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Yes, and regurgitation is what tech interviews these days optimize for in selecting candidates. Regurgitation is not simply repeating the technical components v

by sidlls 8y ago

Yes, and regurgitation is what tech interviews these days optimize for in selecting candidates. Regurgitation is not simply repeating the technical components verbatim, by the way. It includes rote rehearsal of a believable way to present (i.e. fake) working it out from scratch.

stcredzero 8y ago
Hell, if an interviewee understands enough to be able to convincingly fake working things out, they're already way ahead of a lot of other candidates. I've seen people faking such things badly. In general, they can spout off about the "happy path," but they can't tell you how the implementation can go wrong and what to do about it. When I was a grad student TA, I told people not to cheat. If you don't know enough to answer the questions, you don't have enough knowledge to cheat. That turned out to be quite true.
- sidlls 8y ago
  I think you might be underestimating how big the "interview prep" industry is or how it works. The people "faking" it in this way likely actually know much less than someone who honestly struggles to come up with a poorly performing brute force solution and they practice the soft skills necessary to prevent the interview from ever getting to the point where you're asking questions about where the implementation can go wrong that aren't also on their script.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    The people "faking" it in this way likely actually know much less than someone who honestly struggles to come up with a poorly performing brute force solution My office scores the people with the brute force solution higher than the others, so long as they know the time/space complexity. they practice the soft skills necessary to prevent the interview from ever getting to the point where you're asking questions about where the implementation can go wrong that aren't also on their script Oh yeah. That sounds familiar. Not getting to the part where they can answer questions about where the implementation can go wrong counts against them.

by sidlls 8y ago

stcredzero 8y ago

Hell, if an interviewee understands enough to be able to convincingly fake working things out, they're already way ahead of a lot of other candidates. I've seen people faking such things badly. In general, they can spout off about the "happy path," but they can't tell you how the implementation can go wrong and what to do about it. When I was a grad student TA, I told people not to cheat. If you don't know enough to answer the questions, you don't have enough knowledge to cheat. That turned out to be quite true.

sidlls 8y ago
I think you might be underestimating how big the "interview prep" industry is or how it works. The people "faking" it in this way likely actually know much less than someone who honestly struggles to come up with a poorly performing brute force solution and they practice the soft skills necessary to prevent the interview from ever getting to the point where you're asking questions about where the implementation can go wrong that aren't also on their script.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  The people "faking" it in this way likely actually know much less than someone who honestly struggles to come up with a poorly performing brute force solution My office scores the people with the brute force solution higher than the others, so long as they know the time/space complexity. they practice the soft skills necessary to prevent the interview from ever getting to the point where you're asking questions about where the implementation can go wrong that aren't also on their script Oh yeah. That sounds familiar. Not getting to the part where they can answer questions about where the implementation can go wrong counts against them.