So I had an interview that was like that, but I wasn’t given enough information. I was asked to implement the “inverse square law in code” ... and I explained to the interviewer who was two years out of college (I looked up all of the interviewers on linkedin, so I had a good idea of their experience and areas of expertise) that my first step as someone who hadn’t been in an academic environment or exposed to this kind of requirement for over a decade would be to research the requirement and asked if I could consult a Wikipedia article. “No, you can’t consult outside sources.” “Ok, can you explain to me the inverse square law?” “No, you should know this.”
I didn’t know that. Also, I didn’t have enough information to ask good questions, because I was pretty sure that this was an incomplete specification and I needed to ask informed questions to reach a particular implementation.
As a result, the company’s evaluation was that I didn’t know how to code.
> and I explained to the interviewer who was two years out of college
Yeah, that one's easy. Young coder sees a competent, experienced dev and tries to sabotage your interview out of fear you'll show up and make a fool of him. It's possible he was just that arrogant, but it sounds suspicious.
Based on my experience, devs who are 2 years out of college, regardless of how well they understand algos and data structures, are mediocre software engineers. The only exception to that are those devs who have been coding since they were 10 or 12, and who grew up working on actual open source projects (one of my main open source collaborators was like this, and was an excellent dev by age 20). Just growing up coding isn't enough, since you won't have exposure to the actual engineering practices needed for professional developers. And just 4 years of college isn't nearly enough, since you again don't get much exposure to the actual engineering practices needed for professional developers.
Naw, I just shadowed a new young interviewer and he asked a similar question that was unreasonable. As a recent grad he legitimately didn't recognize that the interviewee wouldn't necessarily know this one specific thing. We discussed it and he's going to try again next time with a more reasonable question.
As an active interviewer at Google, I think that person shouldn't be allowed to conduct any more interviews without proper training. That's inexcusable.
What even happened next, did you just end the interview right there? Stare at each other awkwardly till time ran out? How did they expect to learn more about your skills if you weren't doing any coding or talking?
If what you're saying all checks out, someone straight out of college (2 years is young) unless he has been working on those kind of things all the time, its an edge case at best.
The fact that he said : "No, you should know this" - Even if he knew it, it shows how they would be work with. Probably dodged a bullet there.
In years past something like this in an interview would've rattled me. But now that I've been in this biz for 30+ years I think I'd just stand up, look the guy in the eye in a really squinty way and say, "Well, then I think we're done here kid" and walked out. You get to a point where you just won't put up with this kind of bullshit after a while.
I'd ask: if I get a job at your company, will I be not allowed to consult outside sources too? I mean, about half of programmer's work on real projects is googling stuff.
I had a recruiter reach out to me recently about a VP role - when I looked her up on linked in seemed legit. But then in the “people also searched for” section there were all sorts of recruiters that appeared fake. I can’t explain it but just seemed like they weren’t real. In any case this one recruiter told me before they’d talk to me I needed to take a “cognitive” test at a third party site. I get testing... but the whole encounter felt like they were just feeding profiles into a machine.
No interview process is invulnerable to bad faith interviewers. Refusing to help you past roadblocks just makes for a worse interview signal. Maybe the candidate doesn’t know X but has extraordinary depth on Y, and so on. Bad interview training or negligence!
Though what's a bit silly here is that all the information you need is right there in the two words "inverse square", it's only the word "law" tacked on that made you (presumably) assume there had to be more to the concept.
You'd assume a competent enough interviewer wouldn't be so rigid and at least hint that you shouldn't overthink it...
What does it mean to implement it in code though? What kind of data should it consume - n-dimensional coordinates, distance matrices, some sort of power level to calculate falloff? If it’s as described, it’s way too vague. Inverse square laws show up all over.
I didn’t know that. Also, I didn’t have enough information to ask good questions, because I was pretty sure that this was an incomplete specification and I needed to ask informed questions to reach a particular implementation.
As a result, the company’s evaluation was that I didn’t know how to code.