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Perhaps it's not as easy a question as you think it is in the heat of the moment during a stressful interview? This point cannot be underemphasized. "Thinking

Perhaps it's not as easy a question as you think it is in the heat of the moment during a stressful interview? This point cannot be underemphasized. "Thinking aloud", not just in front of another person but under a very stressful situation (for most people) that also basically almost never occurs otherwise in daily life -- is a specific metacognitive skill that for many people can only be (even adequately) learned by either (1) careful training or (2) surviving many repeated failures, and finally getting at least partially acclimated to these kinds of confrontations. Yeah sure, perhaps some of the people who "bombed" that calendar test really were the walking fraudsters the interviewer (who knows they'll get to stay in their well-paying job regardless of the outcome of said interview) makes them out to be. But most are probably simply nervous, and due to a variety of psychological factors (imposter syndrome, among others) are simply momentarily blanking out, and having suffering from a very common form of mild anxiety attack which makes the problem seem much more complex to them (at that moment) than it otherwise would, under more natural circumstances.

lopatin 9y ago
Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. Often, time matters and you have to think on your feet. That's why I think rejecting a programmer for losing their core competencies like problem solving, i.e. freezing, under a medium amount of pressure is valid.
- zimzam 9y ago
  I've been a developer for years and worked for multiple companies: the most stressful professional situations I've ever have been in have been maybe a 4 out of 10 stress-wise, whereas interviews range from 7 to 9 out of 10. Interviews aren't ordinary job situations: they are contrived situations where people are making life-changing decisions based on a very short interaction.
  - cnp 9y ago
    Same here, and have worked on some extremely high-profile, complex things. Never _ever_ have I been as stressed as when asked to perform interview whiteboard questions. It simply doesn't compare.
    - FilterSweep 9y ago
      Sometimes, you just have to appreciate the Torvalds-level of arrogance expressed in some of replies on HN.
      - kafkaesq 9y ago
        You're reading too much into it. That wasn't Torvaldsian at all, by my reading.
  - kafkaesq 9y ago
    The most stressful professional situations I've ever have been in have been maybe a 4 out of 10 stress-wise, whereas interviews range from 7 to 9 out of 10. Agree mostly -- just that I guess I've fallen into more abusive environments than I should have allowed myself to over the years, where the stress levels have hit will into the 7-10 range. But in healthy environments -- even when I really did screw something up (sometimes quite significantly) -- it's never above the 4-5 range. Interviews aren't ordinary job situations: they are contrived situations where people are making life-changing decisions based on a very short interaction. And pretending that they can read the tea leaves, and make that kind of assessment as to "whether this guy can handle a medium amount of pressure", to boot.
- weaksauce 9y ago
  It really depends on the job. stress in general is one thing but stress on a pedestal is another. some types of people(programmers fall into this category often) are not good at embarrassment so they shut down and can't think. it's not bad because they can be brilliant without the social pressure but with that they are not ideal. if the job doesn't have that requirement it's silly to drop them for it.
- arethuza 9y ago
  "time matters and you have to think on your feet" I've been in many stressful situations at work - none of them involved finding algorithmic solutions.
  - crispyambulance 9y ago
    I once spent 2 days troubleshooting a machine vision system at bolt factory. Physically in the factory. On my feet. Standing behind an active vibratory hopper filled with bolts, while stake-holders were losing money hand-over-fist, and angry machinists who looked like a motorcycle gang stood next to me. And it was a Windows NT machine. Not quite all about algorithms, but that was part of it :-)
    - arethuza 9y ago
      Yes, and I've set up a demo of an interactive TV system in a cupboard at a large London hotel (standing room only!)... Also found that the probability of someone finding the porn in the demo by randomly pressing remote buttons pretty much approaches 1 as number of button presses approaches infinity...
  - rmah 9y ago
    I once had to diagnose and fix a bug in a financial system that went belly up under extremely heavy load -- causing the company lose tens millions of $'s per hour (literally). Turned out to be a timing problem caused by satellite comms latency. The solution required us to modify how a couple different algorithmic worked. That situation was highly time sensitive and over-the-top stressful (for me anyway).
    - pmiller2 9y ago
      I'm sure you would acknowledge that's a very exceptional situation, right? That's the point of this whole subthread: that this kind of stress is exceptional in a work situation.
      - rmah 9y ago
- FilterSweep 9y ago
  This is far too much of a simplification of (grand)Parent. you don't know the circumstances that 30 year old programmer with a 2 year old child at home is facing. You could also be like certain firms and immediately nix him on the "merits" of ageism. A female programmer might have travelled 2000 miles to just receive an abstraction question out of left-field over an irrelevant concept to the job. She flew out on this uncertainty, and she's in a rather discriminatory field. 26 year old dev has probably built CRUD apps all his short career. and, you're asking him to implement (isBinarySearchTree Boolean) on a whiteboard on the spot.
  - kudokatz 9y ago
