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My goals as an interviewer: 1. Do you have a solid understanding of the foundations for your skill/discipline? 2. If you were given $100,000 VC capital and to

My goals as an interviewer: 1. Do you have a solid understanding of the foundations for your skill/discipline? 2. If you were given $100,000 VC capital and told to build a revolutionary new thing how would you build it? If a candidate cannot adequately address the first objective then I will find another candidate who can. This is pure and simple elimination with simple non-biased questions on things the candidate should know to do their job without abstractions, tooling, and other trendy bullshit. The second objective is where I can evaluate my bias against the candidate's, but only after the candidate has passed the technical evaluation in a non-biased manner.

qaq 9y ago
No offense but if candidate has a credible answer to "2. If you were given $100,000 VC capital and told to build a revolutionary new thing how would you build it?" wtf would she/he work for you :)?
- Can_Not 9y ago
  It's because he wants to focus on building the thing, not focus on acquiring VC funding.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    You are really asking to be bullshited (even if people had a good answer, they won't have an elevator pitch to tell you in an interview). Unless you are looking for people that can make an argument, you are selecting for the wrong trait.
    - austincheney 9y ago
      > You are really asking to be bullshited The question is rhetorical, so what does this matter? It is part of a job interview. It is not a VC pitch. If this confuses a candidate and they answer a question not asked I would not hire them. Interpreting and following instructions are important skills.
      - mratzloff 9y ago
        Communication is also an important skill. Your question poorly communicates whatever information you are trying to glean from the candidate.
        austincheney 9y ago
        > "how would you build it?" Where is the complexity in the question and how is it poorly communicated?
        detaro 9y ago
        It first requires answer to the question "build what?" before the candidate can talk about "how". Unless they would build everything using the same tech, which also would be an odd signal. You putting a specific amount of money on it adds additional concerns regarding that. Do you expect the candidate to talk about some tech stack and/or development process to you? Do you expect the candidate to describe what they'd work on (then why don't you ask that?)? Do you expect the candidate to to treat the question as "if you could work on whatever you liked", or is it "what kind of product would you build", and then talk about the process? Do you expect the candidate to ask for clarification, or is that a bad sign already (since they were to dumb to understand your "simple question")?...
        austincheney 9y ago
        If the candidate is hopelessly stuck in a state of circular analysis paralysis then the quality and thoroughness of their answer would ultimately suffer. It would demonstrate either poor decision making, weak communications skills, or limited comprehensiveness. There are a lot of candidates who need to have their hands held by a parent authority or are hopelessly incapable of forming original ideas. This is a means of identifying such people so that they can be removed from consideration. > Do you expect the candidate to ask for clarification, or is that a bad sign already (since they were to dumb to understand your "simple question")? If I had to answer the question for the candidate, then yes, I would consider that a bad sign. It is a simple hypothetical question demanding a hypothetical response.
  - delecti 9y ago
    That doesn't make any sense, the question presumes you've already acquired the funding.
    - Can_Not 9y ago
      No, the response "why would he work for you" presumes that knowing how to build a product after acquiring VC funding would include the skill set or interest in acquiring the VC funding.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        No, it doesn't, since even without that they would be better served by looking for someone with that skill and being the technical side of the founding team.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    The key thing missing from the question is what the thing being built is. Any answer to the question of how to build must (to be coherent) address what is being built, and anyone who has a what to build and a how to build it for a revolutionary product that takes only $100,000 in VC capital should be shopping that for financing, not looking for a technical gig working on someone else's (probably not revolutionary, certainly more expensive to build, and even more certainly providing the candidate less equity) thing.
