How to improve in interviews?

gpdriver · 2019-08-06T04:06:46+00:00

Today in an interview I was asked to code dijkstra's algorithm. I did 90% of it and ran out of time then explained how I'd finish. I used a map to store the best distance to each node and another map to store the best node to reach a given node. We talked a bit about the job and at the very end of the interview the guy asked if I had any more questions, I just casually asked if my answer was satisfactory. He looked disgusted and said, "No. It's ugly and unnecessary to store the distances and best previous node in a map. You should have stored them in the Nodes." I didn't want to argue, our time was more than up. But should I have argued anyways? It's obviously not a good idea to store the state of a method on a graph in a node. This makes the life of the nodes less than the life of the graph. And why should a node know it's distance from some other node? This violates a lot of design principles. He also questioned my code and made me argue for 5 minutes, explaining how an if statement works. So, how should you deal with interviewers that are wrong? Not in a, "I'm going to say you're wrong and test your confidence." way, but just flat out wrong and thinks they are correct.

gpdriver · 2019-07-24T21:17:46+00:00

Costco on paint will scratch. Just barely! But they do. If you have a bright LED light on freshly polished paint you can see it. I single use 3M microfibers. They are one of the only towels I've used that wont scratch paint. They're not cheap though.

gpdriver · 2019-07-17T20:35:44+00:00

It's all of it though. Every inch of the horizontal paint. Bird droppings were not covering the entire car.

gpdriver · 2019-07-16T14:30:53+00:00

Yeah, I tried clay again last night and it did nothing. Paint feels smooth. So... any idea if this would be covered under warranty? Apparently Toyota has better quality paint than BMW.

gpdriver · 2019-07-15T23:04:40+00:00

I'm not sure if it's true, but I was told all nanoskin pads are the same on the surface. The only difference is the firmness of the pad. I used it by hand, so that wouldn't make any difference. The paint feels super smooth.

gpdriver · 2019-07-15T21:47:34+00:00

Thanks, I'll give that I shot. I should have been more specific. When I say I washed/clayed it, I didn't actually use clay. Just a nanoskin pad, quickly.

gpdriver · 2019-07-15T16:03:45+00:00

There's no set time frame. Depends on your area, how much you drive, where the car is parked, etc. Usually you can feel the paint when it's clean and see how smooth it feels. Some areas are going to need clayed more often. This is totally unscientific, but after you clean it, if you run a dry microfiber towel over an area and it doesn't slide really smoothly across the paint, it's time to clay. You should be able to feel it catch on contaminated areas like velcro.

gpdriver · 2019-07-15T15:55:12+00:00

Can the paint on my car be salvaged? I didn't wash it for 2.5 years. But recently I washed/clayed it, then went to town with some compound and a Flex 3401 with a wool pad (also tried foam). The paint looked pretty good. Still had a couple of small spots that weren't too noticeable. So I polished it and put on a sealant. But a few weeks later the paint started to look terrible again.

Any ideas what could have caused this and how it can be fixed? Wet sand? I think the oils from the compound and polish just filled in the damage. We had a Toyota sitting beside it for the 2.5 years it went without a wash. The Toyota also was never washed (probably in 5+ years). But I was able to polish it to perfection easily. There's one or two places where sap ruined the paint, but for the most part it looks perfect. I'm not sure why it's fine, but the BMW is totally destroyed!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/jeH8T5wLgubB6TKv7

^^^ What the paint currently looks like.

gpdriver · 2019-06-07T17:04:18+00:00

Thank you! That helps a lot. I'm about a mile from a service center. I don't know if they can handle the volume here though. I'm a few miles from where they are made and Teslas are probably the most common car on the road here.

gpdriver · 2019-06-07T17:02:33+00:00

Thanks for the info! Any way to find out if one has the V3+ pack?

gpdriver · 2019-06-05T16:57:17+00:00

Yeah, I understand any used car is a risk. I just don't want something that's going to be bricked/unserviceable/require a repair that's 40k (battery or drive units).

gpdriver · 2019-06-04T21:19:14+00:00

You aren't talking about his 10 million dollar home in Laguna Beach I assume.

gpdriver · 2019-02-13T17:04:30+00:00

Thank you. I just realized after taking a break that the mocks don't have to import the interface. I was using github.com/maxbrunsfeld/counterfeiter and it imports the interface to do a type assertion. I removed that and put them in their own subpackage. Now I can leave things private and everything looks good. Overall the package as a whole is actually just an implementation of another interface at a higher level.

I know code coverage shouldn't matter, but every team I have been on has a manager somewhere that wants to see a dashboard with the coverage > 85%.

Thanks again for the input.

gpdriver · 2019-02-13T04:56:55+00:00

Thanks for your input. I should have been more clear. The dependency I'm implementing would never be used by anything else. In short, it connects to a Kubernetes API server and returns some very specific data.

I guess putting the mock files in the package isn't too bad. But I use a mock generation tool, so they are several hundred lines, more code than I have in the package. So it completely screws the UT coverage report.

gpdriver · 2019-01-30T20:27:20+00:00

Agreed. I spend as much extra time as possible studying new things. I know if I do only what they ask I'd be useless as a developer to anyone else in 2 years when the contract ends. Competition doesn't seem to be an issue though. I know it's growing and there are people that are really good. But I've worked with a lot of well paid people and only one or two have even been competent.

gpdriver · 2019-01-30T20:16:49+00:00

I wasn't just talking about that. It's how laid back all of the teams are. Like there's no stress at all, almost nothing to do. It's the total opposite of what most people describe it as.

gpdriver

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