4 ms·

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
( Opinions are my own ) Anacdata: last year I passed the interview at Google. I completely failed to solve one of my coding interview questions. I demonstrated I knew what to do but I attempted a fancy way to write the code and it didn't pan out. Completely fell on my ass. Other interviews went very well though. Only comment I got was "X said your code was a little messy" because I used python generators + list comprehensions. You can totally fail a question in a tight time slot if the process is built right. What is stupid is the variability in opinions if interviews. This one dude disliked list comprehensions so much he lowered his rating of me despite this being a normal thing for python programmers. You have no way to know if you hit a nerve ahead of time for an interview and it sucks. I had similar things happen with things like discussing the C spec with interviewers in questions like "what happens when you dereference a pointer to 0" and then you have to say "you want me to say segfault but this depends on the vmm and ring your process is running on".
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  And the variability, or just the uncertainty in the interview of what they are looking for. I got dinged for using a promise over async/await (for a backend job that mostly tested my React of all things). I had absolutely no idea that mattered to them.

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

( Opinions are my own ) Anacdata: last year I passed the interview at Google. I completely failed to solve one of my coding interview questions. I demonstrated I knew what to do but I attempted a fancy way to write the code and it didn't pan out. Completely fell on my ass. Other interviews went very well though. Only comment I got was "X said your code was a little messy" because I used python generators + list comprehensions. You can totally fail a question in a tight time slot if the process is built right. What is stupid is the variability in opinions if interviews. This one dude disliked list comprehensions so much he lowered his rating of me despite this being a normal thing for python programmers. You have no way to know if you hit a nerve ahead of time for an interview and it sucks. I had similar things happen with things like discussing the C spec with interviewers in questions like "what happens when you dereference a pointer to 0" and then you have to say "you want me to say segfault but this depends on the vmm and ring your process is running on".

MattGaiser 5y ago
And the variability, or just the uncertainty in the interview of what they are looking for. I got dinged for using a promise over async/await (for a backend job that mostly tested my React of all things). I had absolutely no idea that mattered to them.