CTCI book suggests you to admit you know the question. Really?
Apr 18, 2018
20 Comments
Is it okay to not admit that you have seen the question before? When you do tons of Leetcode there is a high chance that you have seen the question before.
Do people usually admit or no?
comments
If the opportunity presents itself, I'd also throw a complexity curve ball and see how they handle a single extra layer of complexity.
I wouldn't outright fail someone, because there's honestly no way to know for absolute certainty, and it wouldn't be fair. However, I'd note it down, for the committee.
Here's the thing: I care more about a good thought process than I do about memorized solutions. You can pretend to think about it all you want, but it will never look genuine. You're just hurting yourself, because when I say "hire" but I also say "kind of looked like they've seen it before", that will end up implicitly giving more weight to the interviews you didn't do so well in.
The point of the interview is to correctly answer questions.