

Guide to Tech Interviews - kchod
http://www.kchodorow.com/blog/2013/02/28/guide-to-tech-interviews/

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dominotw
I recently had nightmare of a interview experience with AirBnb. They asked me
take 2 days off from work and fly all the way to SFO after I wasted couple of
hours doing their online coding puzzle. The first interviewer asked me a
string matching question, and insisted that I code up his brute force solution
with terrible insert complicity and second interviewer asked me to code up a
binary search tree( he had no clue if what a symetric binary tree was when i
asked him if it has to be symmetric). After which the recruiter asked me leave
saying the interview was not going well. I am yet to hear back from them about
the $1200 i spent on the whole ordeal.

Only interview there if you are ready to waste 3 days of your life and ~$1400
and think Justin Biber jokes are funny ( really? ).

Edit: Anyone know what I can do about recouping the money I spent, I sent all
the receipts and filled out their candidate reimbursement form. They wont
respond to my email.

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Breefield
Did you speak about reimbursement before flying there?

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dominotw
Yes I did. I was also sent the policy document which stated they will
reimburse me for the flights/accommodation/food. I also have the email
communication with their recruiters which said that they will reimburse me. Do
I have to get a lawyer?.

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justjimmy
Sorry to hear about your troubles. I've always had the interviewing companies
pay for the tickets on their end and they (or their travel agents) would send
me the confirmation email/tickets.

Didn't know some companies are asking to pay for it yourself upfront first -
definitely makes it more risky…

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berlinbrown
I asked this on reddit. The one thing about tech interviews. They could ask
anything. Literally any facet of technology. How do you prepare for being
asked anything?

In the Gayle book, they go from binay trees, to bit manipulation to queues,
etc, etc. Of course that won't even get touched in some technical interviews,
it will be more knowledge based, (Describe polymorphism).

I rarely get the complex algorithms (I am not in Silicon Valley) but I get a
great deal of logic questions or draw this abstract concept out on the board.
And it is hard for me to deal with NOT knowing a problem.

For example, if SQL is on the job description, might as well cover every
aspect of SQL which aren't really covered in the technical interview books.
How do indexes work, etc, etc? Venn diagram outer joins.

~~~
kchod
I wrote this specifically for this type of interview:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html).
However, there are lots of companies that do "trivia" interviews, and that
sucks.

Some interviews are just unfair and there isn't really anything you can do to
prepare, so don't waste your time worrying about it. Try to get a good story
out of it and pity the company (I know, cold comfort if you need a job).

Decent interviews will stick to what's on your resume: "you say you spent 10
years working on networking internals, can you tell me about how you'd design
a reliable network protocol?"

You can find lists of common interview questions online for almost every
technical topic, so look up "SQL interview questions" and make sure you can
answer the common ones if you're worried about them.

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jtbigwoo
_Resist the urge to follow up with the company, try to put the whole thing out
of your mind. You probably won’t be able to, but remind yourself that there is
nothing you can do and concentrate on other things. (Also, feel free to write
thank you notes, but I’ve never known a programmer at a geeky company who gave
two shits whether you did or not.)_

This is good technical interview advice, but I've never gotten a job that only
had technical interviews. Programmers might not appreciate a thank you note or
call, but managers probably will. They're trying to figure out whether you're
someone who will follow up and be responsible rather than someone who knows
what a binary tree is.

~~~
nates
I disagree, it's not like it can be negative. There's only a chance for a
positive...

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namenotrequired
Great tips, thank you. One tiny thing I -partly- disagree with:

"you absorb more info when you’re doodling than when you’re just listening" I
think this differs a lot per person. I find creative types tend to be bad at
focussing on one thing, and can focus better if they are distracted by
something they control like doodling. Personally I tend to think very linearly
and once I'm distracted by something, that immediately means I'm not focussing
anymore.

~~~
sturadnidge
I think she's actually referring to this
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/27/doodling-
doodl...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/27/doodling-doodles-
boring-meetings-concentration) rather than making a purely subjective
statement. Having said that, I don't know of any studies that have replicated
that finding so it may not be valid.

~~~
bennyg
Anecdotally, it's how I functioned best in a classroom setting.

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canadev
i personally think you should get rid of that pirated book link.

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tedchs
Agree. In the PDF, there is this little statement:

Copyright © 2008 - 2010 by Gayle Laakmann. All rights reserved.

This means something. The author needs to respect it.

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kchod
I'm trying to track down the link I got it from. It's freely available (I
downloaded it from Google career site) I just can't figure out where, now.

~~~
tedchs
Thanks for replying. I do want to say that I enjoyed and appreciated the rest
of your blog article!

You might consider that just because you were able to download a file from
somewhere does not give you the right to redistribute it. It is possible that
the site _you_ got it from may or may not have had the right to distribute it
themselves!

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enemtin
This is so well thought-out and I think your advice is bang on. Thanks for
posting!

~~~
kchod
Thank you!

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charlesdenault
Your site was throwing some DB connectivity errors...

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chairmankaga
Site accessibility was jumpy for me as well. Cached :
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.kchodorow.com/blog/2013/02/28/guide-
to-tech-interviews/)

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maeon3
If you are using an IDE like Eclipse or anything with auto code completion,
syntax color-highlighting, and syntax error highlighting, get rid of that
while coding up the exercises in the PDF.

Use Notepad++ or kwrite and disable those features, if your coding speed
grinds to a halt under these conditions, good!

That's the point of the exercise, like trying to jog at 30 thousand feet, as
you overcome the hindrance up there, and you come back down to normal level,
you feel like you can leap over a car. Same with coding, you feel like you can
code blindfolded. And your ability/productivity increases by an order of
magnitude.

~~~
gummadi
One of my friend always take his personal laptop to the onsite interviews and
asks the interviewer permission to type code on his IDE for whiteboard
exercises. He didn't have a problem and infact most of them are more than
happy to allow him to do so.

~~~
azov
Not sure it's a good idea. Remember why your interviewer is asking those
questions? So that he can compare candidates. You're making his job a bit
harder because you now have advantage over people who did it on a whiteboard.

~~~
eru
The other candidates could have asked as well.

When on the job, there's no such thing as cheating [1], so I'd like to see any
prospective employy act as pro-active as that. (And if I really need
comparability, I'd thank the candidate for their good idea, but explain why we
are going with the whiteboard instead.)

[1] Modulo conforming to laws and ethics.

