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Comment by namelezz | Hacker News Reader

> Remember Google infamously rejecting Max Howell, the original Homebrew author

If Donald Knuth interviewed with Google, he would fail too because he would need 24 hours to solve a hard level leetcode question[1]. Unfortunately, Google loves throwing those kind of questions at interviewees and expect them to come up with solutions within 1 hour interview, lol.

[1] - http://keithschwarz.com/interesting/code/?dir=find-duplicate

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I thought the trick with this one was to sum all the entries and subtract the sum of 0 to N-2. The remainder is the duplicate entry.

It's just a trick though; I don't think skill in coming up with these is particularly well-correlated with being a good programmer, and for that reason Google claims not to do teasers like this any more.

If a company is relying on someone coming up with a trick answer, then they deserve the employees that they get.

That works in the case where there is exactly one duplicate entry. The question says there is at least one dup entry.

> for that reason Google claims not to do teasers like this any more.

All google does is teasers like this.

To be fair, the level of depth one person knows about algorithm was a lot less back then.

Today everyone is reading CTCI book and prepping. So if you aren't at that level, you will be behind. It's just like that guy who refuses to use steroids while trying to be competitive in MLB/NFL.

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