Case study: Do not yell at me

It is a blog title not so popular to write. I have similar complaints before. Today I got it in my mock interview.

Case study of my mock interview

It is my determination to master the tree algorithm called longest univalue path. One of my ideas to learn is to work with various interviewee if they choose to work on the algorithm, and I also have discussion with the interviewee.

The interviewee chose to work on medium level algorithm instead of starting from an easy level algorithm. So I think that it is better for me to give this algorithm for him to work on.

The discussion lasted over one hour.

The interviewee wrote very good solution and tested the code with the test cases. I tried to point out that there is an edge case to consider. He told me again "why you yell at me? I do not yell at you.".

code to review

Feedback from the interviewee

My feedback

Actionable Items

It is the most challenging job to be an interviewer. I interview new graduate from MIT, Harvard, and all other engineers and leaders in the world. I keep making mistakes on this longest univalue path algorithm as an interviewer.

It takes some time for me to figure out things. I got complaint before not active involving discussion; Now it is my tone of voice. I should show genuine courtesy, instead of saying that there is a bug, I should say that what if we need to add some constraint here. Can we add some constraint here to make it harder?