[grosbisou]

Same experience. Lots of noise making it hard to ask questions. The guy sounded like he was blackmailed to do that kind of job. He asked me to "sum the contiguous number in the array". So I start writing the code looping through the array, finding the boundaries and adding the elements. After 15min the guy is like "why did you add the elements? I asked you to summarize them."

Ok. Never answered their email again.

[dvcrn]

I read your comment a few times and still don't quite understand the difference between "summarize" and "sum" in this context (non-native english speaker here). Care to explain what exactly he wanted?

[akhilcacharya]

They do this on purpose to make you clarify the question.

[onion2k]

If someone asks you to "sum an array" then it's quite reasonable to think they mean calculate the sum of an array. Some languages (PHP springs to mind) have native "array_sum" functions. Wondering if someone from Google, who is interviewing a developer means "sum or summarize" would be weird.

[grosbisou]

Yep I guessed. And that's a good thing. But they should make sure the call environment is optimal (good reception, no background noise, ...) and the interviewer sounds eager to receive questions.