4 ms·

> treat candidates with respect > 95% of clowns out there you interview What's your company affiliation?

FredPret 3y ago
You can and should treat someone with respect, even if your expectation is that there's a 95% chance they will turn out to be a clown.
- foldr 3y ago
  IMO this way of looking at it is indicative of a lack of respect for candidates, even if communication is superficially respectful. If someone performs badly in an interview then by all means don't hire them, but it's both unkind and irrational to jump to the conclusion that they're a 'clown'. If someone is making such a harsh judgment about 95% of their applicants, on the basis of an interview process which we know to be highly imperfect, then I would not want to work for them.
michaelt 3y ago
He works for Clownr, the Uber of children's party entertainment.
- 1920musicman 3y ago
  I had a good laugh reading your comment and then found this: https://www.clownr.com/ https://www.clownr.com/
  - arcanemachiner 3y ago
    > Are You a Clown? > Say hello to you new best friend.
LargeTomato 3y ago
I worked at a rocket startup. 1/3 ex SpaceX. 1/3 ex Google/Facebook. I interviewed a guy and asked him, essentially, "find the biggest number in a 2D array". This guy spent half an hour struggling because he "wasn't sure how to look through the grid in a circle pattern". You'd be incredibly surprised who gets interviews.
- 1920musicman 3y ago
  Honestly, at this point I stopped making strong conclusions about candidates based on a single interview. I won't recommend to hire but also won't judge their abilities overall. Interviews can be very stressful, candidates overthink and often get fixated on a random solution they think the interviewer expects, etc. I had several odd experiences myself in the past, as a candidate. The funniest one was when I interviewed at a prestigious company I thought was hiring only top talent. I spent an hour trying to come up with the most efficient Sudoku solver, got completely stuck on some arbitrary algorithm that I came up with on the spot. It wasn't a "circle pattern" but close to that. Wanted to impress the interviewer and also did not sleep the night before overthinking the process.
- filoleg 3y ago
  > "wasn't sure how to look through the grid in a circle pattern" Now I am curious to know whether I am too dense to get it or if the candidate was just that off the mark. Is circle pattern sorta like iterating through a 2d array like a spiral (i.e., outer layer of the 2d-shape first, then one deeper, etc.)? And if yes, why would that ever be useful for just searching for a specific value in a 2d array? I get how it could be useful for some more niche/specific problems where the layering of the 2d array would actually matter, but is it just entirely off the chain to recommend it here? Because I cannot for the life of me figure out why you would want to do that instead of just iterating, especially considering how significantly less trivial it is to code-up that “circular” iteration (as opposed to just a regular linear iteration). Sidenote: Is there even a more efficient way to solve that problem, other than just sequentially iterating through the 2d array and simply tracking the value/position of the largest number until you finish iterating over the entire 2d array (assuming it is non-sorted)? It seems way too simple, so I feel like either I am missing something about the problem statement or there is a better solution than the one I proposed.
  - icedchai 3y ago
    Most day-to-day coding is simple and boring. Your interview questions should be, too. I've interviewed 100's of candidates over the years. Many of them had trouble writing a couple of for loops. This was for a somewhat similar problem. I would stress "we don't need an optimal solution, we just need a working solution."

You can and should treat someone with respect, even if your expectation is that there's a 95% chance they will turn out to be a clown.

foldr 3y ago
IMO this way of looking at it is indicative of a lack of respect for candidates, even if communication is superficially respectful. If someone performs badly in an interview then by all means don't hire them, but it's both unkind and irrational to jump to the conclusion that they're a 'clown'. If someone is making such a harsh judgment about 95% of their applicants, on the basis of an interview process which we know to be highly imperfect, then I would not want to work for them.

michaelt 3y ago

He works for Clownr, the Uber of children's party entertainment.

1920musicman 3y ago
I had a good laugh reading your comment and then found this: https://www.clownr.com/ https://www.clownr.com/
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  > Are You a Clown? > Say hello to you new best friend.

LargeTomato 3y ago

I worked at a rocket startup. 1/3 ex SpaceX. 1/3 ex Google/Facebook. I interviewed a guy and asked him, essentially, "find the biggest number in a 2D array". This guy spent half an hour struggling because he "wasn't sure how to look through the grid in a circle pattern". You'd be incredibly surprised who gets interviews.

1920musicman 3y ago
Honestly, at this point I stopped making strong conclusions about candidates based on a single interview. I won't recommend to hire but also won't judge their abilities overall. Interviews can be very stressful, candidates overthink and often get fixated on a random solution they think the interviewer expects, etc. I had several odd experiences myself in the past, as a candidate. The funniest one was when I interviewed at a prestigious company I thought was hiring only top talent. I spent an hour trying to come up with the most efficient Sudoku solver, got completely stuck on some arbitrary algorithm that I came up with on the spot. It wasn't a "circle pattern" but close to that. Wanted to impress the interviewer and also did not sleep the night before overthinking the process.
filoleg 3y ago
> "wasn't sure how to look through the grid in a circle pattern" Now I am curious to know whether I am too dense to get it or if the candidate was just that off the mark. Is circle pattern sorta like iterating through a 2d array like a spiral (i.e., outer layer of the 2d-shape first, then one deeper, etc.)? And if yes, why would that ever be useful for just searching for a specific value in a 2d array? I get how it could be useful for some more niche/specific problems where the layering of the 2d array would actually matter, but is it just entirely off the chain to recommend it here? Because I cannot for the life of me figure out why you would want to do that instead of just iterating, especially considering how significantly less trivial it is to code-up that “circular” iteration (as opposed to just a regular linear iteration). Sidenote: Is there even a more efficient way to solve that problem, other than just sequentially iterating through the 2d array and simply tracking the value/position of the largest number until you finish iterating over the entire 2d array (assuming it is non-sorted)? It seems way too simple, so I feel like either I am missing something about the problem statement or there is a better solution than the one I proposed.
- icedchai 3y ago
  Most day-to-day coding is simple and boring. Your interview questions should be, too. I've interviewed 100's of candidates over the years. Many of them had trouble writing a couple of for loops. This was for a somewhat similar problem. I would stress "we don't need an optimal solution, we just need a working solution."