    > 30 year old programmer with a 2 year old child at home ... nix him on the "merits" of ageism A choice, conscious or not, to dedicate time to raising a child at the opportunity cost of myriad other ways to spend time is not related to ageism at all.
    - nsxwolf 9y ago
      Most programming jobs do not actually demand one make this form of Sophie's Choice. Perhaps the Valley is so diseased, but it's not the only game in town.
      - cr0sh 9y ago
        > Perhaps the Valley is so diseased, but it's not the only game in town. Hear! Hear! One of the things that bothers me a lot about HN is the near assumption that if you're a software engineer and not in SV (or have never been in an SE job in SV) - you don't count as much. I'm biased, I will admit: I've never held a software engineering job in the Valley. That opportunity has never occurred, nor have I tried to pursue it. I live and work in Phoenix, Arizona; at my age and position in life, even if the opportunity did present itself, I'd have to think long and hard about it. It would likely be a situation of me leaving my family to go work there, as relocation would likely not be a realistic option unless the pay was over the top (I am not going to move back to an apartment; my next house better be at least as large as my current one, and include a larger yard and/or shop space before anything else). Here, in my current position, I am not only the oldest developer on the entire team (and I am only a few years younger than the owner of the company), but I also am one of the few who doesn't have any children. My wife and I made the conscious choice not to have kids a long time ago, and we are constantly glad for it. In fact, she thanks me on a monthly basis for not "knocking her up". Honestly, we'd probably make terrible parents, and we're pretty selfish as a couple. We know this, so why bring children into the mix, right? That said - here in Phoenix (where it's actually difficult to find competent software engineers for any position), I've never seen or experienced there being an issue if you have kids; every employer I've worked for has been extremely flexible. In fact, both at my current employer, and my previous one, they encouraged you to leave when your day was up. If the end of your day was at 5pm, they didn't want you stay a minute more if there wasn't a really good reason for it. Like things would have to be well and good on fire for that to happen; anything less was "go home, get some rest - it'll be here to fix tomorrow".
- sangnoir 9y ago
  The kinds of pressure are different - unless if at your organization you do your time-critical coding in front of a panel with varying mixes of what looks like disappointment, boredom, impatience and eagerness to "give you a hint" on how they would solve it while thoroughly confusing you. If not, you are measuring the wrong metric to gauge potential candidate success.
- kulu2002 9y ago
  Such kind of situations are very common where you are relatively new, handling software for a safety critical system and entire production line is shut down due to some exception occurring in large complex hard-real time multithreaded s/w module developed by some past ghost employee who has forgot to comment the code with no documentation available and the plant manager is banging your head for downtime loss!
- abramz 9y ago
  I don't put out fires under the watchful eye of a would be colleague or employer.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    Some developers are expected to work on the systems that processes a bajillion dollars of whatever per day and when it screws up they are often on the line for it. I am not saying it is right, I am just saying at some shitty places it is.
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      Right or wrong, in some systems when something goes wrong, somebody dies. At some point, there's somebody on the line for that, whose responsibility it is to say "This code is good enough". That's a high-pressure situation, so if you're hiring for that, it might make sense to interview under pressure.
      - weaksauce 9y ago
        > Right or wrong, in some systems when something goes wrong, somebody dies. I have worked on systems that could cause operator death or disfigurement or damage... they are tested quite thoroughly in general and have reasonable failsafes and redundancy. It's not like they are coded on a whiteboard. being on site at a customer facility while there is a ton of noise does stress you out a bit but most of the coding and testing is done in the office. > That's a high-pressure situation, so if you're hiring for that, it might make sense to interview under pressure. I think the jobs that have that kind of pressure are rare and interviewing like that should be the exception not the norm.
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  The stressful situations tend to be things like "We just broke the production database, we need to figure out how to recover the data ASAP"... not "We need a new algorithm in FIVE MINUTES!"
  - lopatin 9y ago
    The interview question I was referring to is the appointment overlapping one. It's a middle school math question and it's a lot easier than failing over a database without data loss.
    - nsxwolf 9y ago
      I've been doing this for 20 years and I'm not even sure where I'd start on your middle school math question. I hate working with calendars and dates and I don't think I know anyone who enjoys it and can write totally bug free code that takes care of all edge cases. I'm sure good at fighting database fires though. This probably is at the heart of the answer to the question "how could this programmer with such a long resume have botched this interview so badly?" It would be insane to believe they've never added value to any organization and have just been coasting along all this time. Maybe your interview sucks and isn't good at finding value.
      - lopatin 9y ago
        Don't over complicate it. Given two number ranges, of UTC timestamps, determine if they overlap. I think you know where to start with that.
        throwaway29292 9y ago
        I'd probably go for 4 if() checks, some 'less than'/'greater than'/'&&' checks should do it.
  - BeetleB 9y ago
