Data structures and algorithms I actually used while working at tech companies
Early in my career, I interviewed at Google. One of the interviewer asked me to recite the algorithm for constructing a Convex Hull. Since I hadn&#x27;t done anything related to convex hulls since my algorithms class as a sophomore in college (several years earlier), I couldn&#x27;t remember all the details. At some point, I said, I know where in CLRS (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT-Press&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0262033844" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Introduction-Algorithms-3rd-MIT-Press...</a>) this is. The interviewer didn&#x27;t like this, so he said &quot;Pretend you&#x27;re an engineer at Google. You need to have a convex hull. What do you do?&quot; And I said probably the most correct thing I&#x27;ve said in any interview: &quot;I would go look it up.&quot; He really didn&#x27;t like this answer, but we struggled together for an hour, with him frustrated that I couldn&#x27;t remember the details of an algorithm I last had seen 6 years earlier and couldn&#x27;t recite in 60 minutes what took our professor 180 minutes of lectures to cover, and me frustrated that would have taken me 30 seconds to look up.<p>I did not get the job at Google.<p>I do make sure as a more senior engineer at my current company I use what leverage I have to make sure other interviewers don&#x27;t ask pointless questions like this.