justAnotherGuy's blog

Interesting Interview Experiences!
By justAnotherGuy, history, 9 years ago, In English

Hi,

This blog-post is inspired from Google interview — task difficulty. Swistakk and a few others had mentioned their experiences there. It is inspiring!

I (and a lot of others, I'm sure) would like to hear interesting Interview experiences of red, yellow coders in companies like Google, Facebook, Quora etc. You guys are smart, nodoubt, and we would like to learn from you. I know there are many answers in Quora, but I'd like it if the smart guys out here share their experiences

I know you have signed an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement), so you don't have to mention the questions. We're just interested in your experiences. :)

This is my first blog post on CF, so kindly be polite to me. (if you know what I mean)

Thanks a lot,

Just-Another-Guy.

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Comments Comments (14)
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9 years ago, # |
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It seems, everybody taking their NDA seriously :P

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    9 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +18 Vote: I do not like it

    It seems that every yellow and red user is disgusted to speak with black anonymous user. justAnotherGuy, write this blog with your main account, not with fake.

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      9 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +38 Vote: I do not like it

      May be he would havr had better luck if he kept handle as justAnotherGirl

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      9 years ago, # ^ |
        Vote: I like it +17 Vote: I do not like it

      What if my main account didn't have any pic, no name, not even says where I'm from. None of my friends know that it's my account. Say, I had participated in 10 matches, and I'm an Expert. Would that make make me anonymous or not?

      And how does it matter? They're not talking to me just in private. It's for the whole community. I just started the topic.The purpose is served. Isn't that enough?

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        9 years ago, # ^ |
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        I just want to help you to get an answer, I'm trying to explain, why nobody answers this blog.

        For example: In vk (russian social network) I got a letter from anonymous boy. He asked me "How to set a framework cocos2d-x on my computer?" (It seems that he found me in group "cocos2d-x followers"). I gave him a link on habrahabr (with instruction). After that he started to write some strange messages, and I asked him "Who are you?", and he haven't answered. After that I blocked him with message "write me with your main profile please".

        I'm supposing that main part of CF-society has the same opinion, cuz it's quite unpleasent to speake with person, whose name you don't know (in my opinion it's little bit unpolite).

        Blue expert with 10 matches is much better than totally anonymous black person IMHO.

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9 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +79 Vote: I do not like it

I have an amazing experience of interviewing at Yandex. It was more than a year ago, but my buttheart is still burning whenever I think of it. Once I am angry enough and have spare time, I will write a separate blog about it.

Stay tuned!

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    9 years ago, # ^ |
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    We all are eagerly waiting for your post. Plz don't forget about it ! :))

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      9 years ago, # ^ |
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      You know, I'm trying to forget it for more than a year...But I can't :(

      Btw, I wonder: do you represent Yandex or students?

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        9 years ago, # ^ |
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        I am a student at the MSU and I am planning to be interviewed this or next year, that's why I am so interested.

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9 years ago, # |
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I had interview with Microsoft a couple of months ago. It was quite nice in the sense that before this interview I expected both good and bad questions. By good I mean interesting algorithmic or software development related questions. By bad I mean the ones like how many tennis balls fit in a bus or where you see yourself in five years :) So the interview was nice because I didn't get even one bad question, all were good!

From algorithmic point of view, the interview was not hard at all. Many problems were pretty standard. I had to write code to: find the number of connected components (BFS), find the first occurrence of text in a string (KMP), find all primes up to N (sieve of Eratosthenes), find the sum of elements of contiguous rectangular submatrix in O(1).

The challenging parts for me were: to speak in foreign language, to write code on paper and to stay calm while writing code on paper :)

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9 years ago, # |
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my Google interview experience in three words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0AKJMGxwpE

It is just wrong.

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9 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it -21 Vote: I do not like it

Petr

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9 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +3 Vote: I do not like it

If you have a strong contest background, most of the algorithmic and implementation challenges you will face in interviews are relatively easy, even at the more selective companies.

I've still seen some tricky questions from time to time. For example, one thing that interviews can do which competitions can't is differentiate linear solutions from nlogn solutions. This means that certain techniques which are not relevant to competitions can appear on interviews.

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