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

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

#51

Post by LegitShady »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #36
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 un…

I was taking a firearms safety course and there was a true/false section on a test. I can’t recall what the question was specifically but it was about which laws something fell under and the main issue was the word ‘or’ - when used as a logical OR the answer was True. When used as a sort of common day ‘or’ the answer was probably false.

I put false without thinking. I had everything else on the test right and part of the course was the instructor reviewing your test and going over your incorrect answers. He wasn’t a programmer (I think former military tbh) and didn’t really understand why I got it wrong even after I explained it…

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

#52

Post by buu700 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #36
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 un…

Actually, as worded, I think "no" is technically the correct answer to that. The current projected/expected arrival time would be altered at the time that you begin driving more quickly, but the planned arrival time is ossified before you start the car.

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

#53

Post by nkingsy »

The headline feels wrong, as the author started by laying out their assumptions, and revised after more or less getting their question answered.

One could just as easily form this as a question.

“All three are usually at the application layer in my experience. Would you like me to discuss this, or give you a more general mapping?”

In either case, asking questions before answering is something any good interviewer should be looking for as a positive signal.

A general knowledge question like this, though, seems designed for a quick answer, so I’d only ask the question if I was really confused rather than splitting hairs.

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

#54

Post by nvilcins »

buu700 wrote: post #52
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

Actually, as worded, I think "no" is technically the correct answer to that. The current projected/expected arrival time would be altered at the time that you begin driving more quickly, but the planned arrival time is ossified before you start the car.

> I don't remember if the wording was specifically like this [..]

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

#55

Post by tyingq »

typon wrote: post #44
treis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Disagree. The difference is fundamental and if you don't know it you are going to be stuck with a false understanding of the framework you're working with - and you will likely end up trying to shove bad abstractions into places where they don't belong, resulting in an unmaintainable mess of code. I have seen this happen in a lot of codebases where people fundamentally misunderstand the abstractions they're building…

I disagree with this. If you believe that one thing "3 tier" means is that the client doesn't interact directly with a database, as the old fat-client -> database model did, then "MVC" was one pattern to accomplish that. So, to me, there is some relationship. Enough of one to have a interview discussion about it.

I do agree that they aren't the same thing, but they are pretty clearly related to me.

The interview question was “How does this architecture relate to the model-view-controller pattern?”

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

#56

Post by mewpmewp2 »

buu700 wrote: post #52
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 un…

Actually, as worded, I think "no" is technically the correct answer to that. The current projected/expected arrival time would be altered at the time that you begin driving more quickly, but the planned arrival time is ossified before you start the car.

Yeah, I couldn't find the specific wording right now and whether there was some sort of plausible play with the word "planned". This question is also translated.

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

#57

Post by timmg »

My first programming job interview (like 100 years ago) was a group interview. One guy asked me to write string compare in C.

Not sure I did it right, but I basically walked the two char* pointers looking for a '0' or a mismatch. The guy asking the question said, "No, first you should compare the string lengths -- since if they have a different length they will be different."

I was nervous, but I thought he was wrong. I said, "Well, to get the length you need to walk both strings, so that isn't faster."

He got annoyed and said, "They have optimized functions for that!"

I didn't argue. Needless to say, I didn't get the job :)

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

#58

Post by buu700 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #56
buu700 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, as worded, I think "no" is technically the correct answer to that. The current projected/expected arrival time would be altered at the time that you begin driving more quickly, but the planned arrival time is ossified before you start the car.

Yeah, I couldn't find the specific wording right now and whether there was some sort of plausible play with the word "planned". This question is also translated.

Ah okay, that makes sense.

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

#59

Post by ThePadawan »

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.

That's entirely reasonable, and that's exactly why you hire engineers that are aware of this, and don't base their choices on ego.

If you hiring involves ego, you're going to end up with a Challenger disaster some time down the road.

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

#60

Post by supportlocal4h »

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 you had paid more attention to that frown you might have passed the interview.

(It's Monday. Smile a little.)

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