[LostTrackHowM]

With over 20 years experience in the industry, and some products I have worked on visible in SuperBowl advertisements, I can honestly say during interviews I can count to potato.

Most recently during a live coding challenge I forgot to you, you know, occasionally run and test the code I was working on, and had one hour to complete.

I can also anecdotally report code challenges seems to have become a lot more common in interviews recently.

And yet, we are still lucky to be in an industry with so many opportunities which pay so well. After several months of interviewing, and failing pretty much every code challenge, while being a programmer over 40, I finally got hired. And can happily report things are going well once again.

My advice is train interviewing. Train not just solving programming puzzles, but also doing it under the gun. That's not easy to train for real, but try to get as close as possible.

And there is no harm in keeping your options open regarding a career change. If not the interview process, but the work itself ever starts to really make you unhappy, it might be time to switch careers.

[dehrmann]

> I can also anecdotally report code challenges seems to have become a lot more common in interviews recently.

At least these are halfway representative of the job. It's a lot better than being told you're two inches tall, in a blender, and the blender's going to turn on in five seconds, what do you do.

[maerF0x0]

I fly out. If they're going to make a completely unreal scenario, I'll use a completely unreal solution :)

[itronitron]

i think that is the correct answer, reverse the blades and then jump over them so the air current forces you out like one of those indoor skydiving places

[burntoutfire]

Try to dismount the blade from the axle (they're designed to be easily separable, at least in the model I own) and just have the axle rotate and do nothing?

[mxxx]

Pleeeeease tell me you’ve actually been asked this question in an interview

[dehrmann]

No, but it's an apocryphal Google interview question. One of these days I'm actually going to weigh my head (another Google question).

I've gotten a logic riddle that involves scissors and rope, asking what my super power would be, and favorite movie. One that was at least based in math was how many ways are there for a knight to move from the lower left hand corner of a chess board to the upper right without moving back (no left or down moves). Not the DP-solution, though, a closed-form equation.

[ouid]

Get in a pool at the deep end with some floaties and some iron ankle weights. Add floaties and weights until you are at equilibrium at your neck line. Hold your breath and add some weights slowly to your hands until exactly when you start to sink. Drown, but include a request in your will to have them remove your head at autopsy. Have a friend, loved one, or coroner weigh it.