Comment by deathanatos

I don't think I've rehearsed for an interview ever. (And to your question in another thread, yes, I've interviewed since 2015. Multiple times, thanks to a layoff.)

> It’s typically 2 medium/hard problems solved optimally in 20 minutes each with no errors if I want to beat the competition.

I have also definitely made errors in interviews, and gotten hired. If I had to guess, it is a lot more about how you handle those. (To a degree. E.g., in one question, which was a coding challenge, I could solve it, but I was pretty sure my solution was not efficient. I voiced that, voiced why my gut was thinking it could probably be better, but I didn't ever get the full solution. In another one, I was just asked for past experience; I didn't think I had much to offer, voiced what I did have. I still to this day like the question, because it was a tough question, and the person who asked it really pressed me — in a good way, in that I could see that she took her own role/work seriously — on why I thought I was qualified.)

I've also had a call where me & the interview were definitely not connecting, at all. That wasn't going to work out, so nothing was lost?

As an interviewer,

> It’s typically 2 medium/hard problems solved optimally in 20 minutes each

… add 5 min for entry pleasantries and padding, 10 for questions for you at the end, and that's an hour, which is often all the time the recruiter schedules. And honestly, that's usually enough.

I don't ask hard problems. Easy ones sift out candidates. Where I ask coding questions, the first is almost always designed around "can the candidate write a for loop?" and the second is around basic datastructure comprehension. (Can you recognize situations that require a hashtable? a queue? and apply those to the problem.) Often a parsing question. Essentially CS 201, or easier, though I do not care if you know big-oh notation.

Most interviews I've been a part of fit that MO, and I've done interviewing with startups and with FAANG-sized companies.

> each with no errors if I want to beat the competition.

It's not about beating the competition. SWE hiring IME is never zero-sum. Two phenomenal candidates are two hires.