Technical phone screen.

A typical medium-level LeetCode question was presented, and I was able to solve it. It was a completely new question for me, so I took a minute to understand it. The interviewer asked me to optimize it further, which I tried, but he wanted it done in a specific way (I guess using DP). I couldn't do it in the next 5 minutes, so we moved on to the next question. I did well in other areas.

I was rejected for the same reason: I couldn't optimize my code.

Why do interviewers expect candidates to write code in a specific way? What is the end goal here?

Optimize your code as quickly as possible because that is all you are going to do in your job, right? :/

I understand that optimization is important, but surely you need enough time to optimize code using DP, especially if you haven't encountered the problem before or you have to be lucky enough to get a known problem.

My personal opinion: I never felt this was the right way of selecting/rejecting candidates, but it looks like the market is full of HackerRank and LeetCode enthusiasts. So, get in the race because that is how you will be judged :(

Medium-level question from LeetCode.