    - austincheney 9y ago
      Presuming this is a technical interview and the skills are already identified and qualified the "what it is" isn't particularly important. This isn't hiring for marketing or product management. Make anything up. In this case the production process and software organization strategies are what matter. Attempting to bullshit past the spirit of the question with deflections and non-answers are easily identifiable failures.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > Presuming this is a technical interview and the skills are already identified and qualified the "what it is" isn't particularly important. It may not be important to the person asking the question, but it's actually quite central to being able to have a coherent answer. A better question, if the “what” isn't important, is to identify a concrete thing rather than a “revolutionary idea”; if “what?” isn't important, don't ask a question which fundamentally requires having an answer to “what?”. > Attempting to bullshit past the spirit of the question Asking a poorly framed question and blaming the person questioned for bullshitting for not correctly deducing the intended spirit certainly reflects negatively on someone, just not the interviewee.
- austincheney 9y ago
  If your answer was anything about fundraising, marketing, or capital I would fail you. The ability to answer the question that was asked is an unstated implied task. The question is about building something if you had funding and no limitations.
  - qaq 9y ago
    100K is a huge limitation especially for building revolutionary product :)
    - austincheney 9y ago
      You are completely missing the point of the entirely hypothetical question to provide an impromptu technology brainstorm session. Another reason why this is an excellent question is that it forces people to follow a very simple single instruction. If a candidate can't even do that, such as getting in irrelevant discussions about financial burdens, why would I want to hire them?
      - qaq 9y ago
        You are missing a point of Software Engineers paying close attention to all the inputs in the question. If you provide a specific funding level that is significant data point :).
      - qaq 9y ago
        This is extremely general question with undefined scope and is absolute opposite of "a very simple single instruction".
        lolsal 9y ago
        You're at least making this an easy decision for the parent, in this hypothetical situation :)
        rhizome 9y ago
        There's often an inverse relationship between simple to ask and simple to answer.
DanBC 9y ago
Your second example is a lovely example of how terrible interviewers don't realise how fucking awful they are.
- austincheney 9y ago
  :)
- dispo001 9y ago
  Indeed it illustrates how much we don't need human resource workers. I have a reasonable amount of experience with scripted questions for phone calls and face to face conversations. It of course should be "foundation of" not "foundations for" but that aside...("..." for a short breathing break) your first question has a slash in it? The whole point of preparing questions is to not have such things. After a very tiny number of interviews one would chose between the 2. I would smile at the second question and politely explain why I thought the job was interesting in well prepared words, then ask "Why do I want to work here? How long have you worked here? Why do you work here?" I would totally expect an answer (only) to the second question. To which I would respond by asking if they enjoyed it. By that time the vc question will seem alien to the context of the conversation. If you bring it up again I will ask if you ever applied for jobs while working there. Then I will openly mock you by arguing it would be interesting just to see what kind of questions they ask. After "I have other interviews to do today" to crank some urgency into the conversation, I will explain why I thought this job was more interesting than the others (same as before only more contrasting than generic), how it fits with what I know, my expectations for further development of these skills and what interests me about the product. If nothing serious comes out in response I will leave "expecting to hear from you soon". You will be in awe - how fast that went. Then I will set fire to your bikeshed. (haha)

