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> and that I needed to go back and study sql I once had an interviewer with two (TWO!) PhDs. He made sure that I knew he had two (TWO!) PhDs by handing me his
by kabdib 7y ago
> and that I needed to go back and study sql
I once had an interviewer with two (TWO!) PhDs. He made sure that I knew he had two (TWO!) PhDs by handing me his business card as we sat down and casually remarking that he had two PhDs (see, right there, two of 'em, yupperoo). This behavior ("he's kind of jerk, and he has two PhDs") had been accurately foretold by the prior interviewer (that session had gone great).
The guy-with-two-degrees asked, "What is the simplest way to synchronize two threads?"
Well, "simple" is pretty fluffy and subjective, so I asked what he meant by it.
"You know, the most simple way."
It didn't get better. I probably made a mistake, and started naming a bunch of synchronization schemes. "Mutex? Semaphore? Dekker's algorithm? Spinlock?". Each mention got a response like, "No, I mean simple. Simpler!"
I never got it. The rest of his questions were similar ("What is the best way to do RPC?"). His parting words to me were, "You need to go back to school."
The specific answer he was looking for was, "mask off interrupts". Doesn't work on multiprocessor systems, so I'd not even mentioned it. I wrote their hiring manager a polite email along the lines of "thanks for the interview, here's one question that I got wrong and why."
No surprise, I didn't get an offer.
Four or five months later the firm called me back, saying that they had fired the jerk and was I interested in interviewing again? I told them I was pretty happy where I'd landed. (I did not congratulate them on firing the jerk, and I suspect they'd had trouble hiring anyone while he was there).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ramraj07 7y agoNo sane non-narcissistic person will ever fathom doing 2 PhDs. You do a PhD to learn how to think and research things. The only reason you would imagine doing a second one (assuming you're not someone who completely misunderstood what a PhD means), is so you can boast about it.
- laingc 7y agoWhat utter rubbish. I know several people with two PhDs - for example one guy who went from theoretical physics to economics - and they are all humble and brilliant. If I didn't have a family to support and a mortgage to pay, I'd consider doing a second PhD, given how much I enjoyed my first.
- non-entity 7y agoI dont have a family or mortgage and cant fathom affording top PhDs.
- VHRanger 7y agoI imagine you're talking about a specific econometrics professor at McGill? I'd say he's extremely unique, it's far from the typical.
- laingc 7y agoNo, a former Ukrainian colleague of mine from Germany. I also just had a double PhD apply for a job with me - one PhD in stochastic differential equations, one in machine learning. It’s rare, for sure, but not unique.
- jerrya 7y agoIn High School, I went to a summer chemistry program. One professor had 23 degrees, for real, ranging from chemistry to religion. I don't know if he had more than one Ph.D. But when I got to college, one of my professors had been this first guy's student, and one of my other professors had been the second professor's student. fwiw...
- saagarjha 7y agoOne of my professors had two PhDs: one in physics, and one in computer science. Considering that they worked on quantum computing, I’m not sure I could call it a bad choice.