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I thought we were over the "torture the interviewee" interview stuff, this blows my mind ------- Olaf : This is just to Fred. Fred and I probably talked for 4

by smcl 10y ago

I thought we were over the "torture the interviewee" interview stuff, this blows my mind ------- Olaf : This is just to Fred. Fred and I probably talked for 45 minutes–a long time. Then Fred gave me a really brutal mathematics problem ... Okay. So there are 100 lockers in a row. They’re all closed, okay? A kid goes by. He opens every single locker. A second kid goes by. Now he closes every other locker, every second locker. Third kid comes by, every third locker. If it’s open, he closes it. If it closed, he opens it. Then the fourth kid goes by. Every fourth locker, he changes the state. And now 100 kids go by. What is the state of the lockers after 100 kids go by? ... Craig : What was the actual job? Olaf : Customer support

ryandrake 10y ago
Not only that, but the whole interview seemed to be from bizarre-o world. A mix of awesome and WTF. Five minutes after sending an email to jobs@ you get asked to "hop on Skype"? Wow, that's pretty great. With most companies you're lucky if you even get an automated "We got your Email" message after 5 minutes. Then it's "do two presentations by tomorrow". (I guess they assumed he had no plans for the evening). Then after what sounded like typical tech interview hazing, it only took 4 days for the company to decide? Wow!
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  It was bizarre to me, too. I thought most of what you mentioned was just testing his commitment. Solid commitment should mean something decent looking would come out of those efforts. The email and 4 days are probably just their instincts in action with some deliberation on latter after doing this kind of thing regularly for a long time. I'm curious how long it takes on average for most VC's to go from good interview to acceptance.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Hustles are all about commitment, and one of the ways you can tell you're being hustled is when your side has to establish its decisionmaking ASAP while their decision process then can take however long they feel like.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      That is a common pattern. I recently blew someone's alleged deal off because they needed a decision immediately. It's usually a bad sign but might be normal with VC's.
cashmonkey85 10y ago
I applied for a job and they told me I needed to do a 3 hour online test. I didn't reply back to them
- JBReefer 10y ago
  Yeah, at that point you weigh the consulting time against the chance of the (job x salary) NPVed.
shaldengeki 10y ago
Exactly. The question is effectively equivalent to "have you recently taken an elementary number theory course", which, apart from being not at all a brutal mathematics problem, is totally irrelevant to what makes a good customer support hire. The whole interview process comes off as having been designed by someone who had no idea what they were doing.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  The worst part is this is implied by Olaf himself where he points out that he just lucked out on that problem in a way he doesn't expect to repeat. He accidentally passed the contrived problem unrelated to the job. They were just a hair from eliminating the good candidate in the interview.
barmstrong 10y ago
Coinbase CEO here. Keep in mind - this was the first employee we hired. And it was 4.5 years ago. As you can imagine, things may have changed a bit 120 employees and thousands of interviews later. I think you'd find the experience quite different today.
bshimmin 10y ago
Is the answer something like "The lockers are pretty trashed, especially the hinges"?
throwmeup 10y ago
I interviewed with Coinbase a couple years ago and had a horrible experience from start to finish. The whole team was super disorganized throughout and the people I talked to weren’t inspiring in the least. The CEO was super rude at the end of the process too. I aced the stupid online test they wanted, then aced the phone interview with Brian (the CEO), and then on top of that they wanted me to come in and contract with them for a week as a “trial” which I did do partially (didn’t do the full week because I was busy that time of year). Their expectations of the trial were entirely unrealistic, misguided, and in some cases nonexistent (which is worse than misguided imo). It was doomed to fail from the beginning. Anyway, jokes on them because they lost out on a great engineer. I wonder how many more they lost out on due to misguided and mismanaged hiring practices. Now I’m shipping software to more users than Coinbase can ever dream of, having more impact on those users than Bitcoin ever will, and making far more money to boot while working with a higher caliber Eng team. So I'm incredibly thankful for having dodged that bullet.
- IAmGarrett 10y ago
  "An empty cart rattles loudly." Sounds like you and Coinbase were both better off for not working there.
  - throwmeup 10y ago
    Look, I've failed and passed many many interviews in my time. I’ve seen many different interview processes. I've passed many interviews where I thought: "Wow that interview process truly sucked, even though I made it through". I've failed many interviews where I still walked away thinking "That was a great interview experience, I respect everyone I interviewed with, it didn't work out, but I still admire the company and will cheer them on, and I learned some things too“.This was not one of those experiences, and I have no reason to dress it up as such. If you think I’m an empty cart making a racket, feel free, I don’t really care for such one-liners. The only reason I even shared my experience interviewing at Coinbase is because I think we’re obligated to share our experiences in the industry for the benefit of our colleagues (past, present, and future!). I literally don’t gain anything from unfairly ranting about some random interview experience from a couple of years ago. This post just happened to remind me, and I figured some people might find it useful. For all I know, Coinbase might have changed their process significantly since then and maybe the CEO stopped being rude to potential hires. Who knows? Certainly not me. They could even be an awesome employer today. But I do know that I personally won’t recommend the company just based on my single personal datapoint.

