3 ms·

Wow, I just went through the exact same thing (except it took 5 months!). I had 5 interviews (1 non-technical) which went really well, then a sixth, and final,

Wow, I just went through the exact same thing (except it took 5 months!). I had 5 interviews (1 non-technical) which went really well, then a sixth, and final, technical interview with the VP of Engineering in which he threw at me a math puzzle that I had never seen before. Of course it's in pseudocode in a Google Doc, so it's basically sink or swim. I did OK, but only OK on it. His comment when we ran short of time was "Yeah, I think with a little debugging, that solution would probably work" but then he passed. Perhaps it's just my bruised ego, but I think he made a bad decision. Here he is with 5 members of his own team saying that I'd be a great fit, but he basically selects for people who have encountered a puzzle with very little relation to the actual work involved in the role. He may as well have evaluated me as a developer on my ability to prepare a chocolate souffle in 30 minutes. It would have been roughly as representative of my skill set.

kethinov 12y ago
Every detail you just described exactly mirrors my experience. The VP of engineering, the math puzzle I hadn't seen before, trying to solve it in a Google doc rather than with code I could compile. All of it. I did end up solving it, but I wasn't happy with the solution and neither was he, with good reason of course, but it was one of those problems I easily could have solved if given the proper time to work on it rather than digitally whiteboarding it for 20 minutes in a high pressure situation. A quick and dirty solution is all you should expect from working on a never before seen problem in 20 minutes on paper without a compiler. I came away feeling as though their process was more broken than my performance. Doubtless, I could have done better. But it just felt so strange to be washed out after four other engineers thought I was qualified.
- x0x0 12y ago
  The high pressure situation makes things hard. In a recent interview, I turned P(A and B and C) = P(A) + P(B|A) + P(C|AB) rather than the product of the probabilities just because I was stressed, then got a nonsensical answer. Fortunately the interviewer just asked me to reconsider that line, but it was not a mistake I would normally make.

kethinov 12y ago

Every detail you just described exactly mirrors my experience. The VP of engineering, the math puzzle I hadn't seen before, trying to solve it in a Google doc rather than with code I could compile. All of it. I did end up solving it, but I wasn't happy with the solution and neither was he, with good reason of course, but it was one of those problems I easily could have solved if given the proper time to work on it rather than digitally whiteboarding it for 20 minutes in a high pressure situation. A quick and dirty solution is all you should expect from working on a never before seen problem in 20 minutes on paper without a compiler. I came away feeling as though their process was more broken than my performance. Doubtless, I could have done better. But it just felt so strange to be washed out after four other engineers thought I was qualified.

x0x0 12y ago
The high pressure situation makes things hard. In a recent interview, I turned P(A and B and C) = P(A) + P(B|A) + P(C|AB) rather than the product of the probabilities just because I was stressed, then got a nonsensical answer. Fortunately the interviewer just asked me to reconsider that line, but it was not a mistake I would normally make.