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Worst interview questions for software developers

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Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm America there isn't much that is illegal in terms of speech. But you do open your company up for a lawsuit with those kind of questions

I think it may actually be against employment law. Our HR was run by our General Counsel, so they tended to be pretty strict about the language they used, and they called it "illegal." I think asking questions about sexuality and/or disability may fall into the same bucket.

It is practically illegal because relying on the answer to the question in employment decisions is illegal, and if you ask it in an interview, and you are challenged, it is going to be very hard to convince a jury or judge that it did not factor into your decisions.

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it may actually be against employment law. Our HR was run by our General Counsel, so they tended to be pretty strict about the language they used, and they called it "illegal." I think asking questions about sexuality and/or disability may fall into the same bucket.

It is practically illegal because relying on the answer to the question in employment decisions is illegal, and if you ask it in an interview, and you are challenged, it is going to be very hard to convince a jury or judge that it did not factor into your decisions.

That makes sense.

Thanks for the clarification.

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#203

> Have a family/children? How does this affect your work? I'm pretty sure that question is illegal. I do know that asking if someone is married, is illegal (in my state). We got lots of CYA training from HR, telling us to not ask these questions.

what can we do if they ask us illegal questions?

You can certainly say, "I would rather not answer that question."

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#204
When I interview, two things I always look for at as things to be concerned about are many short term (and not contract) jobs, and big inconsistencies between LinkedIn and their submitted CV.

This is of course on top of discussing their recent projects and seeing how far they can drill down into them.

I do this to weed out people who are very suave at interviewing, but turn out to be not only incompetent at the position, but actively poison the org. These folks are rare, but they do exist and can cause lots of organizational harm. They are aggressively self-promoting people who don’t know what they’re doing, but can fake it convincingly for awhile somehow, and who work energetically for higher and higher positions.

Often CV and LinkedIn are way out of whack because of the level of creative nonsense they have gone through about their pasts to get a job. I don’t mean this in the “CV is marketing you” sense, I mean this more as “saying you were CTO when you were a junior QA person” sense.

Many short stints can mean they were found out within a few months/year of being hired.

An odd variation on this is talking about very important sounding positions that turn out to be their own one-person consulting company.

In the past 5 years I have seen three cases of this where they were hired (2 I did not interview, 1 I did and was a “no”). All three imploded rather spectacularly.

I have also seen good candidates with bizarre CV inconsistencies or several short stints in a row who explained it all very sensibly and turned out to be great.

This is why these aren’t CV screening red flags, but points of discussion.

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#205

> How do you see yourself in five years? Man, this question. I was asked this question in an interview for a startup. I gave the regular answer that was expected of me. The interview went well, and at the end when the interviewer (who was the co-founder) asked if I had any questions, I turned this around on him: "where do you see [company x] in five years?" He laughed and talked about finding product-market fit and g…

> How do you see yourself in five years? Standing in front of a mirror.

But what if you're turned into a vampire before then?

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#206
> How many ping pong balls do you need to lift a Ferrari from the bottom of a lake?

I estimate about 55,000?

Ferarri is 1300kg, needs 1300 liters, 1.3m^3 of air to be buoyant, and assuming square pingpong ball of 3cm, that be ballpark 46k. Add some extra for current, drag, mud

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#207
post #129
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what this tests for. I have no idea what those values are! I am still able to make guesses to show that I can figure out a bunch of variables that affect the final value. And since I am multiplying data that's off maybe even by few orders of magnitude, errors multiply as well: I am aware of how erroneous input data affects the results too. Is it relevant to software development as a whole? It definitel…

I have no problem with the question being abstract; my main gripe lies in the first part of your explanation, compounded noise is still noise. Why go through all the mental gymnastics if you yourself are aware that it can be way off? Your next-in-chain-of-command will treat it as hard fact and make a decision or commit to something based on it- then you have all these piano tuners loitering around and nothing to do.…

The thing is that it gives you questions to ask. I am sure NYC population is a web search away. Or tuning frequency recommendations for pianos. Or how long does tuning a piano really take? Some are certainly harder (how frequent are piano-households?), but maybe someone already looked into it.

It shows that one can break a problem down into more manageable pieces. Being more manageable means you can get a better estimate by delving deeper.

The question is not about finding the right answer, but about employing the right methodology.

And if you've got next-in-the-chain taking estimates as hard boundaries or facts, you need to be explicit they are not, and hopefully teach them to be a bit more suspicious of everything.

Even then, it's ok if someone else takes your ballpark and runs with, as long as you are willing to take responsibility. If you are higher in job title, be explicit this is what you are asking them to do, and that you will take the responsibility! Invite them to improve upon it as they learn more, though!

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would be some of the wrong answers?

How about 'Living the life of riley on a hawaiian island having embezzled funds from the company'?

I think there is a middle ground (= I was looking for serious answers)

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#209

Worst one I got recently was "What is your perfect number of working hours per week?" I said 40 and the interview process was ended early after the CEO said "oh we put in 50 per week because we know it takes extra effort for a startup". I expanded on how 40 is what works for me, interview got very cold after that. I felt pretty incredulous after that. Especially when the recruiter asked if 40 was a hard requirement.…

Interviews are a two way street. They crashed and burned on your interview. Unless they can explain that they are paying 25% more to compensate for 25% more time, why would you work for them? I had a similar situation interviewing with one of Musk’s companies a while back. Who would want to work 80 hour weeks to make a 40 hour a week salary? The answer should be no one. You did great.

For 25% more time you would expect more than 25% more pay, since the marginal value of your free time grows as it gets shorter

Re: Worst interview questions for software developers

#210
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that still presupposes a whole lot of knowledge about pianos that most people just wouldn't be expected to have. From what percentage of households have them to how often they need tuning to how long it takes to tune one. Unless you're a serious piano nut, you're at best throwing out random numbers, and likely not only don't know the answers, but don't even know what questions to ask. What about peak demand? Do l…

That's exactly what this tests for. I have no idea what those values are! I am still able to make guesses to show that I can figure out a bunch of variables that affect the final value. And since I am multiplying data that's off maybe even by few orders of magnitude, errors multiply as well: I am aware of how erroneous input data affects the results too. Is it relevant to software development as a whole? It definitel…

> It tests for that generic and general ability to estimate anything, and to break down any problem.

Ability to BS and multiply, more or less. Feels like a waste of a question even for the one asking it!

> Yet some people get flabbergasted . . . since they think too much about specifics of each of the numbers they use and how wrong they might be. Basically, they have a hard time of letting go of the inaccuracies :)

Having a hard time letting go of inaccuracies seems justified if you're in a more technical profession. Too often there's good engineering reasons for not wanting to excuse loose reasoning with bad guesses. On the software dev side, there are also too many cases where those kinds of fudged numbers are inevitably used against us.

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