I had a phone interview today for a Google SRE position — a DSA round. It was a question I'd already done before (an original LeetCode problem), but I'm guessing the interviewer is still going to fail me.
Everyone should learn this technique for failing candidates: give a ton of test cases — looked like 8 of them.
At first, since it was the original problem, I started explaining to him how to solve it. He said no, that I'd misunderstood the problem, and then wrote out some test cases. I looked at them and realized this was just a modified, twisted version of the original problem, so I summarized the test cases he'd given me, reorganized my approach, and explained it again. He said that was correct and told me to go ahead and code it. After I finished coding, he had me dry run the test cases, and then the funny part happened — the cases he'd given me contradicted the later test cases from the original problem. He then used that contradictory case to tell me my solution was wrong, and instantly deleted the sample cases he'd come up with earlier. By that point time was almost up, and I knew things had gone bad, so I ignored him and rushed to change my answer back to match the original problem. Then he said time was up and wouldn't let me keep coding. He let me ask a question, so I pointed out that the problem description he'd given earlier contradicted his own test cases. He flat out denied it and said I was the one who'd misunderstood....
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