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Just because some problems seem hard to you doesn't mean they're tagged incorrectly. In my experience interviewing with some of these big companies, there was no strong correlation between the difficulty of a problem and whether it was asked over the phone or in person. You can definitely be asked very simple or very difficult problems in either. Trust this website. It has a pretty representative sample.

- eugene.yarovoi July 20, 2012 | Flag Reply
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Accuracy of the interview type is debatable (Many ask online contests and class assignments here) but I guess if there is no correlation, it does not matter.

I have another question. These days there seems to be a heavy emphasis on "writing clean code on white board". What is the expectation here? Is there any room for error?

- axecapone July 20, 2012 | Flag
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The default type of an interview is "Other." So if people are tagging a question as something, you can assume that it's accurate.

But, what Eugene said is correct. There really isn't much or any correlation between the difficulty of a question and when it's asked. This is because you're judged on each question relative to how other candidates performed on the same question. So it's no easier to get an offer / move to the next stage from an easy question vs. a hard one.

- Gayle L McDowell July 21, 2012 | Flag
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I was even saying that I don't think there's much correlation between the objective difficulty of the question and whether it's asked on the phone or in-person. Actually, if you take the fact that performance is relative into account, shouldn't you conclude that in-person interviews are more difficult because only the toughest competitors get to that stage? You're the expert, of course, but doesn't it follow from the premises?

- eugene.yarovoi July 21, 2012 | Flag
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@axecapone: yes, there are lots of problems from coding competitions and lots of homework problems here. But these are very easily distinguishable from the rest and so it doesn't impact reliability. See a problem that has constraints, sample input & output, and a very detailed, very clear problem statement? That's from a coding competition. See a problem where someone just wants the code and isn't interested in anything else? That's homework. Everything else is reliable.

I've been asked a lot of problems on this site in real interviews.

- eugene.yarovoi July 21, 2012 | Flag
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@eugene, @Gayle: Thanks for the feedback. Will sure keep this in mind.

@Gayle: I have watched some of your videos on youtube. Great stuff!! I kind of get the perspective of the interviewer which makes it easier as an interviewee. Your pointers and content seems to be more focused towards new grads (pardon me if I am wrong but thats the only content I have watched so far). Is the interview process any different for people with little work experience (in my case about 2 years)?

- axecapone July 24, 2012 | Flag
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Nope. At the big companies, it's basically the same until you get to a pretty senior level (management experience, etc).

- Gayle L McDowell July 24, 2012 | Flag
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This comment has been deleted.

- Administrator July 23, 2012 | Flag Reply
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I'm delete this comment since it's not related to this forum post. Please post this as a new discussion topic.

- Gayle L McDowell July 23, 2012 | Flag




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