    >We just broke the production database, we need to figure out how to recover the data ASAP I know you did not mean it this way, but in some ways that's even worse. If that type of thing were routine enough to merit asking every interviewee that question, I would seriously reconsider working there.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. Often, time matters and you have to think on your feet Not once in my career had I had to fix a problem in an hour, let alone 10 minutes. I have had senior people get mad at me when I couldn't give an answer during a meeting - that's the closest to an interview type scenario where you need the answer now. But even then, I did not stress that I'd lose my job, which is similar to the stress the candidate is facing.
  - npizzolato 9y ago
    Do you work on services that are expected to be working 24/7? It's not exactly uncommon for a production service to have problems and need to be fixed ASAP.
    - BeetleB 9y ago
      Do most programming jobs expect that? I think not. It's like interviewing a doctor who will be someone's primary care physician. Give him/her a set of symptoms, and fail him if he doesn't diagnose it inside of 10 minutes. And then justify it with the expectations in surgery or ER.
    - kafkaesq 9y ago
      It's not exactly uncommon for a production service to have problems and need to be fixed ASAP. Yeah, but if so it's usually of the form of "oh shit, forgot to chmod this little bash wrapper". To the extent that it's of the form of "Solve this cute little dynamic programming problem I heard about from some company where everyone is like, gosh, oh so smart! In like, the next 5 minutes, k?" -- well, basically never.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  Why not go all the way, then? Armies train people by having them run obstacle courses with guns being fired all around them. Do a "realistic" interview, then, to really test how someone does "under pressure". Have them sitting alone in the room, and a screaming angry manager runs in yelling obscenities at them about how the production system is down, it's costing the company millions of dollars, and if they want to have a job they'd better get it fixed ASAP! And have that same manager stand over their shoulder the whole time, yelling yet more obscenities. If the candidate doesn't get it fixed in, say, five minutes, then obviously they lack even the most basic qualifications to work as a programmer and you can reject them. Heck, save money and don't even do it on-site -- get their phone number and do it 3AM on a weekend, just like a real on-call situation! Or... maybe the whole "under pressure" thing is just an excuse people use to cover for the fact that they like making people squirm, enjoy the feeling of power they have from knowing someone else's future is in their hands and that person knows it, and want to savor by making the trained monkey stand up and dance on command... or else. Unfortunately, people who like the "under pressure" idea of interviewing seldom realize that sooner or later they're going to be the monkey and someone else will be the organ grinder.
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    Relevant comedy skit: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iRtBvo9grLw https://youtube.com/watch?v=iRtBvo9grLw
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. Sure -- it's just the tenor (and for some people, sheer intensity) of the psychological stress experienced during interviews is, for many people, basically orthogonal to the stress of real-life work situations -- or even genuinely dangerous (even physically threatening) situations in life, otherwise. With the latter, it's like "Oh shit - the client's gonna get real pissed if I don't figure something out real quick".† Or even: "That guy looks like he's about to lunge at me - I better think of something!" For which your brain and your glands have benefitted from millions of years of evolution in support of mechanisms for pumping just the right kind and amount of juice into your system to "figure something out". But with interviews it's more like: "This person's evaluating me, using some hidden criteria. Given that the problem is slightly tricky, I literally don't know if they're expecting to power on at all costs, or, secretly, that I simply admit that I don't know where to start just yet. Not only that, something tells me he's not stating the problem quite correctly -- they do that, no all the time, but way too often in these kinds of interviews. And on top of that he's just being plain overbearing... and now he's starting to fiddle with his phone. On top of starting 15 minutes late. Like he never really wanted to talk to me in the first place. If I ask too many questions -- or even just one instance of the wrong kind of question -- I'm screwed, and gonna have to hit my inbox for leads again. Oh great, now he's starting to offer 'hints', completely derailing my flow of thought and whatever self confidence I thought I had. Fuck it -- I just should bail and go work on my personal projects. No one will be paying me $150k but at least I'll be learning something." † Where "the client is gonna get real pissed" is roughly equivalent to "if I can't get these rocks to flake in just the right way, we aren't gonna have any more arrowheads and were' all gonna starve!", to a first order approximation.
- colordrops 9y ago
  > Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. understatement of the year.
losteric 9y ago
This is why it's important to start the interview with culture/work history questions to probe how they're feeling, watching their body language, before moving on to simple questions of increasing complexity. I've literally started nervous people with "naively print the string 'hello'"... After warming up, the best one eventually completed my max-difficulty questions.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  This is the way to go. I would add that it takes significant experience and preparation to interview people effectively. This is a difficult-to-learn soft-skill that not everyone has. Too often folks just get dragged into an interviewer situations with no planning or coordination.
