Comment by jb3689
12 hours ago
A good interviewer won’t be looking for a single solution to the problem. I’d expect them to entertain the Google Sheets answer - it’s good signal that the candidate will consider what already exists in the world. I’d rather extend the problem: the team is spending considerable time iterating with manual entry, what would you do?
Complete agreement. "Excellent answer, that is what I would do as well, now what if we wanted to build it in-house?"
"That does sound like something nice to have. However, recreating Google Sheets is a substantial undertaking. First, we need to evaluate the business case for duplicating something that already exists to ensure that there is a net benefit in doing so. Second, we need to determine if the business has sufficient capital to see the project through."
There is a difference between being smart and acting smart.
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That's a good real world answer, but a terrible SWE interview answer.
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I suspect a lot of businesses are going to make this mistake in the "SaaS is dead" era as companies try to eliminate $50k/mo subscriptions for boring business software, and they figure it's easier to burn AI tokens creating an internal solution they didn't plan on maintaining in the far future.
Funny times we're in right now.
> "now what if we wanted to build it in-house?"
"Well I would probably go home and work on my resume because that's a fool's errand."
I hate going to work and reinventing wheels all day because the company I work for thinks it's so special that every business function needs a 100% tailored solution to solved problems. I much prefer working somewhere that's able to tailor business processes to conform to existing standards.
But maybe that's just me.
I’ve interviewed a few hundred people. Probably approaching a thousand, if not already. An interview is a scenario, and if you aren’t willing to engage in the scenario that we all agreed to partake in, that’s a huge warning sign that you’re going to be difficult later down the line. The point of the question is to have something remotely understandable for both sides to talk about, that’s it.
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Setup Etherpad
Think of it this way: they're paying you lots of money to build something boring that has a lot of prior art/research available to you for free. This could be the easiest money maker in your life.
It's not your problem they're hellbent on building a new wheel. They're willing to pay you!
Chances are, you've thought of your own pain points in whatever they've asked you to build and you've now got an opportunity to shine by solving them and demonstrate your expertise.
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The obvious way is to put the spreadsheet file on some shared network location.
You still need some "locking" mechanism so two people don't try editing at the same time.
Which again probably means Google Sheets is the best answer!