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0 pointsmunificent4y ago0 comments

> for being stubborn and drunk on ego.

I think you would have a hard time finding someone who knows me describe me that way. Maybe the way I related the anecdote here doesn't present me well. I am pretty meek and easily flustered. I don't think I was any more confident back then than I am now which is, alas, not very.

> The fact that you were unable to incorporate this into the conversation

In this case, it was an interview with three other engineers simultaneously (a truly cursed interview format), so it was hard to incorporate much of anything into the conversation. It felt much like I imagine a thesis examination where the three of them were in charge of pacing and questions. (Also, it was ten years ago, so I'm sure my memory has faded.

What I recall was them asking me how I'd do some sort of growable collection. I said I'd probably do a dynamic array. I mean, that is the way 99% of growable collections are done today—look at Java's ArrayList and C#'s List. This is a company that does strictly PC games and I was hiring for a tools position. Dynamic arrays are the right solution most of the time in that context.

They asked what the complexity was. I said something like "Constant time, across multiple appends." They didn't seem to get that and asked what the worst case was. I was some appends are O(n) but amortized across a series of them, it's constant. When I tried to clarify, they said they wanted to move on. I think in their minds I was hopelessly lost and they wanted to get to the next question so that I didn't embarrass myself further.

I would have been happy to have a more productive discussion about which problems amortized analysis was the right fit for. My impression was that they had never heard of amortized analysis at all, and thought I was confusing average case and worst case analysis (which I was not). From their perspective, I can see how I looked lost or wrong.

Overall, they had a superior tone that I found off-putting. (For comparison, I didn't get that impression from any of the interviews I had at Google the very next day. My Google interviewers were all kind, engaging, and really fun to talk to.)

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dcow4y ago

You may be entirely correct in your analysis. There are definitely a fair share of toxic interview setups and interviewers out there. What I found off putting about the way you presented the story was the bit at the end where you gloated about your current employment status and achievements as if they missed out on some great mind. It gives the impression that in your view, your intellectual prowess was more important than being a good candidate and potential teammate. While that of course may just be the way it came off, that was my perception. So it drove me to present the alternate, less charitable, interpretation where the interviewers did in fact understand amortized complexity and simply didn't find it suitable.

> I would have been happy to have a more productive discussion about which problems amortized analysis was the right fit for.

This is the type of conversation I tend to enjoy during interview problem solving because IMO it most accurately reflects the type of conversation you'd actually have with teammates when building a system. I also might try to bait this topic by specifying O(1) worst case insertion up front and watch for how the candidate interprets the requirement, what type of questions are asked, etc. If you started implementing an array backed thing I might stop you early and prompt the insertion analysis specifically. However, in my experience people tend to discuss an overview of the solution before writing any code which is a great point to iron out any clear non-starters or missing requirements.

> Overall, they had a superior tone that I found off-putting.

Fair. It's a two way street after all. Even if they were entirely fine and it was all a comms misunderstanding, sometimes personalities just don't gel. Glad you found success the next day!

munificentOP4y ago

> What I found off putting about the way you presented the story was the bit at the end where you gloated about your current employment status and achievements as if they missed out on some great mind.

Yeah, that's fair. I'm not one to gloat usually but I never felt like I got closure from what was a pretty unpleasant interview experience so I couldn't resist the urge to get a dig in.

> This is the type of conversation I tend to enjoy during interview problem solving because IMO it most accurately reflects the type of conversation you'd actually have with teammates when building a system.

My Google interviews were so much better in this respect. The interviewers were really candid and fluid. They did a great job of letting me bring up points that I thought were relevant but not get too ratholed. Overall just a miles better experience.

> sometimes personalities just don't gel.

One way to look at it was that the interview was a success because it established that I likely wouldn't be happy working with those devs and that kind of culture.

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