3 ms·

I recently interviewed with a company, and the interviewer asked me "how do you organize data." I wasn't sure if they wanted to talk about classes, modules, dat

I recently interviewed with a company, and the interviewer asked me "how do you organize data." I wasn't sure if they wanted to talk about classes, modules, databases, k-v stores, hashing data and routing distributed requests to the same pods. I asked, and they answered "I mean in general, how do you organize data." After talking for a bit about pretty much all of the above, the interviewer asked "have you used dictionaries?" The reason I'm telling the story is, if a lot of your candidates fail to answer your questions, the problem might be in the question.

no_wizard 3y ago
I would have halted for a moment and asked something like: organize data for what purpose? At which point I would expect there to be some amount of clarification. As it sounds to me like they're talking about organizing some set of data for lookup, as opposed to organizing data around how it flows through an application, for example
- aranw 3y ago
  I often find when you are given questions like that no matter how you probe you get a really defensive interviewer who doesn’t want to give away the answer they are expecting. I’ve been in very similar situations with vague questions and I’ve tried to probe for more details and just been met with defensiveness with an attitude that says they expect me to know exactly what they mean
  - d0mine 3y ago
    It is worse: your attempt to clarify the question may be regarded by some interviewers as a sign you are not senior dev (they think [erroneously in my opinion] that "senior" means that you must figure out fine details yourself).
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      This seems odd to me, though its entirely possible my experience thus far hasn't been this. I've been told at the last 3 places I worked that one of the reasons I was hired was how inquisitive I was during the interview stage, asking lots of questions before coming up with solutions I am most definitely not ruling out what you're saying may be common case and I am just very lucky, but I do want to act as a sort of counter point to see if others can weigh in so we can get more of an industry sense around this
      - zimpenfish 3y ago
        Anecdatum: my experience has been the same as others - asking questions about the interview questions generally leads to a bad outcome. In 25 years, I reckon it's less than a handful of times where asking questions of the interviewers has actually got a positive response. Hell, even when in jobs, asking questions about projects I'm assigned has sometimes got a negative response...
        no_wizard 3y ago
        Seems weird to me that asking a specific question about what it is you're trying to achieve would be negative. Especially since most interviews often open with feel free to ask clarifying questions or something along those lines. If the prompt is unclear its worth getting clarity, just like if something is unclear in the job you seek clarity, I feel like people not asking questions would be a big red flag. of course, asking too many (this is subjective but I think we can all think of a reasonable situation where there were too many questions being asked relative to their value) could be a red flag
        zimpenfish 3y ago
        > just like if something is unclear in the job you seek clarity There are a distressing number of managers / leads I have encountered who consider that if you're asking for clarity, you're impugning their powers of explanation because CLEARLY they explained it well enough (after all, they understand it!) and you're either an idiot or being sarcastic to undermine them.
    - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
      One a rare occasion I actually got feedback after the interview (it was for a startup), It was because I asked 'too many questions' it was decided that I'd need way more mentoring than they can afford for the senior position I was applying for.
      - henrikschroder 3y ago
        That's infuriating. There's a clear distinction between asking "how do I do this thing?" and "what do you want me to do?" I can't read your mind, and that goes both for interview questions and determining product needs.
pavluha 3y ago
There are plenty of different types of dictionaries, organizing their data differently.
skippyboxedhero 3y ago
I have had that exact experience before. It is fine, you realise the company is toasted and you move on (the place that asked me this had just got rinsed by an offshore consulting firm, ecomm site built with a graph database, comedic stuff).
maximinus_thrax 3y ago
> After talking for a bit about pretty much all of the above, the interviewer asked "have you used dictionaries?" Hahaha classic. I was once in an interview (which I failed) and was asked a problem related to some sort of monotonic queue. I wrote the solution and was going through it, when the interviewer asked: 'what CS concept are you using in this solution'? I didn't really understand what he was asking for and in turn I asked for more clarification like 'Are you referring to the data structures I used? Or the technique (it was some sort of greedy)?' 'no'. After a couple of back-and-forth questions and answers, he finally tells me he was looking for me to say 'a state machine'. Seriously?
- jerf 3y ago
  "I was once in an interview (which I failed)" You didn't fail that interview. They did.