qaq 9y ago

No offense but if candidate has a credible answer to "2. If you were given $100,000 VC capital and told to build a revolutionary new thing how would you build it?" wtf would she/he work for you :)?

Can_Not 9y ago
It's because he wants to focus on building the thing, not focus on acquiring VC funding.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  You are really asking to be bullshited (even if people had a good answer, they won't have an elevator pitch to tell you in an interview). Unless you are looking for people that can make an argument, you are selecting for the wrong trait.
  - austincheney 9y ago
    > You are really asking to be bullshited The question is rhetorical, so what does this matter? It is part of a job interview. It is not a VC pitch. If this confuses a candidate and they answer a question not asked I would not hire them. Interpreting and following instructions are important skills.
    - mratzloff 9y ago
      Communication is also an important skill. Your question poorly communicates whatever information you are trying to glean from the candidate.
      - austincheney 9y ago
        > "how would you build it?" Where is the complexity in the question and how is it poorly communicated?
        detaro 9y ago
        It first requires answer to the question "build what?" before the candidate can talk about "how". Unless they would build everything using the same tech, which also would be an odd signal. You putting a specific amount of money on it adds additional concerns regarding that. Do you expect the candidate to talk about some tech stack and/or development process to you? Do you expect the candidate to describe what they'd work on (then why don't you ask that?)? Do you expect the candidate to to treat the question as "if you could work on whatever you liked", or is it "what kind of product would you build", and then talk about the process? Do you expect the candidate to ask for clarification, or is that a bad sign already (since they were to dumb to understand your "simple question")?...
        austincheney 9y ago
        If the candidate is hopelessly stuck in a state of circular analysis paralysis then the quality and thoroughness of their answer would ultimately suffer. It would demonstrate either poor decision making, weak communications skills, or limited comprehensiveness. There are a lot of candidates who need to have their hands held by a parent authority or are hopelessly incapable of forming original ideas. This is a means of identifying such people so that they can be removed from consideration. > Do you expect the candidate to ask for clarification, or is that a bad sign already (since they were to dumb to understand your "simple question")? If I had to answer the question for the candidate, then yes, I would consider that a bad sign. It is a simple hypothetical question demanding a hypothetical response.
- delecti 9y ago
  That doesn't make any sense, the question presumes you've already acquired the funding.
  - Can_Not 9y ago
    No, the response "why would he work for you" presumes that knowing how to build a product after acquiring VC funding would include the skill set or interest in acquiring the VC funding.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      No, it doesn't, since even without that they would be better served by looking for someone with that skill and being the technical side of the founding team.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  The key thing missing from the question is what the thing being built is. Any answer to the question of how to build must (to be coherent) address what is being built, and anyone who has a what to build and a how to build it for a revolutionary product that takes only $100,000 in VC capital should be shopping that for financing, not looking for a technical gig working on someone else's (probably not revolutionary, certainly more expensive to build, and even more certainly providing the candidate less equity) thing.
  - austincheney 9y ago
    Presuming this is a technical interview and the skills are already identified and qualified the "what it is" isn't particularly important. This isn't hiring for marketing or product management. Make anything up. In this case the production process and software organization strategies are what matter. Attempting to bullshit past the spirit of the question with deflections and non-answers are easily identifiable failures.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Presuming this is a technical interview and the skills are already identified and qualified the "what it is" isn't particularly important. It may not be important to the person asking the question, but it's actually quite central to being able to have a coherent answer. A better question, if the “what” isn't important, is to identify a concrete thing rather than a “revolutionary idea”; if “what?” isn't important, don't ask a question which fundamentally requires having an answer to “what?”. > Attempting to bullshit past the spirit of the question Asking a poorly framed question and blaming the person questioned for bullshitting for not correctly deducing the intended spirit certainly reflects negatively on someone, just not the interviewee.
austincheney 9y ago
If your answer was anything about fundraising, marketing, or capital I would fail you. The ability to answer the question that was asked is an unstated implied task. The question is about building something if you had funding and no limitations.
- qaq 9y ago
  100K is a huge limitation especially for building revolutionary product :)
  - austincheney 9y ago
    You are completely missing the point of the entirely hypothetical question to provide an impromptu technology brainstorm session. Another reason why this is an excellent question is that it forces people to follow a very simple single instruction. If a candidate can't even do that, such as getting in irrelevant discussions about financial burdens, why would I want to hire them?
    - qaq 9y ago
      You are missing a point of Software Engineers paying close attention to all the inputs in the question. If you provide a specific funding level that is significant data point :).
    - qaq 9y ago
      This is extremely general question with undefined scope and is absolute opposite of "a very simple single instruction".
      - lolsal 9y ago
        You're at least making this an easy decision for the parent, in this hypothetical situation :)
      - rhizome 9y ago
        There's often an inverse relationship between simple to ask and simple to answer.

DanBC 9y ago

Your second example is a lovely example of how terrible interviewers don't realise how fucking awful they are.

austincheney 9y ago
:)
dispo001 9y ago
Indeed it illustrates how much we don't need human resource workers. I have a reasonable amount of experience with scripted questions for phone calls and face to face conversations. It of course should be "foundation of" not "foundations for" but that aside...("..." for a short breathing break) your first question has a slash in it? The whole point of preparing questions is to not have such things. After a very tiny number of interviews one would chose between the 2. I would smile at the second question and politely explain why I thought the job was interesting in well prepared words, then ask "Why do I want to work here? How long have you worked here? Why do you work here?" I would totally expect an answer (only) to the second question. To which I would respond by asking if they enjoyed it. By that time the vc question will seem alien to the context of the conversation. If you bring it up again I will ask if you ever applied for jobs while working there. Then I will openly mock you by arguing it would be interesting just to see what kind of questions they ask. After "I have other interviews to do today" to crank some urgency into the conversation, I will explain why I thought this job was more interesting than the others (same as before only more contrasting than generic), how it fits with what I know, my expectations for further development of these skills and what interests me about the product. If nothing serious comes out in response I will leave "expecting to hear from you soon". You will be in awe - how fast that went. Then I will set fire to your bikeshed. (haha)