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When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and tha

When I read articles like this, I tend to assume that they are exaggerations written by people who feel burned because they didn't get the job they want and that the reason was unfair interview questions. In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. To continue with the recruiting example, I suspect what is more common is that interviewers are expecting candidates with some Excel experience, and ask questions to gauge some basic level of competency. And interviewees have conflated using it one time with any depth of experience. I can attest to seeing this many times during programming interviews. If I see something towards the top of someone's resume, I will ask a basic question to see if anything whatsoever is known about that thing. Yes, book knowledge. Stuff that you would know if you had actually read any docs. I don't want to work alongside someone who claims knowledge or experience of something and doesn't know the basics. Or doesn't know that they don't know the basics.

justin_vanw 9y ago
Yes I think you are right, buuuut... Lots of times the initial screen is done by someone totally non-technical, and they are asking questions from a sheet and judging whether you are saying what is in the answer field for their sheet. This is super stupid, but I have seen it, usually when some headhunting firm is deciding whether to add your resume to their database which they pull resume's from to send to clients. The moral: Don't use headhunting firms, because they will basically never send you a decent candidate. In the very rare cases where they by pure luck do send a good candidate, this is rarely worth the dozens of crap candidates they have sent you (not to mention that they will try to push candidates on you if they think they can get away with it).
- minxomat 9y ago
  Yep on the first point. I was once asked to bend a comically large paper clip out of pipe cleaners. Next I was to solve some physics questions. This was for an analyst job at a bank.
- whatever_dude 9y ago
  Some recruiters/recruiter agencies can be pretty good though. I've had interactions with those that let me surprised at their skill and knowledge.
- TurboHaskal 9y ago
  My past initial screen was hilarious: - I see that you worked for a consultancy firm on your previous job. Do you have experience working with clients? - Yes. My client at the time was XXX Bank where I was involved in foo bar baz... - So you don’t have experience working with clients. - What? Yes, yes I do. I worked and interacted with them on a daily basis, with meetings and the like. - Okay. Do you have experience with databases? - Yes. Mostly Oracle and MySQL. Some postgresql. I’m also quite comfortable with NoSQL databases such as Redis and MongoDB. - Good. Do you have experience with programming languages? - ... Yes. Some codility tests and interviews later I was notified I was not getting an offer due to lack of first hand experience with AWS (previous interviewers were apparently fine with that, but this one saw it as a red flag, although it was not listed as a requirement in the job offer). Definitely a good call for both ends, as this was one of those modern companies where everyone are supposed to be friends, play with nerf-guns and have after work drinks. I think I’m too old for that. For the record, it feels good for once being rejected on lack of technical merits rather than failing some “culture fit” interview. A trend that is giving me the worst interview streak of my career and is making me consider a change of profession.
quantumhobbit 9y ago
Sure, but I've just had an interview with a recruiter who literally did the "Do you know Reactjs? Yes. But do you know JavaScript?" face-palm to me. Only with Angular instead of React. Not all recruiters are this dumb, but I promise you I have encountered plenty who are.
- majewsky 9y ago
  That's not "dumb", that's just "incompetent".
- collyw 9y ago
  After giving them a quick overview of my 6 years worth of Django experience, I was asked if I know Python.
- dkersten 9y ago
  In fairness, I don't consider my javascript skills to be much good[1], but I know React quite well (because I've been using React from clojurescript since fairly early on). [1] I can get by, but I'm far from a JS developer. I can read JS just fine, but mainly because I've used plenty of other languages, although when I write JS I need to google often and don't write the best JS code.
joekrill 9y ago
I don't think anyone is suggesting what is written here _actually_ happened. The point is that you are correct -- most interviews are not so stupid as to ask obscure Excel questions that are not relevant. That just doesn't happen. The point is that, for some reason, we put up with this kind of behaviour in software interviews, and no where else would it be considered reasonable.
maxsilver 9y ago
> In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. Sure. But I think the point of these constant articles is that interviewers are regularly asking obscure programming questions when they are plainly not relevant. Programming managers are, apparently, so unsure of their own ability to hire other programmers, that they look up game show questions to grill their candidates with.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
I was once interviewing for a fairly generic Java CRUD job, and the interviewer asked me to figure out how to balance a binary search tree. He then interrupted me every minute or so as I was trying to figure out a way to ask me if that was my completed algorithm.
- poikniok 9y ago
  Can you explain what it means to balance a binary search tree? Are you referring to writing your own implementation of AVL or RB trees?
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    >Can you explain what it means to balance a binary search tree? Yes, to minimize the depth by "filling" every branch possible/equalizing the number of nodes in every subtree at a given depth. >Are you referring to writing your own implementation of AVL or RB trees? Yes, though the interviewer didn't say "AVL" or "RB". I'm not sure I ever even got a class with those in it, and frankly, I don't care enough to memorize how to implement them just for an interview question. Again, this wasn't Google. This wasn't a firm that did complicated data-structures stuff all the time. They fully admitted how simple their work is. But they asked about how to balance a binary search tree anyway.
ryandrake 9y ago
I don't think this is a huge exaggeration. This falls directly into the "it's funny because it's true" category, down to the last sentence. I've had far more interviews that went like this than I care to admit. Most of them (mercifully) end at the phone screen and I don't have to haul myself into an office for more of this treatment. For an industry constantly whining about the "shortage of tech talent" we treat tech talent pretty horribly while we court them. It's like a guy complaining there aren't enough good women out there, starting a date by pulling out a tape measure.
Nursie 9y ago
>> In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. I was interviewed just a couple of weeks ago. The interview itself was pretty straightforward, but they asked me to do a few test questions, which were very much like those described in the article. "Here's some really obscure C code with undefined behaviour, what's the problem" "Well, that you wrote it that way, who the hell would write that?" "Sure, sure, but can you see the problem" "Well yeah, you've got someone who delights in writing obfuscated C in weird ways, that's your problem. You could avoid many classes of error here by writing things out in simpler steps." They were all seriously contrived. (--edit-- and equally as semi-relevant to the role, which is to do with microservices and scalability)
DavidWoof 9y ago
I've been moving around the US for the past few years for personal reasons and I've gone through a round of interviews on every move in a wide variety of situations, and I've honestly never seen anything like this. In fact, I can remember the only two times I didn't actually know the answer to a technical questions, and in both cases I thought they were reasonable questions that tested the limits of what I had recently worked on. This stuff may have been common 15 years ago, but I haven't seen it for a long time. OTOH, when I'm on the other side of the table, I run across a lot of candidates who literally can't write fizzbuzz in a reasonable amount of time. "Interview parody" is a common genre these days, but I'd be much more interested in seeing the actual bad questions people are getting in their interviews rather than a parody of them.
- yellingdog 9y ago
  I think the reason you don't see bad questions posted more often is that you get comments like the top comment in this chain, where people believe you're just upset that you didn't get the job. I also think it is more common for recent graduates to get garbage questions about things you never use. Some of my friends had awful experiences over the last couple of years.
megamindbrian 9y ago
Nice. Actually, like me, they feel burned because it took 100 senseless conversations (1 hour each) just to get a likable job.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

