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The best interview question I've ever heard: Someone is sitting shopping online with their cursor hovering over "Add to Cart". From the moment they physically c

The best interview question I've ever heard: Someone is sitting shopping online with their cursor hovering over "Add to Cart". From the moment they physically click on it to the moment the page refreshes, tell me everything you can think of that happens. Responses are awesome because it gives you an idea of what this person's background is and what breadth of knowledge they have and what they think is cool or exciting. Maybe they start with a contact closing and signals being denounced, or an interrupt being triggered, or the OS and window manager, or the browser and DOM events, or HTTP or TLS or TCP or Ethernet or WiFi or LTE or routing and the tiers of network infrastructure or DNS or load balancing or proxies or web servers and tiers of API services or databases... It's can lead to some really fun technical conversation, follow up about how they learned the things they know and experiences they've had, and most of the time the interviewer learns something too.

Aeolun 4y ago
Oh shit, this one is really nice. I’ll add that one to the list.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
I like that, but does the "to the moment the page refereshes" part mean it'd definitely not a SPA?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- robmccoll 3y ago
  Good question - and one that tells me something. You're familiar with modern front-end development and that's something we can dig into. Why would you want to avoid full page refresh? When would I use a SPA versus more traditional SSR? What about serving something mostly static with progressive enhancement? What frameworks might you consider for developing such a SPA? Which have you worked with in the past? What did you like about them? Any you're looking to work with in the future? How do these frameworks work - i.e. are you someone that hacks on them and is concerned with shadow DOM and optimizing diffs and re-rendering and data binding... That's why I really like this question - it's just such a cool jumping off point.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    You ask those questions and we're not getting through the rest of the answer :P
behdad 4y ago
This is very nice indeed. I should mock-interview someone using it.
- jackblemming 4y ago
  It's not a good question. It's both famous, so people already know how to game it, and it's overwhelming. I do not want to have to give an entire lecture, which essentially 3+ different university courses condensed into one, on the spot to show off my street cred.
  - eep_social 4y ago
    Overwhelming is one way to look at it. Another is that it’s an opportunity to demonstrate both breadth by hitting the keywords and also depth by diving into whichever part you know best. Any candidate who made it to an interview should be able to rattle off a bunch of stuff. An excellent candidate will have more depth than the interviewer on some portions. The interviewer’s first job is to decide whether the candidate has a baseline-acceptable level of knowledge (harsh but true, good fakers make it this far). This question is fine but not great for that for the reasons you mentioned. However, it is best to go in assuming they do. So then the interviewer’s next job is to decide if they are going to be a good teammate. Google is rife with nerds trying to out-nerd each other, finding out how that goes in the interview is an explicit goal. A great interview on this question will end up in a moderately deep technical discussion of some aspect where both the candidate and interviewer are knowledgeable, much like a discussion you would want to have with your teammate at work. And that is why this is a decent question, in my opinion.
neilv 4y ago
It was great until you mentioned it. Now it's just another Leetcode-like study guide memorization task and performance art.
- inconceivable 4y ago
  if the interviewer is truly knowledgeable they can drill down into certain areas, or ask questions about the areas that weren't covered in the answer. i.e. if the answer was mainly browser DOM dynamics, ask about DNS and tcp/ip routing. of course, the whole point of the question is nobody you're likely to interview can fully answer it. maybe someone like jim keller could but is someone like him really going to know about css stuff? maybe, maybe not.
- sjducb 3y ago
  If a candidate is able to memorize and explain all of that then they are a good candidate.
  - neilv 3y ago
    Possibly. Though maybe memorizing is where their skill development is focused (like with Leetcode). Yet they'll test better than a candidate who could tell you 50% of that, off-the-cuff, based on their understanding and insights from experience. The latter candidate is probably much stronger at the job than the memorize-the-test candidate.
fancyfish 4y ago
A twist on the old “what happens when you type google.com into your address bar and press enter” question. If I were answering I’d talk about a couple areas I can adapt from the repo below, and save some time to also talk about API services and DBs to differentiate it from the usual answer. It is indeed a fun question! https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when

Aeolun 4y ago

Oh shit, this one is really nice. I’ll add that one to the list.

pcthrowaway 4y ago

I like that, but does the "to the moment the page refereshes" part mean it'd definitely not a SPA?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
robmccoll 3y ago
Good question - and one that tells me something. You're familiar with modern front-end development and that's something we can dig into. Why would you want to avoid full page refresh? When would I use a SPA versus more traditional SSR? What about serving something mostly static with progressive enhancement? What frameworks might you consider for developing such a SPA? Which have you worked with in the past? What did you like about them? Any you're looking to work with in the future? How do these frameworks work - i.e. are you someone that hacks on them and is concerned with shadow DOM and optimizing diffs and re-rendering and data binding... That's why I really like this question - it's just such a cool jumping off point.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  You ask those questions and we're not getting through the rest of the answer :P

behdad 4y ago

This is very nice indeed. I should mock-interview someone using it.

jackblemming 4y ago
It's not a good question. It's both famous, so people already know how to game it, and it's overwhelming. I do not want to have to give an entire lecture, which essentially 3+ different university courses condensed into one, on the spot to show off my street cred.
- eep_social 4y ago
  Overwhelming is one way to look at it. Another is that it’s an opportunity to demonstrate both breadth by hitting the keywords and also depth by diving into whichever part you know best. Any candidate who made it to an interview should be able to rattle off a bunch of stuff. An excellent candidate will have more depth than the interviewer on some portions. The interviewer’s first job is to decide whether the candidate has a baseline-acceptable level of knowledge (harsh but true, good fakers make it this far). This question is fine but not great for that for the reasons you mentioned. However, it is best to go in assuming they do. So then the interviewer’s next job is to decide if they are going to be a good teammate. Google is rife with nerds trying to out-nerd each other, finding out how that goes in the interview is an explicit goal. A great interview on this question will end up in a moderately deep technical discussion of some aspect where both the candidate and interviewer are knowledgeable, much like a discussion you would want to have with your teammate at work. And that is why this is a decent question, in my opinion.

neilv 4y ago

It was great until you mentioned it. Now it's just another Leetcode-like study guide memorization task and performance art.

inconceivable 4y ago
if the interviewer is truly knowledgeable they can drill down into certain areas, or ask questions about the areas that weren't covered in the answer. i.e. if the answer was mainly browser DOM dynamics, ask about DNS and tcp/ip routing. of course, the whole point of the question is nobody you're likely to interview can fully answer it. maybe someone like jim keller could but is someone like him really going to know about css stuff? maybe, maybe not.
sjducb 3y ago
If a candidate is able to memorize and explain all of that then they are a good candidate.
- neilv 3y ago
  Possibly. Though maybe memorizing is where their skill development is focused (like with Leetcode). Yet they'll test better than a candidate who could tell you 50% of that, off-the-cuff, based on their understanding and insights from experience. The latter candidate is probably much stronger at the job than the memorize-the-test candidate.

fancyfish 4y ago

A twist on the old “what happens when you type google.com into your address bar and press enter” question. If I were answering I’d talk about a couple areas I can adapt from the repo below, and save some time to also talk about API services and DBs to differentiate it from the usual answer. It is indeed a fun question! https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when