Is it possible to excel in a coding interview even if you're unable to solve a particular problem?
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Can You Ace a Coding Interview Without Solving the Problem(s)?
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Top comments (4)
Absolutely. But it depends on the position. I care just as much about HOW you go about solving a problem rather than just whether or not you arrive at "my solution".
I also care about candidates that can tell me they don't know something rather than just BS me with some random response. Oftentimes we both learn something about each other.
I was at a Company, all went very well, and a coding test was just a step on the way, but i got stressed out, doing this after a long day at work, so i did not solve it perfekt, and the the jobb deal was of, just lik that.
But a year after the Company was sold, and 99% of the staff left, so a missed test in this case was a good thing :)
I recently interviewed at a company, and and went pretty well on the behavioral and theory questions, but on the coding part as I didn't have much time I dove straight into solving the problems (I didn't talk much about the solutions, I am not that great at discussing how I arrive at a solution, my brain works in mysterious
ways).
Long story short, I didn't get the job, in the current market 95% on the interview is probably not good enough as there is lots of competition..
When I joined VMware in ~2012 I was asked to get an app running on their (then) new Cloud Foundry platform. I do not remember the specific code or language (I think it might have been Ruby), but I was working in an existing role and had very little time to get the exercise done. Long story short, I wildly overestimated my ability to get it done, and showed up with a non-running demo; but, I knew exactly why it wasn't working, and was able to explain the situation clearly, along with the various things I'd learned (got wrong) along the way.
Now, this was a coding task for a developer relations role which wasn't going to be majority coding, but it was a scenario where I absolutely did not fully (re)solve the task I'd been set, and still got the role. I think in the end the outcome was good, and the interviewers were impressed with what I brought to the conversation despite a non-working demo.