And, again, it's the right thing to do. When candidates admit that they've heard the question before, that is impressive to interviewers. Interviewers like that. Honesty and ethics matter in the real world. By not admitting to your interviewer that you've heard the problem before, you're actually losing an opportunity to score bonus points. https://www.quora.com/Should-you-tell-the-interviewer-that-you-have-heard-the-question-before-or-practiced-it-no-matter-how-many-questions-are-repeated?ch=10&share=34bb9bda&srid=t3wO
I’d rather take my chances and use my acting skills. You’ve gotta be a rockstar to choose these extra points over risking to get a problem you won’t solve.
At this point I've done like 400ish LC total and probably 1000+ competitive programming problems. My issue is more or less every problem is similar to something that I've seen before. So, I tell an interviewer I've seen the problem and then they pull out another problem that I've also seen, and then what? What if I haven't seen the exact problem before, but a very similar one? Where exactly does the line get drawn?
I mean if it was someone else, would they tell the interviewer? And u are being evaluated against them
This isn't how Google does interviews. It's not a PVP situation where you're directly compared with anyone else.
Why on earth would you reveal that? The “points” from adeptly solving the problem far outstrip any honesty-related door prize, especially if you are merely passable on the alternative question. Don’t be the greater fool. No one else would admit this.
What if they ask you to tell them if you have seen the same question before?
As an experienced interviewer at Google (150+), one of the strongest negative signs I get is when someone thinks they've seen the problem before, doesn't tell me, and then barrels along to the solution while getting it subtly wrong and not noticing. Or when they can't explain their solution coherently. Or when I pivot to ask a more complex variation and they completely fall apart. You may fool an inexperienced interviewer by pretending to have not seen the problem, but if you get caught, it'll go much more poorly than if you'd admitted you'd seen the problem before.
The poll unfortunately doesn't capture this, because if you answer "No, you should tell the interviewer", it seems worthless to do so. I fully agree with your point. Thinking about the large scale of interviews and interviewers, it seems to be a minority position in the polling and I wonder how many here are interviewers themselves. Is the interviewer training at Google thorough where this is emphasized strongly to penalize someone who doesn't mention seeing a problem? Also, what if you have seen a problem, but it was a while ago and may not remember the solution well or at all, should it be brought up?
What is your advice to people who have virtually seen every kind of problem before (high level competitive programmers, etc.)?
The reason I will never say it is because I’m terrible at remembering solutions, and have to solve it from basic principles anyway. I can do without the extra pressure
thanks for sharing. imo we can only solve very few problems from first principles. most of problems need experiments, which inexperienced interviewers won't appreciate. a lot of interviewers themselves get in by memorizing solutions.
After being accused of having seen a problem when being able to come up with a solution quickly (for a problem I honestly never saw before) I stopped caring about this, unless the repetition happened between interviewers in the same day.
I generally just be upfront with the interviewer and tell them "oh I actually think I know the answer..." And then walk them through how I would derive it. Genuine honestly is almost always valued. If it's not then do you really want to work at a company that encourages lying over honesty?
That's not what I mean.