This might have been a new question, though I'd only read about ten interview reports. I'd definitely never seen this one.
I don't know the result yet, but I didn't finish, so I'm sure this is a rejection report.
The main issue was some domain knowledge. I couldn't quickly step back from it, and wasted a lot of time.
The interview guidance was also a bit off. I said, "Couldn't this use recursion?" But he mentioned binary search twice. I kept asking how binary search would help here.
Here's the problem:
def mock_squaredar_scan(lat_min: float, lon_min: float, side_length: float) -> bool:
# some logic
def get_car_positions:
# Implementation starts here
Those were the only two def lines in CoderPad. Then nothing...
I didn't know the input or output.
After talking for a while, I learned:
mock_squaredar_scan() is the API you can use. Each scan returns True or False to tell us whether there are any cars within this square scan.
get_car_positions returns the cars' locations.
There was almost no prompt. Very confusing.
How many rounds are in the interview process, and what does each round focus on?
First round, LeetCode-style coding.
What was the specific input/output format for this question?
Nothing very specific.
Did they mention time- or space-complexity requirements?
Not at all.
What approaches did you try?
Brute force.
Then binary search.
By the way:
The interviewer wasn't from the team I was interviewing for and knew nothing about the team I wanted to join.
He'd only joined the company a few months earlier, too. I don't know whether he lacked interviewing experience, but his explanations were unclear.
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