Wacky interview questions
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Wacky interview questions
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Re: Wacky interview questions
#2I can see where most of these are coming from. Estimation, consulting/sales, personality, management & leadership. The penguin in the sombrero is harder to pin down. Are they trying to see how you analyse novel situations? As in, "Well, it's wearing a sombrero but comes from the antarctic, so it's likely been on holiday. Since this office isn't in Mexico or the antarctic it's probably on a travelling holiday, which means its young and doesn't have any money. Since it's a construction company, best case is it wants a job as a labourer. Worst case, it wants to use the phone to call its parents and ask for a bail out." I know, call me Sherlock. I expect I've missed the point though. I really would like to know what other people have to say about this question.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#3I can see where most of these are coming from. Estimation, consulting/sales, personality, management & leadership. The penguin in the sombrero is harder to pin down. Are they trying to see how you analyse novel situations? As in, "Well, it's wearing a sombrero but comes from the antarctic, so it's likely been on holiday. Since this office isn't in Mexico or the antarctic it's probably on a travelling holiday, which m…
> The penguin in the sombrero is harder to pin down.
My response would be, "If a penguin in a sombrero walks through the door and starts talking, the most plausible reason for why he's here is that you've spiked my coffee with LSD."
Re: Wacky interview questions
#4Has anyone been asked any of these? I'm curious because I've been asked #18 before.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#5I don't really ask these kinds of questions, but I do kind of like them.. the giant puzzle/estimation types. Can someone who asks these regularly give some feedback on how well you think they work? I'm curious how much you end up learning from them.
That said, there are some doozies in this list. For example: "On a scale of one to ten, rate me as an interviewer".
Um, okay but only if the next question is to rate you as an asshole.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#6I don't really ask these kinds of questions, but I do kind of like them.. the giant puzzle/estimation types. Can someone who asks these regularly give some feedback on how well you think they work? I'm curious how much you end up learning from them. That said, there are some doozies in this list. For example: "On a scale of one to ten, rate me as an interviewer". Um, okay but only if the next question is to rate you…
In my experience these "Fermi questions" aren't that useful, the primary thing they tell you is whether the person has previously been exposed to the concept of "Fermi questions" or not.
I guess if the person being interviewed is 30+ and working in software development and hasn't been exposed to Fermi questions then maybe that's a red flag, but other than that I've seen no indication that answering these types of questions well correlates to real world performance.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#7I can see where most of these are coming from. Estimation, consulting/sales, personality, management & leadership. The penguin in the sombrero is harder to pin down. Are they trying to see how you analyse novel situations? As in, "Well, it's wearing a sombrero but comes from the antarctic, so it's likely been on holiday. Since this office isn't in Mexico or the antarctic it's probably on a travelling holiday, which m…
“A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?”
He says "deslizarse". He's there because he is my power animal.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#8“What’s your favorite song? Perform it for us now.”
I'd have to go with "Take this job and shove it". There's nothing worse than places that mandate you be "fun" and "offbeat". If I am fun/offbeat, all you as an interviewer have to do is make me comfortable enough to show it. If you can't do that, why do I want to work for you?
Re: Wacky interview questions
#9Has anyone been asked any of these? I'm curious because I've been asked #18 before.
I am pretty sure (and given this is HN I'm sure a googler will be along soon to confirm/deny this) that Google have a policy of no longer asking those kind of brain-teasers for their software engineering roles. They may still do so for PMs, etc.
Certainly when I had my Google on-site for an engineering role I was spared the infamous questions that crop up in articles like this from time to time.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#10Has anyone been asked any of these? I'm curious because I've been asked #18 before.
I've seen variations of #18 before but more involved versions where I've had to write pseudo code to place clock hands based on the current time from a timer.
I've also seen various variations of the Fermi questions before, though maybe not exactly these ones. Like half of the questions listed there fall into that model: Estimate how many XYZ are there in ABC?
Of the others, “How would you direct someone else on how to cook an omelet?” seems pretty reasonable in terms of sussing out communication skills, but a lot of the rest are just insanely stupid questions, IMO.