watwut 9y ago
I wonder how all those people unable to answer interview question passed school. I don't think they are fraudsters, they are simply not too good programmers who can't solve simple problems by themselves. Many dudes believe themselves to have technical talent just for memorising done basis. That does bit imply problem solving ability. Momentary blackouts happen - rarely.
- Bahamut 9y ago
  I've had it happen - just in my past job search the past few weeks, I had a total blankout in my last Google interview session in person on a dynamic programming question, and I'm pretty sure that ended up being the reason why I got rejected as I felt pretty good about all 4 of my prior sessions. I am about to start work as a senior engineer for Apple with 4 1/2 years of experience, after passing two back-to-back onsite interviews with them, and I hardly have studied specifically for technical interviews. I possess an MS in mathematics. Don't presume anything about an individual just because the person happened to not answer a particular question - the person could be actually much smarter than you. It could have just been a bad day, or a number of factors.
  - watwut 9y ago
    I know it happens, but I don't think it happens to majority of people. Bad days are caled that way because they happen once in a while, not constantly. You had good three interviews and one bad at Google. You passed well at apple. That really sounds like bad day. But then there are people for who practicaly any question beyond "lets talk in general about what you like and how passionate for technology you are" is unfair and causes black out entry single time. Thay is entirely different.
    - Bahamut 9y ago
      I disagree - different people could have dufferent triggers for a fight or flight response. For one of my best friends, anxiety is her trigger. It is super important to try to ease a candidate into being comfortable to get the important information you need as an interviewer, as interviews are inherently stressful for candidates, and you almost never want to be testing a candidate's stress coping abilities.
roflc0ptic 9y ago
>> "Thinking aloud" ... is a specific metacognitive skill Is there evidence for this claim? I'm inclined to believe it but that's experiential. It's also something I've never had to work to acquire, but that could be a cultural thing (my family and friends talk a lot about thinking) or a personal history thing (I have a minor learning disability, and it has forced me to develop strong, conscious meta-cognition). It's not a given, tho, that being able to talk about thinking is distinct from being able to think and being able to talk.
- wmil 9y ago
  I think psychology has a lot of models of cognition without a clear winner, so there's probably no conclusive answer at the moment. But talking through a problem forces you to use verbal reasoning. A lot of programming can be done well with non-verbal reasoning skills. Personally, quickly sketching some timelines on a piece of paper would be the fastest way to get the correct checks. Talking it through would force me to convert my mental visualizations into words, and that'd make me stumble.
- wayn3 9y ago
  the idea to "think aloud" is downright silly. people who "talk to themselves" are labelled idiots. mental dialogue is supposed to be mental. call it social conditioning if you will. spelling out your thoughts for someone else to hear them just so they can take note of them for evaluation is the polar opposite of normal human interaction.
  - kafkaesq 9y ago
    Let's just say that it's at best a corner case in the the toolbox of approaches our brain has for tackling problems. Yes, it's something we make use of once in a while. But more like a "caught you in the hall, here's my idea" approach. Never in a "solve this now in 5 minutes or yer OUT!" sense. The problem with the modern interview process is that not only elevates the later approach way out of proportion to its actual significance -- but basically makes in the centerpiece of your interactions with the company and potential team members, on that fateful day.
kafkaesq 9y ago
This point cannot be underemphasized. Edit: that should be 'overemphasized', of course.
Clubber 9y ago
I agree. Most companies screw themselves with the technical interview by giving it. I give something simple like FizzBuzz and that's it. My big questions is: "What was one of your favorite projects and what did you do?" That will tell you everything I need to know. The problem with giving technical interviews is you are testing for someone who is an extrovert that can bullshit under pressure. That's not what you want. You want someone who is smart and can solve problems with a compiler.
- Scea91 9y ago
  I think you have it the other way round. Asking about favorite projects is easier for extroverts that can bullshit under pressure than technical interviews.
  - dozzie 9y ago
    It's also much easier for introverts. They can talk about something that is not themselves and something they know very well. They can now expose many interesting and subtle details of their craft. Do you think introverts don't like to talk and to brag?
    - Clubber 9y ago
      Yes, this. Most introverts I've known will talk endlessly about stuff they like. Ask an introverted Star Wars geek about Star Wars. It's the meaningless smalltalk they have trouble with. Ask an extrovert bullshitter who couldn't care less about Star Wars about Star Wars and you can easily tell the difference. (as long as you yourself aren't an extrovert bullshitter who couldn't care less about Star Wars)
- lostmsu 9y ago
  Bad idea. I have not interviewed many people yet, but already during one lunch (!) interview (where I don't ask any questions), a guy was so proudly talking about his achievements at his previous job in quite generic terms, that I've got an impression he was teached the whole story, rather than actually lived it. Later he was not hired. According to (trusted) others in the interview loop he did not know how to do any basic shit.

