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"Can you write me a parser that has a <1% false negative and <1% false positive rate on real email addresses?" A similar enough issue happens in coding intervi
by CydeWeys 5y ago
"Can you write me a parser that has a <1% false negative and <1% false positive rate on real email addresses?"
A similar enough issue happens in coding interviews anyway. Sometimes the interviewee is aware of a library that essentially solves the problem for you. In those cases I give them some credit for knowing of it and then ask them to implement it anyway, as if the library didn't exist (because there are a large number of problems out there for which a solution doesn't yet exist, and when hiring a SWE you need to find someone who can write new solutions from scratch for those situations; whether a given toy interview problem is such a situation doesn't matter for the purpose of evaluating said skills).
- biztos 5y agoI would usually structure the question a bit, give a couple test cases with different formats and ask something like "write a class..." if in Python, etc. I wasn't trying to trap anyone who might actually think /\w+@\w+/ covers the range of all possible addresses. Digression: I do miss the days when you could assume a candidate for a position at Aquatic Widgets Incorporated would know something about water, or about widgets, or at least would have looked up what an aquatic widget is before bothering to come in for an interview, but those days have long since departed the realm of Software Engineering as far as I can tell. Which may be a good thing from the engineers' point of view, I'm not sure.