3 ms·

I'm sorry, but this mainly reads like the signal you'll get from running through this script is learning whether or not this candidate enjoys being walked throu

I'm sorry, but this mainly reads like the signal you'll get from running through this script is learning whether or not this candidate enjoys being walked through how clever you are. That might be something you are looking for in a member of your team, but it's not a great indicator that they'll bring much additional shareholder value.

wpietri 4y ago
Yeah. I'm much more interested in discovering an interview subject's strengths, so I tend to give broad things that can be solved many ways. One interview I had years ago that I really liked was where they gave a sample of code with a number of issues and asked me to describe how I'd improve it. I really appreciated that a) it was much more like actual work than many questions, b) you could start with obvious things and work deeper, and c) there were many valid ways to improve the code, so you weren't just trying to guess the answer the interviewer had in mind.
- timv 4y ago
  Do you have a reason to believe (c) is true in practice? I strongly suspect many interviewers (myself included) would have a few "top issues" and significantly favour candidates who pointed them out. But as the candidate you don't really know which issues will seem important to the interviewer. It's not an irrelevant exercise though - code reviews are a real part of many roles and making sensible choices about what to comment on is a necessary skill. But it is hard to avoid turning the interview into an exercise in "guess what's on the top of my list"
  - wpietri 4y ago
    The first part of (c) is true, so I guess you're asking about how the interviewers would react? These folks were obviously interested in differing approaches; we had a good conversation about it. And that's how I use broad questions. But I agree a huge problem of interviews is the "guess what I'm thinking" interviewer. Most interviewing processes are not primarily about making good hires. They're about making interviewers feel smart and important.
yongjik 4y ago
I don't think that's fair. The kind of candidates who are good at these questions won't view it as being walked through how clever the interviewer is, but as an opportunity to solve an interesting problem (and show how clever they are). That is, if your reaction to the problem is "Eww what a 'clever' problem, are you showing off that you know such stuff?" then you are not someone Google is looking for. (Of course, whether Google is right here is a separate question ...)
- jameshart 4y ago
  The author calls out several points where it's usually necessary for the interviewer to explain something to the candidate - or rather, to push them to have the insight you want them to have to progress the interview. Too bad if they have other insights they want to share! The interviewer needs you to buy into his view that the time it takes to generate your hash keys is an important part of your big-O analysis of this problem! The danger here is that when you explain something to someone, and they get it, you get a warm fuzzy rush of happy brain chemicals. You will feel well-disposed towards candidates who appreciate and enjoy taking the breadcrumbs you feed them. Candidates who didn't think your clever insights were as clever as all that, or who fail to respond to your tutelage and try to solve it their own way... you'll get a negative feeling towards them. They're not playing your game. That's great if you're interviewing a student to figure out if they will enjoy learning from you, and you will enjoy teaching them! But while teacher/learner relationships might be part of your relationship with colleagues at work, it seems an odd part of the relationship to compatibility filter in an interview.
  - yongjik 4y ago
    Yeah, sorry, I don't think I'm following your argument. When you compute hash keys of a string, of course you want to read the whole string at least once, so the time complexity is at least O(N) (where N is the length of the string) - sure it's easy to overlook, but once explained there's not really much to disagree. It's not like the interviewer is asking a matter of opinion and punishing those who have different viewpoints. Also, once you used the same problem half a dozen times in interviews, you no longer get any "warm and fuzzy" feelings for having to explain something which is now blindingly obvious to you: if anything, you'll give higher scores to candidates to whom you don't have to explain such things. Of course, if you are a candidate and (hypothetically) your response is "Actually it can be less than O(N), because a hash function does not have to read the entire string, and I know how it works because I've been dealing with string hash functions for years in my professional career," then by all means, fire away, I'm pretty sure any reasonable interviewer would consider it as a big plus sign.
Gimpei 4y ago
Questions like these test to see how good you are at remembering your algorithms class. But I thought we’d all learned that the best interview question is one that tests the kind of work that you will actually be doing at your job. This is the equivalent of hiring a journalist by testing how well they remember that class they took on the Critique of Pure Reason. Not entirely useless, but not far from it.
yosito 4y ago
I've done several dozen technical interviews in my career and approximately 89% of them have felt like the interviewer is walking me through how technical they are.