lopatin 9y ago

Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. Often, time matters and you have to think on your feet. That's why I think rejecting a programmer for losing their core competencies like problem solving, i.e. freezing, under a medium amount of pressure is valid.

zimzam 9y ago
I've been a developer for years and worked for multiple companies: the most stressful professional situations I've ever have been in have been maybe a 4 out of 10 stress-wise, whereas interviews range from 7 to 9 out of 10. Interviews aren't ordinary job situations: they are contrived situations where people are making life-changing decisions based on a very short interaction.
- cnp 9y ago
  Same here, and have worked on some extremely high-profile, complex things. Never _ever_ have I been as stressed as when asked to perform interview whiteboard questions. It simply doesn't compare.
  - FilterSweep 9y ago
    Sometimes, you just have to appreciate the Torvalds-level of arrogance expressed in some of replies on HN.
    - kafkaesq 9y ago
      You're reading too much into it. That wasn't Torvaldsian at all, by my reading.
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  The most stressful professional situations I've ever have been in have been maybe a 4 out of 10 stress-wise, whereas interviews range from 7 to 9 out of 10. Agree mostly -- just that I guess I've fallen into more abusive environments than I should have allowed myself to over the years, where the stress levels have hit will into the 7-10 range. But in healthy environments -- even when I really did screw something up (sometimes quite significantly) -- it's never above the 4-5 range. Interviews aren't ordinary job situations: they are contrived situations where people are making life-changing decisions based on a very short interaction. And pretending that they can read the tea leaves, and make that kind of assessment as to "whether this guy can handle a medium amount of pressure", to boot.
weaksauce 9y ago
It really depends on the job. stress in general is one thing but stress on a pedestal is another. some types of people(programmers fall into this category often) are not good at embarrassment so they shut down and can't think. it's not bad because they can be brilliant without the social pressure but with that they are not ideal. if the job doesn't have that requirement it's silly to drop them for it.
arethuza 9y ago
"time matters and you have to think on your feet" I've been in many stressful situations at work - none of them involved finding algorithmic solutions.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  I once spent 2 days troubleshooting a machine vision system at bolt factory. Physically in the factory. On my feet. Standing behind an active vibratory hopper filled with bolts, while stake-holders were losing money hand-over-fist, and angry machinists who looked like a motorcycle gang stood next to me. And it was a Windows NT machine. Not quite all about algorithms, but that was part of it :-)
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Yes, and I've set up a demo of an interactive TV system in a cupboard at a large London hotel (standing room only!)... Also found that the probability of someone finding the porn in the demo by randomly pressing remote buttons pretty much approaches 1 as number of button presses approaches infinity...
- rmah 9y ago
  I once had to diagnose and fix a bug in a financial system that went belly up under extremely heavy load -- causing the company lose tens millions of $'s per hour (literally). Turned out to be a timing problem caused by satellite comms latency. The solution required us to modify how a couple different algorithmic worked. That situation was highly time sensitive and over-the-top stressful (for me anyway).
  - pmiller2 9y ago
    I'm sure you would acknowledge that's a very exceptional situation, right? That's the point of this whole subthread: that this kind of stress is exceptional in a work situation.
    - rmah 9y ago
FilterSweep 9y ago
This is far too much of a simplification of (grand)Parent. you don't know the circumstances that 30 year old programmer with a 2 year old child at home is facing. You could also be like certain firms and immediately nix him on the "merits" of ageism. A female programmer might have travelled 2000 miles to just receive an abstraction question out of left-field over an irrelevant concept to the job. She flew out on this uncertainty, and she's in a rather discriminatory field. 26 year old dev has probably built CRUD apps all his short career. and, you're asking him to implement (isBinarySearchTree Boolean) on a whiteboard on the spot.
- kudokatz 9y ago
  > 30 year old programmer with a 2 year old child at home ... nix him on the "merits" of ageism A choice, conscious or not, to dedicate time to raising a child at the opportunity cost of myriad other ways to spend time is not related to ageism at all.
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    Most programming jobs do not actually demand one make this form of Sophie's Choice. Perhaps the Valley is so diseased, but it's not the only game in town.
    - cr0sh 9y ago