justin_vanw 9y ago

Yes I think you are right, buuuut... Lots of times the initial screen is done by someone totally non-technical, and they are asking questions from a sheet and judging whether you are saying what is in the answer field for their sheet. This is super stupid, but I have seen it, usually when some headhunting firm is deciding whether to add your resume to their database which they pull resume's from to send to clients. The moral: Don't use headhunting firms, because they will basically never send you a decent candidate. In the very rare cases where they by pure luck do send a good candidate, this is rarely worth the dozens of crap candidates they have sent you (not to mention that they will try to push candidates on you if they think they can get away with it).

minxomat 9y ago
Yep on the first point. I was once asked to bend a comically large paper clip out of pipe cleaners. Next I was to solve some physics questions. This was for an analyst job at a bank.
whatever_dude 9y ago
Some recruiters/recruiter agencies can be pretty good though. I've had interactions with those that let me surprised at their skill and knowledge.
TurboHaskal 9y ago
My past initial screen was hilarious: - I see that you worked for a consultancy firm on your previous job. Do you have experience working with clients? - Yes. My client at the time was XXX Bank where I was involved in foo bar baz... - So you don’t have experience working with clients. - What? Yes, yes I do. I worked and interacted with them on a daily basis, with meetings and the like. - Okay. Do you have experience with databases? - Yes. Mostly Oracle and MySQL. Some postgresql. I’m also quite comfortable with NoSQL databases such as Redis and MongoDB. - Good. Do you have experience with programming languages? - ... Yes. Some codility tests and interviews later I was notified I was not getting an offer due to lack of first hand experience with AWS (previous interviewers were apparently fine with that, but this one saw it as a red flag, although it was not listed as a requirement in the job offer). Definitely a good call for both ends, as this was one of those modern companies where everyone are supposed to be friends, play with nerf-guns and have after work drinks. I think I’m too old for that. For the record, it feels good for once being rejected on lack of technical merits rather than failing some “culture fit” interview. A trend that is giving me the worst interview streak of my career and is making me consider a change of profession.

