Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#261

Post by logifail » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 8:46 AM UTC

I was asked a series of brainteaser interviews at a university interview.

It was immediately clear that the purpose of the questions wasn't really to see if I knew the answers, but to see how I responded when asked about something I didn't (immediately) know the answer to.

Isn't this a perfectly legitimate way to try to see how a candidate might deal with solving problems they don't know the answers to?

Ironically one of the interviewers (a somewhat crusty old astrophysics professor) later became my physics tutor, and continued to ask us brainteaser questions during tutorial sessions.

For instance, I dimly recall us being asked to "estimate the change in the length of the Earth's day if all the cars in the UK were to drive on the right-hand side of the road instead of on the left"...

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#262

Post by est » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 9:01 AM UTC

I think it's only fair if interviewee was allowed to ask a counter brainteaser question.

Let the both sides suffer some kind of stress.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#263

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 9:08 AM UTC

vivekseth wrote: post #171

8_hours_ago wrote: post #123

I recently interviewed at Apple and one interviewer caused me to decide to never work there. I was put into a conference room and had 8 people over 6 hours come in and interview me one after another. Each person asked me about my background and then jumped into a whiteboard coding problem. Most of the interviewers were understanding of the fact that writing code on a whiteboard is nothing like writing code on a compu…

So you will never work at Apple because you had 1 bad interviewer out of a sample size of 8? That seems foolish.

[deleted]

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#264

Post by ubernostrum » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 9:52 AM UTC

jpttsn wrote: post #258

cubano wrote: post #127

Maybe the correct stratagy is turn the tables and try to lighten the mood of the interview if a brainteaser is asked, and sort of shuck "oh one of these things? (laugh)...ok let's work this out together" and proceed to try to engage the interviewer with estimating the number of floors in an average building, the number of windows per story, and the number of buildings, all the time asking the interviewer what his est…

The interviewer doesn’t need to know the number of windows. They need to know that you will take things seriously on demand.

The candidate doesn't need to know how to estimate the number of windows.

They need to know you're the sort of interviewer who likes to be the organ grinder while everyone else is the dancing monkey. Many common interview questions give this away quickly, which is useful.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#265

Post by logifail » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 10:00 AM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #91

welcome_dragon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, as long as getting the right answer isn't important. I flat out tell people I don't care if they get the right answer, that I just want to hear their thought process. Such questions used in this way are extremely valuable.

They're valuable for what? Showing off a thought process in a high pressure one hour meeting with a judge watching you?

If the candidate is applying for a job which will require the ability come up with solutions to new and/or difficult problems while under pressure, sure. Why wouldn't the prospective employer want to explore that at interview?

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#266

Post by ubernostrum » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 10:02 AM UTC

justfor1comment wrote: post #199

To account for some interviewers being sadist in general, may be companies can implement a per interviewer rejection quota. For example, if you interview 10 candidates at max you can reject 7 candidates. You have to yes to 3 candidates or be removed from the interviewing committee. This will ensure that just one bitter person is not preventing good candidates from clearing the interview process.

I like this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8RxkpUvxK0

The speaker formerly worked at Google, and around 8:55 in the video relates the story of being on a hiring committee that was known for being tough on candidates. And a recruiter once forwarded a set of interview packets to them, and they voted "no hire" on all of them. The recruiter then revealed to the committee that they'd been given their own packets, slightly anonymized, from when they were interviewed, and had just voted against hiring themselves.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#267

Post by ubernostrum » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 10:05 AM UTC

darawk wrote: post #213

prolepunk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the interviewee needs to have exactly the same assumptions about the world as interviewer (or whoever come up with the brainteaser) and the knowledge of the same basic facts. I mean how do you even approach questions like -- how many snowflakes on the south pole? how many fish in all of the oceans? how much grass is in Mongolia?

I think that's the point of the question: to see how you approach it. The 'correct' approach that they'd be looking for is 'Fermi estimation': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

No, the point is to try to rationalize cargo-culting. Fermi did this, and Fermi was brilliant, so if we require candidates to do this we'll end up hiring people who are as brilliant as Fermi!

Here's a brainteaser: spot all the flaws in that chain of "reasoning".

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#268

Post by S4M » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 11:45 AM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #221

moduspol wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish my Googling skills were stronger, but alas, they are not. I remember one of the other key takeaways was that the manager role was treated more favorably--specifically that they apologized they could only offer some (reasonable) amount of relocation assistance while none was even offered in the developer role. It was theorized that managers were seen as an "in group" among other managers, but that was obviously…

I think it was a blog post by Michael O Church, though I don't have the reference to hand.

I managed to dig it from archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20160113210613/https://michaeloc...

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#269

Post by moduspol » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

S4M wrote: post #268

rwallace wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a blog post by Michael O Church, though I don't have the reference to hand.

I managed to dig it from archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20160113210613/https://michaeloc...

That's the one! Thank you so much.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#270

Post by reversecs » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #150

pinewurst wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many interviews are hard, but there's a distinct difference between good hard and bad hard. My current gig interviews were all deep storage strategy conversations and hard in the sense of needing to show a lot of knowledge articulately. I left there feeling really good if exhausted. My Google interviews were hard in the sense of embarrassing regurgitation and thinking nonsense on one's feet. Hard was being made to fe…

Hard was being made to feel inferior. I had an interview experience, where the interviewer was looking for a particular answer. I give him 3 answers to his design issue. Then the interviewer says he was looking for the 2nd answer I gave him, as if I didn't just say it. It's one thing to reach and fail. It's another thing to be in a context where the truth of what you know doesn't even matter.

I had a Google interview where the interviewer started by saying we will start with a warm up question and then we would go into a real question.

The warm up question was difficult and I was completely embarrassed that I didn't some it right away. As I walked out I knew for certain that was not a warm up question and was pissed that he had consciously shaken my confidence right off the bat.