Ha! Soooooo many doctors—I know plenty of them and nurses too—have the most unhealthy habits.

I don't insist on bug free white-boarding of advanced algorithms in an interview. I muffed a technical execution point myself in my last interview on a simple question but I was able to know I was wrong without prompting and cite the exact document which would straighten me out and allow me to turn the broken pseudo-code into production code. Got the job. Google interviews are legendary for being technically difficult and a couple days long. Your M$FT story sounds believable, if dangerous from a legal standpoint. My best friend is at M$FT today and he was a VP at Yahoo back in the day. Flushed his fortune. Amazing how it comes and goes. I quit Amazon over stress and flushed my own more minor fortune in the act.

Anyway, I think you can probe for correct, on some level, answers in an interview without making it a pressure cooker. I also think pressure might be appropriate depending on the office and its culture and that you can perceive talent and conscientious attitude where knowledge is currently lacking. You're a much more brilliant hacker than I am, incidentally, so I don't presume to advise on those grounds at all. :P

In reply to Re^6: Rosetta Dispatch Table by Your Mother
in thread Rosetta Dispatch Table (Interview Question) by eyepopslikeamosquito

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