[dekhn]

If somebody asked me logic/brainteaser questions like that, I would politely stop them, explain that if they're asking me that question I'm not a good match for the company, and if they would like to ask a better question, I'm open to it, but otherwise, we can end the application process now. I did that recently with a junior eng who asked me a leetcode question literally with the same exact test data as the leetcode page. I ended up explaining to the CEO that at the very least his engineers should be creative enough to come up with different test data, but that realistically, if "recognize the need for, and implement binary search in 45 minutes" is your go-to question, I'm not gonna be a match at your company.

I had to fight my way into google by doing every bit of prep and practice to solve stupid questions and code quicksort but when I joined, nothing I did in the 12 years I was there required any of that. And I wrote high performance programs that ran on millions of cores (I did know some folks who needed that skill, like the search engine developers, or the maps engine, or the core scheduling algorithms in borg). The entire time I was there I tried to get people to understand the questions they're asking are just not good indicators of programming, but it was repeatedtly pointed out, the goal is to minimize false-positive hires.

I do admire your ability to solve problems like that quickly, always wished I could.

[eez0]

> If somebody asked me logic/brainteaser questions like that, I would politely stop them, explain that if they're asking me that question I'm not a good match for the company

This is exactly what I started to do after I was asked a leetcode-based question for a SRE manager position.

It turned out that by making clear my "profile", I stopped to have bullshit interviews and started to get ones more aligned to actual daily work.