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I was once asked a very very specific question about a conflicting setting in an nginx config and the dude actually wrote the config on the whiteboard and asked

I was once asked a very very specific question about a conflicting setting in an nginx config and the dude actually wrote the config on the whiteboard and asked me how I would make it work. I stared at it for what felt like minutes and then said, if I looked in your search history would I see you looking this up on stackoverflow? The guy said "yes" and I said I would make it work by asking you to send me the link to the stackoverflow answer. He laughed and said "you got me". Same company different interviewer asked me to explain the "pros and cons of Java vs Rails." I turned the job down.

Declanomous 9y ago
One of my friends told me that when he was interviewed at his current company, they asked him a similar question, and he said he gave a long complicated answer that basically amounted to "I would google it." He got the job, so there you go I guess.
- odammit 9y ago
  Gotcha style questions like that pretty much just ask "have you been in the exact same scenario as me last Tuesday?" My interviewing has boiled down to 30 minutes of shooting the shit to see what the person is like and to make them more comfortable and then a pair session with a ticket I haven't had experience with so we are both on approximately the same level. My goal in the session is to see how they interact with an unfamiliar project and what kind of questions they ask and their discovery process of learning our business domain.
  - hashkb 9y ago
    Your interview process is unfair. 1. The shoot the shit session is guaranteed to be driven by your personal biases. 2. Working on a different ticket with every candidate ensures you can't possibly compare one candidate's performance to another's.
    - odammit 9y ago
      Totes, but what interview is fair? I also send the same screening test depending on role so I do have a baseline, although I'm much more interested in our interaction during the pair session.
    - eropple 9y ago
      I'd rather have an informal discussion that demonstrates competence than being quizzed on meaningless Googleable stuff[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570309
- booleandilemma 9y ago
  I said the same thing to an interviewer once when he asked me about the syntax of some Entity Framework command and he looked at me like I had cheese coming out of my mouth. I didn't get the job, but I'm glad. His reaction was a red flag as far as I'm concerned.
EduardoBautista 9y ago
I don't understand how Stack Overflow is so popular for these types of questions. Usually the documentation is a much better source. So yes, using Stack Overflow instead of the documentation is a red flag for me.
- Belphemur 9y ago
  The documentation is great when you know what you're looking for. When you don't exactly, SO is a good pointer to the part of the documentation you didn't know.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    yes back in the day IBM and DEC had good documentation today not so much
- BeetleB 9y ago
  Good SO answers usually link to the documentation. Often quicker to get to it via SO than to trawl through the docs hoping to find it.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  It's not on SO people search for their problem; it's Google. If SO comes up before the official documentation, then I guess by at least a quantifiable metric, SO is not that much worse than the docs, after all...
- 13of40 9y ago
  I think it's because Google somehow manages to index stack overflow better than the documentation. That, and stack overflow only answers real-world questions while the documentation tends to give equal weight to rarely and commonly used features.
  - fragsworth 9y ago
    The reason is the text of the questions, which is what people type into the Google search bar. Documentation never has questions worded in the way people would commonly ask it. For this reason, I wish they would allow redundant questions to be asked, if the phrasing is even slightly different. But the rule-mongering mods always remove it if they can.
siliconc0w 9y ago
I dunno, I think Java vs Rails is a great question if asked right. There are large meaningful and practical differences between the two and every non-jr programmer should at least be able to talk about the technical and business merits of using one vs the other. There isn't a right answer, you basically just start shallow and probe until either you or the candidate can't go any deeper. This question could lead you into exploration around the JVM, concurrency, memory management, typed vs un-typed, choosing libraries, toolchains, dependency management, strategies for persisting state(i.e ORMs), back-of-the-envelope performance, etc I'm pretty sure I could get a full 45 minutes out of that question.
- joncrocks 9y ago
  So you mean Java vs. Ruby? ('Rails' being 'Ruby on Rails') Java vs. Rails is a bad question as it's comparing two things that aren't equivalent. One is a language, the other a web-application framework.
  - khazhoux 9y ago
    It's not a "bad" question, but your reply is a fine starting point for a good answer: "Well, for starters, Rails is a framework while Java is a language. Granted, Rails is THE framework on Ruby, so I can tell you about the differences between Java-based webdev, vs Ruby/Rails. With R/R, you have convention over configuration, which means blahblahblah and is good for getting started but at times you run into blahblahblah. And community blahblahblah, etc. Java, OTOH, has stating typing, which gives you guarantees blahblahblah but there's no standard web framework like on Rails so you'll spend a lot of time researching not-so-great choices, etcetc...."
    - joncrocks 9y ago
      Sure, there's a good amount to discuss, but I would argue it's too open ended. I could also, as the grandparent suggests, talk about that particular topic for a long while. But as an interviewee it would suggest to me that they possibly are just spewing out words they heard around the watercooler. Either that, or it's a 'trick' question, due to the fact that they are not comparable. I expect chefs could talk all day on the question: "What are the pros and cons of flour vs. forks?" That doesn't make it a good interview question.
jghn 9y ago
edit: I didn't even notice the "rails" until after I wrote this. My brain filled in "ruby". I agree that java vs rails is stupid. I love the compare/contrast style of questions between languages. I try to not phrase it as "pros and cons" however. What I'm looking to see is the breadth of their knowledge and what insights they've picked up from hard earned experience. Also, showing the ability to think critically about different tools demonstrates that they understand when a hammer is appropriate vs a screwdriver. I don't care what they think is better or worse, I want them to show me that they've traveled the world, so to speak.
- denzil_correa 9y ago
  Generally, I never interview about things "I know". I want to know how the candidate approached his/her project - the choices s/he to consider while designing the solution. It gives me far greater insight into the candidate's mind than merely asking "whiteboard questions".
- Clubber 9y ago
  It's not completely stupid. My answer would be: If you need something up and running fast, but don't care about performance per instance, such as a marketing landing page use RoR. If you need something very performant per instance and are willing to pay for it, such as a enterprise application or large web site, use Java. If that's not an acceptable answer, the interviewer doesn't know what he's doing.
  - jghn 9y ago
    The "stupid" part is comparing Java to Rails, not Java to Ruby. IOW you're comparing a language to a web framework. I agree with everything you said.

