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In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

nytimes.com

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Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#121

Post by Plutor »

fduran wrote: post #106
Udo wrote: post #100

There are questions that are actually fun and I can sort of see them starting a conversation with the right kind of interviewer that tells both parties a lot about who they're dealing with. From the article: > How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? Basic economics estimating - probably not that useful and a bit dull, but hey why not. At least the problem has several angles to it that might be…

> A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? horrible question, it took me a few seconds to figure out they are talking about the game Monopoly.

Not necessarily (and actually that would be a terrible answer. The highest rent in Monopoly with a hotel is $2000, and I would hardly call that a "fortune".

The point of the question is to establish how well you gather additional information when the initial description is unsatisfactory. Anyone who's been an engineer knows you have to do this every single day.

(Not that it's a good interview question.)

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#122

Post by donohoe »

edent wrote: post #3

The original article - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-huntin... Distraction free reading and without all the annoying cruft of Quartz. Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#123

Post by wavefunction »

fduran wrote: post #106
Udo wrote: post #100

There are questions that are actually fun and I can sort of see them starting a conversation with the right kind of interviewer that tells both parties a lot about who they're dealing with. From the article: > How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? Basic economics estimating - probably not that useful and a bit dull, but hey why not. At least the problem has several angles to it that might be…

> A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? horrible question, it took me a few seconds to figure out they are talking about the game Monopoly.

Especially since I always picked the top-hat.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#124

Post by 127001brewer »

Udo wrote: post #100

There are questions that are actually fun and I can sort of see them starting a conversation with the right kind of interviewer that tells both parties a lot about who they're dealing with. From the article: > How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? Basic economics estimating - probably not that useful and a bit dull, but hey why not. At least the problem has several angles to it that might be…

It's more like a hazing, not a hiring interview.

It seems like a hazing but perhaps it's a bias on the part of the person interviewing. Meaning, the interviewer wants to work with people very much like themselves, instead of hiring the best candidate.

I think one of the best interview strategies was a recent posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5779406

...or anything similar to the FizzBuzz problem.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#125

Post by matwood »

joeldidit wrote: post #82
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the interviews will be less tough, they'll just be differently tough. After all, they're just changing the mechanism, not lowering the standard.

I always wonder how Google manages to have so many vanilla Engineers given how high their standards are. I don't think their standards are high in the "needs to be smart" sense, but in regards to all the other BS. Or they must only ask basic data structure (and puzzle) questions that any studious person can memorize the answers to. I don't think knowing the answer to these interview questions correlates with knowing…

It's basically like SAT prep. With a little prep work a person can greatly raise their chances at getting a great score. Google's hiring practices are well known so a little prep can get vanilla engineers over the hump.

Then again, are there vanilla engineers who would prep in this manner? Just the simple fact that someone preps at all puts them above the 'can't complete fizzbuzz person' ~100% of the time.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#126

Post by bornhuetter »

donohoe wrote: post #122
edent wrote: post #3

The original article - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-huntin... Distraction free reading and without all the annoying cruft of Quartz. Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

Well for starters, there is a huge fixed banner at the top of the page, and a fixed sidebar. If you are trying to read the page in a windows that is not maximised, then you really lose a lot of real estate.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#127

Post by donohoe »

tokenadult wrote: post #102

From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed here: "On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart." Long before this was reported in the New York Times, this was the fi…

  From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed
No, this is Linkspan:

  Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for 
  reasons other than merit.[9] Link spam takes advantage of 
  link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher 
  rankings the more other highly ranked websites link to it. 
  These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based 
  ranking techniques such as the HITS algorithm.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkspam#Link_spam

Lets be clear, there is link-spam and then there is writing an original piece based on information from elsewhere.

The NYT article is about 8 questions and answers from a HR person at Google.

The "puzzle" aspect is 1 of those 8 questions.

From that Quartz references that, links directly to the piece and then expands upon it and links out to other relevant and related information.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#129

Post by donohoe »

donohoe wrote: post #122
edent wrote: post #3

The original article - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-huntin... Distraction free reading and without all the annoying cruft of Quartz. Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

I can't reply directly, but in reference to:

  huge fixed banner at the top of the page, and a fixed sidebar.
I see what you mean - but I don't think I"d call that "cruft" but thats my opinion. Thats the Navigation Bar at the top, and the sidebar is a Queue of the Articles in the feed. These are basic page elements.

We get feedback specifically calling this out as good and relatively distraction-free (hence your comment struck me as odd)

Also - the width of the page dedicated to text/images is the same as the NYT mobile site (600px aprox)

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#130

Post by raldi »

I've never seen any citation that Google ever used these kinds of question. Especially the idiotic one about pushing a car to a hotel. I think it was just an urban legend and a good piece of linkbait.

There must be thousands of people on HN who interviewed at Google over the years. Did anyone ever get a question like this?

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