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Yup if you are willing to explain the algorithm to the candidate and not dock them any "points" (or whatever) for having to explain the algorithm, then this wor
by dmoy 6y ago
Yup if you are willing to explain the algorithm to the candidate and not dock them any "points" (or whatever) for having to explain the algorithm, then this works fine. I have no qualms about having a discussion about an algorithm that's tricky, and seeing how the candidate works through it.
That's not what I see in practice though. Not remembering the whole algorithm at best ends up wasting half of the interview (code the remainder in 20 minutes??), and at worst gets explicit language from the interviewer like "TC couldn't figure out <insert tricky algorithm> and I had to explain the algorithm to them explicitly, WEAK/BORDERLINE on algorithms".
I should also say, I dislike doing any engineer interviews that are purely talk-about-algorithm without any code, because I've interviewed a disturbingly large number of candidates who cannot write about 10 lines of mostly-bug-free code with a single state variable and like one loop, in 30+ minutes.
- musicale 6y ago> That's not what I see in practice though. Not remembering the whole algorithm at best ends up wasting half of the interview (code the remainder in 20 minutes??), and at worst gets explicit language from the interviewer like "TC couldn't figure out <insert tricky algorithm> and I had to explain the algorithm to them explicitly, WEAK/BORDERLINE on algorithms". It is kind of hilarious to get an algorithm problem which took eminent computer scientists years to solve the first time. "Why yes, I am Donald Knuth/Edsger Dijkstra/et al. – only smarter, luckier, and much faster!" As you note, the initial question is basically "how well do you recall the solution to this problem?"
- naugtur 6y agoIf I liked spending time memorizing long stretches of text, I'd be a doctor, not a software developer.