On 7/14/20 1:25 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
- If someone asks me to do an algorithm or coding question, I
generally tell them to pound sand; that I generally use the language
statement or a standard library, or look up hard stuff in Knuth - and
then ask them if they'd like to discuss the specifics about how I
might approach finding/developing specialized algorithms for the
problems I'll be working on. (I refuse to be a code monkey on a
string - and if they insist, I know that there's no way I'd want to
work for them.) I'm reminded of a story an old-line DEC engineer told
me - at his interview they asked him about converting an octal number
to hex, or some such - he basically asked if they had an octal-hex
calculator handy (remember the old paper ones?). After that, the
interview went swimmingly - he thought that was kind of a test to see
how he'd react (who really wants to hire someone who's going to start
doing paper calculations of something silly).
I got rejected once because he wanted me to write strstr() on a
whiteboard and it was insufficiently Knuth blessed, which I admitted and
said in real life I'd just look it up, because you know, that's what
resourceful engineers do. That wasn't good enough.
Mike, I didn't even know it was programming interview so it took me
aback even more