Declanomous 9y ago

One of my friends told me that when he was interviewed at his current company, they asked him a similar question, and he said he gave a long complicated answer that basically amounted to "I would google it." He got the job, so there you go I guess.

odammit 9y ago
Gotcha style questions like that pretty much just ask "have you been in the exact same scenario as me last Tuesday?" My interviewing has boiled down to 30 minutes of shooting the shit to see what the person is like and to make them more comfortable and then a pair session with a ticket I haven't had experience with so we are both on approximately the same level. My goal in the session is to see how they interact with an unfamiliar project and what kind of questions they ask and their discovery process of learning our business domain.
- hashkb 9y ago
  Your interview process is unfair. 1. The shoot the shit session is guaranteed to be driven by your personal biases. 2. Working on a different ticket with every candidate ensures you can't possibly compare one candidate's performance to another's.
  - odammit 9y ago
    Totes, but what interview is fair? I also send the same screening test depending on role so I do have a baseline, although I'm much more interested in our interaction during the pair session.
  - eropple 9y ago
    I'd rather have an informal discussion that demonstrates competence than being quizzed on meaningless Googleable stuff[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570309
booleandilemma 9y ago
I said the same thing to an interviewer once when he asked me about the syntax of some Entity Framework command and he looked at me like I had cheese coming out of my mouth. I didn't get the job, but I'm glad. His reaction was a red flag as far as I'm concerned.

EduardoBautista 9y ago

I don't understand how Stack Overflow is so popular for these types of questions. Usually the documentation is a much better source. So yes, using Stack Overflow instead of the documentation is a red flag for me.

