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I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

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Re: I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

#61

Post by bravesoul2 »

owebmaster wrote: post #25
millzlane wrote: post #13

It's not my . Has been my mantra lately. If I mention that a quarterly update cycle for mission critical software is too long in the context of security and the desktop enginners don't agree...I just repeat my mantra. I did recently develop a fix to a stupid bug a company said was working as expected. So I don't always stick to the mantra. But I'll disagree once. But then I commit to whatever management wants no matt…

> But then I commit to whatever management wants no matter how boneheaded. This is always the right thing to do when you decided to sell yourself as a cog of a bigger machine. Some times, management is right and the know-it-all engineer isn't.

Correct modulo immoral or law breaking practice.

Re: I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

#62

Post by bravesoul2 »

wenc wrote: post #48

The SQL question (mentioned in the thread) was: "It was very benign and was probably the most practical question I asked him! Let's say you want to randomly sample 1,000 users out of a table with a user_id column, e.g. so you can get a list of IDs to send a customer feedback form to. How would you do that?" To me, that's not a dumb question. I mean, there is a simple answer but there are also complicated answers (esp…

I like the question. Not sure how id do it. As a one off of the table is not too big id get all the IDs then write a program to pick 1000 at random. I assume randomness is more important than expense but that can be a clarifying question to the interviewer.

If this query had to be done regularly for A B testing or whatever I might suggest a salted hash. Given an id you hash and do a Bitcoin style "is it lower than X". Figure out X based on total user count and desired sample. This way you can tell if a user is in the set without looking at other records. You can also handle the user count growing or shrinking. But the trade off is rough numbers over exact numbers.

Re: I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

#63

Post by keepamovin »

Being an asshole is a right ordinarily reserved exclusively for managers and is somewhat correlated with their insecurity/incompetence.

So the corporate principle is often not against assholery per se, it's against who's permitted by the hierarchy to do it.

I've seen this a few times. There's more assholes among those who have a "manager"-type title. But by no means are all managers assholes. I think it oftens comes down to: 1) emotional immaturity, where people don't know how to execute the duties of the office (getting others to do something) without some kind of abusive coercion / intimidation; 2) also likely comes down to people reflecting the authority style they were raised with - so those who were traumatized by abusive asshole parents are probably going to have that as a model of authority and reflect that when they have authority; 3) finally, I often observed it correlated with obvious insecurity, in that it seems to be a defensive mechanism where people who fear themselves to be incompetent/unworthy will compensate by trying to shore up their position with abuse of their colleagues.

Ideally, promotion should prevent/remediate such behavior, but I guess that the selfish-streak often displayed by assholes is mildly adaptive for the power dynamics involved in getting promoted. As a last point, often I think there's something else, that people tend to trust that "abusive/coercive" assholes will be able to "get shit done" (by, roughly, intimidating their team) - which there is probably some "truth" to, unless a team wholesale revolts against such behavior. Overall this last points reflects some room for improvement in human organizational dynamics in general.

As a counterpoint to the prevailing "assholery" discussion in this thread, it would be really cool I think to see counterexamples in detail of managers who greatly succeeded by being stellar people and really good managers. I think ideally the "asshole manager" trope will become a true relic of history, something antiquated like the tolerated alcoholic hothead, or whatever.

Re: I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

#64

Post by beefnugs »

justaj wrote: post #58
nkrisc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be a disagreeable asshole even while being completely correct. Being an “asshole” relates to inter-personal relationships, it has nothing to do with facts or correctness.

As long as they don't insult people personally then they're not an asshole in my book. Attacking ideas is one, attacking people behind those ideas is another.

Not entirely though: if you are attacking coworkers just for being wrong that is asshole. If you are holding the top of the pyramid accountable for their illegal immoral wrong "ideas" then that is a level of correct that the world needs way more of

Re: I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

#65

Post by em-bee »

Freedom2 wrote: post #51
stevesearer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how your delivery was, but maybe the best way is, “If I were doing it that way, here’s how I’d go about it. However, I might consider this other way and here’s why.”

In all honesty, my words were something along the lines of "I don't think that approach is a good idea. It's because of X reason." Another viewpoint I've seen when sharing this story is that the interviewer wants me to start with the "bad" implementation first, then we move on to the "proper" one, but what's the point if I actually have pointed out the flaws beforehand?

there is also an aspect of interviewing the interviewer. if they get upset at the slightest hint of pushback, instead of saying something like: ok, fair point, but humor me, or you may be right, but i'd like to hear the solution anyways..., in other words if they are not able to look past the pushback and tell you what they want then maybe you don't want to work there anyways.

Re: I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

#66

Post by remram »

sandinmyjoints wrote: post #43
cluckindan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is software that sends video call transcripts to LLMs and shows you answers in real-time.

I was not aware of this. (We haven’t been interviewing recently.) Honest question, is it not possible to see the candidate’s eyes scanning the text? In video meetings I notice this when someone is reading.

Yes, I caught one candidate doing exactly that. There were other obvious signs as well. Of course I don't know how many I didn't catch.

Re: I started with a SQL question. He said "that's a dumb question."

#67

Post by sandinmyjoints »

sdedovic wrote: post #50
sandinmyjoints wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not aware of this. (We haven’t been interviewing recently.) Honest question, is it not possible to see the candidate’s eyes scanning the text? In video meetings I notice this when someone is reading.

Fun fact, there are multiple pieces of software that will real-time correct your eye tracking. Useful for virtual all hands or talks to fix teleprompter eyes.

Yikes!
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