4 is tricky. I am also an interviewer and agree with Sean. Some working code is more important to me than the optimal version. But I don't work at a tech company and my department is producing code that runs mostly in batch jobs. We do have an upper time limit, but as long as the job is nowhere near this limit, we don't waste time on optimizing code.
However when I applied recently for a job at a tech company I focused on delivering a working solution with a test case. It had O(n). My interviewer wanted me to optimize the code and I came up with an O(log n) solution. But it wasn't good enough. I got declined. Directly after the interview I found a clever solution with O(1) on SO.
But I would never decline a candidate in an interview who doesn't find the clever solution, as long as I can talk about optimizations with him and see that he knows this stuff.
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4 is tricky. I am also an interviewer and agree with Sean. Some working code is more important to me than the optimal version. But I don't work at a tech company and my department is producing code that runs mostly in batch jobs. We do have an upper time limit, but as long as the job is nowhere near this limit, we don't waste time on optimizing code.
However when I applied recently for a job at a tech company I focused on delivering a working solution with a test case. It had O(n). My interviewer wanted me to optimize the code and I came up with an O(log n) solution. But it wasn't good enough. I got declined. Directly after the interview I found a clever solution with O(1) on SO.
But I would never decline a candidate in an interview who doesn't find the clever solution, as long as I can talk about optimizations with him and see that he knows this stuff.