[dnautics]

I asked a dp question in an interview. It was useful. Here's why. I know the solution, so I frequently guide the interviewee towards the correct answer and offer my help. Plus I put my nice guy hat on. I have seen a supposedly good candidate refuse my offers of help and then proceed to spaghetti code on the board a series of disjointed while loops that is obviously going to go nowhere.

I don't want to work with such a person. They still got the job, because connections, but will 100% never be on my team.

[pavlov]

> "I know the solution, so I frequently guide the interviewee towards the correct answer and offer my help. Plus I put my nice guy hat on."

I wouldn't want to work with a person whose idea of a useful job interview is:

"I'll pick an esoteric bullshit problem, put my nice guy hat on, and guide you towards the solution as I bask in your admiration of my largesse."

It's like when self-declared "nice guys" approach women: when you have to make an explicit point about how nice you are being right now, you're probably doing something very wrong.

[srean]

I think its a win win. They get to pick someone who is more suited to their needs (problem solving that needs some algorithms thinking) and you get to work at a place where things are more rote.

[pavlov]

Do you think that "I'll put my nice hat on and guide you to the solution, if I feel like it" is an optimal way to measure "problem solving that needs some algorithms thinking"?

[srean]

Well, of course one can be a dick about it, but nothing in the parent post indicated that he was. May be you had a bad experience in the past and projecting it on the author of the comment. I tend to / try to assume good faith.

Picking up loosely specified directions and filling up the gaps is indeed an important skill to have. If I had the time to describe the solution in the minutest detail to a co-worker, I would have the time to write it myself. Often, its a luxury that I dont have. In such situations I would certainly appreciate the skill that a co-worker can fill in the necessary detail from pointers and rough directions.

[pavlov]

A whiteboard DP puzzle is totally different from any real-world engineering situation of “picking up loosely specified directions and filling up the gaps.”

No point in arguing this further. These tests are fundamentally just a performative power trip masquerading as objective measurement — the perfect storm of software engineer bias.

[srean]

I think you are projecting your own biases here. OP said "DP question", there is no mention of a 'puzzle' anywhere. As I said in another comment of mine on this page, I have had to use DP in each of my last three years in real projects. If i were to hire someone for help with these, I would definitely be looking for comfort with DP styled thinking in a candidate. In order to do so I do have to simplify and abstract out the problem statement.

[nosianu]

An alternative point of view is that you set them up with an unsuitable question in the first place. Also, the disadvantage of stories such as yours is that we only hear one side. How did your "help" look like? We don't know.

For my taste the brevity and content of your story indicates a lack of introspection. It seems to me that the only option you consider is that the interviewee gets all the blame.

The reason for my suspicion is that independent of what happened there you should at least be aware that the story is not suitable to be shared in this form, because readers here only get your (very short too) story. Sure, you will get agreement - from people who jump to quick conclusions without actually having a basis for it. You are not even trying to give sufficient and/or unbiased information. I know this is just a forum and casual conversation, but to compare with science, which has the same issue of communicating one's ideas to other people, the equivalent would be a paper that only publishes the authors conclusions.

[collyw]

If I was given a new problem like this, the first thing I would do is google to see if it has been solved before and the approaches other people have taken. Not try to think up shit myself. With 15 years of tech experience I have found it to be a far superior approach to solving problems.

Some people may well not want to ask for help with a task during an interview seeing as its obvious that some interviewers may well mark you down for asking.

[JustSomeNobody]

> ... the correct answer.

The?

We're talking about programming, so I am rather stumped by that word.

But I suppose if your goal is to select only candidates that you can drive towards a particular solution, then "the" might be appropriate.