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by petelevinea
3399 days ago
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I agree, especially when designing programming languages that it's a bit weird to not know how to traverse a tree. There is one thing I want to point out though. Before starting my algorithms course I knew how to solve problems recursively. I had done project euler tasks and what not. I just never knew the words abstract syntax tree or binary search tree. I could guess what they were prior to the course but I didn't know what they were off the top of my head. Do you think that it's possible that a self taught engineer would know how to solve these problems given time and enough questions to the interviewer? Maybe get frustrated with "How do you balance a search tree?" questions under pressure? |
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It's very easy for new interviewers to come up with problems that are easy for them (because they know the subject), but very difficult for the interviewee. Avoiding that is a priority for me, but I still strive to evaluate how the candidate approaches problems.
My strategy is to keep my questions as close to first-principles as possible, making the problem more about programming approach than algorithmic recollection. I had a Google interview once where they asked me to implement pivot tables, and I had to sheepishly ask: "What's a pivot table?" That set me back somewhat, and I try to avoid that in my own questions.