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Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

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Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#41
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been interviewed at Google and I was given a brainteaser. "Can you estimate Google AdWords revenue for Italy - B2B?"

Get population estimate for all countries with adword revenue, get adword revenue for each of these countries, fit to a linear model, predict italy. Or calculate adword revenue per capita and apply.

No, you had to give out a number.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#42

My issue is more with tricky algorithmic questions. I faced these tricky interview questions, where you either have to know the trick beforehand or there is NO way you can come up with a solution in an interview. I never understand the point of these questions. Because these esoteric hypothetical questions will almost never come up in real-life. They don't test someone's skills, because these problems don't follow an…

Most algorithms questions only prove one thing: whether a candidate has brushed up on algorithms beforehand. That has some usefulness, being a proxy measure for conscientiousness, but offers little beyond that. Maybe that they’re able to follow the reasoning, but it could just as easily be learned by rote and parroted back. The fact is that no one comes up with a from-scratch efficient algorithm for doing anything in 5 minutes, the candidate either knows it going in, or they’re screwed.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t a brain teaser. It’s market size estimation, I’m guessing this was not an engineering role?

How is that question different from "please estimate how many golf ball fit in a school bus" ? The only thing changing are parameters. EDIT: it was for the Search team, search spam prevention, can't remember role it's been 4-5 years, sorry.

If you were interviewing for a job at a company whose main revenue stream involved transporting golf balls in school buses, that might be a perfectly reasonable interview question.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#44
post #5

The single most effective interview question I ask: "What do you want to do?". I drill down on that to a granulator level as I try to make sure the tasks, duties and overall position matches what the candidate really wants for themselves. Its followed-up with a "How would you do it?", again persisting in the discussion (not interrogation) until we both are comfortable with the sensibility and symmetry of the answers.

If you think anyone 'really' wants to build your shitty CRUD app then you are deluding yourself.

Do you 'really' love your job? Would you do it for free?

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#47
post #44
post #5

The single most effective interview question I ask: "What do you want to do?". I drill down on that to a granulator level as I try to make sure the tasks, duties and overall position matches what the candidate really wants for themselves. Its followed-up with a "How would you do it?", again persisting in the discussion (not interrogation) until we both are comfortable with the sensibility and symmetry of the answers.

If you think anyone 'really' wants to build your shitty CRUD app then you are deluding yourself. Do you 'really' love your job? Would you do it for free?

Ouch. So, I'm not in the software business, but either way the point of my Q&A is measure the distance between what an employee wants to during the day versus what probably needs to be done to accomplish the desired result. When the gap is big the hire/job never works out.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#48
post #5

The single most effective interview question I ask: "What do you want to do?". I drill down on that to a granulator level as I try to make sure the tasks, duties and overall position matches what the candidate really wants for themselves. Its followed-up with a "How would you do it?", again persisting in the discussion (not interrogation) until we both are comfortable with the sensibility and symmetry of the answers.

I'm going to try this. The questions my team comes up with haven't been very satisfying and this seems like a good way to find out what they do know vs what they don't.

I learned this from one of the best recruiters in finance. I can't take credit for it.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#50
I took an interview today and was asked a simple problem which I immediately answered with linear time complexity. The interviewer then went on to say "no I'm looking for a specific answer which involves a trick".

Literally said those words.

Eventually figured it out but I came away with a bad impression of the company. Not the kind of stuff I judge people on.

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