I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#21

Post by tyingq » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

This isn't a great example to me. I doubt the interviewers would disagree that the actual code in MVC runs at the "application tier".

I think they were just trying to elicit the idea that the model defines interaction with the database and that the view defines interaction with the browser client. That there is some relation there between MVC and 3-tier architecture. The Wikipedia snippet that disputes any relationship seems overly pedantic to me.

Though all moot to me since there's very little real world pure MVC or pure "3-tier" anyway. For good reason.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#22

Post by lumost » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #6

A job interview is also you judging the company and people you’re applying to join. If you feel the team lead can’t handle you answering questions honestly because it might reveal one of his or her blind spots, that’s not a great sign.

At a certain point in your career, you'll start finding that the current TL you'd be joining often doesn't have the same context as you do. It can be threatening for junior leadership to onboard someone who has extra capabilities beyond what they do, and a big part of your job in these situations is to rock the boat...slowly.

Bear in mind, many TLs are in their current role by virtue of having a good idea, supportive management, trust of their team and good/lucky execution. This combination of activities can easily mean that you have a great up and coming TL with ~3 years of experience. Management may be bringing in more senior talent as the upscaling product requires it, but that doesn't mean you start with the same trust, management support, ideas, or in-house knowledge as the TL.

In such a situation, setting out to prove that you can outsmart the junior TL as your first contribution seems suspect...

Bear in mind that often successful companies, have many inexperienced leaders due to growth.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#23

Post by issa » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

laurieg wrote: post #8

> So I decided to start by giving the correct answer, and see how he responded. I explained “The model-view-controller is a software pattern, and so resides inside the written code. Since in most cases, this code only runs on the application tier, …”. But then I saw him frowning, and so knew this was not the answer the was expecting. So I continued: This is a great cold reading technique that works in magic tricks to…

I used to do a very stupid magic trick where I would have someone pick a card and then shuffle it back into the deck. I would shuffle a few more times while asking them to focus on their card. Then I would ask them to name their card. They did. I would put down the deck and say "not only have I found your Ten of Clubs..." and then I would look at the top card and finish with "...but I have changed it into the Ace of Spades".

Every once in a while, purely by luck, the correct card would be at the top. In which case I would just change the second line to "...but I have brought it to the top of the deck for you". My sister begged me to tell her how I did it for years.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#24

Post by heurisko » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

mohbk wrote: post #10

heurisko wrote: post #2

> Anyway, there was only 1 proper solution to this: I had to answer what they thought was correct. I think it was a poor solution. There are ways to respectfully disagree. "I really think I'm right on this one. Since it's a question of facts, not opinion, we could easily verify it later." Did the author know they were hired because they didn't rock the boat, or despite of it? If I were hiring someone, I would want to…

knowing how many people can't take disagreement well, I don't think this was a poor decision, practically you can't just trust everyone to have a good head on their shoulders, when you just want a job to survive or get your foot in the door, you can't be picky with who you work for.

I think the underlying assumption here, is that it is better for your job prospects to agree with something you know is wrong, in order to avoid confrontation.

I don't think this should be the default recommended advice. It could just as well cost you the job, if you are interviewed by two people, with the other also knowing what his or her colleague said was wrong, and being disappointed you didn't find a way of politely disagreeing.

In job interviews, I would count it as a positive if I could see that the candidate could handle disagreement. That is in my view more important than getting a rather generic technical question "correct".

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#25

Post by allo37 » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #6

A job interview is also you judging the company and people you’re applying to join. If you feel the team lead can’t handle you answering questions honestly because it might reveal one of his or her blind spots, that’s not a great sign.

I was also thinking something along the line of whether you'd even want to work somewhere like that. But I guess not everyone is in a position to be so picky about their employment or maybe it would be a gateway to other opportunities.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#26

Post by rocqua » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

tomerv wrote: post #15

Can't really comment on whether that was the correct way to handle the situation, given that passing the interview was the goal. However, I would have a hard time giving an incorrect answer on purpose. I also consider an interview as an opportunity to learn about the company I'm going to work for, and especially my future colleagues. I would probably try to give a full answer, such as "there's a widely-held concept X…

Do you want to have that discussion with your team-lead almost fully cold, in front of his superior? Because in the article, that is the key point. The applicant was totally willing to go into a fair discussion about the pattern.

However, doing that in front of the tech-lead his boss is likely to be different from a fair discussion. Disagreement about technical architecture is fine. Doing so in front of higher management is likely a different ball game.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#27

Post by ianai » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

dennis_moore wrote: post #20

laurieg wrote: post #8

> So I decided to start by giving the correct answer, and see how he responded. I explained “The model-view-controller is a software pattern, and so resides inside the written code. Since in most cases, this code only runs on the application tier, …”. But then I saw him frowning, and so knew this was not the answer the was expecting. So I continued: This is a great cold reading technique that works in magic tricks to…

All great until you come across someone with a permanent poker face. During my last interview, the interviewer was frowning the whole time.

If there’s two sides to something present both and note positives and negatives of each.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#28

Post by taneq » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

I guess the real question is what Koen's goal was. Was it to be hired for this particular job? Or was it to get a technically satisfying job?

Personally I'd find it very difficult to knowingly give a wrong answer to a client or potential employer, even if it's clearly the one they want. After all, they're hiring me to find the right answer for them, not to agree with them. That's just me though.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#29

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

laurieg wrote: post #18

chrisseaton wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Picture the card in your mind. Ace of hearts. Ace of hearts" If they give a big reaction then you've found their card and performed a miracle. If not then you just continue "Of course, that's just an example..." and continue the patter throwing out other hints Wouldn't you have to do this on average five times to get the right one? Wouldn't it be a bit suspicious giving five example cards before arriving at the ri…

The hard part is writing your patter so that it doesn't sound like you're listing cards. Without giving away too many magical secrets, I invite you to consider the fact that there are many ways to reference cards more subtly. Color, suit, number, high and low. There are also a few different possible reactions.

So basically running a Decision Tree algorithm.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#30

Post by cryptica » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

I don't like this kind of interview question because it's all about subjective terminology and superficial knowledge and not about logic or reasoning.

The author is right, the MVC pattern can be considered from many different angles. It's possible to have MVC just on the client side (e.g. with React framework with Redux you have a store as a model, components are views and the router is essentially a controller). React (the library) is itself is also a controller since it handles the DOM diffing and handles the state reactive update mechanism and thus acts as the glue logic between all the views.

I wouldn't want to work for a company with such a rigid view of software development.

It's a sign of seniority when you notice inconsistencies with terminology.

For example, I know some senior developers who had totally different ideas about what is 'unit testing' versus 'integration testing'. Both are valid views because the terminology is still currently ambiguous.

Does unit testing have to only test 1 class in complete isolation (stub out all function calls to dependencies)? Or is it OK to test a class along with its dependencies (no stubbing)? Some developers say that if you include dependencies, then you're testing more than 1 class so it should be called 'integration test', other developers will claim that it's still a unit test with respect to that class - That integration tests must interact with the system from outside via the API (not method calls on a class). Either way, I think that stubbing out dependencies is a bad idea in most cases (aside from mocking I/O calls to external systems like a database) so if I was to accept the definition of a unit test as being without dependencies, then I would very rarely use unit tests... Anyway this shows that even a simple term which is widely known can be the subject of conflicting opinions and it's wrong to criticize people for choosing a definition which doesn't match your own.

Software development doesn't have much global consensus nowadays and part of the problem is that companies are using bad hiring techniques to interview candidates; companies end up forming tribes of like-minded individuals and completely miss all these nuances and these debates.