      > Perhaps the Valley is so diseased, but it's not the only game in town. Hear! Hear! One of the things that bothers me a lot about HN is the near assumption that if you're a software engineer and not in SV (or have never been in an SE job in SV) - you don't count as much. I'm biased, I will admit: I've never held a software engineering job in the Valley. That opportunity has never occurred, nor have I tried to pursue it. I live and work in Phoenix, Arizona; at my age and position in life, even if the opportunity did present itself, I'd have to think long and hard about it. It would likely be a situation of me leaving my family to go work there, as relocation would likely not be a realistic option unless the pay was over the top (I am not going to move back to an apartment; my next house better be at least as large as my current one, and include a larger yard and/or shop space before anything else). Here, in my current position, I am not only the oldest developer on the entire team (and I am only a few years younger than the owner of the company), but I also am one of the few who doesn't have any children. My wife and I made the conscious choice not to have kids a long time ago, and we are constantly glad for it. In fact, she thanks me on a monthly basis for not "knocking her up". Honestly, we'd probably make terrible parents, and we're pretty selfish as a couple. We know this, so why bring children into the mix, right? That said - here in Phoenix (where it's actually difficult to find competent software engineers for any position), I've never seen or experienced there being an issue if you have kids; every employer I've worked for has been extremely flexible. In fact, both at my current employer, and my previous one, they encouraged you to leave when your day was up. If the end of your day was at 5pm, they didn't want you stay a minute more if there wasn't a really good reason for it. Like things would have to be well and good on fire for that to happen; anything less was "go home, get some rest - it'll be here to fix tomorrow".
sangnoir 9y ago
The kinds of pressure are different - unless if at your organization you do your time-critical coding in front of a panel with varying mixes of what looks like disappointment, boredom, impatience and eagerness to "give you a hint" on how they would solve it while thoroughly confusing you. If not, you are measuring the wrong metric to gauge potential candidate success.
kulu2002 9y ago
Such kind of situations are very common where you are relatively new, handling software for a safety critical system and entire production line is shut down due to some exception occurring in large complex hard-real time multithreaded s/w module developed by some past ghost employee who has forgot to comment the code with no documentation available and the plant manager is banging your head for downtime loss!
abramz 9y ago
I don't put out fires under the watchful eye of a would be colleague or employer.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  Some developers are expected to work on the systems that processes a bajillion dollars of whatever per day and when it screws up they are often on the line for it. I am not saying it is right, I am just saying at some shitty places it is.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    Right or wrong, in some systems when something goes wrong, somebody dies. At some point, there's somebody on the line for that, whose responsibility it is to say "This code is good enough". That's a high-pressure situation, so if you're hiring for that, it might make sense to interview under pressure.
    - weaksauce 9y ago
      > Right or wrong, in some systems when something goes wrong, somebody dies. I have worked on systems that could cause operator death or disfigurement or damage... they are tested quite thoroughly in general and have reasonable failsafes and redundancy. It's not like they are coded on a whiteboard. being on site at a customer facility while there is a ton of noise does stress you out a bit but most of the coding and testing is done in the office. > That's a high-pressure situation, so if you're hiring for that, it might make sense to interview under pressure. I think the jobs that have that kind of pressure are rare and interviewing like that should be the exception not the norm.
nsxwolf 9y ago
The stressful situations tend to be things like "We just broke the production database, we need to figure out how to recover the data ASAP"... not "We need a new algorithm in FIVE MINUTES!"
- lopatin 9y ago
  The interview question I was referring to is the appointment overlapping one. It's a middle school math question and it's a lot easier than failing over a database without data loss.
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    I've been doing this for 20 years and I'm not even sure where I'd start on your middle school math question. I hate working with calendars and dates and I don't think I know anyone who enjoys it and can write totally bug free code that takes care of all edge cases. I'm sure good at fighting database fires though. This probably is at the heart of the answer to the question "how could this programmer with such a long resume have botched this interview so badly?" It would be insane to believe they've never added value to any organization and have just been coasting along all this time. Maybe your interview sucks and isn't good at finding value.
    - lopatin 9y ago
      Don't over complicate it. Given two number ranges, of UTC timestamps, determine if they overlap. I think you know where to start with that.
      - throwaway29292 9y ago
