Two coding rounds were conducted via codeshare on the phone. A full-day Hangouts interview was scheduled subsequently.

Feedback from Gusto: She was quiet during parts of the paired programming interview. She focused on solving the larger problem instead of tackling smaller ones. She wrote a significant amount of code without running tests until prompted.

Before this interview, I had multiple mock sessions with an Amazon SDE2 and an SDE3. I was explicitly advised to approach problems top-down, tackling smaller, known-easy problems later. The SDE3 mentioned they never expect candidates to run tests mid-coding, considering it a red flag. Perhaps Gusto follows TDD? If so, I should have paid more attention.

For context, I don't remain silent; I typically think aloud. I never go quiet for more than five minutes, which is justified for personal thinking. In the last round, the interviewer seemed disinterested, with a slumped posture and hand on his cheek. This gave me the impression he just wanted the code written. I explained my entire approach before coding and added numerous comments to each method, another practice learned during mocks.

I understand and respect that companies have different methodologies. However, I am confused by these opposing opinions from experienced interviewers.

Here's the text to clean up:

char[][] board = c4.parseBoard("9_r4_brbrbr_3b2rb_b2r2br_r2b3rb");

Convert this into a 2D array with 9 spaces, r, 4 spaces, b, r, b, r, b, r, 1 space, and so on.

Given a log file, parse it to calculate the median, mode, mean, and other string values. The challenge was to parse the lines.

HR questions like: Which book do I love? Who motivates me? etc.

Given X amount of money and Y amount of people, split the money equally. The right question to ask was, what if the money cannot be evenly distributed, and certain other edge cases?