> Did they try to fix them by inverting a binary tree?
>> Yeah maybe implementing a quick LRU cache on the nearest whiteboard will help them out here
>> Did they try checking what shape their manhole cover is?
>> Dev ops was too busy out counting all the street lights in the United States
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/kcwqij/every_s...
Max himself later opened up[0] and admitted to being difficult to work with. It is entirely likely that he was rejected based on his personality and not his ability. As someone who contributed to Homebrew many years ago I would not be surprised if this was the case. In their own words: "I am often a dick, I am often difficult, I often don’t know computer science". I am not sure why any company would want to hire someone like that and put the culture of the team in jeopardy.
[0] - https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...
"Dev ops was too busy out counting all the street lights in the United States"
If it was a Consulting interview any one would have gotten in. Thankfully no one asks these at G.
Every time I see complaints like this I can't help but think the posters have a chip on their shoulder from being rejected by Google or a similarly selective company. It's never a commentary on any fundamental issues with these types of interview questions and no one ever comes up with a better process that is equally scaleable and effective for hiring generalists. In my experience interviewing with dozens of small, medium and large companies, the vast majority of technical roles require these types of questions now. These come off as criticisms against Google specifically for asking hard variants of these questions.
I don't personally have any issue with companies asking questions like these as long as they don't simply look for "a correct and optimal solution coded up perfectly whilst under stress in under 30 minutes", but rather the process of solving the problem.
> If you don't come up with a close-to-optimal solution in about 5 minutes
Disingenuously hyperbolic. I was only given a single problem to solve in each of my 45 minute "coding rounds" at Google and Facebook. If you approach these interviews like a competitive coding competition you will absolutely not get the job. By that I mean arriving at a non-optimal solution as fast as possible while writing messy code and not explaining your thought process. Not to mention that senior roles involve an increasing number of interviews that focus on design rather than algorithmic questions.
This all seems like nonsense coming from individuals who are (understandably or not) frustrated at an interview process that doesn't align with their strengths.
I think so too, look at this angry (it says "fucking" 3 times) comment over at Reddit:
> It’s a waste of fucking time. I’m a really talented programmer [...] I’ve been eliminated based solely on messing up some dumbass arbitrary puzzle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/kcwqij/every_s...
And the only reply that to me somewhat seems to understand what's going on, getting lots of downvotes, so it got collapsed and you cannot easily find it:
> They just play a numbers game, and are able to discard perfectly capable candidates with this kind of questions, and still get a bunch of great candidates
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/kcwqij/every_s...
(although it started in a bit weird way with "Lmao", however the other replies weren't any more polite were they?)
