I have mixed feelings about this. I had an interview at Palantir with a self-described "front-end" guy, who asked me to write an algorithm to find a number between zero and infinity, where you could pick a number and you would get a response that would tell you whether or not the number was lower or higher than the secret number. The dude had a particular form of approaching the problem that was not at all the fastest form, in fact, he insisted on starting at zero and using an algorithm that was "2x," which he insisted was "fast enough."
I thought that a system which started at zero and went up by multiples of two was obscenely slow, and I hinted at this, but he insisted on having things his way. In the end I'm sure he wrote me a bad review and I wasn't offered the job (I didn't really want it anyways, given my impression that the team I was interviewing for wasn't that focused).
In any case, I didn't go right now and say this is dumb, but I hinted at a better way, and even this hinting lead to some conflict. In the end I didn't get the job. I'm conflicted if this was the best approach. I could have pretended to be dumber than I actually am and gotten the job offer at least, which at this present moment I could probably use for leverage in the search for contracts or a job, but I couldn't bring myself to accept his not particularly good algorithm (full disclosure: the process was also affected by the fact that my flight was delayed from the east coast, that I got 4 hours of sleep, the fact that I insisted in wearing a tweed coat to the interview, which may have impacted ever important perception of "fit," and that the interview in question was a "surprise" interview after several other interviews).
I thought that a system which started at zero and went up by multiples of two was obscenely slow, and I hinted at this, but he insisted on having things his way. In the end I'm sure he wrote me a bad review and I wasn't offered the job (I didn't really want it anyways, given my impression that the team I was interviewing for wasn't that focused).
In any case, I didn't go right now and say this is dumb, but I hinted at a better way, and even this hinting lead to some conflict. In the end I didn't get the job. I'm conflicted if this was the best approach. I could have pretended to be dumber than I actually am and gotten the job offer at least, which at this present moment I could probably use for leverage in the search for contracts or a job, but I couldn't bring myself to accept his not particularly good algorithm (full disclosure: the process was also affected by the fact that my flight was delayed from the east coast, that I got 4 hours of sleep, the fact that I insisted in wearing a tweed coat to the interview, which may have impacted ever important perception of "fit," and that the interview in question was a "surprise" interview after several other interviews).