5 ms·
One of the things I learned nearly 20 years ago is that it sucks to work in shops where the engineers are arrogant, because the more arrogant the less likely an
by lzw 16y ago
One of the things I learned nearly 20 years ago is that it sucks to work in shops where the engineers are arrogant, because the more arrogant the less likely any good engineering is tolerated.
These kinds of puzzles communicate arrogance to me. They say "We're more interested in excluding you based on a trick question than in getting to know you".
- cageface 16y agoI guess it depends on the question. If it requires previous knowledge of some kind of gimmick then I agree it's a turnoff. A good puzzle that challenges your thinking and tests some basic algorithmic chops is a good sign though, I think. For example, the puzzle in this ad is a good one: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/sof/1927765905.html http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/sof/1927765905.html
- blasdel 16y agoA bonus question requiring previous knowledge can be fantastic as a shibboleth if crafted well — it reinforces to the potential applicant that there is a clever compatriot on the other side, and makes the job of screening resumes easier.
- lzw 16y agoYeah, I knew that was a group of arrogant douche bags who are probably incompetent before I even got to the puzzle. I didn't bother to look at the puzzle, it oddest matter how difficult it is, it's presence is just icing on the douchcake.
- cageface 16y agoI think you've got the sensitivity on your douche detector cranked up way too high.
- bugsy 16y agoI'm not sure that he does, I thought the same of the ad and didn't say anything but I was glad someone did. Reading in the graph and putting it in a tree structure is a reasonable problem, but not a 10 minute interview one. Traversing the graph to find the optimal path? Wow, that's known to be a tricky problem. Brute force search will work but will take a while. Now, undoubtedly there must be some very clever proof that discards most of the searches for the special case of a triangle structure. And if you've seen that you're all set. If not, hopefully you have your copy of AoCP at hand to start looking for it. If you are in an interview and haven't seen it, you just need to recreate the conditions from 1 million BC to 1950 or whenever someone had the right insight to come up with a proof. Not really a reasonable assumption. In those circumstances it's only a test of if you've run into this issue before. And figuring out the answer is necessary to determine the email to submit a resume? How foolish that hiring manager is. If he was Google, yeah, you can put the question on a giant billboard ad as a challenge and get some responses. He's not Google. Reasonable question is if someone can parse some data and put it in a tree or graph. Reasonable interview question is to bring this up and talk about approaches. Person mention's Djikstra's algorithm, well he's heard of Djikstra and knew he was big on optimal path searches. Mentions AoCP, he knows a good place to look for clever algorithms. Knows how to solve it on the spot? Probably pretty clever. Finding the optimal 100 node long path in a graph as a screening method to send in a resume? Funny stuff there. Being a bit clever myself though I'll go a bit further here. I'd say you might be the person who posted that ad. But I think more likely is you want to apply for the job and have no idea at all how to solve that problem and are hoping by coming here and pretending it is trivial someone like me will give you some hints. Because if you really knew your stuff, you wouldn't be claiming it was trivial for any competent practitioner to solve and a reasonable screening question. Sure, there is an easy answer out there for doing this search, that's almost certain. That everyone competent would figure it out easily? Nah.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gyepi 16y agoThis puzzle has a couple of problems: The problem description claims there are 100 rows, but the data only has 99 rows. The example solution shows an "isosceles" triangle, but the data set represents a "right" triangle and the given example solution is impossible with a right triangle (because the left border is a constraint). In order to properly solve the puzzle, one much make assumptions that may turn out to be untrue. Resolving such ambiguities and unspecified detail is something we deal with every day; however, it's less than helpful so early in the process. As others have mentioned, hiring is a two way street.
- bugsy 16y agoIt's actually completely specified. Note that I don't think it's a great test at this position in the hiring process, but it is completely specified and solvable.