> I didn’t know the limit because it had been many years since I’d had a problem that could be solved with a DB small enough to be held in its entirety in memory. And they were right to fail me for that: the fact that I was good at solving strictly more difficult problems didn’t matter because I didn’t know how to solve the easier ones they actually had.
No way it's "right" to fail an interviewee because they wondered outloud if a dataset can fit in memory. A candidate should be able to estimate the answer, but beyond that it's trivia that can be researched as needed -- indeed even asking the question is a positive signal not a negative one (it's not just people with "google scale" background who reach for over-complicated solutions).
No way it's "right" to fail an interviewee because they wondered outloud if a dataset can fit in memory. A candidate should be able to estimate the answer, but beyond that it's trivia that can be researched as needed -- indeed even asking the question is a positive signal not a negative one (it's not just people with "google scale" background who reach for over-complicated solutions).