Interviews in 2024

Interviewer: Hi, thanks for making the time to see us.

Me: Same here!

Interviewer: I'll get started. I need a bathroom designed.

Me: May I know how many commodes will be there?

Interviewer: Let's say, 2.

Me: Ok. How big are the people? You know, for the western toilet. I am making an assumption here that the bathroom implements WesternStyle, not IndianStyle.

Interviewer: Ah, I see. The average person.

Me: Average child, average male, or average female?

Interviewer: Good question. Average male, in mid 20s to 40s. The gender is binary, so I am glad you asked that.

Me: Ok, sounds like a normal bathroom for men in an IT company. Have I gotten the requirements correct?

Interviewer: Yes.

Me: Ok, sounds like you need a bathroom with 2 commodes, as per your initial statement. Sounds like you are using a boolean value for gender, and I only need to concern myself with bathroom for men.

With 2 commodes, to prevent deadlock, I would say 3 sinks are good. This is because someone may want to just wash their hands and leave, or brush after a meal.

In the test case of only 2 men, always, this sink would only have an aesthetic benefit, and a down side of extra maintenance.

But I think an extra sink is still worth the cost of installation.

In the test case of 4 men, due to peak demand, only 2 will wait. However, as mentioned before, if only one of them want to only wash their hands, his user experience improves - he can interrupt the wait time, and leave with higher priority.

For 6 men, assuming all want to use the toilet, then it would take 3 cycles for all 6 men to sanitize themselves.

However, my previous statement assumes 2 men are done with the toilet at the same time.

So, in the event of one man being done sooner, there might be a favorable situation because he can use the sink, while the 3rd man can get started.

Interviewer: Why is that?

Me: Well....I didn't think that through.....I thought if 2 men are done at different times, then another man can get started.

But, my point doesn't have to do with the sink at all....How many ever sinks there are, if the bottle neck is the number of commodes, then the extra sink won't help in batching the men as far as using the commode is concerned.

Interviewer: How will you fix that?

Me: I would have another commode, to prevent this bottle neck....Oh wait, we can have a urinal. You already said only 2 commodes.

That way, by breaking down the act into 2 related classes, each can inherit from BathroomAction, implementing OOP and speeding up the new designer's idea of what this bathroom does.

Interviewer: Thanks for the interview! We have all that we need.

Me: Thanks as well, I liked the questions, and enjoyed the conversation.

Hi Suman,

After careful review, we have come to the unfortunate conclusion that we have chosen another janitor for this role.

While we cannot offer feedback at this time, we will keep your resume in our system, and we would like to reach out later, if a need arises.

Good luck on your job search!

Sincerely,

IT inc.

A few hours later

"If I don't wash a bathroom in 9 minutes, my name is not Rajnikanth" - Suman Jampala