> What truly matters is the process—how you structure your code, think through problems, make decisions, and handle obstacles. Whether your solution is perfect or not is secondary.
> "Whether your solution is perfect or not is secondary."
People want to tell themselves that this is case, but in reality they're lying to themselves. The interviewers want to see the solution coded like they would code it, and they want to see it coded correctly and performantly.
As the founder and founding engineer of multiple successful startups, lead engineer at two top silicon valley companies, and having interviewed / been interviewed countless times, we only kid ourselves in thinking we're being more holistic about it.
"Solve the problem, correctly, speedily and in a similar way that I would solve it, or else you're rejected"
Another bad interviewer sign is "here's a contrived problem to solve that you would probably never encounter. solve it or else you're rejected."
It boils down to both arrogance and ignorance.
We've all read the stories of creators of popular 3rd party libraries being interviewed and rejected by companies using the creator's library.
Same can be said about the job descriptions of most of these developer roles; ridiculous. We've read stories of JDs containing requirements for "X years of experience in this library" when "this library" has only been around for a fraction of that time.
> What truly matters is the process—how you structure your code, think through problems, make decisions, and handle obstacles. Whether your solution is perfect or not is secondary.
> "Whether your solution is perfect or not is secondary."
People want to tell themselves that this is case, but in reality they're lying to themselves. The interviewers want to see the solution coded like they would code it, and they want to see it coded correctly and performantly.
As the founder and founding engineer of multiple successful startups, lead engineer at two top silicon valley companies, and having interviewed / been interviewed countless times, we only kid ourselves in thinking we're being more holistic about it.
"Solve the problem, correctly, speedily and in a similar way that I would solve it, or else you're rejected"
Another bad interviewer sign is "here's a contrived problem to solve that you would probably never encounter. solve it or else you're rejected."
It boils down to both arrogance and ignorance.
We've all read the stories of creators of popular 3rd party libraries being interviewed and rejected by companies using the creator's library.
Same can be said about the job descriptions of most of these developer roles; ridiculous. We've read stories of JDs containing requirements for "X years of experience in this library" when "this library" has only been around for a fraction of that time.
That's a great point! Interviewer is trying to hire the person and expect the same level as he is sometimes.
>Another bad interviewer sign is "here's a contrived problem to solve that you would probably never encounter. solve it or else you're rejected.
Indeed. Gladly many companies are not making a pass to the next step only after 100% with log(N) complexity time.