Interview Strats Position ( REALLY STRANGE)

Hi everyone, I did an Interview for strats analyst position.

The interview happened in a web-platform where you need to write algorithms about some problem and the interviewer can see everything that you are coding.

He said that will be 3 problems and I choose Python to code. The first problem was really simple and I did fast.

The second problem was more tricky but not too hard, I did too and my answers were correct but the interviewer started to ask me if I could code the problem in another way decreasing the time complexity of the code.

I started the problem again using dictionaries (table hash for those who are not familiar with python) but it was a bit harder and I started pause to thinking and the interviewer started to help me with the problem. It was a little strange because the interviewer was helping me a lot to write the code with the another data structure and when the time was up, I didnt get chance to see the 3rd problem and I just solved two problems being the second solved in my way and his way. Really strange interview 

 I dont know If I passed in this round because I have solved 2 of 3 problems but one of them the interviewer helped me a lot or I did really bad.

I really dont know what happened. Someone has experienced something like that before ???

6 Comments
 

Huum.. Yes, but what it was very strange is the fact that I solved the second problem alone, without him, in my way, what it was very hard-coded but it worked and I passed, but he asked me to try again using another data structure and he started to help me a lot to handle with this data structure and solve the problem using that.

I still really dont know if I did a good or bad interview but 2 of 3 problems maybe its not a very good thing and the fact that I have spent solving the problem two times in different ways took my opportunity to see and solve the 3rd question.

 
Most Helpful

Ahh I see. I think the main issue here was the hardcoding. It’s like if the interviewer asked you to find the nth fibonacci, and you literally wrote out the first 20 using if and elifs. Technically you’d pass the test case you were given, but it doesn’t really solve the problem.

The interviewer writing new code was their way of subtly hinting to you that you weren’t quite right, but are on the right track. They want to give you a couple of hints to see if you can catch what they’re trying to say, and have you finish the code.

 

Soorry, my fault, I used the wrong expression.. it was not hard coded like you said (inputing results like this you will be very stupid, but I used the wrong experession, my mistake, sorry)... In my solution I just used for insides for when I could use some simple dictionary like he said and turned the code more clean.

 

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