[figseed]

The candidate may have solved the problem, but failed the task.

At the outset, the interviewer placed a premium on time which the candidate ignored. The candidate made assumptions that the question was contrived therefore the solution offered was simply a place to make speaking points as well as test the interviewer's code literacy and as a result, spent the entire interview rewriting the system rather than filling in the blanks and moving on as asked.

Did the candidate prove adequate experience? Sure. But at the day of the day, I feel the interviewer made a very reasonable decision to dismiss the candidate based on the fact that the response ignored the implied time constraint for the sake of adding superfluous nonsense.

If I ask someone to fix a simple bug in some of my code and come back to see the code completely rewritten, 3 times the length with prince of darkness and tortoise and hare stuff mixed in, that would likely be the last time I ask them to touch my code.

[zipfle]

The opening of the piece pretty clearly implied that the candidate did not have trouble finding work. The candidate made a good-faith effort to solve the question given in the interview while also using it as a tool to discover if this was a place where he'd like to work.

Interviewers use filters like this question to weed out employees they don't want. What's wrong with interviewees using filters like code style and problem-solving priorities to weed out employers that wouldn't be a good fit?

[nine_k]

I don't see any mention of time constraints, except for "to save time, we have written some boilerplate for you". I wish my prospective employer clearly communicated key constraints like this.

If I were the candidate, though, I'd first explain the idea of the solution (takes half a minute), then discussed ways to implement it (a minute or two), then went with a particular solution (counter, bitmap, two chasing indices, etc). I'd keep feedback from interviewers constantly flowing.

[madeofpalk]

Well, it's an interview. As both an interviewer and interviewee, you should be respectful that time is finite.