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>The normal tech interview questions about sorting or recursion or whatever are not supposed to be business-relevant questions, they are to filter out people wh

>The normal tech interview questions about sorting or recursion or whatever are not supposed to be business-relevant questions, they are to filter out people who simply can't program. It's perfectly possible to be a 10x engineer but not being able to solve some obscure recursion problem on a whiteboard. All it does is forcing candidates to study obscure problems before the interview and hope they get lucky and receive a problem that they have memorized so they can pretend to have never seen it.

estomagordo 5y ago
Or, you know, they're smart problem solvers and don't need to rely on memorizing.
- michaelscott 5y ago
  Is that what you really end up testing though? As parent mentioned this can be broken by simply memorising, so are you sure the candidate is a good problem solver or are they just good parrots?
  - thinkharderdev 5y ago
    So I think it's actually evolved into a weird sort of test of conscientiousness. Originally the idea was probably that we will test people's abstract problem solving skills. Can they come up with a solution on the fly? Ok, now can they figure out any clever optimizations? But at this point it is sort of expected that if you are interviewing with a FAANG you will be getting these sorts of questions (and they tell you that up front), so it becomes a sort of test of "is this person willing to spend 10 hours preparing for an interview"?
    - michaelscott 5y ago
      Yeah I suspect this is the case, the original intention and structure was solid but it's been progressively shifted into that FAANG space. I think the only solution is probably a question tailor made to the company interviewing, that doesn't rely on leetcode-style approaches to solve.
    - monster_group 5y ago
      10 hours? Preparing for FAANG interviews requires months of preparation.
  - estomagordo 5y ago
    I hardly think a solid interview question can be solved through memorization.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      I’ve had interviewers ask about cycle detection in a linked list. The answer was of course the classic tortoise and hare algorithm. Which took ~15 years to come up with, and was found by a Turing award winner. Anybody who claimed they “came up with the algorithm themselves” in a few minutes in an interview is a liar, and anyone who takes them at their word is a fool.
      - estomagordo 5y ago
        Well, it's not a rocket science algorithm. But regardless, it's a very bad interview question indeed.
Grustaf 5y ago
You don't have to solve it, they are interested in seeing you _try_ to solve it.
- lovetocode 5y ago
  Every interview I have done expects you to solve the problem.
  - a4a4a4a4 5y ago
    And most expect it to be solved perfectly on the first try. I was rejected by Google when I solved a LC hard problem (in Google Docs), and when asked the time complexity I said something like, "It's O(nlogn). Wait, it's O(logn), [explanation why that's the case, which was correct]." Feedback: "struggled with figuring out the time complexity." *eye_roll*
    - stnmtn 5y ago
      Honestly, stuff like this makes me wonder if there's some metric that judges the reviewers, such as "percent of interviews in which feedback is given". I've experienced this as my company recently implemented metrics for code reviews, with one of them being "percent of lines commented on during a code review"; which unfortunately makes me comment on lines that I wouldn't usually do just to serve the metric. I'm wondering if they have a similar thing.
      - a4a4a4a4 5y ago
        late reply, but I know for Google they're required to start participating in interviews to be promoted to L4 (?) and above, whether they have interest in it or not. Maybe there is a disproportionately harsh performance penalty for recommending someone for hire that shouldn't be hired, vs the other way around, and the easiest way to "tick the box" for the promotion is to do the interviews and reject everyone (unless they're seriously impressive).
  - gravypod 5y ago

estomagordo 5y ago

Or, you know, they're smart problem solvers and don't need to rely on memorizing.

michaelscott 5y ago
Is that what you really end up testing though? As parent mentioned this can be broken by simply memorising, so are you sure the candidate is a good problem solver or are they just good parrots?
- thinkharderdev 5y ago
  So I think it's actually evolved into a weird sort of test of conscientiousness. Originally the idea was probably that we will test people's abstract problem solving skills. Can they come up with a solution on the fly? Ok, now can they figure out any clever optimizations? But at this point it is sort of expected that if you are interviewing with a FAANG you will be getting these sorts of questions (and they tell you that up front), so it becomes a sort of test of "is this person willing to spend 10 hours preparing for an interview"?
  - michaelscott 5y ago
    Yeah I suspect this is the case, the original intention and structure was solid but it's been progressively shifted into that FAANG space. I think the only solution is probably a question tailor made to the company interviewing, that doesn't rely on leetcode-style approaches to solve.
  - monster_group 5y ago
    10 hours? Preparing for FAANG interviews requires months of preparation.
- estomagordo 5y ago
  I hardly think a solid interview question can be solved through memorization.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    I’ve had interviewers ask about cycle detection in a linked list. The answer was of course the classic tortoise and hare algorithm. Which took ~15 years to come up with, and was found by a Turing award winner. Anybody who claimed they “came up with the algorithm themselves” in a few minutes in an interview is a liar, and anyone who takes them at their word is a fool.
    - estomagordo 5y ago
      Well, it's not a rocket science algorithm. But regardless, it's a very bad interview question indeed.

Grustaf 5y ago

You don't have to solve it, they are interested in seeing you _try_ to solve it.

lovetocode 5y ago
Every interview I have done expects you to solve the problem.
- a4a4a4a4 5y ago
  And most expect it to be solved perfectly on the first try. I was rejected by Google when I solved a LC hard problem (in Google Docs), and when asked the time complexity I said something like, "It's O(nlogn). Wait, it's O(logn), [explanation why that's the case, which was correct]." Feedback: "struggled with figuring out the time complexity." *eye_roll*
  - stnmtn 5y ago
    Honestly, stuff like this makes me wonder if there's some metric that judges the reviewers, such as "percent of interviews in which feedback is given". I've experienced this as my company recently implemented metrics for code reviews, with one of them being "percent of lines commented on during a code review"; which unfortunately makes me comment on lines that I wouldn't usually do just to serve the metric. I'm wondering if they have a similar thing.
    - a4a4a4a4 5y ago
      late reply, but I know for Google they're required to start participating in interviews to be promoted to L4 (?) and above, whether they have interest in it or not. Maybe there is a disproportionately harsh performance penalty for recommending someone for hire that shouldn't be hired, vs the other way around, and the easiest way to "tick the box" for the promotion is to do the interviews and reject everyone (unless they're seriously impressive).
- gravypod 5y ago