I had a phone interview with Dropbox, feedback I got from recruiter is my code was optimal but wasn’t clean so have to give second round of phone. What to expect from Dropbox second phone interview? Seems they are very selective/strict in interview. @Dropbox
AirBnb and Dropbox have very small set of problems. This makes candidates practice perfectly and interviewers are spoiled to see clean and optimal code because candidates have already solved them. I chuckle at interviewers thinking this coding test evaluates coding skill and they can figure out who has solved the problems before. Most of interviewees do a show of pretending like they saw the problem first and they all pass when they are given a problem that they solved before.
Is it ok to tell interviewer that you have seen this problem before?
Also the point of phone interviews isn’t to see perfect code. I mean who does that in the real world. Do you write perfect code while dictation code to your team mates over the phone?
I have been called for a second phone screen as well. @1508 how was your interview with Dropbox?
You "gave" an interview? We are no more or less selective than other companies. Given that your interviewer thought the code was optimal, it's doing what its supposed to do but it does not look like it's going to be easy to maintain. You will be in a team and someone else may have to read and maintain your code, make sure you are following an easy to read naming convention, modularize and reuse your code, have good comments explaining what/why and indentation is important.
While I have your attention, is no one at DBX bothered that there's a really small set of interview questions that are asked, and all of them seem to be on Glassdoor? I found both the coding questions I was asked onsite on Glassdoor, after the fact.
Thanks for your valuable input #met