news.ycombinator.com• Jan 29, 2022• 1 min read
What to do if you get a question you've already seen in a coding interviewThe common advice you'll see is "Tell the interviewer so you can get a new question"I disagree.You should take every advantage you can get. The whole point of studying ahead of time is to prepare yourself for the inevitable interview question, if you've seen it before you are likely in a really good place to answer it well.My take on what to do if you've seen a question before* Don't get overly excited, if you let out an audible "YES I know this one", the interviewer may give you a different problem.* A lot of the time you think you've seen a problem before but you really haven't. When you get overly confident and then realize you haven't seen it, it looks really bad. Don't introduce that opportunity to get hit* If an interviewer asks you "Have you seen this one before?" you should say, "I don't think so!". Why? Because it's the truth, you probably haven't. A lot of the times you've seen a similar problem, one small tweak can result in a very different solution. You should be cautious!