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The Mother of All Interview Questions

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Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#51

Post by DennisP »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #20
raganwald wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question of bias is an excellent one to ponder. I agree that my phrasing is biased, but so is: The last three times you faced a "build or buy (/use open source)” situation, which did you choose, and why? ...in a way, as it only covers places where there is a perception that there was a straight-up choice. One of the things I am interested in is places where the invetion-oriented folks didn’t perceive there was a…

When I was at Google I wished they had a few 'uncoders', people who made it their goal in life to leave the source tree with fewer lines of source than they found it. True story: I went to a talk given by one of the 'engineering elders' (these were low Emp# engineers who were considered quite successful and were to be emulated by the workers :-) This person stated when they came to work at Google they were given the…

I once read the following story about a famous hacker. If I remember right it was about Woz, and recounted in the book Founders At Work.

At some point Apple was taken over by beancounters who wanted reports from programmers saying how many lines of code they'd written. Woz spent a day or two refactoring something, removed 5000 lines of code, and thoughtfully submitted a form with LOC marked "-5000".

They exempted him from having to submit any more forms.

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#52

Post by raganwald »

tmp43522 wrote: post #41
ChuckMcM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Google I wished they had a few 'uncoders', people who made it their goal in life to leave the source tree with fewer lines of source than they found it. True story: I went to a talk given by one of the 'engineering elders' (these were low Emp# engineers who were considered quite successful and were to be emulated by the workers :-) This person stated when they came to work at Google they were given the…

I hate to depart from the group think, but there's another explanation aside from a smart engineer getting carried away with their own brilliance: They remarked how they spent a couple of days looking over the system which was complicated and creaky, they couldn't figure it out Now it may be the case that they didn't really try to fix it and are just using that as an excuse, but OTOH, they may actually have been stum…

It is difficult to agree or disagree on the basis of a few paragraphs of anecdote. For example, I have often heard programmers say they don’t understand some code. When I probe, what I discover is that they have figured out what it does, but they disagree with why it is built the way it is built.

So they may explain that making such-and-such a change will take two days instead of a few hours, thanks to all the FactoryFactoryFactoryAPIXMLDescriptorSchemas they have to write. That is obviously a hugely different thing to having no idea how the code works and what they need to do to add or change features.

Or for another example, say instead of understanding a system in a day, it takes a week. The system sucks. But if it is relatively stable, even six days of lost time is trivial compared to the time needed for a rewrite and the risks involved.

I am not saying that this particular rewrite of Google’s XYZ is correct or incorrect, just saying that sometimes we might be right to leave well enough alone. Development time is not free, and in addition to figuring out the ROI of writing a new system, we should consider the opportuinity cost of having Mr. Brilliant rewriting a working but terribly written system vs. inventing something else that might confer a greater benefit to his employer.

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#53

Post by lsb »

DennisP wrote: post #51
ChuckMcM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Google I wished they had a few 'uncoders', people who made it their goal in life to leave the source tree with fewer lines of source than they found it. True story: I went to a talk given by one of the 'engineering elders' (these were low Emp# engineers who were considered quite successful and were to be emulated by the workers :-) This person stated when they came to work at Google they were given the…

I once read the following story about a famous hacker. If I remember right it was about Woz, and recounted in the book Founders At Work. At some point Apple was taken over by beancounters who wanted reports from programmers saying how many lines of code they'd written. Woz spent a day or two refactoring something, removed 5000 lines of code, and thoughtfully submitted a form with LOC marked "-5000". They exempted him…

Bill Atkinson: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#54

Post by [deleted] »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #20
raganwald wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question of bias is an excellent one to ponder. I agree that my phrasing is biased, but so is: The last three times you faced a "build or buy (/use open source)” situation, which did you choose, and why? ...in a way, as it only covers places where there is a perception that there was a straight-up choice. One of the things I am interested in is places where the invetion-oriented folks didn’t perceive there was a…

When I was at Google I wished they had a few 'uncoders', people who made it their goal in life to leave the source tree with fewer lines of source than they found it. True story: I went to a talk given by one of the 'engineering elders' (these were low Emp# engineers who were considered quite successful and were to be emulated by the workers :-) This person stated when they came to work at Google they were given the…

[deleted]

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#55

Post by [deleted] »

DennisP wrote: post #51
ChuckMcM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Google I wished they had a few 'uncoders', people who made it their goal in life to leave the source tree with fewer lines of source than they found it. True story: I went to a talk given by one of the 'engineering elders' (these were low Emp# engineers who were considered quite successful and were to be emulated by the workers :-) This person stated when they came to work at Google they were given the…

I once read the following story about a famous hacker. If I remember right it was about Woz, and recounted in the book Founders At Work. At some point Apple was taken over by beancounters who wanted reports from programmers saying how many lines of code they'd written. Woz spent a day or two refactoring something, removed 5000 lines of code, and thoughtfully submitted a form with LOC marked "-5000". They exempted him…

[deleted]

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#56

Post by [deleted] »

DennisP wrote: post #51
ChuckMcM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at Google I wished they had a few 'uncoders', people who made it their goal in life to leave the source tree with fewer lines of source than they found it. True story: I went to a talk given by one of the 'engineering elders' (these were low Emp# engineers who were considered quite successful and were to be emulated by the workers :-) This person stated when they came to work at Google they were given the…

I once read the following story about a famous hacker. If I remember right it was about Woz, and recounted in the book Founders At Work. At some point Apple was taken over by beancounters who wanted reports from programmers saying how many lines of code they'd written. Woz spent a day or two refactoring something, removed 5000 lines of code, and thoughtfully submitted a form with LOC marked "-5000". They exempted him…

[deleted]

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#57

Post by flurm »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #20
raganwald wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question of bias is an excellent one to ponder. I agree that my phrasing is biased, but so is: The last three times you faced a "build or buy (/use open source)” situation, which did you choose, and why? ...in a way, as it only covers places where there is a perception that there was a straight-up choice. One of the things I am interested in is places where the invetion-oriented folks didn’t perceive there was a…

When I was at Google I wished they had a few 'uncoders', people who made it their goal in life to leave the source tree with fewer lines of source than they found it. True story: I went to a talk given by one of the 'engineering elders' (these were low Emp# engineers who were considered quite successful and were to be emulated by the workers :-) This person stated when they came to work at Google they were given the…

There is an opposite extreme seen on government software efforts...imagine systems that have been around 15,20,25 years. Interfaces frozen from the days of mainframe, millions upon millions of lines of code, written not necessarily by software engineers, but other engineers.

There's a point where it is really really smart to throw away pieces of that system and regenerate them. You produce a lot of cruft of 20 years.

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#58

Post by KennethLStein »

DANGER - BAD QUESTION - asking this question is asking a candidate (currently employed or otherwise) to violate the terms of the Confidentiality Agreement with their previous employer. Asking prospective employer this question is doing the same thing.

THE CORRECT ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION - "Answering this question necessitates that I violate my duty of confidentiality.

Re: The Mother of All Interview Questions

#60

Post by [deleted] »

bugsy wrote: post #49

> please describe the three most recent things you have invented The "most recent" qualifier makes this a short answer, which would be: Of the last three of my inventions, two are trade secrets and the third has not completed the patent application process. I am not able to discuss any of these. Would you rather discuss some of the patents I hold that are public instead? While you are considering I would like to know…

[deleted]
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