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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

#271

Post by mmirate »

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.

> 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.

What did (or will) my successors do to deserve having an easier time than I did?

(Disclaimer: have not been to a military academy or a frat; but only to an undergrad school.)

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#272

Post by commandlinefan »

anonytrary wrote: post #237
commandlinefan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some jobs require performance under pressure, but programming is not one of them. In fact, programming under pressure is the leading cause of programming disasters. It's the exact opposite of what a rational employer should want.

> programming under pressure is the leading cause of programming disasters I don't want to straw man you, but it seems like hiring someone who is demonstrably better at programming under pressure would mitigate the inevitable situations that force employees to program under pressure.

> mitigate the inevitable situations

Conversely - the person who feels like he's good at programming under pressure might consider it no big deal and not bother to mitigate any potential "programming under pressure later" possibilities.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#273

Post by ectospheno »

When interviewing I would often ask one (and only one) question of this type. The rest of the interview was your standard set of questions to see what type of person you were sitting across from.

The one "brainteaser" question was "Estimate how fast human hair grows in miles per hour. Order of magnitude is fine."

I just wanted to see that they not only knew how to estimate something but that they understood this particular estimation wasn't important given the job they were interviewing for and could thus be answered quickly rather than accurately.

The one person who answered immediately was off by 3 orders of magnitude but he was the best hire we had. He could spot BS a mile away.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#274

Post by Aeolun »

kajmagnusmobile wrote: post #256
FundThrowaway wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty crazy, how do these people exist and get jobs? What kind of development were they supposed to be doing?

And what's the reason they were asked to do the fizzbugz test?

They weren’t asked until we had some internal hackathon where we were trying to implement tested fizz buzz in new languages we were working with.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#275

Post by Aeolun »

FundThrowaway wrote: post #239
Aeolun wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a candidate, someone we had already hired through an agency. Two someone’s actually. Never again. They were great people, but couldn’t distinguish a string from an int.

That's pretty crazy, how do these people exist and get jobs? What kind of development were they supposed to be doing?

Full stack Webdevelopment. Had 2 years of experience.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#276

Post by bfrydl »

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #230
bfrydl wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My answer: I use my infinite resources to become benevolent dictator of Earth. With my endless wealth I prevent climate change, provide the basic needs of every person on the planet, educate the world, and set up a global system of sustainable reproduction. I have infinite resources so I assume it's not eugenics or something dystopian, but more a collective human understanding of responsibility. Finally, with our fut…

> when there is nothing left to learn, I only logged in to comment on this :-) This won't happen, ever. That's because new things to learn are being created all the time! For example, when there was no horse there was no horse riding. When there was no computer there was no programming. Just two infinitesimal examples to demonstrate what I mean. Knowledge of "basics of the universe" such as quantum theory are of no u…

Who am I going to believe, a human in 2018, or a transcendent being composed of the unity of life in all its forms across the entire universe who has dedicated an unfathomable amount of time to uncovering every mystery related to ping pong balls and 747s?

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#277

Post by vivekseth »

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.

My point was that Apple is a large company with many teams. I didn’t understand why OP would write off an an entire company because they didn’t like 1 team.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#278

Post by andrewprock »

guelo wrote: post #216
commandlinefan wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some jobs require performance under pressure, but programming is not one of them. In fact, programming under pressure is the leading cause of programming disasters. It's the exact opposite of what a rational employer should want.

Not to defend that interviewer, but sometimes it's inevitable that you do have to code under pressure. I've been in situations where the whole system is collapsing, thousands of dollars are being lost every second, and I have to push a patch to production as quickly possible. Not that I would interview for such a situation.

"I've been in situations where the whole system is collapsing, thousands of dollars are being lost every second"

That's the situation you get into when you code under pressure.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#279

Post by andrewprock »

Timmah wrote: post #97
nimbius wrote: post #28

I dont work in tech, im an engine mechanic by trade, but im fascinated to know why/how often this happens in a tech interview? Do programmers/sys admins really endure this kind of aggravation in their interviews? The hardest question I've ever asked one of my shop mechanics during an interview was how does Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) in a Diesel engine affect thermal efficiency, smoke output and emissions of the…

It happens because the types of problems software engineers face are random and require active engagement and creativity to solve. There's no book that you can read that says "if the program crashes, try these things". Yes there are basics but theres no real formula that always leads to the solution. Each program is unique enough that you have to study the internals of how it works and then test hypotheses about the…

'There's no book that you can read that says "if the program crashes, try these things".'

You are talking to a mechanic. This makes up a huge fraction of their job. On the flip side, cars usually come with design documents, testing tools, and standards. Software only wishes it could be so organized.

Re: Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

#280

Post by stcredzero »

reversecs wrote: post #270
stcredzero wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

How do you know it wasn't just a badly written question? Interviewing is hard in the same way that teaching and writing is. It's hard to put yourself into another person's shoes. Never ascribe malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.

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