I one time built an events management system (like meetup.com) for a fairly big company hoping to move into that space. A few years later I quit consulting and ended up getting an interview there. I was flown out and grilled with trick questions for 2 days. They broke it up with taking me out to lunch and dinner and put me up in the W in NYC. It turned out they were looking for me to work on the platform I built but I didn't get the job. I think the excuse was culture fit. I wasn't mad, but it was a pretty surreal experience.
This is why I generally prefer to ask technical questions that don't require previous knowledge of a specific algorithm. I'm not looking for if you have memorized Cracking the Coding Interview, I want to know if you can write new code.
A favorite question of mine is to write a parser for robots.txt. One of the best things about this question is that most people can complete the base case. It gives the candidate some confidence and then you can easily add complexity to build off of the base case. It puts the candidate at ease to feel like they've completed the question and then you can spend the rest of the time asking follow-ups. There is no feeling of "oh, I need to get through x number of questions" on the candidate's part because they all just seem to flow into each other.
lcdramerica on March 25th, 2019 at 22:11 UTC »
Large Social Media Company recruiter: "our interviewees typically spend 6 weeks preparing for our interviews, taking practice exams, etc"
Me: "yeah, I think I'm just gonna keep focusing on the job that I've actually got rather than spend more time away from my family for a 'maybe'."
waterbottlesavage on March 25th, 2019 at 23:37 UTC »
I one time built an events management system (like meetup.com) for a fairly big company hoping to move into that space. A few years later I quit consulting and ended up getting an interview there. I was flown out and grilled with trick questions for 2 days. They broke it up with taking me out to lunch and dinner and put me up in the W in NYC. It turned out they were looking for me to work on the platform I built but I didn't get the job. I think the excuse was culture fit. I wasn't mad, but it was a pretty surreal experience.
andrewguenther on March 26th, 2019 at 00:08 UTC »
This is why I generally prefer to ask technical questions that don't require previous knowledge of a specific algorithm. I'm not looking for if you have memorized Cracking the Coding Interview, I want to know if you can write new code.
A favorite question of mine is to write a parser for robots.txt. One of the best things about this question is that most people can complete the base case. It gives the candidate some confidence and then you can easily add complexity to build off of the base case. It puts the candidate at ease to feel like they've completed the question and then you can spend the rest of the time asking follow-ups. There is no feeling of "oh, I need to get through x number of questions" on the candidate's part because they all just seem to flow into each other.