The rumors about the hiring process being haphazard are true.

First, a manager phone-screened me and asked me to come to Palo Alto. Next, the recruiter told me I still need to go through a phone screen. If the disconnect stopped there, it would have been okay. I did not expect to get invited to Palo Alto without a tech screen.

Here's the kicker: I am a senior engineer in my present job. The person who phone-screened me was a fresh college hire and had spent about one month working at Facebook. Facebook was that person's first job. I am not saying a new hire cannot be smarter than a senior person, but it is reasonable to think that it would be good practice at a big company to allow new hires, especially fresh out of school, to settle down, understand the needs of the company, and then start interviewing people.

Write binary search?

You are trying to rob houses on a street. Each house has some positive amount of cash. Your goal is to rob houses such that you maximize the total robbed amount. The constraint is: once you rob a house, you cannot rob a house adjacent to that house.