> these are examples of some of the things you're expected to know as a competent engineer
I find this statement tenuous at best when the example question has absolutely no programming component of any kind and is entirely a little math puzzler about determining the highest floor from which one can safely drop an egg.
It's certainly an interesting problem, and the explanation is presented incredibly well, so I don't fault the site itself. I'm also aware that this is something of a pop culture question for "programming" interviews. However, I don't believe that it is in any sense true that it is necessary to excel at this sort of question in order to be a competent programmer.
This might seem representative of the experience of trying to design a novel algorithm to solve a new problem, but in fact it couldn't be less representative. I've had to write some hairy code in my job a few times, and not once was I under time pressure or expected to have the critical insight within five minutes. Any problem that has any sort of creative or exploratory or "research" aspect to it should not be under time pressure, and ideally it should be mixed in with other work so that you can rest from the problem and come back to it later. The vast majority of candidates who will pass this particular test all the way to the end are ones who just memorized it online.
wow, unless you got a different question that I did I am amazed at your response. The algorithm is used often in CS, that you didn't know this kind of makes my point. Sure you can probably work as a programmer for years and not care about writing well optimized code, processors are so damn fast these days you can ignore the code quality and get away with it.
Also if you couldn't reason your way to the answer how would I have any confidence you could reason any other problem of similar difficulty level. This kind of problem shouldn't you more than 5 or 10 minutes to figure out.
That's quite a loaded and passive-aggressive non-response. It does not befit this forum and certainly does not display the maturity I'd require from anybody reviewing my resume. It's so filled with assumptions I don't even know where to begin. Truly, I do not know how you deduced from my post that I don't care about writing well-optimized code. You clearly didn't understand what I wrote.
I find this statement tenuous at best when the example question has absolutely no programming component of any kind and is entirely a little math puzzler about determining the highest floor from which one can safely drop an egg.
It's certainly an interesting problem, and the explanation is presented incredibly well, so I don't fault the site itself. I'm also aware that this is something of a pop culture question for "programming" interviews. However, I don't believe that it is in any sense true that it is necessary to excel at this sort of question in order to be a competent programmer.
This might seem representative of the experience of trying to design a novel algorithm to solve a new problem, but in fact it couldn't be less representative. I've had to write some hairy code in my job a few times, and not once was I under time pressure or expected to have the critical insight within five minutes. Any problem that has any sort of creative or exploratory or "research" aspect to it should not be under time pressure, and ideally it should be mixed in with other work so that you can rest from the problem and come back to it later. The vast majority of candidates who will pass this particular test all the way to the end are ones who just memorized it online.