After doing 500+ Leetcode problems and going over CLRS 3 times, finally I got rejected due to insufficient knowledge in algorithms and data structure, and not able to come up with expected answers after many hints. (Could be because I am an Indian female? My conversations with my interviewers were actually very polite) Had a debate with an interviewer about part of my code, which he claimed not needed and error prone, but I proved him/her wrong at the end. Had another debate with an interviewer about choices of data structure to use, couldn't convince him/her without throwing him a textbook. Was being doubted about choices of algorithm to use, I didn't fight for it but still feedback is not expected answer. I just want to tell my interviewers: Yes, weighted quick union with path compression can lead to linear time complexity in practice! (Difficult proof though) Yes, in graph traversal besides visited and unvisited flags there is this inprogress flag so a set or boolean flags might not be enough, not that I don't know what is a Hashset! (White/Black/Grey marks on textbook) Yes, top-down dynamic programming could be faster than bottom-up dynamic programming in cases that not all subproblems need to be visited! (Bottom-up is not always optimal or you prove it to me) Yes R-way Trie could be faster than Hashmap for string search/dedup because when the target string is not present Hashmap still iterates through all characters to get hash but Trie can terminate search early with sublinear time complexity! (Hashmap is linear to input string length) To Google: If your interviewers are not like me spending all night every day studying algorithms and data structures, how could you reject me based on their words? To whoever failed Google interview: It's okay, it could be Google's loss. To those who are spending a huge amount of time on Leetcode just for doing interviews: The system is broken, but you are a hero doing things that need to be done.
Same with above...
Do you want to be the colleague of a guy who throws textbook and yells at you during a problem discussion or peer review to prove that he is right? Question is obvious, so is the answer.
Problem discussion is different. What would you do if your interviewer doesn't know what he/she is talking about? Do you just accept it? What if it's an important interview?
Besides showing your technical skills you are expected to show soft skills as well. There is a special grade for “googliness”. You can solve multiple problems in a suboptimal way, but it’s a huge red flag if some of the people said that they would not want to work with you. I am not an interviewer myself this is just my understanding of the process. If you care, my advice is to take it easy, there will be many cases when someone has no idea what are you talking about and perhaps vice versa, you should be prepared to handle such cases.:) Funny enough I also had an interviewer at Facebook who never heard about union search with path compression and I also got rejected:)
QED: The system works!
I will not like to be stuck with OP on an airport for even an hour.
Why would you be on an airport? I wouldn’t want to be on an airport either. 🤔
Sorry to know about the rejection. Think you have already excelled the tough part ie technical. You just need to work on behavioural part and you would get it. Also, Googles not the end, dont be desperate, try fb/uber etc. You are very close, good luck ✌️
An interview is not all about getting the question correct. It’s about if they want you as a colleague. One of my past team leads wanted me to suggest something ludicrous and see how the candidate reacts.
That’s why god giving less intelligence or knowledge is blessing in disguise, because that keeps us humble. Atheist trolls please stay away.
I think what a lot of people are trying to say is that at the end of the day, interviews are about the question of ‘can I see myself working with this girl/guy?’ which depends on a lot of factors. Sure, technical aptitude is super important since you certainly don’t want to hire someone who can’t pull their own weight or will weigh the team down, but the social component is not negligible either. For engineering, the behavioral component (ex. Googley or Jedi parts) is mostly a filter for the really bad apples. Whether due to poor matching with interviewers or yourself, it looks like you got caught in that filter. Just remember that interviews (and also code reviews...) aren’t ego contests. Being able to adjust behavior to the time and setting is an important quality imo. I hope you have better luck next time or elsewhere!
Sounds like something on /r/iamverysmart
I’m really glad I don’t work with you.
What would you do if your interviewer doesn't know what he/she is talking about? Do you just accept it? What if it's an important interview?
+1, Uber