A recruiter reached out to me. I think my background was a good fit, because they only screened me a little before scheduling the phone interview.
I got one question, malloc, with some tests provided.
Part 1 was malloc/free. I wrote it by hand, using a list to simulate a linked list, and I couldn't get it to pass in one go. I debugged for a while, then the interviewer gave me a hint, I rewrote a rather dumb piece of my earlier approach in a cleaner way, and it passed.
Part 2 asked whether it could be optimized. I explained using two sorted lists to get log n malloc and free. I assumed Python had no built-in binary tree, so my plan was to explain the idea and write a simplified version, but the interviewer told me to use a third-party library instead. I kept debugging until time ran out and never got it working. I was rusty while writing it and my head wasn't clear. Afterwards I gave the code to an AI, and it found 6 places where I had written things backwards, no wonder I couldn't get it to work.
Anyway, I regret it a lot. Before the interview I specifically had an AI search for interview reports and I practiced 7 or 8 problems. I had actually seen this problem before, but I skipped it because I couldn't be bothered, and of course that was exactly the one that came up.
Other than that, the conversation went pretty well. I thought the Meta interview I had at the same time might pull me out of the hole, but it turns out I'm just too weak.
Discussion
Loading comments…