Call screen with recruiter – 15m Code challenge with dev – 1hr

The code challenge was pretty easy. The interviewer encouraged me to not worry about code structure or quality, just go for a working solution. I followed this suggestion and had a correct solution in 22 minutes.

A few days after the code challenge, I got an email saying I'd failed the challenge. I followed up with the recruiter. They reached out to my interviewer, who provided a few things they'd failed me on:

• Didn't talk enough out loud while solving the problem.
• Didn't have a clean enough code structure.
• Didn't answer the bonus question fast enough.

None of this seemed particularly fair. I wasn't aware I needed to talk out loud when trying to solve the problem. The interviewer explicitly told me not to worry about code structure. And the bonus question seemed like it was just that: bonus. I didn't realize it would count against me if I didn't solve it.

The interviewer seemed young, out of undergrad a few years, and basically like a 'brogrammer.' So my best guess is they evaluated me as not a good culture fit. Maybe they are correct and saved me from working with people I don't jibe with.

Given a set of players on a coordinate plane, find those that are close to each other.