Array

I'm a Tech Lead at a company you've heard of and I have 11 yoe. I'm typically anti-LC in interviews, my style is typically I pick the project they've listed on their resume that seems the most interesting both in terms of level of difficulty and just of interest to me, and drill super deep on it to really tease out if they did what they said they did. And 9/10 times that works. But until you've interviewed lots of people, you don't realize how good some people are at bullshitting. This is why LC exists, and it's why we implemented at least a super basic tech screen. We're a data team so we give them a sample dataset from data we actually work with, and ask them to do some super basic transformations and aggregations. We'll also work with them and are very forgiving, we're not looking for you to get the answer even, but we're looking for the signs that you actually understand the super basics and when given feedback can adjust your approach and at least have the right mindset. So back to the title, it astounded me when there was a post in this sub where someone was super upset that reversing an array without using the reverse function would be a question, as that was too much of memorizing algorithms. If we were talking an LC hard then sure I agree. But to anyone who knows the basics about programming this should be super easy. But given all the pushback I reconsidered, and I tested myself to ensure I could do it. And within 5 minutes I had 3 different solutions. Again I don't do LCs regularly, I've done some in job prep but we're talking about \~10 hours in my life and I'm on my 4th job. I don't think I've ever successfully done a hard, and although I can easily do most easy ones and am around 50/50 at mediums, there was one easy I failed on. I'm definitely not the LC, memorize algorithms type. But again this isn't an algorithm question it's one of the most basic things you can do. I used python but the fundamentals are the same in all languages: 1. for i in range(len(array)): array2[len(array) - 1 - i] = array[i] array = array2 2. j = 0 for i in range(len(array)-1,-1,-1): array2[j] = array[i] j += 1 array = array2 And probably the most algorithm answer: i = 0 j = len(array) - 1 while j > i: a = array[i] array[i] = array[j] array[j] = a i += 1 j -= 1 And I'd assume in an interview setting it's fine to be running code and refining it, I certainly did when doing especially the last one (I had the while condition j > 0 initially so it was actually re-reversing so ending with the original array). And I get it I have 11 yoe this was talking about a junior level interview. But if there's even an intern on the team, I'm expecting them to be able to figure things out much more complicated than reversing an array, and I don't think that's all that crazy to expect them to be able to do. My analogy I used was saying "you'll never have to reverse an array at your job" is similar to if a French to English translator was asked to count to 10 in French, couldn't, and angrily replied "when am I ever going to be counting to 10 in my job?" And the answer is you'll be asked to do things so much more difficult, and if you can't count to 10 in the language you're translating from obviously you're not going to be able to perform the job duties. As I mentioned, I've never asked this question in an interview, but I'm asking much harder questions. I'm asking our junior level folks to calculate weighted averages excluding outliers and creating summary statistics by year. I'm then changing the requirements and seeing how they can update their code with the shifting requirements. And I don't think those are even all that hard, they're the bare minimum I'd expect interns to be able to do. We care a lot more about soft skills and perceived willingness to learn, but we need you to be able to do the bare minimum from a technical perspective. Do people really think asking a potential employee whether they can reverse an array is that crazy and means we expect them to memorize algorithms that have nothing to do with the job? This isn't an LC hard, I don't think any of my solutions above are all that crazy or tough to come up with if you understand the basics of arrays and loops. And given how business logic works, it's not even that crazy to be a real world example. What if there are certain values in the array that can't be moved due to government regulation or enterprise requirements so you can only reverse all the other elements while keeping certain values in their place? You can't use a reverse function for that. And that's a hell of a lot tougher of a problem than simple reversal. I don't know I guess it just astounds me that this sub is all about how tough this market is especially for juniors, yet at the same time it's crazy to expect a junior can do something that in my mind is super basic and contrary to the arguments against it does not actually require memorizing any algorithms, just using a little bit of critical thinking about what reversing an array actually is doing (first is last, second is second to last, etc).