I ran interviews at my last job. Most candidates struggled with basic algos like: write a function to check if a string is a palindrome.

I can't imagine a candidate being:

A. Someone who can solve engineering problems we can't with no context in under an hour.

B. Someone we don't want to make an offer too.

> A. Someone who can solve engineering problems we can't with no context in under an hour.

Not all employers have dedicated IT teams, behaviour such as this fixes a problem without having to pay for it, while giving false hope to interviewees.

>> write a function to check if a string is a palindrome.

outside of an intern or junior these types of questions are such garbage. Do your teams write a lot of trivial, isolated functions in the day to day?

It's a smoke test, there are a lot of fakers out there. Everyone should be able to write a function to check if a string is a palindrome, regardless of the role not necessarily involving writing trivial isolated functions.

No, but it should be easy.

I agree for questions that are impossible if you didn’t memorize the specific algorithm that solves them.

This question and the others I tried to ask usually have a ton of possible solutions and someone who knows how to code or can at least talk with me about coding can come up with one.

Lmao has this happened to you? If someone’s problem really can be fixed in a 45 minute conversation I’d gladly provide it for a beer. No subterfuge necessary.

Once, shortly after the .com bubble burst, and I only found out a year or so later. The interviewer, rather worse for ware, approached me in a nightclub and told me all about it.

You're hired, I will pay you ~40 beers a week