Belphemur 9y ago
The documentation is great when you know what you're looking for. When you don't exactly, SO is a good pointer to the part of the documentation you didn't know.
- walshemj 9y ago
  yes back in the day IBM and DEC had good documentation today not so much
BeetleB 9y ago
Good SO answers usually link to the documentation. Often quicker to get to it via SO than to trawl through the docs hoping to find it.
nothrabannosir 9y ago
It's not on SO people search for their problem; it's Google. If SO comes up before the official documentation, then I guess by at least a quantifiable metric, SO is not that much worse than the docs, after all...
13of40 9y ago
I think it's because Google somehow manages to index stack overflow better than the documentation. That, and stack overflow only answers real-world questions while the documentation tends to give equal weight to rarely and commonly used features.
- fragsworth 9y ago
  The reason is the text of the questions, which is what people type into the Google search bar. Documentation never has questions worded in the way people would commonly ask it. For this reason, I wish they would allow redundant questions to be asked, if the phrasing is even slightly different. But the rule-mongering mods always remove it if they can.

siliconc0w 9y ago

I dunno, I think Java vs Rails is a great question if asked right. There are large meaningful and practical differences between the two and every non-jr programmer should at least be able to talk about the technical and business merits of using one vs the other. There isn't a right answer, you basically just start shallow and probe until either you or the candidate can't go any deeper. This question could lead you into exploration around the JVM, concurrency, memory management, typed vs un-typed, choosing libraries, toolchains, dependency management, strategies for persisting state(i.e ORMs), back-of-the-envelope performance, etc I'm pretty sure I could get a full 45 minutes out of that question.

joncrocks 9y ago
So you mean Java vs. Ruby? ('Rails' being 'Ruby on Rails') Java vs. Rails is a bad question as it's comparing two things that aren't equivalent. One is a language, the other a web-application framework.
- khazhoux 9y ago
  It's not a "bad" question, but your reply is a fine starting point for a good answer: "Well, for starters, Rails is a framework while Java is a language. Granted, Rails is THE framework on Ruby, so I can tell you about the differences between Java-based webdev, vs Ruby/Rails. With R/R, you have convention over configuration, which means blahblahblah and is good for getting started but at times you run into blahblahblah. And community blahblahblah, etc. Java, OTOH, has stating typing, which gives you guarantees blahblahblah but there's no standard web framework like on Rails so you'll spend a lot of time researching not-so-great choices, etcetc...."
  - joncrocks 9y ago
    Sure, there's a good amount to discuss, but I would argue it's too open ended. I could also, as the grandparent suggests, talk about that particular topic for a long while. But as an interviewee it would suggest to me that they possibly are just spewing out words they heard around the watercooler. Either that, or it's a 'trick' question, due to the fact that they are not comparable. I expect chefs could talk all day on the question: "What are the pros and cons of flour vs. forks?" That doesn't make it a good interview question.

jghn 9y ago

edit: I didn't even notice the "rails" until after I wrote this. My brain filled in "ruby". I agree that java vs rails is stupid. I love the compare/contrast style of questions between languages. I try to not phrase it as "pros and cons" however. What I'm looking to see is the breadth of their knowledge and what insights they've picked up from hard earned experience. Also, showing the ability to think critically about different tools demonstrates that they understand when a hammer is appropriate vs a screwdriver. I don't care what they think is better or worse, I want them to show me that they've traveled the world, so to speak.

denzil_correa 9y ago
Generally, I never interview about things "I know". I want to know how the candidate approached his/her project - the choices s/he to consider while designing the solution. It gives me far greater insight into the candidate's mind than merely asking "whiteboard questions".
Clubber 9y ago
It's not completely stupid. My answer would be: If you need something up and running fast, but don't care about performance per instance, such as a marketing landing page use RoR. If you need something very performant per instance and are willing to pay for it, such as a enterprise application or large web site, use Java. If that's not an acceptable answer, the interviewer doesn't know what he's doing.
- jghn 9y ago
  The "stupid" part is comparing Java to Rails, not Java to Ruby. IOW you're comparing a language to a web framework. I agree with everything you said.