Re:Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
by WalterBright on Sunday December 12, 2021 @12:35AM
(#29527408)
I didn't have any credentials at the time, which is why I felt the need to be proactive in the job interview.
I also interviewed at Microsoft (just down the street) a few years later, and got the standard interview treatment.
I know what quicksort is, and I've implemented it more than once over the years. But I could not implement it off the top of my head at the moment without doing a quick refresher on the algorithm.
I was once assigned the task of speeding up a program written by <famous programmer you've heard of>. In perusing the code I happened to notice that there were two custom bubblesorts buried in it. I replaced them both with calls to C's qsort and got a nice boost. Was <famous programmer you've heard of> a fraud? Not at all. Anybody's code can be made better. I've been found guilty of having hidden quadratic code many times.
I also interviewed at Microsoft (just down the street) a few years later, and got the standard interview treatment.
I know what quicksort is, and I've implemented it more than once over the years. But I could not implement it off the top of my head at the moment without doing a quick refresher on the algorithm.
I was once assigned the task of speeding up a program written by <famous programmer you've heard of>. In perusing the code I happened to notice that there were two custom bubblesorts buried in it. I replaced them both with calls to C's qsort and got a nice boost. Was <famous programmer you've heard of> a fraud? Not at all. Anybody's code can be made better. I've been found guilty of having hidden quadratic code many times.