6 ms·

So far all you've said is that they asked you to code on a board and that they were "hard". Without knowing why you found them hard it's impossible to provide a

So far all you've said is that they asked you to code on a board and that they were "hard". Without knowing why you found them hard it's impossible to provide any meaningful input.

morbidhawk 10y ago
Exactly this! To improve a more critical thinking approach is needed. Learning to interview better is a separate issue from whether the interviewer or interviewee should be assumed incompentent. Asking "Am I incompetent" is a question that you can't control (right now you can only do something to change your future competence as the past is behind you) and it might be a passive-aggressive mechanism to protect yourself rather than addressing issues directly. OP, asking better questions will help focus your mind on achieving what you want. "What did I struggle with in the interview?", "Ok I struggled with x topic, what is x?", "What are different ways x is implemented?". You need to focus on content and start learning to ask productive questions to help you become really interested in the content you are learning about, rather than treating it like some quiz you just study for. Be honest with yourself and with the interviewers. You don't need to prove your competence to yourself or overstress about looking competent to your interviewers, care about the content and they'll be able to see that you are good
muse900 10y ago
Sorry about that and the late response. I was asked to balance a binary tree on a whiteboard! I walked out of there instantly, but generally all the interviews I went to had very similar questions.
- davelnewton 10y ago
  But what's the specific issue with a question like that? I agree that it's rare that we have to write low-level functionality like this any more (I have had to write such things, however). I argue that basic CS knowledge isn't useless and actually does matter in the long run.

So far all you've said is that they asked you to code on a board and that they were "hard". Without knowing why you found them hard it's impossible to provide any meaningful input.

morbidhawk 10y ago

Exactly this! To improve a more critical thinking approach is needed. Learning to interview better is a separate issue from whether the interviewer or interviewee should be assumed incompentent. Asking "Am I incompetent" is a question that you can't control (right now you can only do something to change your future competence as the past is behind you) and it might be a passive-aggressive mechanism to protect yourself rather than addressing issues directly. OP, asking better questions will help focus your mind on achieving what you want. "What did I struggle with in the interview?", "Ok I struggled with x topic, what is x?", "What are different ways x is implemented?". You need to focus on content and start learning to ask productive questions to help you become really interested in the content you are learning about, rather than treating it like some quiz you just study for. Be honest with yourself and with the interviewers. You don't need to prove your competence to yourself or overstress about looking competent to your interviewers, care about the content and they'll be able to see that you are good

muse900 10y ago

Sorry about that and the late response. I was asked to balance a binary tree on a whiteboard! I walked out of there instantly, but generally all the interviews I went to had very similar questions.

davelnewton 10y ago
But what's the specific issue with a question like that? I agree that it's rare that we have to write low-level functionality like this any more (I have had to write such things, however). I argue that basic CS knowledge isn't useless and actually does matter in the long run.