5 ms·

Unless you're hiring them to work in that domain, I don't understand why you'd ask that question.

teraflop 5y ago
Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of things it tests for: * Ability to reflect on and critique their own ideas, using technical common-sense. If someone has never had a reason to research or think too hard about how GPS works, then it might be reasonable to initially assume that it sends a signal to a satellite. But hopefully, when prompted to think about it a bit more, they would realize: "Hey, if that's true, then somehow these satellites that were launched in the 80's and 90's were able to scale up their capacity and handle orders of magnitude more demand, now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Maybe that's not how it works?" * General curiosity and interest in areas outside their field of specialty. This might not be strictly necessary to get a job done, but it probably has some correlation with other measures of technical aptitude that are hard to probe directly.
- bobthechef 5y ago
- alesua93 5y ago
  > General curiosity and interest in areas outside their field of specialty. This might not be strictly necessary to get a job done, but it probably has some correlation with other measures of technical aptitude that are hard to probe directly. I think this is a bit misguided, since the scope of things outside of a candidate's field of specialty is tremendously large. Picking a random piece of tech within that space and drilling the candidate about it seems rather unfair. A better way to handle this would be to actually ask the candidate about what else interests them outside of their specialty. But hey, maybe that doesn't stroke the interviewer's ego enough (:
  - Unklejoe 5y ago
    > random piece of tech IDK. GPS is probably one of the most prevalent technologies used today besides the Internet itself.
    - alesua93 5y ago
      Fair enough. I understand where you're coming from, at the end of the day I guess it depends on the context and the way the question is presented (left-field questions such as this one can be somewhat fun to try to answer and hypothesize about, if the interviewer creates a friendly environment to do so)
      - Unklejoe 5y ago
        I hear ya. I would definitely not disqualify someone for not knowing the answer. In fact, someone who is able to sort of work through the problem on the spot may even be preferable to someone who just knows the answer because they happened to read Wikipedia the week before.
    - daenz 5y ago
      Chip manufacturing is even more prevalent. Why not ask a candidate about how silicon wafers are made?
      - avianlyric 5y ago
        Because that’s not a problem you can solve with software and algorithms. That a chemical and lithographic problem that requires a knowledge that rarely overlaps with software. However GPS can be solved with some high school maths, and applying solutions found on the software engineering domain E.g. computing distance from latency, communicating with a remote resource over a comms link, broadcast vs unicast etc It’s not like the interviewer is going to ask them to design the satellites and rockets themselves.
      - Unklejoe 5y ago
        Because that's a lot more obscure. A better example might be asking something like "what's the difference between cache and RAM" or "what is a CPU register", which I'm starting to think will still catch objections from some people on the grounds of it not being relevant to Javascript. Asking how GPS works (in general terms) is more like asking how the Internet works. Anyone who has "engineer" attached to their job title should at have a general understanding of this, or at least be able to work through it using common sense on the spot. I know we covered it early on in college (maybe in Physics, I forget). Again, I'm not talking about low level details here. Something like "your phone measures the time it takes the signals to arrive and calculates a distance" indicates some understanding. From there, most people can figure out how that information could be used to calculate a 3d position.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Mindless2112 5y ago
You either find out the candidate knows how GPS works or you find out the candidate's willingness to say "I don't know". It's valuable to know how someone will handle a question they don't know the answer to -- whether they recognize their own ignorance and whether they are willing to admit to it.
- daenz 5y ago
  There are plenty of ways to get to the bottom of what a candidate knows without resorting to unreasonable questions. What you're really testing for is a candidate's patience for being toyed with.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Or the candidates ability/willingness to bullshit in order to not look ignorant or unskilled in something. Which is actually useful to know, even if this method would be a dickish way to do it.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of things it tests for: * Ability to reflect on and critique their own ideas, using technical common-sense. If someone has never had a reason to research or think too hard about how GPS works, then it might be reasonable to initially assume that it sends a signal to a satellite. But hopefully, when prompted to think about it a bit more, they would realize: "Hey, if that's true, then somehow these satellites that were launched in the 80's and 90's were able to scale up their capacity and handle orders of magnitude more demand, now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Maybe that's not how it works?" * General curiosity and interest in areas outside their field of specialty. This might not be strictly necessary to get a job done, but it probably has some correlation with other measures of technical aptitude that are hard to probe directly.

bobthechef 5y ago
alesua93 5y ago
> General curiosity and interest in areas outside their field of specialty. This might not be strictly necessary to get a job done, but it probably has some correlation with other measures of technical aptitude that are hard to probe directly. I think this is a bit misguided, since the scope of things outside of a candidate's field of specialty is tremendously large. Picking a random piece of tech within that space and drilling the candidate about it seems rather unfair. A better way to handle this would be to actually ask the candidate about what else interests them outside of their specialty. But hey, maybe that doesn't stroke the interviewer's ego enough (:
- Unklejoe 5y ago
  > random piece of tech IDK. GPS is probably one of the most prevalent technologies used today besides the Internet itself.
  - alesua93 5y ago
    Fair enough. I understand where you're coming from, at the end of the day I guess it depends on the context and the way the question is presented (left-field questions such as this one can be somewhat fun to try to answer and hypothesize about, if the interviewer creates a friendly environment to do so)
    - Unklejoe 5y ago
      I hear ya. I would definitely not disqualify someone for not knowing the answer. In fact, someone who is able to sort of work through the problem on the spot may even be preferable to someone who just knows the answer because they happened to read Wikipedia the week before.
  - daenz 5y ago
    Chip manufacturing is even more prevalent. Why not ask a candidate about how silicon wafers are made?
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      Because that’s not a problem you can solve with software and algorithms. That a chemical and lithographic problem that requires a knowledge that rarely overlaps with software. However GPS can be solved with some high school maths, and applying solutions found on the software engineering domain E.g. computing distance from latency, communicating with a remote resource over a comms link, broadcast vs unicast etc It’s not like the interviewer is going to ask them to design the satellites and rockets themselves.
    - Unklejoe 5y ago
      Because that's a lot more obscure. A better example might be asking something like "what's the difference between cache and RAM" or "what is a CPU register", which I'm starting to think will still catch objections from some people on the grounds of it not being relevant to Javascript. Asking how GPS works (in general terms) is more like asking how the Internet works. Anyone who has "engineer" attached to their job title should at have a general understanding of this, or at least be able to work through it using common sense on the spot. I know we covered it early on in college (maybe in Physics, I forget). Again, I'm not talking about low level details here. Something like "your phone measures the time it takes the signals to arrive and calculates a distance" indicates some understanding. From there, most people can figure out how that information could be used to calculate a 3d position.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Mindless2112 5y ago

You either find out the candidate knows how GPS works or you find out the candidate's willingness to say "I don't know". It's valuable to know how someone will handle a question they don't know the answer to -- whether they recognize their own ignorance and whether they are willing to admit to it.

daenz 5y ago
There are plenty of ways to get to the bottom of what a candidate knows without resorting to unreasonable questions. What you're really testing for is a candidate's patience for being toyed with.
- lazide 5y ago
  Or the candidates ability/willingness to bullshit in order to not look ignorant or unskilled in something. Which is actually useful to know, even if this method would be a dickish way to do it.