Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

ochagavia.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 324 posts

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#251

Post by Waterluvian »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #246
jameshart wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t “enthusiasm to try and tackle somewhat abstract puzzling questions” act as a reasonable proxy for some of those attributes?

It does; the old school hackers, the people who built the computer and software industry, loved logic puzzles / brainteasers and elegant, high performance solutions to coding challenges. Most of the pushback is from dull corporate programmers (no shame in that, so am I) who want to claim that they are hackers for the clout but aren't. Ironic that a site named Hacker News is almost entirely devoid of true hackers.

“true hackers” Yikes. I’m not sure a rebuttal is even needed for a comment that’s just so lost in its own limited view of things.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#252

Post by pstuart »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #203
fenomas wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the weirdest interview I ever had (boutique software agency, maybe 30 devs). I walk in, and the CEO's secretary hands me an IQ test and says I have one hour. I do the test, then I meet the CEO and we chat about general topics while she grades the test nearby. Then she announces my IQ, and the CEO says "hmm, yes, that's above the minimum I'd consider for a developer." Then for the last few minutes h…

At least he didnt came out with a measuring tape and tried to measure your skull.

That's silly! Everybody knows it's the shape that shows the intelligence, not the circumference!

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#253

Post by tptacek »

arjie wrote: post #219
fenomas wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the weirdest interview I ever had (boutique software agency, maybe 30 devs). I walk in, and the CEO's secretary hands me an IQ test and says I have one hour. I do the test, then I meet the CEO and we chat about general topics while she grades the test nearby. Then she announces my IQ, and the CEO says "hmm, yes, that's above the minimum I'd consider for a developer." Then for the last few minutes h…

This can't have been recent. Or perhaps it was and they violated the law. A standard IQ test is probably quite good at assessing if you'll be good at a programming job but it is also quite illegal unless it has passed through a battery of compliance paperwork - which it actually cannot pass because it would require the output of IQ tests to be race-equal and they cannot be both an IQ test and race-equal. This is lite…

I'm a broken record about this, but no, it's not illegal to administer IQ tests in white-collar employment, and it doesn't take a battery of compliance paperwork to do so. This is an Internet myth.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#254

Post by apwheele »

My experience like this was for a data scientist position at Facebook in 2022.

So the question was something like, here is a table of predicted probabilities for credit card transactions (hypothetical table, I do not remember the exact quantities), but it looked something like this:

    Amount, Probability, ActualFraud
       $5 ,    0.2     ,  0
     $100 ,    0.5     ,  0
       $3 ,    0.7     ,  1
       $1 ,    0.9     ,  1
And then the question was "what was the threshold used to maximize (precision|recall)?" (I cannot remember which metric they were asking for).

My response was that a proper decision model should take the dollar amount of the transaction into consideration, so the decision should more like be `$*p > threshold`, where this threshold meets your precision and recall for preventing dollars lost instead of the binary yes/no.

The interviewers English was not great, so after all that I was just like "well to answer your exact question, it could be anywhere between `0.5 Did not make the second round!

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#255

Post by rahimnathwani »

arjie wrote: post #219
fenomas wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the weirdest interview I ever had (boutique software agency, maybe 30 devs). I walk in, and the CEO's secretary hands me an IQ test and says I have one hour. I do the test, then I meet the CEO and we chat about general topics while she grades the test nearby. Then she announces my IQ, and the CEO says "hmm, yes, that's above the minimum I'd consider for a developer." Then for the last few minutes h…

This can't have been recent. Or perhaps it was and they violated the law. A standard IQ test is probably quite good at assessing if you'll be good at a programming job but it is also quite illegal unless it has passed through a battery of compliance paperwork - which it actually cannot pass because it would require the output of IQ tests to be race-equal and they cannot be both an IQ test and race-equal. This is lite…

"illegal unless it has passed through a battery of compliance paperwork"

"This is literally a Title VII violation."

Griggs v. Duke Power Co. held that "The [Civil Rights] Act [of 1964] does not preclude the use of testing or measuring procedures, but it does proscribe giving them controlling force unless they are demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance."

Why do you believe that prior documentation is required, and that the absence of such documentation would make the testing illegal?

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#256

Post by gwbas1c »

apwheele wrote: post #254

My experience like this was for a data scientist position at Facebook in 2022. So the question was something like, here is a table of predicted probabilities for credit card transactions (hypothetical table, I do not remember the exact quantities), but it looked something like this: Amount, Probability, ActualFraud $5 , 0.2 , 0 $100 , 0.5 , 0 $3 , 0.7 , 1 $1 , 0.9 , 1 And then the question was "what was the threshold…

A common interviewer mistake is looking for exact answers, assuming that a candidate just needs to regurgitate facts.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#257

Post by kot_manul »

inigyou wrote: post #207
RealityVoid wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water level decreases, along with the shore and anything with it falling within the event horizon. Any other apocalyptic brain teasers?

You invert the phase of the Higgs field within a basketball. What happens?

The universe becomes suddenly VERY different, while a ghostly rendition of the Harlem Globetrotters theme whistles eerily in the background?

(I actually don't know the answer to this)

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#258

Post by CodesInChaos »

IsTom wrote: post #180
AlecBG wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First one water is lower. Ball is more dense than water, in boat displaces its weight in water, in water displaces it's volume Dip for hill roll is faster

But won't your boat displace more water by lowering a bit if you've got additional mass on board?

That's what they meant by "in boat displaces its weight in water". While it's in the boat, the amount of water it displaces weighs as much as the bowling ball. While it's in the water, it displaces the volume of the bowling ball, and its weight doesn't matter. The ball is denser than water (since it sinks), so the amount of water it displaces based on its weight is bigger than the amount of water it based on its volume.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#259

Post by gwbas1c »

Halfway through my career, being on both sides of the table (interviewer and interviewee,) I've observed that a common interviewer mistake is to expect candidates to regurgitate facts; or be able to provide a memorized answer.

In this case, the goal is to hire great engineers; and great engineers do not memorize solutions to every problem, nor can they come up intuitively with great solutions in a matter of minutes.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#260

Post by gwbas1c »

steveBK123 wrote: post #194

One thing I've taken away in my career, interviewing every 3-5 years is that difficulty of interview & difficulty of job are uncorrelated. Often they are inversely correlated. Possible reasons.. Sometimes a team is growing so fast / or turnover is so high / everyone is so busy / etc that they cannot really stand up a proper interview process .. and/or they just need to get people into seats, and are happy to fire fas…

> difficulty of interview & difficulty of job

Define "difficulty of job"

I'm going to assume you mean "people problems;" because the best way a team avoids people problems is by interviewing very, very carefully.

Post reply on HN