Applied Intuition Software Engineer Interview Experience — An Unclear Car-Location API and Binary-Search Hints

This might have been a new question, though I'd only read about ten interview reports. I'd definitely never seen this one.

I don't know the result yet, but I didn't finish, so I'm sure this is a rejection report.

The main issue was some domain knowledge. I couldn't quickly step back from it, and wasted a lot of time.

The interview guidance was also a bit off. I said, "Couldn't this use recursion?" But he mentioned binary search twice. I kept asking how binary search would help here.

Here's the problem:

def mock_squaredar_scan(lat_min: float, lon_min: float, side_length: float) -> bool:
# some logic
def get_car_positions:
# Implementation starts here

Those were the only two def lines in CoderPad. Then nothing...

I didn't know the input or output.

After talking for a while, I learned:

mock_squaredar_scan() is the API you can use. Each scan returns True or False to tell us whether there are any cars within this square scan.

get_car_positions returns the cars' locations.

There was almost no prompt. Very confusing.

How many rounds are in the interview process, and what does each round focus on?

First round, LeetCode-style coding.

What was the specific input/output format for this question?

Nothing very specific.

Did they mention time- or space-complexity requirements?

Not at all.

What approaches did you try?

Brute force.

Then binary search.

By the way:

The interviewer wasn't from the team I was interviewing for and knew nothing about the team I wanted to join.

He'd only joined the company a few months earlier, too. I don't know whether he lacked interviewing experience, but his explanations were unclear.