I've got a story of my own that has some remarkable similarities to this one. When I interviewed with Microsoft, they asked me to write a program that detects w

I've got a story of my own that has some remarkable similarities to this one. When I interviewed with Microsoft, they asked me to write a program that detects whether the stack grows toward lower address or higher addresses. Since I had studied computer engineering with an emphasis on CPU architecture, this was trivial for me, and I got the job. A few years later I interviewed with Google, and they asked me the exact same question. I didn't tell them I've already done this question with another company, in part because I knew the answer the first time around and didn't see the point in potentially torpedoing an opportunity to work at Google. For another interview question at Google, they asked me to write a heap allocation algorithm for the Linux kernel, and since I had recently written some kernel code, I happened to know (at the time) exactly how to use the kernel linked list manipulation macros from memory, which really impressed the interviewer. I ended up getting the job at Google too. Both jobs defined my career in many ways -- especially the Google gig. I've never performed quite so well on coding interviews since then, but somehow internal references and prior accomplishments seem to give enough momentum to make mediocre coding performance a non-issue. In fact I've never interviewed for a job for which I didn't end up getting an offer. In my case, I really did spend a lot of time in college getting as much exposure in breadth and depth to computer architecture as I could, and so I feel I earned my career. But at the same time I can't help but wonder to what degree dumb luck came into play with respect to the interview questions I got asked when I started out in Big Tech.