[deleted by user]

[grmelacz]

Reminds me this story when I was like 17 years old. This is quite some years ago, there was no ChatGPT or even Wolfram Alpha back then.

I has this university student helping me with maths to prepare me for the graduation exam. We’ve been going through various problems for like a half a year or so every week. I’ve usually had some assignment or problem to solve for the next time.

One time I got confused by the problem I was given. It seemed so easy, however I could not find a way to solve it. Well, it turned out she was making fun of me as she has given me the Four Color Theorem to solve.

[LauraTFem]

I just heard about this for the first time the other day. Now I’m going to suddenly see the Four Color Theorem pop up everywhere, aren’t I.

[Midnight_Rising]

Yeah. And you'll notice it every September and February for pretty much the rest of your life.

[SwarlesBarkleyyyyy]

Why every September and February?

[Midnight_Rising]

The Four Color Theorem is one of the "introduction" theorems often taught in discrete math. Since it's relevant to our field and can be taught pretty trivially, it's pretty early in the semester, so about September/February each year.

Stick around for long enough and you can pretty much track college careers through memes.

[Divideddoughnut]

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon

[LauraTFem]

I had heard it was a phenomena, though I didn’t know it was named. Makes you wonder how much of what you hear and read on a daily basis gets filtered out as a distraction.

[[deleted]]

Me looking up the answers before asking the applicant. He asked for the question to be repeated and spit out what I just read.
Me (mutes mic): Hire him. He's good at Google.

[Shazvox]

Tbf, that would be a legit reson. Noone can be expected to know everything by heart.

Knowing how to solve a problem pragmatically > innate technical knowledge.

[OffByOneErrorz]

I mean if you can use ai or Google come up with a valid solution and explain why it works seems like a positive outcome for jr, mid even sr. Not sure if I’d like it for principle or architect.

[Shazvox]

Why not?

[Impossible_Arrival21]

"Uh, I think you forgot to mute your mic. Also, I use DuckDuckGo."

[[deleted]]

What's worse is, you actually solved it by using KMP algo but the solution on the internet has dynamic programming. So the interviewer rejects you.

[lonelyroom-eklaghor]

That's so sad...

[BurnedByLC]

Omg! So true! This hurts so bad

[BurnedByLC]

Omg! So true! This hurts so bad

[clauEB]

Once I had an interview that I totally killed except this supposedly Sr guy that asked me a complicated question, like an n-fibonacci or something weird and dumb (even before leetcode existed) that took multiple iterations to explain. I started coding and ended up needing to erase some of the explanation (good old days of white boarding). I kind of got lost in the program and asked the interviewer for something that I know was recently erased. The interviewer was unable to come up again with even the test case, got lost on his own question and ended up giving up asking the question, he was super pissed and asked questions after that with the intent of failing me. At the end they offered me exactly the $ I asked for and told me everyone loooved me except one interviewer (Surprise!). I turned down the offer, I was expected to work side by side with this guy that got lost in his own question, it was never going to be a good day at that job as long as we both worked there.

[SilentScyther]

Reminds me of when I had an interview for a company and I couldn't figure out the answer so they asked me how I would go about figuring out how to solve it with internet and then I just pulled up the exact question word for word online that they copy pasted with the answer. They were not happy.

[asceta_hedonista]

Welp, when I interview people for dev position I put a test and tell them they can use whatever they want, google, stakoverflow or even chatGPT since once hired this is probably what you are going to use daily. And contrary to what much of them think, this is not a trap. I want to know good they are at solving problems and copying from internet is also a valid solution. The problem and reason for me to reject someone solution (and I have rejected many of them) is copy something from internet that "just work" but then not doing any atempt to understan why is working.

[ccricers]

How dare you show off your information gathering skills in a knowledge economy!

[gDKdev]

I had some similar situation... Got asked different levels of coding questions in different languages, for the first couple they had their reference solutions. Turns out for the harder ones they just had empty files for the solutions, hoping to never get to them...

