[lukeck]

Similarly to the person you’re replying to, I needed to confirm that a doubly linked list is what I thought it was because for me, high school and college were decades ago. I just haven’t had to use that knowledge in many years of professional development. Now I’ve refreshed my memory on the data structure, inserting an element is straightforward. In other words, the harder bit for me is the boring trivia of what is the data structure with this name, while the far more interesting questions how do you use it and what are its advantages and disadvantages are easy. I would expect that a good interview would focus on the more interesting parts.

[InefficientRed]

Probing for information and not being too afraid of "looking dumb" to ask foundational questions about the assignment are, in fact, part of what's assessed in a leetcode-style question. If we're honest, that's probably more important than the actual problem.

At most places I've interviewed, each interview question is a 25 minute - 30 minute session. Since white-boarding the solution takes perhaps 5-10 minutes max, in this case, there's plenty of budget to refresh definitions and provide a clean interface from which the actual task begins.

Critiquing "insert into DLL" as an unreasonable question does a disservice to the "less leetcode" position :(

[MikePlacid]

> Probing for information and not being too afraid of "looking dumb" to ask foundational questions about the assignment are, in fact, part of what's assessed in a leetcode-style question. If we're honest, that's probably more important than the actual problem.

Exactly! We were not looking for A+ CS students, we were looking for people we can work with.