Interviewers who fail people due to simple mistakes / typos

Google
very_bored

Go to company page Google

very_bored
Jun 5, 2021 16 Comments

I've done hundreds of interviews as an interviewer and never penalize people I interview for trivial mistakes.

As an interviewee, I've had this a few times now where I go into an interview with a super-easy question (LC easy or medium) and make a small typo or mistake. These interviews are usually with runnable code so I ask "Is it okay to run this code?" Because that's how I do it in coding competitions. I'm just going to run the code and any typo will not compile and fail. I can then find the bug and solve the problem in 2 seconds instead of reading over the code manually and taking 5 minutes. I've failed a few phone screens where this has happened.

Am I getting penalized for making these mistakes? This is so irritating as the questions they ask are so stupid I could have solved them in middle school.

Some advice for interviewers: if you are going to fail someone based on something, you should give them a chance to demonstrate their skill or tell them that it's important. Don't just smile, end 15 minutes early, and fail them. Also stop asking questions that are too easy. #interview #tech #leetcode

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  • As studies show, most interviewers are actually terrible at being interviewers. Rather than holistically judging someone for their ability, interviewers are biased as to what they are nit-picky on and judge based on that. Watch videos of Laszlo Bock and his studies on interviews.
    Jun 5, 2021 0
  • Google
    lcxt

    Go to company page Google

    lcxt
    Honestly any company that enables compilation during interviews suck.

    It amazes me how common it is.

    Why are you wasting both of our times finding typos?
    Jun 5, 2021 3
  • Lol reminds me of my interview yesterday. Wasted 2 min at the end just mixing up .length vs .length() vs.size() etc
    Jun 5, 2021 3
  • VMware
    vmwaredell

    Go to company page VMware

    vmwaredell
    I don’t mind typos. I don’t care for compilation either in interviews. Show me how you think, how you solve problems.
    Rest of the things are a search away if at all you need syntax help or know what to look for.
    Jun 5, 2021 1
  • Same here. Worst part is a lot of interviewers want you to manually create the test cases. Waste so much time, especially with binary tree questions where you have to manually create the TreeNode classes and set pointers
    Jun 5, 2021 0