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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)

#81

Post by zabzonk »

emeraldd wrote: post #75
zabzonk wrote: post #45

In my experience, being "right" is no bar to getting the job. In one case where I was going for a C++ expert job, I got asked a question (that I can't remember now), gave the correct answer, which the interviewer disputed. I asked if they had a copy of TC++PL on hand, which they did, and I pointed out the relevant section. I got the job. In another case, I was asked something complicated about "const" in C++ (which h…

It get's tricky with ambiguous subjects. If there is a concrete correct answer then yes, give that stick to your guns. If there isn't and the issue comes down to opinion and interpretation ... things get dicy ...

Well, I disagree - people are presumably paying me for my experience and successes, which will affect my opinion and interpretation. If they don't like those, then presumably they don't value my experience, and we would probably not be happy working together.

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

#82

Post by karmakaze »

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…

The goal of the interview shouldn't always be to get the job. If you have any length of career, you are interviewing the company as much (or more) than they are interviewing you.

My approach would have been to go with the new idea and see what discussion can come out of it. If they don't have time to get into it, that's one thing but if they are simply not open-minded to new ideas, I don't want to work there.

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

#83

Post by jmull »

Reading this, the partial first answer the author started with was, in fact, a bad answer. Where the MVC pattern is used was not really relevant to the question.

Not to mention, the second answer is correct. Three-tier architecture and MVC don't have to be exactly the same to be related and have major elements that correspond to each other.

Going deeper, if anyone is interested... it's pretty common in MVC for the view to point at elements of the model. To make it more concrete, imagine a Circle type composed of x, y, and r and a CircleView that displays a Circle. The CircleView might point to an instance of Circle that is also in the model. But as long as the controller put in in the view and the view know it's from the model, that's a perfectly valid MVC (IMO anyway. People will argue about this.) Interestingly, a similar situation arises in a three-tier architecture where storage is able to directly serve resources over standard protocols. E.g., imagine an application to store and share images where the images are stored in KV store that also has an HTTP interface (like S3). When displaying images, the app layer could render HTML to the browser client with elements where the href links directly to the storage. The client would then bypass the app layer to access the storage itself. This is perfectly valid for the same reason as the MVC case -- the client doesn't know or depend on the fact that the resource is directly from the storage, and the middle tier is what controls what the client it going to access.

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

#84

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

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…

> "there's a widely-held concept X, but my understanding is that this is not completely correct, and in fact a better model is Y."

Why not say "there are many similarities and some differences, they're similar in these ways..."

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

#85

Post by avalys »

crispyambulance wrote: post #77
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…

If I remember correctly, that question likely refers to some argument in the driving manual about speeding. Something along the lines of "speeding in most urban areas doesn't actually help get someone to their destination faster. There are always multiple traffic lights and other cars to contend with, so it's not helpful to go over the speed limit and it increases the risk and severity of an accident." It's perfectly…

On the other hand, if you are driving on the interstate highways across the USA, driving 85 mph instead of the 65 mph limit will save you roughly 3 hours from an 800-mile journey.

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

#87

Post by gorpomon »

There's not a lot of context given about the behaviors exhibited in this interview, but as many others here have said, red flags abound in this anecdote.

> But the problem was, that this guys manager was sitting next to him. If he didn’t know, I would totally humiliate him in front of his boss. So either he would stick to his guns and refuse the correctness of my answer, to save face. Or he needed to agree that he was wrong, and lose face.

I would love to ask the author if their team lead ever confirmed these suspicions. I would doubt it, but happy to amend my position if wrong. Regardless, to me this sounds like the exact type of culture I wouldn't want a new hire bringing in. I don't need to be managed or protected, especially from my own manager. I need honest answers, not what I want to hear. I wasn't in the room, I can't read the vibes like the author did, but I'll consider the omissions here telling-- there's no description of an anxious or frazzled team lead, or an imperious manager peering down. It seems like the only thing the author saved the team lead from were problems in their own head.

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

#88

Post by LanceH »

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…

> “How does this architecture relate to the model-view-controller pattern?”

It's an ambiguous question.

One answer is that all the mvc code runs on the application layer. This correct in a nearly tautological way (the code is where the code is).

The other answer is how does it relate. The model relates to the database in their three tier example.

Indeed, I think this question definitely implies something other than "where does the mvc code exist?"

I really don't think his answer is even a pedantic one. It's bending over backwards to read a question in a certain way that his preferred clever answer could be considered correct.

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

#89

Post by mnw21cam »

LegitShady wrote: post #51
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…

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…

What other meaning of the word "or" is there?
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