| >treat these interviews like the SAT If you have an interview with complicated tangled questions with too many things to handle, or questions that require the knowledge of a special algorithm, then either you fail because you haven't come across it, or you pass because you know the answer and pretend that you don't. Then those interviews literally become the SAT. I think it is a good strategy when it comes to giant companies (applicant's job demand>>supply). It's just as a high SAT score is relevant when it comes to the top schools. It signals to employers that either you're a genius who have done a lot, or you want the position badly enough to go through the pain to study and memorize them. Either is a good thing to have. I think for smaller companies, posing those crazy hard questions and expecting the best answer is a bad idea. I have seen companies that have executed the tech interview very well, though. The questions don't require specific knowledge about an algorithm. The interviewer hinted the interviewee when they needed help. I got asked questions that I never came across but managed to come up with a great answer by the end of the session. That's a sign of companies that know what they are doing. After interviewing with several companies in different sizes with a mixture of good/bad interviewing processes, I realized the YouTube tutorials and the books weren't wrong. But not everyone has a bad interviewing process. And you probably shouldn't expect a non-tricky one from a giant tech company that everyone wants to get in. It's like dating the hottest girl in high school -- you know the name of the game. But for a real happy relationship, maybe you don't need to chase the hottest girl. Maybe you should look for smaller companies that like you as much as you like them. |