no_wizard 3y ago

I would have halted for a moment and asked something like: organize data for what purpose? At which point I would expect there to be some amount of clarification. As it sounds to me like they're talking about organizing some set of data for lookup, as opposed to organizing data around how it flows through an application, for example

aranw 3y ago
I often find when you are given questions like that no matter how you probe you get a really defensive interviewer who doesn’t want to give away the answer they are expecting. I’ve been in very similar situations with vague questions and I’ve tried to probe for more details and just been met with defensiveness with an attitude that says they expect me to know exactly what they mean
- d0mine 3y ago
  It is worse: your attempt to clarify the question may be regarded by some interviewers as a sign you are not senior dev (they think [erroneously in my opinion] that "senior" means that you must figure out fine details yourself).
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    This seems odd to me, though its entirely possible my experience thus far hasn't been this. I've been told at the last 3 places I worked that one of the reasons I was hired was how inquisitive I was during the interview stage, asking lots of questions before coming up with solutions I am most definitely not ruling out what you're saying may be common case and I am just very lucky, but I do want to act as a sort of counter point to see if others can weigh in so we can get more of an industry sense around this
    - zimpenfish 3y ago
      Anecdatum: my experience has been the same as others - asking questions about the interview questions generally leads to a bad outcome. In 25 years, I reckon it's less than a handful of times where asking questions of the interviewers has actually got a positive response. Hell, even when in jobs, asking questions about projects I'm assigned has sometimes got a negative response...
      - no_wizard 3y ago
        Seems weird to me that asking a specific question about what it is you're trying to achieve would be negative. Especially since most interviews often open with feel free to ask clarifying questions or something along those lines. If the prompt is unclear its worth getting clarity, just like if something is unclear in the job you seek clarity, I feel like people not asking questions would be a big red flag. of course, asking too many (this is subjective but I think we can all think of a reasonable situation where there were too many questions being asked relative to their value) could be a red flag
        zimpenfish 3y ago
        > just like if something is unclear in the job you seek clarity There are a distressing number of managers / leads I have encountered who consider that if you're asking for clarity, you're impugning their powers of explanation because CLEARLY they explained it well enough (after all, they understand it!) and you're either an idiot or being sarcastic to undermine them.
  - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
    One a rare occasion I actually got feedback after the interview (it was for a startup), It was because I asked 'too many questions' it was decided that I'd need way more mentoring than they can afford for the senior position I was applying for.
    - henrikschroder 3y ago
      That's infuriating. There's a clear distinction between asking "how do I do this thing?" and "what do you want me to do?" I can't read your mind, and that goes both for interview questions and determining product needs.

pavluha 3y ago

There are plenty of different types of dictionaries, organizing their data differently.

skippyboxedhero 3y ago

I have had that exact experience before. It is fine, you realise the company is toasted and you move on (the place that asked me this had just got rinsed by an offshore consulting firm, ecomm site built with a graph database, comedic stuff).

maximinus_thrax 3y ago

> After talking for a bit about pretty much all of the above, the interviewer asked "have you used dictionaries?" Hahaha classic. I was once in an interview (which I failed) and was asked a problem related to some sort of monotonic queue. I wrote the solution and was going through it, when the interviewer asked: 'what CS concept are you using in this solution'? I didn't really understand what he was asking for and in turn I asked for more clarification like 'Are you referring to the data structures I used? Or the technique (it was some sort of greedy)?' 'no'. After a couple of back-and-forth questions and answers, he finally tells me he was looking for me to say 'a state machine'. Seriously?

jerf 3y ago
"I was once in an interview (which I failed)" You didn't fail that interview. They did.