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> You don't need to think about graphs or runtimes every day- but that one time each year or so that you do need to know it, it's critical that you do. That on

by mrbgty 6y ago

> You don't need to think about graphs or runtimes every day- but that one time each year or so that you do need to know it, it's critical that you do. That one time a year when it's critical, I would want someone who is likely to engage on the rest of the team to come up with a solid solution together and spend at least a day thinking about it. This isn't how interviews work so if you think you're selecting for that one time a year when its critical at the expense of the rest of the year, I don't think you're getting what you think you are. For quick workarounds to deal with a critical error while allowing time to solve it properly, I think an experienced person may have an edge.

mabbo 6y ago
I see your point, but interviews are tame compared to the real world. It's not about "Can the candidate solve this mission critical problem we'll spend a week on, in an hour?". It's more like "Can the candidate recognize a graph problem?". If they can't even tell that this is a graph problem, how are they going to know that today is the day we need to ask someone for help, and think about this very hard? An example: Many times I've asked something like Word Ladder[0] to a candidate, and they can't tell that this is a shortest path problem, nor use the common tools to solve such things. Even with hinting and helping as much as I can, sometimes they just don't have those tools in their toolbox. And my job is to find out whether they do or not. [0]https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/ https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/ and no, I don't use this exact question.
- mrbgty 6y ago
  I honestly doubt that a team of diverse engineers (young and old) would have a hard time figuring out whether it is a graph problem in a reasonable amount of time with the internet at their disposal under normal working conditions. The interview isn't set up that way and introduces non-natural pressures that can easily alter the way a good engineer responds to such a question. I would think younger candidates have likely been more recently immersed in problems such as graph problems and tend to be more aware that they need to spend time training on leetcode or hackerrank in order to pass an interview but I don't know. You could always still get lucky or be making decisions for reasons you aren't aware of.

by mrbgty 6y ago

mabbo 6y ago

I see your point, but interviews are tame compared to the real world. It's not about "Can the candidate solve this mission critical problem we'll spend a week on, in an hour?". It's more like "Can the candidate recognize a graph problem?". If they can't even tell that this is a graph problem, how are they going to know that today is the day we need to ask someone for help, and think about this very hard? An example: Many times I've asked something like Word Ladder[0] to a candidate, and they can't tell that this is a shortest path problem, nor use the common tools to solve such things. Even with hinting and helping as much as I can, sometimes they just don't have those tools in their toolbox. And my job is to find out whether they do or not. [0]https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/ https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder/ and no, I don't use this exact question.

mrbgty 6y ago
I honestly doubt that a team of diverse engineers (young and old) would have a hard time figuring out whether it is a graph problem in a reasonable amount of time with the internet at their disposal under normal working conditions. The interview isn't set up that way and introduces non-natural pressures that can easily alter the way a good engineer responds to such a question. I would think younger candidates have likely been more recently immersed in problems such as graph problems and tend to be more aware that they need to spend time training on leetcode or hackerrank in order to pass an interview but I don't know. You could always still get lucky or be making decisions for reasons you aren't aware of.