If you're a hiring manager who uses these things, you should know that I (try) to train/prepare my students to answer them. I do think there is some utility in watching how people approach an unconventional problem, but don't be too impressed with people that can solve them easily, compared to those who don't do well the first time they see them. I see a huge improvement in the quality of answers of most students, once students know it is a gag and once they've been shown how to estimate things. Most students are constrained by having been in a learning environment that provides them with well-defined boundaries within which to form their answers. IMO failing to perform well with these problems is not always a failing of the student as much as it is their educators.
In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
201–210 of 285 posts
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#202The 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.
I asked these questions until a year ago. Brain teasers were never ok. They are defined as things that require a single insight and/or domain knowledge and could be communicated in a few seconds. "Monopoly" is a perfect example of a brain teaser and anyone using that would be treated pretty harshly by the committee that reviews interview feedback. Estimate questions are not: there's no expectation of a "right answer"…
Are we thinking of the same "Monopoly" question? The one where you ask them to sketch out how they would program the game Monopoly? Because that's a lot more like an estimation question than a single-insight brain-teaser.
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#203From 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…
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Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just me or this kind of comment is one of the most common in HN lately, when any story about data analysis comes up ? We get it, big data it's not really "big" unless you talk giga(tera?)bytes. Do not take upon yourself to educate any single person that misuses the term. It's not worth it. :)
I guess it's a natural reaction to people wanting to jump on that "big data" bandwagon. Kind of like size envy I guess? So sad...
True, the point is that many people writing these stories cannot really tell (or care) about the difference. "Big data" is a sexy definition, so they go with it regardless of wheter it's actually relevant.
Most of the people here do, so these comments are really preaching in the wrong place...
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#205I don't understand people's problem with estimating. It's a useful skill. Perhaps it would be better if the questions actually related to technology, rather than golf balls - but the principle is the same. For instance - "how many hard drives does Gmail need?" requires a rough guess of how many users Gmail has (if you're interviewing at Google, you should know it's 1e8-1e9). How much space each one takes (probably no…
>(if you're interviewing at Google, you should know it's 1e8-1e9)
Why? Is the interview a trivia exam like in college?
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#206The 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?
My personal pet peeve... A huuuuuuuuge banner image pushes the article text below the fold on my 13" rMBP on default display settings in a maximized (by height and width, grr OSX) Chrome window.
Screenshot: http://imgur.com/fFqt2ud
Maybe I'm a bit irrational about this, I know scrolling isn't hard, but I came to read your text, dammit.
Edit:
Also, seriously... HUGE thanks for asking!
Edit 2:
Scrolling down I'm noticing that your image height is actually bigger than the height of the viewport (minus the height of your top bar). Even if you disagree with the idea that the image shouldn't push the text below the fold, I hope you agree that the image should at least fit my viewport.
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I asked these questions until a year ago. Brain teasers were never ok. They are defined as things that require a single insight and/or domain knowledge and could be communicated in a few seconds. "Monopoly" is a perfect example of a brain teaser and anyone using that would be treated pretty harshly by the committee that reviews interview feedback. Estimate questions are not: there's no expectation of a "right answer"…
Are we thinking of the same "Monopoly" question? The one where you ask them to sketch out how they would program the game Monopoly? Because that's a lot more like an estimation question than a single-insight brain-teaser.
No sorry the "man pushes his car to a hotel and loses his fortune" question from another comment.
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#208The best book on hiring, no doubt, is Who: http://www.amazon.com/Who-The-A-Method-Hiring/dp/0345504194 We used it to build our hiring process for http://www.thinkful.com/ and it consistently proves valuable. We also use it to help our students prepare for job interviews.
I'm seriously put off by any talk of topgrading and 'a/b/c player' ranking. Have you gathered much data on the success of this book's approach in your firm? I'd love to hear a positive take on it.
Agreed. I think anyone can be an "A" player under the right conditions. Under different conditions, the same person can be a "D" player. I know I've had jobs were I was the wonderboy who was regarded as an A player all around. I've had other jobs where I was the black sheep "F" player who gets fired after one week of employment.
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#209From 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…
"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."
A similar equivalent in coding interviews would be "what does obscure function/feature do?"
Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal
#210This topic/discussion reminds me of a movie I saw recently It was called "That guy...who was in that thing". It is a documentary about working actors. Not Big time superstars like Tom Cruise, but the small time 'character' actors.
Anyways, there was one part in the movie where they start talking about auditions. All four or five of the actors they were interviewing for the movie unanimously spoke badly about the typical audition process. Some quotes taken from memory:
"I love acting, but I hate auditioning"
"You've seen my demo reel, you've seen me when I was on Star Trek, you know I can act, then why not just give me the part? Why make me go through this tedious audition process"
"90% of acting is reacting. You can't fully demonstrate your full acting abilities when you're standing in front of a panel of producers 'acting' out a scene that consists of 5 lines of dialog"
What the actors were saying about how they hate the audition process reminded me a lot of my frustrations surrounding hiring during tech interviews. Making an engineer do puzzles like FizzBuzz is a lot like making an actor act out a 20 second scene without any time to prepare or a proper "scene partner" to act alongside of.
I wish I could like to a youtube of the movie, but I can't find one. Its on netflix though.