3 ms·

I'm going to start asking linked-list questions just to weed out people who take it as a grave insult to their ego.

by ng12 9y ago

logfromblammo 9y ago
I guess I'll amend my previous statement. I need to discern between "Not Invented Here", "Cargo Cult", and "Power-Abusing Management". You won't be able to tell by asking me. I know linked lists forward and backward--though the backward part really only concerns doubly-linked lists. I won't stop judging you for asking the question, but I will answer it. It will then provoke automatic follow-up questions about how much you rely on first-party and third-party code libraries, and about which kinds of open source licenses your company finds acceptable for use with their products. Interviewing is a two-way street. If you ask questions more relevant to academics than real-world employment, I will try to figure out whether the pay your company offers is worth dealing with the apparent dysfunction in it. I can deal with almost anything if you pay me enough. Your presumption is that the ability to answer linked list questions in an interview gracefully is positively correlated with future job performance. The burden of proof is on the person making the assertion. The only way I can see evidence for it is if people ask those questions in the interview and make note of the response, but do not use it for the hiring decision. Then, in the future, after the worth of the employee is measurable, correlate it with the answers to the experimental questions. As far as I am aware, no company asks experimental interview questions that do not impact the hiring decision, in large numbers and for years at a time, just to gauge the merit of those questions before adopting them into the interview process. It is far more common for someone to decide on a theoretical basis that a question has real discriminating power without any real evidence, or to stop asking a particular type of question and then maybe compare employee populations a few years later.

I'm going to start asking linked-list questions just to weed out people who take it as a grave insult to their ego.

by ng12 9y ago

I'm going to start asking linked-list questions just to weed out people who take it as a grave insult to their ego.

I guess I'll amend my previous statement. I need to discern between "Not Invented Here", "Cargo Cult", and "Power-Abusing Management". You won't be able to tell by asking me. I know linked lists forward and backward--though the backward part really only concerns doubly-linked lists. I won't stop judging you for asking the question, but I will answer it. It will then provoke automatic follow-up questions about how much you rely on first-party and third-party code libraries, and about which kinds of open source licenses your company finds acceptable for use with their products. Interviewing is a two-way street. If you ask questions more relevant to academics than real-world employment, I will try to figure out whether the pay your company offers is worth dealing with the apparent dysfunction in it. I can deal with almost anything if you pay me enough. Your presumption is that the ability to answer linked list questions in an interview gracefully is positively correlated with future job performance. The burden of proof is on the person making the assertion. The only way I can see evidence for it is if people ask those questions in the interview and make note of the response, but do not use it for the hiring decision. Then, in the future, after the worth of the employee is measurable, correlate it with the answers to the experimental questions. As far as I am aware, no company asks experimental interview questions that do not impact the hiring decision, in large numbers and for years at a time, just to gauge the merit of those questions before adopting them into the interview process. It is far more common for someone to decide on a theoretical basis that a question has real discriminating power without any real evidence, or to stop asking a particular type of question and then maybe compare employee populations a few years later.