3 ms·

> has been gamed and is no longer useful To be fair, if you can game it, the interviewer's doing it wrong. The idea is to ask a question that the interviewee c

> has been gamed and is no longer useful To be fair, if you can game it, the interviewer's doing it wrong. The idea is to ask a question that the interviewee can complete and then work together with them for ideas on other ways of implementing it, trade-offs, demonstrating that they understand the memory and execution model of the machine, talking about how to measure performance issues or representation choices, etc. You're trying to discover by working with them on a problem in the small how they will react when faced with similar problem on a problem in the large. And while I don't claim that A -> B, I do claim not A -> not B. If they can't even talk about the memory touched during binary search, good luck putting them on partitioning an algorithm to run across multiple processors. If you're just giving an algorithms quiz, you'd be better off just outbidding IBM on their "we will hire everyone from the top 25 ICPC teams" strategy.

steve8918 15y ago
I'm not sure if you've been through interviews recently, but from the experience of myself and my friends who have been interviewing, this is what it seems to be. Based on my experience 1.5 years ago, I quit interviewing until I got enough time to sit down and memorize algos. A popular question to ask as a stumper is "Given a tree, how do you determine if it is a binary search tree". Either that or "convert a sorted integer array into a BST".
- crenshaw 15y ago
  Why would you have to memeorize algorithms for those? Without thinking about this I don't know how to it. But I know what a BST is and I could figure this out in a few seconds/minutes, I'm pretty sure.
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    Exactly. If you have to memorize answers to these, you need to revisit CLRS and brush up on your problem solving skills. But this is also an example of how these interviews are gamed. You don't want someone who just memorized the answers and couldn't come up with them on their own, but its hard to distinguish the two during an interview. And in many cases the guy who answers faster from having memorized it can seem like the better candidate.
- larsberg 15y ago
  I haven't been through them, but I used to interview for MSFT (I did ~300 in-person interview between 2000 and 2007). I'll admit I'm totally biased having worked for them and that all my experience is there and not elsewhere.

steve8918 15y ago

I'm not sure if you've been through interviews recently, but from the experience of myself and my friends who have been interviewing, this is what it seems to be. Based on my experience 1.5 years ago, I quit interviewing until I got enough time to sit down and memorize algos. A popular question to ask as a stumper is "Given a tree, how do you determine if it is a binary search tree". Either that or "convert a sorted integer array into a BST".

crenshaw 15y ago
Why would you have to memeorize algorithms for those? Without thinking about this I don't know how to it. But I know what a BST is and I could figure this out in a few seconds/minutes, I'm pretty sure.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  Exactly. If you have to memorize answers to these, you need to revisit CLRS and brush up on your problem solving skills. But this is also an example of how these interviews are gamed. You don't want someone who just memorized the answers and couldn't come up with them on their own, but its hard to distinguish the two during an interview. And in many cases the guy who answers faster from having memorized it can seem like the better candidate.
larsberg 15y ago
I haven't been through them, but I used to interview for MSFT (I did ~300 in-person interview between 2000 and 2007). I'll admit I'm totally biased having worked for them and that all my experience is there and not elsewhere.