3 ms·

You're wrong in dismissing a correct but inefficient solution as babbling. I won't respond to your other wrong conclusion that follows from this wrong starting

You're wrong in dismissing a correct but inefficient solution as babbling. I won't respond to your other wrong conclusion that follows from this wrong starting point.

watwut 9y ago
The ability you test there is saying half throught things out loud while you are still evaluating them. You yourself talked about saying things "bad or inneficient" within 10 seconds. That ability is not the same as being good engineer or problem solver. It is pretty much orthogonal. E.g. You can be good and both have it or not have it. Basically,you test social skill for position that does not necessary requires that skill.
- kartickv 9y ago
  It's not half thought out if the answer correctly solves the problem, even if inefficient. Rather, it's the attitude of finding a working solution first, and then making it better, rather than the attitude of perfectionism ("I'll take a lot of time to find a great answer"), which the blog post talks about as well.
  - watwut 9y ago
    It is half thought, because at the time of speaking you haven't evaluated yet whether it works or not. It is about being ok with uncertainty when speaking. It has more to do with whether you think out loud (which I do and have a bit of advantage in such hiring process) and less to do with overall attitude of perfectionism when giving away finished work. I would not hire such person as consultant or support, but I worked with such people on positions that don't require much speaking with customers and they were great to work with.
    - kartickv 9y ago
      Good to see that we don't fully disagree :) Going back to the example of a doubly nested loop to determine if there are any two numbers in an array that sum to zero, it should take at most 1 minute for a smart engineer to figure out that it works. They don't have to speak before they've evaluated whether it works. The metric I use is: how long did they take to get to a solution that works, even if inefficient?

You're wrong in dismissing a correct but inefficient solution as babbling. I won't respond to your other wrong conclusion that follows from this wrong starting point.

watwut 9y ago

The ability you test there is saying half throught things out loud while you are still evaluating them. You yourself talked about saying things "bad or inneficient" within 10 seconds. That ability is not the same as being good engineer or problem solver. It is pretty much orthogonal. E.g. You can be good and both have it or not have it. Basically,you test social skill for position that does not necessary requires that skill.

kartickv 9y ago
It's not half thought out if the answer correctly solves the problem, even if inefficient. Rather, it's the attitude of finding a working solution first, and then making it better, rather than the attitude of perfectionism ("I'll take a lot of time to find a great answer"), which the blog post talks about as well.
- watwut 9y ago
  It is half thought, because at the time of speaking you haven't evaluated yet whether it works or not. It is about being ok with uncertainty when speaking. It has more to do with whether you think out loud (which I do and have a bit of advantage in such hiring process) and less to do with overall attitude of perfectionism when giving away finished work. I would not hire such person as consultant or support, but I worked with such people on positions that don't require much speaking with customers and they were great to work with.
  - kartickv 9y ago
    Good to see that we don't fully disagree :) Going back to the example of a doubly nested loop to determine if there are any two numbers in an array that sum to zero, it should take at most 1 minute for a smart engineer to figure out that it works. They don't have to speak before they've evaluated whether it works. The metric I use is: how long did they take to get to a solution that works, even if inefficient?