Well depends on what position. For a grunt position, I would expect the candidate to show a deep knowledge of thermodynamics, law of conservation of energy etc... it's a physics problem solvable at high school level. But a manager is not concerned with this sort of low level stuff so yeah, since the question never specified the timeframe, "one bunny" is the right answer
These sort of questions were all the rage some 10-15 years ago but have now fallen out of favor. Think 1970s Afro haircuts or 1980s dressing style. So don't worry, this sort of bullshit questions isn't asked anymore but as with fashion, bullshit always finds a way to dress under a new form.
position titles mean nothing. find out exactly what you will be doing and the backgrounds of your colleagues. birds of a feather
aquarians how legit is your code after 20 years? if you want to sort a 4 dimensional array of integers V[i,j,k,l] by dimenesion 3 so given (i,j) sort so the k's are in descending order (with the right l's attached) how would you do it and what sorting algorithm if you want to be bibilically fast and in particular the fastest worst case. what salary do you get after 20 years dont be shy? my advice would be dont go in with the attitude because youw ill get much less than you should, there are telephone engineers who write goldust. one could argue it is of more value than bloviating about the natural level of the pound.
BTW, sle lowkey tested me with some triangular matrix question over DM when he was looking for someone. So you will still get dumb questions.
It was low key. I only realized it afterwards so there is plausible deniability. But it was exactly a stupid question I'd expect in an interview. The solution did cross my mind but I thought it was too dumb and didn't really care lol Edit :it could be that I am so allergic to interviews that I sensed this question was an interview question.
Best sort algo to my knowledge is quicksort, with complexity O(N * Ln(N)). It'd take time to implement it myself but I can do it just "remembering" how it works, however if I were to quickly implement something I'd go for the "natural algo". Start at first array element, find the mininum element in the array, swap with first. Now start at second element, find minimum of the remaining, swap. And so on till the end. If you want biblically inefficient and yet asymptotically convergent (and also a programmer's joke), use this algo: while not sorted: shuffle elements! Don't ask me for an estimate of complexity, I'm sure there's a deterministic answer based on probabilities and a quant could find it - me too, but not under the time constraints of an interview. To your sorting problem, I'd need to apply a sorting algo on direction K while keeping the position of all the other elements. Regular array, when I need to swap element A[klow] with A[khigh] I'd do tmp = A[klow]; A[klow] = A[khigh]; A[khigh] = tmp; In your case that would be FOR i = 1 TO N, FOR j = 1 to N, FOR l = 1 TO N {tmp = A[i,j,klow,l]; A[i,j,klow,l] = A[i,j,khigh,l]; A[i,j,khigh,l] = tmp;}. >> what salary do you get after 20 years dont be shy I surely ain't. Bit north $60,000 / year and under special circumstances this year (working a second job that pays me some $10,000 gross per year for 16 hours per month), I've actually passed the $70k mark. Salaries for developers in Europe are shit and Hacker News is right ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20792765 ). "Yep, at least in tech, German salaries are stupidly close to Eastern Europe now. All this because in EE the free market kicked in and did it's thing, forcing employers to compete for talent while German companies artificially cap salaries to fixed grids while complaining there's a talent shortage and pushing for immigration instead of wage increases." I'm not gonna say what the cost of living is here, definitely lower than in Germany albeit I live in the most expensive city in Romania (life here costs more than in Bucharest btw). In a conversation with a colleague from Shanghai who visited us he said prices there are very very similar to my city, a bit lower though. But Shanghai is one of the most expensive places in China and the kind of food we had at the restaurant that was around 50 lei (bit north of €10 and more than a tip's distance away from $10 and that 50 doesn't include tip) it's about 60 yuan there. Or even 10 yuan in poorer cities from Northern China. Told him I know the feeling, what changed in the past 20 years here is me not being so traumatized when going to a western Europe location, a decent meal there no longer costs me a month's salary here Anyways, it seems that in spite of my efforts to discourage such an unlikely scenario, I got promulgated to the next phase of the interview process and will have another encounter with the hiring managers in the near future.
>> All this because in EE the free market kicked in and did it's thing, forcing employers to compete for talent while German companies artificially cap salaries to fixed grids while complaining there's a talent shortage and pushing for immigration instead of wage increases." Also I'm probably not supposed to say this but my current employer is not from the West but from the East. Chinese that is.
If you aren't familiar with office politics and still (need to) go to an interview, ramp-up quickly here: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ . Short summary: the currently accepted office politics theory says there are three layers in this world: losers, clueless and psychopaths. Otherwise said, grunts, managers and executives. Every now and then it happens that an executive is trapped at the grunt level like my case. I guess that's why the interview went on in spite of me not caring for it (but not enough as to actively reject it). Logically: a) If you're top level stuff at this time (20 years into corporate life), you definitely don't need any help, additions or God forbid, a job. b) If you're grunt level stuff after 20 years into corporate life then you're either a loser or a mole. c) #clueless doesn't exist in my world