Hacker News Reader

Comment by t_mann | Hacker News Reader

This seems so much more relevant than what FAANG companies are asking apparently (never did an interview with them), ie undergrad algorithms and data structures problems, but in a really tricky way. I wonder why your approach to interview questions isn't the norm.

View on HN

At the time we debuted the question, it was actually a recruiting advantage for us. People would interview with us and other "big tech" firms, and get excited about the opportunity because we asked this question.

I was asked this question when I interviewed in 2020 and finished in about 35 minutes without any C experience. I can confirm that this question made me very interested in working for MemSQL/Singlestore: I loved the experience. The next step of the interview was to implement a pretty large concurrent program. I was given conflicting/very little information from the recruiter on how to complete the assignment, which I thought was odd given that in my estimation this was far too large for an interview question. I submitted my work after a couple hours of effort in an incomplete state because I decided I didn't really want to work for the company anymore. I never heard back. Really soured me on the company.

Seconded this. I interviewed at MemSQL in 2013 as an intern, and that (plus other algo based questions) get me really hooked to MemSQL.

I had to finish a half completed tool that would validate dns. I finished the actual problem in 5 minutes. Staff engineer position for a FAANG

Ok, that does sound more relevant. Either my sources gave an inaccurate picture, or that's only for junior roles.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com