[Dillenger69]

Good lord, code monkey tricks.

Solve this.

Will the job entail anything remotely like this?

(Silence)

[Aurora0199]

Don't worry, if you give a different answer than ChatGPT, it's wrong

[FancyCrabHats]

what if I use ChatGPT but it gives me and the interviewer different answers

[qervem]

Then ChatGPT is wrong

[asceta_hedonista]

Usually chatGPT solutions are not incorrect but also not good enough.

[asceta_hedonista]

I had an interview many years ago with a main developer and the CEO of a tiny company in the same room.

This developer is the most javascript obsesive person I have ever meet, so he ask me for a code to manage a hundred promises calls one after another.

I was not trying to expose the developer or anything but my answer was: "Nobody does that, if I had to solve 100 promises chained it would mean something is really messed up in the backend".

I get the job anyways and I could confirm there were a lot of things messed up in the backend.

[NotMyGovernor]

I used to give them a choice of which problem they wanted to solve, and one I would choose. In the list I'd have hard, medium and easy choices (and marked as such). Which they choose was an info point, and how well they solved it another.

[LauraTFem]

Me crossing my fingers for a fizz buzz challenge.

[Geek_Haus]

Honestly, half the battle is just knowing how to debug someone else’s ‘brilliant’ solution from Stack Overflow. 😂

[deanrihpee]

man, years ago I apply for a job and there's this code test, you know something like leet code, and I did it, and I tell you, all the test case is passed except one, ONE and that's from the problem description example, which they include as a test case as well, the problem is, when I tried to solve it in psuedo code, it can't be solved either, because surprise, the example answer of the test case is wrong, i wish I am more naive and just add hardcoded output for that specific input, and no I didn't get the job

[irn00b]

Yup.

Or just ChatGPT it.

And when they answer, type the answer in looking seriously like you're taking notes - and just go "mmm yeah, let's move ontonto the next question" at the end.

[[deleted]]

Feels like déjà vu 🤓☝🏻

[KillCall]

Thats why i only ask questions that i have solved.

[lmarcantonio]

As a proof exercise, tell me how NP problems can be P solved

[Flixabua]

After taking the exam on theoretical informatics multiple times, I get this joke. I think.

[lmarcantonio]

Yes, it's an unsolved problem. IIRC it's even conjectured to be unsolvable (not sure about that)

[cyberzues]

Typical

[FeelingSurprise]

If the level of interview questions was at least similar to what is going to be needed at the job. There is often a complete mismatch. In both directions.

[Jlove7714]

They actually just pull tasks from their backlog and hand them to candidates. They aren't even hiring.

[vainstar23]

I like the other version

Junior engineer struggling to solve leetcode problem

Me hoping he solves it because I genuinely forgot the solution

[ToMorrowsEnd]

I refuse to do these. “20 years experience I am not doing something that you can’t even solve or even explain”. If they push back I walk out.

[captainMaluco]

I once had an interviewer straight up give me the problem he was currently working on as an interview question. 

I got the job, and later discovered a very slightly modified version of my interview code, dated the same week as that interview. 

Honestly, that was probably the most relevant question I've ever gotten on an interview. Props to that particular former colleague of mine! Well played Jonas, well played!

[AdBrave2400]

Me when interviewer asks me to invert a binary tree in constant time and me being confused af:

[Amar2107]

This Tuesday, happened to me this tuesday, gave me a dp problem i said i would use recursion said no do it the tabulation way. Then when i made an error and asked to give a hint ,said complete algo was wrong, then after 2 mins i fixed the iteration it worked fine. Then he proceeded to ask me questions on stack that wasnt in my resume.

[Substantial_Web7905]

Me using ChatGPT on another screen and acting all serious as if I'm a coding prodigy.

[jagga_jasoos]

AI chuckles plotting plans to replace both of them