Software engineer interviews are so GD frustrating. Of course I got a "hard" problem, the kind that you can't just solve in an hour with someone breathing down your neck watching your screen without already basically having it memorized.
Earlier this week in another one, the guy's first question was about counting set bits in an integer (i.e. how many set bits is 010010 or whatever). So you have to iterate over each bit, which you do by dividing to get each place, and you do that using logical operators. Well, I forgot that dividing for bit shifting is using ">>" and I just told the guy how I would do it but that I couldn't remember the operator to use because it's been a long time. His response was "eh this is a new grad problem. Anyway let's move on to the next one."
A lot of it is just luck of getting some combination of:
1. a somewhat doable problem that's not extremely simple but not difficult either
2. a problem where it could be tricky but the interviewer doesn't mind providing hints or whatever and does *not* ding you for doing so
I haven't interviewed with a company yet to get that combination this go around. Hopefully soon.
I knew my problem this job search would be the interviews themselves; I've had 0 problems getting companies to talk to me. It's such a crapshoot.
My other issue is that I get severe anxiety leading to it and then when on the call I have basically a panic attack and I don't know what to do for that other than
borrowing some prozac from @
humfrz.
