Technical Interviews: More Than a Brain Teaser?

http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2015/11/19/technical-interviews-more-than-a-brain-teaser/

by skybrian • 11 years ago

8 4 11 years ago

drd93• 11 years ago

So... What happens if the interviewee doesn't go the way interviewer expects? Like, what if I answer with this:

    bin(x ^ (x >> 1))

Most often interviewers get quite irritated if interviewer comes up with a much simplier and a faster solution than what was intended.

skybrian• 11 years ago

If the interview is irritated they're not doing it right. In my case I'd just ask the interviewee to explain his or her answer, and if it holds up, make sure to write in the report to the hiring committee that nobody else I interviewed came up with this answer before. That's why it's an interview and not a standardized test.

Coming up with an unusual solution should be a win, though it's of course not required.

Also, in some cases I might ask a slightly harder follow-up where the shortcut doesn't work.

mcphage• 11 years ago

The point is to show off your thinking process. So if you answer with that, how does that show any thinking? It's not like the interviewer really needs the algorithm for Gray codes, so I'm not sure how rattling off an efficient but opaque solution helps anyone. They're not evaluating your memorization abilities.

irascible• 11 years ago

Latex diagrams are broken.

Technical Interviews: More Than a Brain Teaser?

Related Stories