Hacker News Reader

The problem he's having is that good interview questions are getting busted, as people post solutions on the web.

If you have a lot of similar interview questions, then there's no way anyone other than a savant can memorize them without actually learning the theory.

View on HN

Point taken. But it's hard to come up with good interview questions, as my colleagues here, at Google, and at Endeca can attest. In contrast, it's much easier to post solutions.

That's why I'm working on an approach that assumes the candidate does of prior knowledge of the problem. But not there yet.

One thing that I've noticed over the years is that almost no one prepares for an interview in any way so you'll still keep out the worst candidates with this question.

I think Google etc are exceptions, people do prepare for technical interviews there.

There's not too much difference between "people who get dynamic programming, after boning up for the interview", and "people who can answer your dynamic programming question because they read the answer to a similar one while boning up for the interview". Both are probably good candidates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com