3 ms·

I don't see the issue. Coding on a whiteboard is more about demonstrating your problem solving ability, not your raw knowledge of programming. If they ask you t

by ikeyany 10y ago

I don't see the issue. Coding on a whiteboard is more about demonstrating your problem solving ability, not your raw knowledge of programming. If they ask you to implement something like a maze solver, having the exact answer seems less important than communicating the steps needed to create such a solver (e.g. making sure you truly understand the question, taking note of possible bottlenecks or corner cases, having an 'obvious' solution and proving why it's slow/wasteful, etc.). That being said, everyone knows you need to have a solid understanding of data structures and algorithms to be seriously considered, but I don't think Google is necessarily looking for software prodigies.

kafkaesq 10y ago
Coding on a whiteboard is more about demonstrating your problem solving ability, Whilst explaining verbally to others your every single step of your thought processes while you are doing fine-grained analysis the problem (something which one almost never has to do in real engineering environments), and under incredibly unrealistic time pressure ("these people will either love me or hate me, depending on what I say in the next 5 seconds.") And typically to solve "problems" that bear little or no resemblance to the kind of problems that you'd actually be tasked with solving on a day-to-day basis at most of these roles. But which instead seem to solve other, ulterior purposes -- in particular, to shore up the interviewer's own insecurities: "Gosh, I wish I knew how to find good people for this job. And heaven forbid if the candidate should ask me to explain our business model... But if we ask a bunch of Google-style questions at the whiteboard... I guess that means we must be in same league as Google."
- pm90 10y ago
  Seeing as how it has worked so far for them, I would put in a little more effort to justify why their current process needs to change.
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    I'm not saying that the Google process doesn't work. My point is that it "works", but for ulterior purposes. In Google's case, for example -- to establish their "brand."
- ikeyany 10y ago
  I've never seen someone put a scarier spin on "showing your work". Fine-grained analysis? Again, you're not expected to be a master, but it's not asking a lot for you to break down a seemingly complex problem into something workable (e.g. The maze solver example above could be approached with choosing a right turn whenever you approach an intersection...does that seem very fine-grained to you?). Incredibly unrealistic time pressure? Again, in most interviews I've had/conducted, you're not expected to just know the answer. If you do, that's great, but you make it seem like they're waiting to pounce on you the moment you struggle. I've never seen that in interviews for larger companies.

by ikeyany 10y ago

kafkaesq 10y ago

Coding on a whiteboard is more about demonstrating your problem solving ability, Whilst explaining verbally to others your every single step of your thought processes while you are doing fine-grained analysis the problem (something which one almost never has to do in real engineering environments), and under incredibly unrealistic time pressure ("these people will either love me or hate me, depending on what I say in the next 5 seconds.") And typically to solve "problems" that bear little or no resemblance to the kind of problems that you'd actually be tasked with solving on a day-to-day basis at most of these roles. But which instead seem to solve other, ulterior purposes -- in particular, to shore up the interviewer's own insecurities: "Gosh, I wish I knew how to find good people for this job. And heaven forbid if the candidate should ask me to explain our business model... But if we ask a bunch of Google-style questions at the whiteboard... I guess that means we must be in same league as Google."

pm90 10y ago
Seeing as how it has worked so far for them, I would put in a little more effort to justify why their current process needs to change.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  I'm not saying that the Google process doesn't work. My point is that it "works", but for ulterior purposes. In Google's case, for example -- to establish their "brand."
ikeyany 10y ago
I've never seen someone put a scarier spin on "showing your work". Fine-grained analysis? Again, you're not expected to be a master, but it's not asking a lot for you to break down a seemingly complex problem into something workable (e.g. The maze solver example above could be approached with choosing a right turn whenever you approach an intersection...does that seem very fine-grained to you?). Incredibly unrealistic time pressure? Again, in most interviews I've had/conducted, you're not expected to just know the answer. If you do, that's great, but you make it seem like they're waiting to pounce on you the moment you struggle. I've never seen that in interviews for larger companies.