3 ms·

God I love those questions. They're essentially essay questions- come up with reasonable-enoguh assumptions and get on with business. We don't do a -ton- of s

God I love those questions. They're essentially essay questions- come up with reasonable-enoguh assumptions and get on with business. We don't do a -ton- of stuff like that, but I've found that if you can't estimate with any rationale, you're probably just not very good at whatever domain you're asked to deal with. For example, 'what sort of architecture are we going to use to make this system', 'how many simultaneous users are we expecting', 'how many requests per second can we handle given this hardware', 'how much memory do we really need- if we quadrupled it, what would that get us', etc. Also- if a person locks up when they're thrown "How would you move mt fuji", there are going to be a lot questions that I'd be concerned about getting answers out of you for... For a Sr or higher person, I'd hope to get some reasonable answers. Am I off?

dekhn 10y ago
You're off. You're confusing Fermi Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem with computer science algorithm approximation problems.
- dethswatch 10y ago
  You don't feel that it's appropriate to ask a "Sr or higher" candidate questions such as: "'how many requests per second can we handle given this hardware', 'how much memory do we really need- if we quadrupled it, what would that get us', etc," ? In addition- do you feel it's reasonable for a "Sr or higher" candidate to lock up (ie- stammer, not be able to come to any sensible conclusion)if one was to be asked a question where they have to use the same tools to answer those questions above when asked a question not in their domain- for example, 'how many pianos tuners are likely to be in this area'? I'm not arguing in favor of non-domain experience questions like mt fuji or piano tuners- but I can't see hiring a Sr who can't tell give me some Fermi question approximations about how many servers we need. Maybe I don't know what a Sr is supposed to be capable of doing?

dekhn 10y ago

You're off. You're confusing Fermi Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem with computer science algorithm approximation problems.

dethswatch 10y ago
You don't feel that it's appropriate to ask a "Sr or higher" candidate questions such as: "'how many requests per second can we handle given this hardware', 'how much memory do we really need- if we quadrupled it, what would that get us', etc," ? In addition- do you feel it's reasonable for a "Sr or higher" candidate to lock up (ie- stammer, not be able to come to any sensible conclusion)if one was to be asked a question where they have to use the same tools to answer those questions above when asked a question not in their domain- for example, 'how many pianos tuners are likely to be in this area'? I'm not arguing in favor of non-domain experience questions like mt fuji or piano tuners- but I can't see hiring a Sr who can't tell give me some Fermi question approximations about how many servers we need. Maybe I don't know what a Sr is supposed to be capable of doing?