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

dewitters.com

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

#31

Post by brazzy »

rychco wrote: post #7
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…

That’s entirely reasonable, but people aren’t reasonable. When ego is involved, even a polite argument may appear as a personal attack.

I really, really don't want to work for a manager who involves his ego in technical questions.

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

#32

Post by cortexio »

if i had to give a wrong answer in order to get a job, i would just take another job. I just cant work with close minded people. I can for a while, but not for years. It drains your soul.

I also hate questions that ask you to explain the meaning of a word. I mean, i have no idea what 3 tier arch is. Yet, after looking it up, it's just frontend, backend, datastorage... i know everything about those things.. but the question makes it look like i dont know any of them =/ Personally, i would label this as a failure of the interviewer, but sadly, that's not how reality works.

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

#35

Post by city41 »

I don't feel this particular example is very strong since MVC is a bit of a loose/spongy term, especially nowadays. But I've been in interviews - on both sides of the table - where the interviewer is just outright incorrect. On several occasions I've needed to defend the candidate as my colleague was protesting something the candidate came up with based on incorrect knowledge. In my experience, this is very common. I'm sure I've been incorrect as an interviewer at times too. I really dislike software job interviews, on either side of the table, this just being one reason.

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

#36

Post by mewpmewp2 »

Radim wrote: post #9

Heh. Happens all the time with tests and questionnaires, the choice is always frustrating: * "Does the author really mean what they are asking? Are the mistakes in the phrasing or corner cases intentional, meant to catch me, test my deep knowledge?" , or * "Is the author just not very good with logic / not thinking this through?" I go with the latter in "soft social" contexts. Never regretted it yet. This saved my hi…

Same with some driving exam questions I have had. For example worded something like that, "does driving faster in some sections of the journey affect your planned time of arrival?"

I don't remember if the wording was specifically like this, but it was something that to me logically obvious answer is "yes", but the correct answer and what they expect is "no", to show that you are a reasonable driver who won't speed unnecessarily.

And I think throughout the driving exam there were several questions like that. This type of thing really annoys me.

EDIT: I found the actual question - although I still had to translate it - and I think I was giving the question a benefit of the doubt from my memory, with the term "planned" as I had written here, the actual way the question was setup was following:

What affects the duration of a planned journey?

a) Length of the journey.

b) Maximum speed in few lone sections of the journey.

It uses checkboxes, so you can check both.

They expect you to check only a), but b) is in my view also logically correct answer as if at any section even if it's shorter than 1 metres, if your max speed nears 0, duration of your journey will reach infinity. But it is worded in such a way that most people will get the hint that B) should not be checked.

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

#37

Post by quirkot »

rocqua wrote: post #26
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 manage…

seems like having a discussion like that in front/with management would be a great way to suss out the way management will respond to future differences of opinion. A very valuable thing to know in deciding whether to accept a position

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

#39

Post by treis »

tyingq wrote: post #21

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 relationsh…

Seconded. What they're calling the right answer is the pedantic answer.

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

#40

Post by blacktriangle »

cryptica wrote: post #30

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). Rea…

Its not even superficial knowledge, it's overloaded terminology. MVC as originally formulated came out of Smalltalk and looked more like what we would call MVVM today with smaller controllers. Apple took MVC with iOS and moved it to the opposite extreme with their god-controller objects that knew everything and did everything. Meanwhile what web developers think of as MVC is really the JSP Model-2 architecture where the controller is the entry point to the system which is responsible for coordinating with the models and views to generate a response, where in traditional thick client GUI MVC the view layer is the entry point into the system and the controller sits between the views and the model.

Point being, "What is MVC?" is a very expansive question and I'd be very wary of working for any developer who thought there was one right answer to it.

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