3 ms·
I once failed an interview because they asked how I’d solve a geospatial problem in Postgres and I said I’d use PostGIS and order by ST_Distance. The guy said “
by ch4s3 1y ago
I once failed an interview because they asked how I’d solve a geospatial problem in Postgres and I said I’d use PostGIS and order by ST_Distance. The guy said “what’s postgis” and I knew it was over.
- WesolyKubeczek 1y agoYou failed, or was it them?
- ch4s3 1y agoI believe we all failed as an industry that day. A friend of mine worked at the company and tried to get me to reapply a year later and promised they had scrapped the old interview process, but I just couldn’t.
- renewiltord 1y agoWait. What’s the “right” answer? The “in Postgres” naturally directs towards PostGIS.
- ch4s3 1y agoThey apparently wanted me to do some geometry, and know that the naive geometry doesn't account for the curve of the earth, and that there are indexing concerns. This was for a company that makes HR software and the interviewer who devised this exercise had never heard of PostGIS and sort of implied it was a real thing that people used.
- renewiltord 1y agoWhy on earth say the Postgres part then? Bullet dodged. Everyone in GIS knows all the geometry stuff, but also if you say "in Postgres" you're strongly implying PostGIS.
- ch4s3 1y agoAnd for an HR web app that doesn't do any geospatial stuff...