wpietri 4y ago

Yeah. I'm much more interested in discovering an interview subject's strengths, so I tend to give broad things that can be solved many ways. One interview I had years ago that I really liked was where they gave a sample of code with a number of issues and asked me to describe how I'd improve it. I really appreciated that a) it was much more like actual work than many questions, b) you could start with obvious things and work deeper, and c) there were many valid ways to improve the code, so you weren't just trying to guess the answer the interviewer had in mind.

timv 4y ago
Do you have a reason to believe (c) is true in practice? I strongly suspect many interviewers (myself included) would have a few "top issues" and significantly favour candidates who pointed them out. But as the candidate you don't really know which issues will seem important to the interviewer. It's not an irrelevant exercise though - code reviews are a real part of many roles and making sensible choices about what to comment on is a necessary skill. But it is hard to avoid turning the interview into an exercise in "guess what's on the top of my list"
- wpietri 4y ago
  The first part of (c) is true, so I guess you're asking about how the interviewers would react? These folks were obviously interested in differing approaches; we had a good conversation about it. And that's how I use broad questions. But I agree a huge problem of interviews is the "guess what I'm thinking" interviewer. Most interviewing processes are not primarily about making good hires. They're about making interviewers feel smart and important.

yongjik 4y ago

I don't think that's fair. The kind of candidates who are good at these questions won't view it as being walked through how clever the interviewer is, but as an opportunity to solve an interesting problem (and show how clever they are). That is, if your reaction to the problem is "Eww what a 'clever' problem, are you showing off that you know such stuff?" then you are not someone Google is looking for. (Of course, whether Google is right here is a separate question ...)

jameshart 4y ago
The author calls out several points where it's usually necessary for the interviewer to explain something to the candidate - or rather, to push them to have the insight you want them to have to progress the interview. Too bad if they have other insights they want to share! The interviewer needs you to buy into his view that the time it takes to generate your hash keys is an important part of your big-O analysis of this problem! The danger here is that when you explain something to someone, and they get it, you get a warm fuzzy rush of happy brain chemicals. You will feel well-disposed towards candidates who appreciate and enjoy taking the breadcrumbs you feed them. Candidates who didn't think your clever insights were as clever as all that, or who fail to respond to your tutelage and try to solve it their own way... you'll get a negative feeling towards them. They're not playing your game. That's great if you're interviewing a student to figure out if they will enjoy learning from you, and you will enjoy teaching them! But while teacher/learner relationships might be part of your relationship with colleagues at work, it seems an odd part of the relationship to compatibility filter in an interview.
- yongjik 4y ago
  Yeah, sorry, I don't think I'm following your argument. When you compute hash keys of a string, of course you want to read the whole string at least once, so the time complexity is at least O(N) (where N is the length of the string) - sure it's easy to overlook, but once explained there's not really much to disagree. It's not like the interviewer is asking a matter of opinion and punishing those who have different viewpoints. Also, once you used the same problem half a dozen times in interviews, you no longer get any "warm and fuzzy" feelings for having to explain something which is now blindingly obvious to you: if anything, you'll give higher scores to candidates to whom you don't have to explain such things. Of course, if you are a candidate and (hypothetically) your response is "Actually it can be less than O(N), because a hash function does not have to read the entire string, and I know how it works because I've been dealing with string hash functions for years in my professional career," then by all means, fire away, I'm pretty sure any reasonable interviewer would consider it as a big plus sign.

Gimpei 4y ago

Questions like these test to see how good you are at remembering your algorithms class. But I thought we’d all learned that the best interview question is one that tests the kind of work that you will actually be doing at your job. This is the equivalent of hiring a journalist by testing how well they remember that class they took on the Critique of Pure Reason. Not entirely useless, but not far from it.

yosito 4y ago

I've done several dozen technical interviews in my career and approximately 89% of them have felt like the interviewer is walking me through how technical they are.