<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>bogomipz</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;quot;&amp;gt; If you already know the answer, don&amp;#x27;t just blurt it out! They will suspect that you already knew the answer and didn&amp;#x27;t tell them you&amp;#x27;ve seen the question before. At least pretend to be thinking though the problem before you give the answer!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This to me epitomizes the absurdity of this whole &amp;quot;leet code, cracking the algorithm&amp;quot; mania that has blighted the tech interview process. The only way to pass these types of tests is to spend time studying them. But then if you have studied and therefore know the tricks(use two pointers etc.) its seen as unacceptable enough that you should either lie or tell your interviewer &amp;quot;I know the trick&amp;quot; to solving this so ask me something else.&amp;quot; The whole thing has become a scripted charade.&lt;p&gt;I get it that these types of tests and interviews work for Google but it&amp;#x27;s absurd when small startups still building a product adopt these tests simply because Google and FB do it.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a sad corporate uniformity to it that feels very much at odds with the hacker ethos.</text><parent_chain><item><author>rajathagasthya</author><text>These are useful tips, although the example questions are extremely outdated. I found one tip &amp;quot;interesting&amp;quot; though.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If you already know the answer, don&amp;#x27;t just blurt it out!  They will suspect that you already knew the answer and didn&amp;#x27;t tell them you&amp;#x27;ve seen the question  before. At least pretend to be thinking though the problem before you give  the answer!&lt;p&gt;Most interview questions are taken from sites like Leetcode. So you would have come across some of them if you work through those problems. Is it really that bad if you give the solution quickly? Some problems have specific &amp;quot;techniques&amp;quot; to solve them which you would likely only know if you solved it before. Are you expected to come up with a completely new algorithm to solve a problem?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Hacking a Google Interview (2009)</title><url>http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/index.php</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ceautery</author><text>A better response would be honesty: &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve seen this question before on a (puzzle&amp;#x2F;interview prep&amp;#x2F;whatever) site. The optimal answer was better than what I initially came up with... I didn&amp;#x27;t consider that we knew one of the coins was explicitly heavier than the others, I was only thinking that one was a different weight. That&amp;#x27;s a good reminder to read your specs very closely.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Or something like that.</text><parent_chain><item><author>rajathagasthya</author><text>These are useful tips, although the example questions are extremely outdated. I found one tip &amp;quot;interesting&amp;quot; though.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If you already know the answer, don&amp;#x27;t just blurt it out!  They will suspect that you already knew the answer and didn&amp;#x27;t tell them you&amp;#x27;ve seen the question  before. At least pretend to be thinking though the problem before you give  the answer!&lt;p&gt;Most interview questions are taken from sites like Leetcode. So you would have come across some of them if you work through those problems. Is it really that bad if you give the solution quickly? Some problems have specific &amp;quot;techniques&amp;quot; to solve them which you would likely only know if you solved it before. Are you expected to come up with a completely new algorithm to solve a problem?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Hacking a Google Interview (2009)</title><url>http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/index.php</url></story>