Comment by silverlake

Often it's completely free-form too. So you have to pick the language, the data model, the data structures, the traversal mechanism (recursive vs. iterative), state to track (allow duplicates? prevent infinite loops?) and how to test the example all at once before even getting _started_ with their problem description.

Many of the interviews could actually work if they broke the process down into 8 questions instead of one (how would you represent a tree? a binary tree? how would you find node X? how would you move node X to the other side of the tree?). But, the ability to accommodate understanding takes empathy and human connection, not being a jerk programmer on interview duty who is browsing HN while listing to the interviewee mumble on your speakerphone.

Never underestimate the lack of ability in the interviewer and not the interviewee. Except, the company always believes itself to be more competent than outsiders, so you're ultimately left with being condescended to unnecessarily.

Ha, I totally messed up a question for a front end interview today that could have easily been solved with timeouts. I didn't realize timeouts had resets as I haven't used them extensively and bam I'm trying to essentially design a reset for a generic counter. Boy I felt ridiculous. As soon as he said use timeout reset it's immediately obvious what I had to do. I'm not a bad programmer but between brain freeze and whiteboarding, and interviewing day after day for a few weeks, it just didn't occur. Killed me and I hope I don't miss out on an offer from a company I was actually really interested in because of some bullshit brainfart on something I'm not particularly well versed in.

Whatever! They asked me back but it sure is a frustrating feeling even if I tend not to appear flustered until I walk out, introspect, and realize what a doofus I was.

>>To be fair the tree problem he got was easy

They don't just stop at binary trees. Think of it more like memorizing hundreds of magic tricks that could be done using a deck of cards. The tree is more analogous to those deck of cards. The data structure remains constant but the tricks you can do keep changing.

I know of situations where candidates have been grilled whole full hours on tree traversal methods, and then asked to code up perfectly working solutions for them.

Do these people seriously think people who can invent 50 years of CS research by sheer analysis over an hour on the whiteboard, will be ready to work for them to write shell scripts? If not you are only testing memory skills.

In my academic days I used to refer to say "physics-standing-up" is a different subject from "physics-sitting-down" and needs to be studied separately. Some years after I left academia I had the good fortune to get in contact with the person who introduced me to acting at a very young age and thank her for her contribution to my academic career. About 30% of my success was due to my comfort working in front of an audience--even a panel of examiners is "an audience"--and I had a huge advantage over my peers because of it.

One thing that I'd recommend to anyone seeking any kind of job is taking some improv courses--they are pretty common in major centers and even some smaller towns, and can really improve your ability to deal with this kind of nonsensical interview situation, which tests a bunch of skills that have nothing to do with your ability to actually do the job.

Bingo, unfortunately, this does happen. Happened to me at Google interview with one of the rather trivial question.

Yup. I could see myself getting brain freeze on this question in an interview setting.