Comment by bradlys
1 day ago
I'm routinely asked LC Hard questions in interviews. Sometimes more than one in one 45 minute interview.
That said, I interview in silicon valley and I'm a mixed race American. (extremely rare here) I think a lot of people just don't want me to pass the interview and will put up the highest bar they can. Mind you, I often still give optimal solutions to everything within good time constraints. But I've practiced 1000+ problems and done several hundred interviews.
This is not how it works. The interviewer knows 1-2 problems and there is no time for profiling since they are rushing through their day, probably focused on their day to day work. You are the least of their concern, believe me.
Source: we am a hiring manager.
I’ve been the hiring manager too. You’re severely underestimating how many people operate.
Not sure about the timespan that you are referring to. Post covid hiring high, in the last 2 years or so, the hiring bar has been extremely high, in general. Not denying your experiences, may be it is even higher for you.
Personally, my experience has been that pre-covid, majority of interviewers were assessing your problem solving ability and if you can code the algorithm that you came up with. Getting the most optimal solution and fixing all edge cases for all problems in all interviews was not strictly necessary. But these days, even if you have the best solution coded up for 3 problems and missed one edge case in the 4th problem, you are not “good enough”. At one place, I was dinged for not thinking of the edge case before I wrote the program, even though I caught it while coding it up, in spite of having the write solution for the other 3 problems asked in the 2 coding rounds. It is a tough market, and probably tougher for you. Good luck mate.
Do you interview at startups?
Yes. I interview at everything from pre-seed to FAANG.
I don’t think being mixed race is particularly rare in Silicon Valley?
Very rare. So is being American.