Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by falcolas 4022 days ago
> It's not like they get you in a room and ask you to draw a linked list or a binary tree.

And yet the OP was turned down for not being able to invert a binary tree (based on limited information, etc etc.)? What do you feel that is, if not a "whiteboard this algorithm" question?

As for many of the other companies who try and emulate Google - this is exactly what they do.

2 comments

> And yet the OP was turned down for not being able to invert a binary tree

Your source is a series of salty tweets.

Well, for what it's worth, it's all we have to go on at the moment.

And in either case, my original comment was directed at the idea that "algorithmic interviews provide false negatives, but not false positives".

It's something that trips me up constantly, but we don't have to say anything. If there's not enough to go on, we can just be quiet.
There are tens of thousands of employees at Google. Most of them interview. People are different.
> There are tens of thousands of employees at Google. Most of them interview.

You say that as if it's a good thing. Do you expect that most people could be e.g. effective teachers, effective marketers, or effective taste-testers, with no previous experience?