quantumhobbit 9y ago

Sure, but I've just had an interview with a recruiter who literally did the "Do you know Reactjs? Yes. But do you know JavaScript?" face-palm to me. Only with Angular instead of React. Not all recruiters are this dumb, but I promise you I have encountered plenty who are.

majewsky 9y ago
That's not "dumb", that's just "incompetent".
collyw 9y ago
After giving them a quick overview of my 6 years worth of Django experience, I was asked if I know Python.
dkersten 9y ago
In fairness, I don't consider my javascript skills to be much good[1], but I know React quite well (because I've been using React from clojurescript since fairly early on). [1] I can get by, but I'm far from a JS developer. I can read JS just fine, but mainly because I've used plenty of other languages, although when I write JS I need to google often and don't write the best JS code.

joekrill 9y ago

I don't think anyone is suggesting what is written here _actually_ happened. The point is that you are correct -- most interviews are not so stupid as to ask obscure Excel questions that are not relevant. That just doesn't happen. The point is that, for some reason, we put up with this kind of behaviour in software interviews, and no where else would it be considered reasonable.

maxsilver 9y ago

> In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. Sure. But I think the point of these constant articles is that interviewers are regularly asking obscure programming questions when they are plainly not relevant. Programming managers are, apparently, so unsure of their own ability to hire other programmers, that they look up game show questions to grill their candidates with.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

I was once interviewing for a fairly generic Java CRUD job, and the interviewer asked me to figure out how to balance a binary search tree. He then interrupted me every minute or so as I was trying to figure out a way to ask me if that was my completed algorithm.

poikniok 9y ago
Can you explain what it means to balance a binary search tree? Are you referring to writing your own implementation of AVL or RB trees?
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >Can you explain what it means to balance a binary search tree? Yes, to minimize the depth by "filling" every branch possible/equalizing the number of nodes in every subtree at a given depth. >Are you referring to writing your own implementation of AVL or RB trees? Yes, though the interviewer didn't say "AVL" or "RB". I'm not sure I ever even got a class with those in it, and frankly, I don't care enough to memorize how to implement them just for an interview question. Again, this wasn't Google. This wasn't a firm that did complicated data-structures stuff all the time. They fully admitted how simple their work is. But they asked about how to balance a binary search tree anyway.

ryandrake 9y ago

I don't think this is a huge exaggeration. This falls directly into the "it's funny because it's true" category, down to the last sentence. I've had far more interviews that went like this than I care to admit. Most of them (mercifully) end at the phone screen and I don't have to haul myself into an office for more of this treatment. For an industry constantly whining about the "shortage of tech talent" we treat tech talent pretty horribly while we court them. It's like a guy complaining there aren't enough good women out there, starting a date by pulling out a tape measure.

Nursie 9y ago

>> In other words, I simply don't believe that interviewers are, as a group, so stupid that they regularly ask obscure Excel questions when they are plainly not relevant. I was interviewed just a couple of weeks ago. The interview itself was pretty straightforward, but they asked me to do a few test questions, which were very much like those described in the article. "Here's some really obscure C code with undefined behaviour, what's the problem" "Well, that you wrote it that way, who the hell would write that?" "Sure, sure, but can you see the problem" "Well yeah, you've got someone who delights in writing obfuscated C in weird ways, that's your problem. You could avoid many classes of error here by writing things out in simpler steps." They were all seriously contrived. (--edit-- and equally as semi-relevant to the role, which is to do with microservices and scalability)

DavidWoof 9y ago

I've been moving around the US for the past few years for personal reasons and I've gone through a round of interviews on every move in a wide variety of situations, and I've honestly never seen anything like this. In fact, I can remember the only two times I didn't actually know the answer to a technical questions, and in both cases I thought they were reasonable questions that tested the limits of what I had recently worked on. This stuff may have been common 15 years ago, but I haven't seen it for a long time. OTOH, when I'm on the other side of the table, I run across a lot of candidates who literally can't write fizzbuzz in a reasonable amount of time. "Interview parody" is a common genre these days, but I'd be much more interested in seeing the actual bad questions people are getting in their interviews rather than a parody of them.

yellingdog 9y ago
I think the reason you don't see bad questions posted more often is that you get comments like the top comment in this chain, where people believe you're just upset that you didn't get the job. I also think it is more common for recent graduates to get garbage questions about things you never use. Some of my friends had awful experiences over the last couple of years.

megamindbrian 9y ago

Nice. Actually, like me, they feel burned because it took 100 senseless conversations (1 hour each) just to get a likable job.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]