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Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#21

Post by Neablis »

esonderegger wrote: post #9

I feel like the pattern of "solve this puzzle, get an interview" has fallen out of fashion in the past few years. In 2012 I got an interview at facebook by solving a puzzle that involved adding weights to a recursive arrangement of levers on top of levers. I remember both having a lot of fun with the puzzle and knowing that I would have never landed the interview any other way because I was coming from a non-traditio…

Ya i remember doing them pretty often 5-6 years ago. When i went to remember some of the fun ones for my friends who like puzzles, i couldnt find any of them, so i posted this.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#22

Post by rntksi »

etaerc wrote: post #15

Oh... I thought you talk about real hidden interview questions. Like the ones they use to figure out how you got the recommendation letter to this job (i.e. if it wasn't one of their faction who they must be careful about). Or when you get a referral at a competitor and in the interview they try to get your insider info without making you an offer (i.e. "tell me about the last interesting project you worked on"). Or…

I'm guilty of having done one of these things.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#23

Post by throwawaymath »

grahamperich wrote: post #8

The repl.it jobs page is literally just a shell, and you have to figure out how to apply: https://repl.it/site/jobs

That's pretty cool, but they should really lock down outbound requests. You can send arbitrary curl requests to the public internet from their IP addresses (which are located in GCP). I'm not sure about mapping out the internal network, but that at least gives you a reliable proxy through Google Cloud.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#24

Post by emmanuel_1234 »

I tried to design one of those for my company. We've typically just hired someone through my HN post about it recently, so I think it's working, but I'd still really like to get some feedbacks on it. I am very concerned about getting it right, having been through the shitty side of many interview processes.

omnistream-dot-co/job-opportunities/

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#25

Post by alkibiades »

lukejduncan wrote: post #12
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

Many tech companies add a link to their careers page in browser consoles. I'm not sure if that's "secret" or "cool" enough. (Facebook puts in a warning to prevent "XSS" attacks.)

AirBnB did this at least 3-4 years ago? If you watched the network traffic their HTTP headers included the email address for an engineering manager there. I stumbled on this while debugging something I wanted to file a bug report for. I didn't end up interviewing, but I remember thinking it was really cool at the time. I wonder how many applicants they got through that.

usually one person who finds it then posts it on a reddit and it loses value as a filter

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#26

Post by PopeDotNinja »

I just signed up for https://dailycodingproblems.com, a daily email of company interview problems. I can't speak to the veracity of the claims that the problems are from actual interviews, but I have no reason to doubt their authenticity. The premium version shares the answers, too. I like it so far.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#27

Post by rendall »

alkibiades wrote: post #16

i still remember SWIM googling for hours trying to force google foobar to pop up. when it eventually did, most of the answers were on github and it got me an interview.

Would you mind explaining this like I'm 5? I'm curious but have no idea what SWIM or foobar is, and those aren't exactly googleable terms!

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone curated a list of hidden interview questions?

#29

Post by LyndsySimon »

rendall wrote: post #27
alkibiades wrote: post #16

i still remember SWIM googling for hours trying to force google foobar to pop up. when it eventually did, most of the answers were on github and it got me an interview.

Would you mind explaining this like I'm 5? I'm curious but have no idea what SWIM or foobar is, and those aren't exactly googleable terms!

SWIM = Someone Who Isn’t Me
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