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A comment on Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by oraguy on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @06:59AM (#18449207)
On the contrary, the interview was an ordinary one. The screening round consisted of very basic fizzbuzz type coding ability checks: Reversing a linked list, finding duplicates in a list, etc.

Further rounds of interviews covered data structure problems (trees, hashtables, etc.), design problems, scalability problems, etc. It was just like any other interview for software engineering role.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by alexeiz on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @01:52PM (#18452628)
"Well, your interviews went quite well. Now the final question: what would you do if you start losing your mind?"
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by CoolGuySteve on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @09:33PM (#18456403)
"I'd like you to write a graph algorithm that traverses the abyss, the cosmic horror that consumes one's mind, that traverses twilight to the rim of morning, that sees the depths of man's fundamental inability to comprehend.

Oh ya, the markers in here are pretty run down, let me pray to the old ones for some more"

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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by breatheoften on Saturday November 17, 2018 @05:41PM (#18477749)
I have written the algorithm you requested - but I wish I hadn’t run it. I hit ctrl-c when I realized what it was doing but it was too late... The damage is done — we are left with only the consequences and fallout.

Forgotten dreams like snowflakes melt on hot dusty ground, soon to turn into hard dry mud beneath a bitter polluted sky.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by doctorless on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @10:33PM (#18456667)
Pretty sure I was asked that question in an Amazon interview.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by mlthoughts2018 on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @07:29AM (#18449344)
Were you even given substantial time to ask the interviewers questions? In most interviews I’ve done, even later round interviews whether it’s a finance company, start-up, FAANG, and companies of all sorts in between, I was given at most 5 minutes to ask questions after some dumb shit whiteboard algo trivia.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by oraguy on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @07:49AM (#18449436)
I was given 5 minutes to ask questions after each round of interview. That part was ordinary too. That's what most of the other companies do (FAANG or otherwise).
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by sodafountan on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @12:33PM (#18451746)
The real risk is for people who are too young to know what to ask
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by numpty13 on Thursday November 15, 2018 @07:17AM (#18458630)
I'd hope they wouldn't even consider somebody for this sort of job who's too young to know what to ask.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by Latteland on Thursday November 15, 2018 @06:15PM (#18464397)
That's kind of naive, of course you want young people who will work hard and maybe not know what they are getting in to. I was offered a job at oracle back in the day, I would have felt a lot of despair if this is what it was.
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Re:Ask HN: What's the largest amount of bad code you have ev... by rumpelbums on Thursday November 15, 2018 @02:18PM (#18462306)
I am not sure what position you were interviewing for and to what level of interview you made it.

When I was interviewing for an SRE position with Google in Dublin, I had about 10min to ask questions in each of the 5 interviews that were conducted on-site.

In between the interviews, a sixth SRE would take me to lunch for about an hour. Anything discussed with him wouldn't be evaluated as part of the interview.

So there was plenty of time for questions, I would say.

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