Did they fail because they couldn't solve an algorithm? Or was it due to something else - e.g. soft skills, solving without explaining your thought process, system design, behavioral questions.
Algorithms are only one part of an interview. I wouldn't hire someone who was rude or condescending, regardless of how fast they can write an O(n) solution.
It’s just the raw scope of what can be asked. The interviewer doesn’t care if you’re an expert in standard structures like red black trees, doubly linked lists, min max heaps - or even hash tables - when they’ve got a obsession with scanning Wikipedia for articles on Tries and Topological sort because their self proclaimed 10x engineer spirits believe their Log(n) spellcheckers are gonna replace elastic search
Yeah that's what I want to know. If I ace 100% of the algorithmic questions, in real time during the interview, like flawless and pure, actual perfection in real life,[1] can I fuck up at the parts I've been conditioned under torture to fuck up on and still get the job? Nail it and nail it and nail it, do they help me out?
Like Michael O'Church talked about a company hiring a software engineer and another hiring a manager, and he and the engineer A/B testing trying to get hired as an engineer or as a manager. And in the interview, they wanted him to come up with the golden algorithm that took them months and was their hot shit with which they would win big, they wanted that in an hour. Actually less, you couldn't solve it in minute 59 without coming up with incremental steps to "show progress" as if that weren't counterproductive. So like 4 minutes, Michael O'Church lied through his teeth in favor of these guy's patience. 4 minutes of silence and it's over. And because he couldn't do it that's when they started discounting points, like you start at 100 and then get knocked points for not having gone to Stanford (or Berkeley as he puts it, but you still get discounted for Berkeley in reality), then more demerits for every flaw, negging over and over. Always communicating it's the engineer's fault he's treated like shit.
Whereas for applying to manager (which in many ways was more honest, it was arguable, he just hadn't been formally promoted with actual employees with a wage, he just pretended he had and had the knowledge to back it up), with applying to manager, he started at like 80 points and everything he did well added points to his value, they saw him as an ally. Against the software engineer, against his own alternate self, whom they treated as the subordinate, like enemy slash slave.
So that story I don't know how to judge, I don't have enough visibility on Michael O'Church and I have very negative opinions about a lot of his thoughts. But that's not the question. The question is, if I do crack the golden algorithm that took them months right then and there, in the heat of the moment under time pressure, in the interview, under adversarial circumstances, all of that, in the four minutes they actually give you without acting impatient, if I DO not if I don't IF I DO will that get me human dignity and a wage? Or will they still reject me because I'm not submissive, which I can never again be after standing up to torture?
[1] So what this means is, suppose a chess player is at a crossroads, and thinks for a minute. And from that point on, plays perfectly until checkmate. Every move correct. Saying I don't do it perfectly would be like saying the chess player didn't play perfectly because he didn't lay the pieces in the exact geometric center of the square when he moved them. I get every algorithm interviewer to say "what the fuck", "did you hear it before?" "that was fast" But it's never enough. Best job I had was $20 an hour, dream job, as a handyman, construction. Dream job. I got promoted into software, and was quickly fired.
Managers are primates first, mathematicians a distant second. They talk about being mathematicians a lot, like a lot, they pretend it's all about the bottom line, but no. It's about dominance, being alpha, a guy who stood up to torture is an alpha challenger, no hire, no matter what he can bring to the company. Mathematics is a distant distant second.
