The Meta Interview
I prepared for the interview like crazy, refreshing my knowledge of all the trendy Silicon Valley buzzwords, like "quantum" and "default mode network."
The algorithm question was a bit silly — something only a trendy FAANG company could propose with a straight face: "Write a program that generates text like the lyrics of 'Girls and Boys' by Blur and outputs a chain of 'X who likes Y who likes Z' up to an arbitrary depth."
Girls who want boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they're girls
Who do girls like they're boys
— "Girls and Boys," Blur, 1994
It seemed surprisingly tailored to a Prolog implementation. Defining a few logical relations would provide far more functionality than initially asked for, thanks to Prolog's math-powered rollback algorithm.
I weighed the risk of being considered a snob, but went ahead and asked to use Prolog.
The interviewer seemed pleasantly surprised, almost eager to give me the job on the spot. He mentioned he actually knew someone on that floor who was a Prolog expert.
Five minutes later, a tech bro walked in, half his shirt untucked and wearing a pair of Ray-Bans. My interviewer introduced him as Chad, the Prolog expert. He left us alone so Chad could properly assess my skills...
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