For virtual System Design interviews can I ask my Alexa to compute simple rote computations for me? For example, if I am estimating how many bits to use to represent epoch time in order to prepend some Primary Key ID with - in order to implicitly sort chronologically - can I ask Alexa: “Alexa, how many seconds are there in 50 years?” And then follow that up with, “Alexa, what is the log base 2 of that?” Which would give me the number of bits I would need to use to represent my time epoch for 50 years compactly. I realize these calculations are supposed to be **estimates** so doing it by hand and rounding aggresively is fine. However, I find that I often take an annoying amount if time to do this or go back and see I missed. Furthermore, showing this skill is plain useless IMO - we arent interviewing to be on the trading floor where quick mental math is valued. I *feel* as if such a thing is reasonable. Though I also think doing this unprompted risks throwing things off and explaining ^ to the interviewer is a waste of time and would probably end up being of negative util. Maybe I can’t do this now, but hell, it’d be nice! What would interviewers out there think if a candidate just did this? TC 300 #interviews #systemdesign #faang
In a way, I think it would impress the interviewer lol