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Wacky interview questions
11–20 of 60 posts
Re: Wacky interview questions
#12“Have you ever stolen a pen from work?”
The correct response to this question is to say "Could I please hold your pen?", and wink slyly.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#13Has 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.
Boy, I hope so. I've got my on-site on Monday!
Re: Wacky interview questions
#14These aren't just wacky, they are stupid. "How many ping-pong balls can fit in a VW bus" is just about the worst question I've ever gotten. Little or no relation to software development.
Here's what we do. Interested in feedback, please!
Via the phone:
* A few background questions (why are you looking for a job, what sounds interesting about what we are doing) (20-30 minutes)
* A bunch of topgrading questions http://www.smarttopgrading.com/ (maybe an hour)
In person:
* A few programming challenges (of increasing difficulty) that involve stuff the candiate is not expected to know (some algorithmic, most problem-solving type thing), and has to solve it via Google and Stack Overflow or whatnot, to make sure they can work outside of their comfort zone (I've had a lot of people freeze up at "Write a program to get Time from outside of the system", for example) (couple of hours til lunchtime)
* Then pair programming for the rest of the day to make sure we can all get along with this person (after lunch, and next day if possible)
If reasonable, we put a new hire on a 1 month contract before we make a final offer (we give a tentative salary offer at day one so they know approximately what it'll be but cannot judge equity grants until we have more time with them).
Re: Wacky interview questions
#15“Have you ever stolen a pen from work?” The correct response to this question is to say "Could I please hold your pen?", and wink slyly.
This reminds me, I lost my pen and it's time to grab a new one.
I consider it stealing as much as I consider using the toilet paper they provide for me stealing.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#16Has anyone been asked any of these? I'm curious because I've been asked #18 before.
#18 is kind of interesting, because there's two possible answers. For a modern analogue clock where the hands move in fixed increments, rather than smoothly, the answer is simply 5 minutes. For older ones it's 25/6 minutes.
I like #12, just because it begs to be answered with "perfectly".
Re: Wacky interview questions
#17“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?
Agree. Who would like to work there anyway? All your collages must have been pretty desperate sins they didn't tell the interviewer to shove it...
If http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/LivingSocial-Interview-RV... are to bee believed this company are wasting a lot of peoples time.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#18“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?
It could be part of the job description, not every interview is for a developer.
Re: Wacky interview questions
#19I 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…
I once interviewed at a place that had an interesting spin. They gave me three fermi questions, which I had 5 minutes total to estimate:
1. Mass of the earth in kg 2. US GDP 3. Number of carriages on the London Underground
I then had to give a 95% confidence interval for each one (i.e. an interval that I was 95% sure the true answer lay in) and then asked, for each estimate, which bet I wanted to take:
1. Bet that the answer is inside the interval at odds of 10 to 1 on. 2. Bet that the answer is outside the interval at odds of 30 to 1.
There's a lot of work that has to be done there, and potential for a very interesting discussion (this was for a trading/research role, rather than a software developer role).
Re: Wacky interview questions
#20"How would you rate your memory?"
Sorry what was that again? I forgot what you asked