; other questions were ambiguous, debatable or completely wrong. Sounds like testgorrilla. I swear they have a poor markov-chain based AI generating the questions.

Modern not-quite-AI might be able to figure out reasonable questions from high quality source material (e.g. StackOverflow questions) and synthesize wrong answers, but competent human reviewers are still needed and this is probably the weak point of the process.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#477

Post by mlazos »

ralfd wrote: post #281
cntainer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be is this a technical puzzle/question? to me it reads like a middle school geometry question. it would be fun to discuss it with friends/colleagues but I wouldn't expect it during a software engineering interview

https://mathimages.swarthmore.edu/index.php/Rope_around_the_... > Although finding the answer requires only basic geometry, even professional mathematicians find the answer strangely counter-intuitive. I guess the more a visual person you are the more counter-intuitive it is. That only 6 feet of rope is needed to widen the radius of Earth at every place at continents and oceans ect at a whole 1 feet seems crazy to me…

It helps me to think about it in opposite terms. You're increasing the radius by ~1ft (radius around the whole earth), and 2pi is the linear relationship with circumference, so you'll get six ft. Thinking about it this way kind of ignores the fact the circle is huge. I'm not too visual of a person though.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#478

Post by boxed »

mjochim wrote: post #390
boxed wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... the answer is "impossible to know"? There's no data on how many seats there are, their distance, or whatever. There could theoretically be literally just the seat you're sitting on in the entire system. Then the answer is zero.

Let's neglect the horizontal distance the chair(s) travel at the bottom and at the top of the lift. Then the answer is "all of them," which holds true in your one-chair scenario. The question reminds me of "how many groves are there on a vinyl record?"

And how many is "all of them"? Btw it's not all, you're sitting on one, clearly you're not gonna meet that one.

If I ask you how many sugars you want in your coffee and you answer with an equation I will assume you're joking or an idiot :)

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#479

Post by mjochim »

boxed wrote: post #478
mjochim wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's neglect the horizontal distance the chair(s) travel at the bottom and at the top of the lift. Then the answer is "all of them," which holds true in your one-chair scenario. The question reminds me of "how many groves are there on a vinyl record?"

And how many is "all of them"? Btw it's not all, you're sitting on one, clearly you're not gonna meet that one. If I ask you how many sugars you want in your coffee and you answer with an equation I will assume you're joking or an idiot :)

Since I don't drink coffee, you are unlikely to ask me that question. But if you did, I might assume you are either joking or an idiot ;).

Clearly, it's a trick question (with unnecessary details to distract you from a possible solution) and the one asking probably thinks they are very clever. So now, whether you accept an equation or insist that it's impossible to solve when it's not really comes down to how you want to play that game.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#480

Post by afpx »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #155

IMHO, this was not cheating. This is a phenomenon called success. If you are fortunate (?) to be around in the entrepreneurial world long enough, you will realize that intelligence, hard work, good time management etc are not adequate. They just qualify as deserving. There are serendipities that separate those who succeed from everybody else who was deserving. Survivor bias [1]. Calling Eli was your serendipity. The…

The thing is, for 20+ years you didn’t have to study. Only within the last decade or so have things become so competitive. There’s been a fundamental shift in supply and demand.
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