Comment by Apocryphon
Comment by Apocryphon 10 hours ago
> the point is to understand how the candidate thinks, communicates, and decomposes problems
Interviewers always say this, but consider: would you endorse a candidate who ultimately is unable to solve the problem you've presented them, even if they think, communicate, and decompose problems well? No interview in this industry prizes those things over getting the answer right.
Every interview I know is severely time limited. I don't care if you can solve the problem, so long as your are clearly making progress and have proven you could solve the problem if given longer.
Now I give you problems I expect to take 20 minutes if you have never seen them before so you should at least solve 1. I have more than once realized someone was stuck on the wrong track and redirection efforts were not getting them to a good track so I switched to a different problem which they were then able to solve. I've also stopped people when they have 6 of 10 tests passing because it is clear they could get the rest passing but I wouldn't learn anything more so it wasn't worth wasting their time.
In the real world I'm going to give people complex problems that will take days to solve.