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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

I think most people make stupid mistakes in job interviews and thus interview below their level. If you fix that you practically interview way above your level.

I bought the course this guy was selling 15 years ago

https://job-interview-answers.com/

which changed my viewpoint. Also I am good at leetcode questions and highly educated and experienced. Even when I don't know the answer I manage to salvage the situation anyway (They asked me what "regularization" was in a data science interview, I had no idea, they told me, and then I told them all the ways I had done regularization.)

I say "there is no question in a data science interview that can't be answered by (1) look it up in the hashtable or (2) look it up in the literature." I can make that work for me, but I am not sure how to make it work for you.

Now if I could only pick up girls as well as I do job interviews...

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    Even when I don't know the answer I manage to 
    salvage the situation anyway (They asked me what
    "regularization" was in a data science interview, 
    I had no idea, they told me, and then I told 
    them all the ways I had done regularization.)

Yeah I've found that interviewers are interested in your thought process, not rattling off canned quiz answers.

I do something similar whenever I'm unfamiliar with a term like that in an interview.

First, I never bullshit. I'm VERY upfront about not knowing a thing - but like you I say, "can you define that term for me -- perhaps I know it by another name" and more often than not, yeah, I can talk about how I've been doing it or something similar to it. And if not I get to have a discussion about the term and learn something, at least.

(Tangentially, being upfront about not knowing a thing gives you more authority when you state that you do know a thing...)

This field changes so quickly, I don't think any interviewer ever expects you to know more than a % of the topics broached, but they do expect you to be able to converse reasonably about all of them IMO.

Great, will check the course out

I don't think competing in answering questions anybody can learn is my skill or is a great skill to have. I'm a creative guy!

Wish you much luck with girls!

Some subjects (medicine) are all about memorization.

Leetcode is more like solving math problems; bad students are bad in a few different ways, a certain kind of bad student thinks it is about memorization -- maybe that is why they are bad.

It is a complex set of skills, aptitudes and knowledge to do that kind of programming. I think it partially relates to real work. Personally I did all the Python problems in HackerRank and I felt like it was a fun challenge where I learned a lot even though I was already experienced in Python.

Doing that kind of problem in a job interview is not the same as doing them online. You could be good at doing them online but choke at the whiteboard because of social pressure. You could also be bad at doing them online but lean on the other people heavily and still make a good impression. (e.g. you can really make people think you are smart by asking great questions.)

Confidence and bluster can get you a long way in those situations and you also can run into situations where the people interviewing you are just totally wrong about the problem and that involves both confidence and tact.

The primary route is "when in Rome do as the Romans do" so I play along rather than fight or fly. Maybe it is my bias because I'm good at that kind of thing (got a Physics PhD.)

Interesting how the pressure dates on that site work heh

document.getElementById('pressureDate').innerHTML = moment().add(1, 'days').format('dddd, MMMM Do');

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