Microsoft Software Engineering Interview: Number Array

[@tryexponent]

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[@kklowd]

I don't think this is a good example of how to interview, but a great lesson on how to think and solve this technical problem. I don't know if he was confused about what kind of video this was but the title is misleading

[@lightsensestudio8766]

Never seen an interviewer so silent in an interview. The interviewee is making a bunch of assumptions and the interviewer has zero input.

[@implemented2]

What I would expect to hear is a bunch of clarifying questions. Does list have constraints on number of elements and do elements have some upper bound? Does the order of elements matter? The solution proposed is actually a set, not a list. What about negative numbers?

[@tryexponent]

This is a great list Michael - the interviewee in this case had some context beforehand, but asking clarifying questions is a must-have!

[@tryexponent]

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[@youssefabdallah3940]

TBH, I feel like this video is full of inaccuracies. The solution would work for a multiset of integers, not a list (there is no notion of previous and next elements). In addition, saying that multiplication and division are O(1) is certainly not true.

[@binkygoh6787]

The first idea that came up to my mind is something like bitmap. I wonder if calculating prime map might take a lot of time?

[@MarufHossain]

This is not the right approach for a real interview. :(

[@vikx02]

This is a great example of a bad interview.

[@nameunknown007]

What! I wouldn’t even start coding if I haven’t gotten the algorithm first. I should be able to immediately see that 6, 3, 2 will be a problem. This is not a list, it’s utmost a set. And if the time complexity to find nth prime is O(n) and then reverse mapping, this solution won’t scale. So I won’t propose this solution. ROFL you should’ve set a context that interviewee will make a bunch of assumptions. Thanks for the video.

[@siqiaochen]

Not even sure if it is the problem interviewer really asked. Is this interview staged?

[@m.subanov]

Was thinking about bit shifting, kinda have buckets where small integers are stored.

[@abraiyan7984]

The intro gave me goosebumps.

[@stealthrabbi9064]

Snake Case in Java?

[@Ideagineer]

Thank you for making this video!

[@terreyshih1628]

another good one form you. Would you categorize this as an easy or medium level quetsion. How frequent would you exepct this type of questions on a phone screen vs. onsite ? In addition, I thought we are supposed to convert some list like '1, 2, 3, 4, 5' and conver it to one singel number. Should he have added multiple numbers to the list as a test case ? thanks

[@vinaynaik953]

Excellent good work guys

[@harishbytes4735]

Awesome

[@tryexponent]

Glad you liked it!

[@c2ashman]

Coding, without knowing the solution on paper is a terrible way of addressing a problem. Even more problematic is, what does the interviewer really want. The question is not clear. How can you start coding without knowing the problem. You could code anything and it would basically satisfy the description. Just horrible. It's also a terrible way of learning to code. And btw...his coding style is all over the place. Nothing to see or learn here. Lets get out of here.