4 ms·
I'm kind of surprised at some of the negative comments people have towards these styles of interviews. I'm a current student still going through the interview
by wting 14y ago
I'm kind of surprised at some of the negative comments people have towards these styles of interviews.
I'm a current student still going through the interview process with Seattle / SV / Austin companies (big and small).
Every interview is the same:
- review resume
- 0-2 behavioral questions
- 1-3 technical questions covering design, data structures, algorithms, sometimes language specific (usually pointers)
Here are two recent questions asked of me this past week:
1. How would you detect the largest sub array (i.e. max sum of adjacent numbers) given an example array:
[ -1, 5, 2, -4, 6, 3, 9]
2. Given N cubes painted 1-6 sides (duplicate colors on a single cube is possible), what's the largest stack you can build such that all faces on each side are the same color? The stack is 1 cube wide and deep, solve for height.
Maybe wherever you're employed / looking for a job doesn't ask these type of questions. Congrats. However it doesn't change the fact that these questions are the norm for top tier US tech companies, and a quick glance at GlassDoor.com will corroborate.
Their effectiveness (or lack thereof) is up to the hiring companies to decide. Seriously, hot companies get flooded with applications (I believe Google gets >100k annually). They don't have time to sit down with you and pair program for an entire day, especially as a 1st or 2nd round screening.
- pjscott 14y ago> 1. How would you detect the largest sub array (i.e. max sum of adjacent numbers) given an example array: That's a fun one. The obvious solution is O(n^2), but there's a less obvious way to do it in O(n). (I'm not giving spoilers, because this actually is fun to solve.)
- wting 14y agoA sad fact is I had to look up the answer, and the algorithm is well known from one of my university's professors which I've had class with.