        I'd probably go for 4 if() checks, some 'less than'/'greater than'/'&&' checks should do it.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >We just broke the production database, we need to figure out how to recover the data ASAP I know you did not mean it this way, but in some ways that's even worse. If that type of thing were routine enough to merit asking every interviewee that question, I would seriously reconsider working there.
BeetleB 9y ago
>Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. Often, time matters and you have to think on your feet Not once in my career had I had to fix a problem in an hour, let alone 10 minutes. I have had senior people get mad at me when I couldn't give an answer during a meeting - that's the closest to an interview type scenario where you need the answer now. But even then, I did not stress that I'd lose my job, which is similar to the stress the candidate is facing.
- npizzolato 9y ago
  Do you work on services that are expected to be working 24/7? It's not exactly uncommon for a production service to have problems and need to be fixed ASAP.
  - BeetleB 9y ago
    Do most programming jobs expect that? I think not. It's like interviewing a doctor who will be someone's primary care physician. Give him/her a set of symptoms, and fail him if he doesn't diagnose it inside of 10 minutes. And then justify it with the expectations in surgery or ER.
  - kafkaesq 9y ago
    It's not exactly uncommon for a production service to have problems and need to be fixed ASAP. Yeah, but if so it's usually of the form of "oh shit, forgot to chmod this little bash wrapper". To the extent that it's of the form of "Solve this cute little dynamic programming problem I heard about from some company where everyone is like, gosh, oh so smart! In like, the next 5 minutes, k?" -- well, basically never.
ubernostrum 9y ago
Why not go all the way, then? Armies train people by having them run obstacle courses with guns being fired all around them. Do a "realistic" interview, then, to really test how someone does "under pressure". Have them sitting alone in the room, and a screaming angry manager runs in yelling obscenities at them about how the production system is down, it's costing the company millions of dollars, and if they want to have a job they'd better get it fixed ASAP! And have that same manager stand over their shoulder the whole time, yelling yet more obscenities. If the candidate doesn't get it fixed in, say, five minutes, then obviously they lack even the most basic qualifications to work as a programmer and you can reject them. Heck, save money and don't even do it on-site -- get their phone number and do it 3AM on a weekend, just like a real on-call situation! Or... maybe the whole "under pressure" thing is just an excuse people use to cover for the fact that they like making people squirm, enjoy the feeling of power they have from knowing someone else's future is in their hands and that person knows it, and want to savor by making the trained monkey stand up and dance on command... or else. Unfortunately, people who like the "under pressure" idea of interviewing seldom realize that sooner or later they're going to be the monkey and someone else will be the organ grinder.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Relevant comedy skit: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iRtBvo9grLw https://youtube.com/watch?v=iRtBvo9grLw
kafkaesq 9y ago
Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. Sure -- it's just the tenor (and for some people, sheer intensity) of the psychological stress experienced during interviews is, for many people, basically orthogonal to the stress of real-life work situations -- or even genuinely dangerous (even physically threatening) situations in life, otherwise. With the latter, it's like "Oh shit - the client's gonna get real pissed if I don't figure something out real quick".† Or even: "That guy looks like he's about to lunge at me - I better think of something!" For which your brain and your glands have benefitted from millions of years of evolution in support of mechanisms for pumping just the right kind and amount of juice into your system to "figure something out". But with interviews it's more like: "This person's evaluating me, using some hidden criteria. Given that the problem is slightly tricky, I literally don't know if they're expecting to power on at all costs, or, secretly, that I simply admit that I don't know where to start just yet. Not only that, something tells me he's not stating the problem quite correctly -- they do that, no all the time, but way too often in these kinds of interviews. And on top of that he's just being plain overbearing... and now he's starting to fiddle with his phone. On top of starting 15 minutes late. Like he never really wanted to talk to me in the first place. If I ask too many questions -- or even just one instance of the wrong kind of question -- I'm screwed, and gonna have to hit my inbox for leads again. Oh great, now he's starting to offer 'hints', completely derailing my flow of thought and whatever self confidence I thought I had. Fuck it -- I just should bail and go work on my personal projects. No one will be paying me $150k but at least I'll be learning something." † Where "the client is gonna get real pissed" is roughly equivalent to "if I can't get these rocks to flake in just the right way, we aren't gonna have any more arrowheads and were' all gonna starve!", to a first order approximation.
colordrops 9y ago
> Being a professional programmer is not an entirely stress-free job. understatement of the year.

