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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

#111

Post by yAak »

eip wrote: post #44
rrggrr wrote: 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?

I'd build his/her CRUD app, and make sure it wasn't shitty, if I felt it had potential to be a useful product and also felt like the people I met would be good to work with/for.

I've learned the hard way that I much prefer quality of life over "sexy dev work." (...and obviously take both if I can find it.)

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#112

Post by opportune »

I guess I’m evil because I would refer working with people who can pass brain teasers to those who can’t. The problem is that you can “prepare” for brain teaser questions, so you end up selecting for people who prepare more than people who are actually smart.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#113

Post by jgtrosh »

riyadparvez wrote: post #26

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…

I don't know the loop question. Do you have a formulation where it's not obvious but realistically possible to solve?

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#114

Post by jfasi »

biztos wrote: post #58
jfasi wrote: post #7

As someone who does both a lot of interviewing (at Google) and gives a lot of advice on interviewing to people just starting out, this rhymes with my intuition about why some people get into interviews: even without the use of brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google), the interview process is hard . People rarely come out of it without at least a twinge of frustration of humiliation. I'm not immun…

> brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google) Out of curiosity, how is this controlled?

Interviewers write up questions asked, candidate solutions, and their commentary and hiring recommendation. Those writeups are sent to a hiring committee which reviews all the candidate's feedback and makes a hire/no hire recommendation.

If the committee sees a brainteasers, disagrees with a question, spots inconsistencies in the feedback, etc., they moderate their use of the feedback or ignore it altogether. There's also a mechanism to send feedback to the interviewer, which they can use to let them know a question is appropriate, banned due to having leaked, etc.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#115

Post by TeMPOraL »

pinewurst wrote: post #9
jfasi wrote: post #7

As someone who does both a lot of interviewing (at Google) and gives a lot of advice on interviewing to people just starting out, this rhymes with my intuition about why some people get into interviews: even without the use of brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google), the interview process is hard . People rarely come out of it without at least a twinge of frustration of humiliation. I'm not immun…

It's like military academy (or fraternity) hazing. You've been abused, therefore you want to pass the load of that abuse on. Maybe you delude yourself into calling it "tradition" or "high standards" or maybe you're just honest and enjoy the sadism of it all.

I can't speak on how solid this research was, but I remember reading a book (one of Cialdini's, I think), that explained hazing behaviour as group cohesion enhancers. Basically, what you suffer during initiation will make your bond with the group much stronger. I suppose there might be something to it, given how prevalent such practices are all around the world, in all cultures.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#116

Post by stcredzero »

throwawaymath wrote: post #54
wolfgke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like military academy (or fraternity) hazing. You've been abused, therefore you want to pass the load of that abuse on. I really cannot imagine why people have this behavior. I was often treated unfairly in life, so I try to architect systems that attempt to avoid my perceived unfairness so that the next generation does not have to suffer similarly (ideally in way for which correctness can be shown in a mathem…

I think the answer is that most people are not like that, and the ones that are don't think about it from that perspective or that explicitly. All disagreeable human behavior is easy to point out and criticize in its most straightforward and uncharitable representation.

I think the answer is that most people are not like that, and the ones that are don't think about it from that perspective or that explicitly.

That, in a nutshell, is why a lot of abnormal psychology is so very sticky. It's even worse than that, however. It's more that most people are just a tiny bit "like that," and no one thinks about it from that perspective.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#117

Post by codr4 »

pinewurst wrote: post #9
jfasi wrote: post #7

As someone who does both a lot of interviewing (at Google) and gives a lot of advice on interviewing to people just starting out, this rhymes with my intuition about why some people get into interviews: even without the use of brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google), the interview process is hard . People rarely come out of it without at least a twinge of frustration of humiliation. I'm not immun…

It's like military academy (or fraternity) hazing. You've been abused, therefore you want to pass the load of that abuse on. Maybe you delude yourself into calling it "tradition" or "high standards" or maybe you're just honest and enjoy the sadism of it all.

The wheel of pain and suffering must roll on, otherwise people might get a clue and unite against their oppressors.

Or in the words of the freemasons, order through chaos.

Once hurt, few seem to have enough integrity to break the loop; so it snow balls nicely all by itself.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#118

Post by pzh »

illumin8 wrote: post #77
jfasi wrote: post #7

As someone who does both a lot of interviewing (at Google) and gives a lot of advice on interviewing to people just starting out, this rhymes with my intuition about why some people get into interviews: even without the use of brainteasers (which, for the record, are not used at Google), the interview process is hard . People rarely come out of it without at least a twinge of frustration of humiliation. I'm not immun…

I interviewed at Google (back in 2005, mind you) and I remember being asked a couple brain teaser questions like how to estimate the number of windows in NYC. I will say that out of my loop, there were only 2 interviewers that came across as intentionally mean, the rest were genuinely wanting to see how I solved problems and understand what my thought process was, which is what most interviewers should be attempting…

Aren't the examples of brainteasers actually Fermi problems? Maybe they sound like brainteasers if asked without the appropriate context, but when you're doing a system design interview and you have to estimate your throughput or storage requirements, you're effectively solving a Fermi problem just like the one that asks you to estimate the number of windows in NYC.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#119

Post by jgtrosh »

framebit wrote: post #69

I had one of these brainteaser questions in an interview once, and I liked my mathematician friend’s answer to it the best. Q: Given infinite setup time and infinite money, how would you fill the inside of a 747 with ping pong balls as quickly as possible? A: Define the inside of the plane as the exterior. Now, by definition, all ping pong balls are inside the plane. QED.

If there's a specific number of balls, that's a great answer; if you need to fill up the interior, you're gonna need a lot more balls!!

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#120

Post by TeMPOraL »

sjg007 wrote: post #40
gcatalfamo wrote: post #12

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.

Er, if you can do that, then why not "get adword revenue for each of these countries, read the value for Italy"?
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