by smcl 10y ago

ryandrake 10y ago

Not only that, but the whole interview seemed to be from bizarre-o world. A mix of awesome and WTF. Five minutes after sending an email to jobs@ you get asked to "hop on Skype"? Wow, that's pretty great. With most companies you're lucky if you even get an automated "We got your Email" message after 5 minutes. Then it's "do two presentations by tomorrow". (I guess they assumed he had no plans for the evening). Then after what sounded like typical tech interview hazing, it only took 4 days for the company to decide? Wow!

nickpsecurity 10y ago
It was bizarre to me, too. I thought most of what you mentioned was just testing his commitment. Solid commitment should mean something decent looking would come out of those efforts. The email and 4 days are probably just their instincts in action with some deliberation on latter after doing this kind of thing regularly for a long time. I'm curious how long it takes on average for most VC's to go from good interview to acceptance.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Hustles are all about commitment, and one of the ways you can tell you're being hustled is when your side has to establish its decisionmaking ASAP while their decision process then can take however long they feel like.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    That is a common pattern. I recently blew someone's alleged deal off because they needed a decision immediately. It's usually a bad sign but might be normal with VC's.

cashmonkey85 10y ago

I applied for a job and they told me I needed to do a 3 hour online test. I didn't reply back to them

JBReefer 10y ago
Yeah, at that point you weigh the consulting time against the chance of the (job x salary) NPVed.

shaldengeki 10y ago

Exactly. The question is effectively equivalent to "have you recently taken an elementary number theory course", which, apart from being not at all a brutal mathematics problem, is totally irrelevant to what makes a good customer support hire. The whole interview process comes off as having been designed by someone who had no idea what they were doing.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
The worst part is this is implied by Olaf himself where he points out that he just lucked out on that problem in a way he doesn't expect to repeat. He accidentally passed the contrived problem unrelated to the job. They were just a hair from eliminating the good candidate in the interview.

barmstrong 10y ago

Coinbase CEO here. Keep in mind - this was the first employee we hired. And it was 4.5 years ago. As you can imagine, things may have changed a bit 120 employees and thousands of interviews later. I think you'd find the experience quite different today.

bshimmin 10y ago

Is the answer something like "The lockers are pretty trashed, especially the hinges"?

throwmeup 10y ago

I interviewed with Coinbase a couple years ago and had a horrible experience from start to finish. The whole team was super disorganized throughout and the people I talked to weren’t inspiring in the least. The CEO was super rude at the end of the process too. I aced the stupid online test they wanted, then aced the phone interview with Brian (the CEO), and then on top of that they wanted me to come in and contract with them for a week as a “trial” which I did do partially (didn’t do the full week because I was busy that time of year). Their expectations of the trial were entirely unrealistic, misguided, and in some cases nonexistent (which is worse than misguided imo). It was doomed to fail from the beginning. Anyway, jokes on them because they lost out on a great engineer. I wonder how many more they lost out on due to misguided and mismanaged hiring practices. Now I’m shipping software to more users than Coinbase can ever dream of, having more impact on those users than Bitcoin ever will, and making far more money to boot while working with a higher caliber Eng team. So I'm incredibly thankful for having dodged that bullet.

IAmGarrett 10y ago
"An empty cart rattles loudly." Sounds like you and Coinbase were both better off for not working there.
- throwmeup 10y ago
  Look, I've failed and passed many many interviews in my time. I’ve seen many different interview processes. I've passed many interviews where I thought: "Wow that interview process truly sucked, even though I made it through". I've failed many interviews where I still walked away thinking "That was a great interview experience, I respect everyone I interviewed with, it didn't work out, but I still admire the company and will cheer them on, and I learned some things too“.This was not one of those experiences, and I have no reason to dress it up as such. If you think I’m an empty cart making a racket, feel free, I don’t really care for such one-liners. The only reason I even shared my experience interviewing at Coinbase is because I think we’re obligated to share our experiences in the industry for the benefit of our colleagues (past, present, and future!). I literally don’t gain anything from unfairly ranting about some random interview experience from a couple of years ago. This post just happened to remind me, and I figured some people might find it useful. For all I know, Coinbase might have changed their process significantly since then and maybe the CEO stopped being rude to potential hires. Who knows? Certainly not me. They could even be an awesome employer today. But I do know that I personally won’t recommend the company just based on my single personal datapoint.