losteric 9y ago

This is why it's important to start the interview with culture/work history questions to probe how they're feeling, watching their body language, before moving on to simple questions of increasing complexity. I've literally started nervous people with "naively print the string 'hello'"... After warming up, the best one eventually completed my max-difficulty questions.

crispyambulance 9y ago
This is the way to go. I would add that it takes significant experience and preparation to interview people effectively. This is a difficult-to-learn soft-skill that not everyone has. Too often folks just get dragged into an interviewer situations with no planning or coordination.

watwut 9y ago

I wonder how all those people unable to answer interview question passed school. I don't think they are fraudsters, they are simply not too good programmers who can't solve simple problems by themselves. Many dudes believe themselves to have technical talent just for memorising done basis. That does bit imply problem solving ability. Momentary blackouts happen - rarely.

Bahamut 9y ago
I've had it happen - just in my past job search the past few weeks, I had a total blankout in my last Google interview session in person on a dynamic programming question, and I'm pretty sure that ended up being the reason why I got rejected as I felt pretty good about all 4 of my prior sessions. I am about to start work as a senior engineer for Apple with 4 1/2 years of experience, after passing two back-to-back onsite interviews with them, and I hardly have studied specifically for technical interviews. I possess an MS in mathematics. Don't presume anything about an individual just because the person happened to not answer a particular question - the person could be actually much smarter than you. It could have just been a bad day, or a number of factors.
- watwut 9y ago
  I know it happens, but I don't think it happens to majority of people. Bad days are caled that way because they happen once in a while, not constantly. You had good three interviews and one bad at Google. You passed well at apple. That really sounds like bad day. But then there are people for who practicaly any question beyond "lets talk in general about what you like and how passionate for technology you are" is unfair and causes black out entry single time. Thay is entirely different.
  - Bahamut 9y ago
    I disagree - different people could have dufferent triggers for a fight or flight response. For one of my best friends, anxiety is her trigger. It is super important to try to ease a candidate into being comfortable to get the important information you need as an interviewer, as interviews are inherently stressful for candidates, and you almost never want to be testing a candidate's stress coping abilities.

roflc0ptic 9y ago

>> "Thinking aloud" ... is a specific metacognitive skill Is there evidence for this claim? I'm inclined to believe it but that's experiential. It's also something I've never had to work to acquire, but that could be a cultural thing (my family and friends talk a lot about thinking) or a personal history thing (I have a minor learning disability, and it has forced me to develop strong, conscious meta-cognition). It's not a given, tho, that being able to talk about thinking is distinct from being able to think and being able to talk.

wmil 9y ago
I think psychology has a lot of models of cognition without a clear winner, so there's probably no conclusive answer at the moment. But talking through a problem forces you to use verbal reasoning. A lot of programming can be done well with non-verbal reasoning skills. Personally, quickly sketching some timelines on a piece of paper would be the fastest way to get the correct checks. Talking it through would force me to convert my mental visualizations into words, and that'd make me stumble.
wayn3 9y ago
the idea to "think aloud" is downright silly. people who "talk to themselves" are labelled idiots. mental dialogue is supposed to be mental. call it social conditioning if you will. spelling out your thoughts for someone else to hear them just so they can take note of them for evaluation is the polar opposite of normal human interaction.
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  Let's just say that it's at best a corner case in the the toolbox of approaches our brain has for tackling problems. Yes, it's something we make use of once in a while. But more like a "caught you in the hall, here's my idea" approach. Never in a "solve this now in 5 minutes or yer OUT!" sense. The problem with the modern interview process is that not only elevates the later approach way out of proportion to its actual significance -- but basically makes in the centerpiece of your interactions with the company and potential team members, on that fateful day.

kafkaesq 9y ago

This point cannot be underemphasized. Edit: that should be 'overemphasized', of course.

Clubber 9y ago

I agree. Most companies screw themselves with the technical interview by giving it. I give something simple like FizzBuzz and that's it. My big questions is: "What was one of your favorite projects and what did you do?" That will tell you everything I need to know. The problem with giving technical interviews is you are testing for someone who is an extrovert that can bullshit under pressure. That's not what you want. You want someone who is smart and can solve problems with a compiler.

Scea91 9y ago
I think you have it the other way round. Asking about favorite projects is easier for extroverts that can bullshit under pressure than technical interviews.
- dozzie 9y ago
  It's also much easier for introverts. They can talk about something that is not themselves and something they know very well. They can now expose many interesting and subtle details of their craft. Do you think introverts don't like to talk and to brag?
  - Clubber 9y ago
    Yes, this. Most introverts I've known will talk endlessly about stuff they like. Ask an introverted Star Wars geek about Star Wars. It's the meaningless smalltalk they have trouble with. Ask an extrovert bullshitter who couldn't care less about Star Wars about Star Wars and you can easily tell the difference. (as long as you yourself aren't an extrovert bullshitter who couldn't care less about Star Wars)
lostmsu 9y ago
Bad idea. I have not interviewed many people yet, but already during one lunch (!) interview (where I don't ask any questions), a guy was so proudly talking about his achievements at his previous job in quite generic terms, that I've got an impression he was teached the whole story, rather than actually lived it. Later he was not hired. According to (trusted) others in the interview loop he did not know how to do any basic shit.