Cracking the Coding Interview, 4 Edition - 150 Programming Interview Questions and Solutions

Interview War Stories
The View from the Other Side of the Front, by Peter Bailey
For the eager candidate getting ready for a big job interview, Cracking the Coding Interview
is an invaluable reference, containing excellent coaching and practice
material that gives you an inside edge on the interview process.
However, as you go over your old data structures textbook
and drill yourself with homemade discrete math flash cards, don’t
make the mistake of thinking of the interview as a kind of highpressure
game show – that if you just give all the right answers to
the tech questions, you too can win a shiny new career (this week,
on Who Wants to be a Software Engineer?)
While the technical questions on computer science obviously are
very important, the most important interview question is not covered
in this guidebook. In fact, it’s often the single most important
question in your interviewers' minds as they grill you in that little room. Despite the questions
on polymorphism and heaps and virtual machines, the question they really want an
answer to is ...
Would I have a beer with this guy?
Don’t look at me like that, I'm serious! Well, I may be embellishing a little, but hear me out.
The point I'm trying to make is that interviewers, especially those that you might work with,
are probably just as anxious as you are. Nonsense, you say, as a nervous young professional,
checking your pants for lint while you bite your fingernails, waiting for the interview team to
show up in the front lobby. After all, this is the big leagues, and these guys are just waiting for
you to slip up so they can rip you apart, laugh at your shriveled corpse, and grind your career
dreams to dust beneath the heels of their boots.
Right? Just like pledge week, back in freshman year? Right? Hmmm?
Nothing could be further from the truth. The team of developers and managers interviewing
you have their own tasks and projects waiting for them, back at their own desks. Believe me,
they’re hoping that every interview is going to be the last one. They'd rather be doing anything
else. There might be a batch of upcoming projects looming on their calendar, and they
need more manpower if they’re going to even have a prayer of making their deadline. But
the last guy the agency sent over was a complete flake who railed about Microsoft’s evil for
half an hour. And the one before that couldn’t code his way out of a wet paper bag without
using copy-and-paste. Sheesh, they think, where is HR getting these guys? How hard can it
be to hire one lousy person?
While they may not literally be asking themselves “Would I have a beer with this guy (or gal)”,
they are looking to see how well you would fit in with the team, and how you would affect
team chemistry. If they hire you, you’re all going to be spending a lot of time together for
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Cracking the Coding Interview