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> My suspicion is that more candidates than one would expect get hung up worrying about giving some sort of clever answer to impress the interviewer that they b
by kevan 12y ago
> My suspicion is that more candidates than one would expect get hung up worrying about giving some sort of clever answer to impress the interviewer that they bobble it up a bit.
I've definitely felt that pressure as an interviewee. It's pretty disheartening to write a simple and obviously correct implementation only to have the interviewer express their disappointment that you didn't use a particular optimization.
The most fun technical questions I've had start with making a functional algorithm and then massaging it to meet whatever time/space complexity requirements are asked for. Sometimes it results in a complete rewrite and that's ok, the real world works like that too.
- jlebar 12y ago> It's pretty disheartening to write a simple and obviously correct implementation only to have the interviewer express their disappointment that you didn't use a particular optimization. I almost always preface whiteboard coding sessions with "I'm going to write some dumb, slow code and then we can make it faster if you want. Sound OK?" I've never had anyone disagree with this, but if they tell you they want you to go straight to the clever solution, hey, now you know what they're looking for.
- Bahamut 12y agoEven still, sometimes it helps just getting a solution down in order to step back and figure out the clever solution.