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Hmm, I'm not sure I like the idea of intentionally trying to steer the candidate off on a tangent. It feels like a trap. In an interview, the interviewer liter

Hmm, I'm not sure I like the idea of intentionally trying to steer the candidate off on a tangent. It feels like a trap. In an interview, the interviewer literally has all the power, and saying "no" or refusing to answer a question posed by the interviewer seems rather difficult. This would be doubly hard for me since I like to teach (both my parents are teachers and I love to explain things to people so that they can understand them). If a person shows genuine interest in a topic by asking a question that might go in a tangent, I generally want their curiosity to be sated before moving on; in some cases a deeper understanding of a related topic will help educate them on the main topic. Anyway, I think I would fall for this trap for both reasons (not wanting to refuse the interviewer and also wanting to genuinely teach someone). I'm conflicted. However, I like the overall idea of the question. So much time during actual real-world development is spent communicating between coworkers about how a system works or will be implemented. I think being able to gauge a candidate's communication/knowledge transfer ability is very important and a good indicator of success.

bollockitis 14y ago
I would never, under any circumstances, tell my interviewer to "stay on topic." How should I know what he believes to be relevant? If he no longer wants to quiz me on my abilities as a developer but would rather discuss the airspeed velocity of swallows, I would assume that he has a reason for doing so, and I would gladly share with him with my limited knowledge of avian aeronautics.
- nooneelse 14y ago
  Also, the trap question could easily have the opposite "right response" as it does in the post and still be defensible as something important to learn about a candidate. Another interviewer performing the same test sequence might want to see if the candidate can change subjects quickly, roll with new circumstances, and not get flustered or stuck on a single, obsolete outcome.
engtech 14y ago
"In an interview, the interviewer literally has all the power, and saying "no" or refusing to answer a question posed by the interviewer seems rather difficult." If you feel like the interviewer has all the power in an interview, then it'll be difficult to negotiate your salary. You'll do things like give a concrete number when they ask you what your salary was at your last job. The only time I would feel like an interviewer has all the power over me is if I was a new grad with no work experience. An interview is a two-way street, you're trying to find out if you want to work for them as much as they're trying to find out if they want to hire you.
- jazzychad 14y ago
  Doing an interview (specifically a tech interview in this situation) and negotiating salaries after you have an offer are two completely different things. I would fall for the trap, but I can (and have) negotiate a really great deal for myself in the offer phase.
  - TWAndrews 14y ago
    The whole interview process is an implicit negotiation over salary.
bduerst 14y ago
They refer to the "leader" star candidates as the ones to say no, which makes sense. Typically when hiring upper level managers you are interviewing someone who is going to be your peer - not someone who will be below you. Part of being a good leader includes pushing back on the people who are going to be your peers, if it means interfering with your tasks.
alabut 14y ago
I'm glad you're conflicted! Because it is a trap, an intentional one meant to simulate the unintentional randomization that happens in real life at work. I'm sure we've all had that thing happen when someone threatens to accidentally scramble your work queue because they don't understand the problem domain as well as you do, so you need to be able to steer and guide the work requests that are coming your way and push back when it doesn't make sense. My dad's a teacher too and boy does he love to lecture. About anything - digital signal processing, the price of gas, whatever - and that mode of communication is useful in its own context, but not so much when a team of people are trying to get something done together. If it makes you feel better, I fell for the trap too. I asked Kevin for a demo of the question in action so I could see what it was like to be on the receiving end before I used it on candidates myself. I was the guy he referenced in the blog post that compared poker to backgammon and I was in the middle of explaining how Texas Hold Em taught me essential skills of entrepreneurship when he asked me how many board pieces were in a typical backgammon setup. I lost a good 20-30 seconds there trying to remember, until I laughed out loud and called him out on trying to randomize me :)
- xanados 14y ago
  I think this would be ok if they said upfront that this is a simulation of a meeting and so to pretend that you are someone attending the meeting, and so explicitly take it out of the context of an interview. When I've been interviewed, we are often friendly toward each other and it's not uncommon for them to just want to chat and go on tangents, especially for throwaway questions that assess fit and culture. And you wouldn't know as the interviewee if this was such a throwaway question. Basically, no matter what reasons you have for thinking people should do the right thing, you have to keep in mind that their reference set for YOU is all the people who have interviewed them in the past, many of whom were likely dumber and less competent than you. They are going to be acting accordingly.
kscaldef 14y ago
> Hmm, I'm not sure I like the idea of intentionally trying to steer the candidate off on a tangent. It feels like a trap. And, yet, it's quite a realistic model of what happens in meetings and presentations all the time. > In an interview, the interviewer literally has all the power, and saying "no" or refusing to answer a question posed by the interviewer seems rather difficult. You could say the same with regards to managers or other higher-ups in real workplace environments. It's an important skill to be able to say no, or deflect gracefully. In this situation, saying "I'm not going to answer that question" is the wrong response. Something like "that's an interesting question, but it will take more than 5 minutes to answer. I'd be happy to go into more detail later if you'd like." is.
- debacle 14y ago
  I think it depends on the job. If I'm in project manager or manager mode, I might say "That's not relevant," but if I'm wearing my developer hat part of my job is providing information and so I'd be more than willing to jump down the rabbit hole.
- jazzychad 14y ago
  > And, yet, it's quite a realistic model of what happens in meetings and presentations all the time. Yes, absolutely. In a real work environment where we all know each other I would not hesitate to shut down a conversation that takes the discussion off course. An interview is not like a real work environment at all. It can try to be a simulation, but it is still just a simulation where the candidate and the interviewer may not know each other very well. Maybe it's my southern upbringing (a topic of much mirth in my office), but I would consider pushing back on a stranger I am trying to impress to be somewhat rude. I have noticed that people out here in SV tend to be more aggressive than I am used to.
- mikeash 14y ago
  It's a realistic model, sure, but the stakes aren't the same. In a meeting or presentation, you have a subject and an agenda and many people present who expect you to cover them. In an interview, it's one-on-one. If the interviewer asks you A, then stops and asks you B, there's no reason not to move to B. If the interviewer is suddenly asking about B, they must want to know about it. There are no other stakeholders present who might care more about A. You didn't even know you were going to be talking about A until a few minutes before! It's an important skill to be able to say "no" and stay focused on a subject. But this is a shitty test for finding out whether a person has that skill.
mmcconnell1618 14y ago
"Leaders have the guts to say no." Are you hiring a leader or an employee? In my experience leaders tend to make poor employees and employees tend to make poor leaders. If you're looking for leaders don't expect many of them to walk through the door and sit through an interview. They're off doing something already.
- kevin_morrill 14y ago
  When I first learned about this question, I thought this "trick" part of it was the most interesting. The more I've asked this, the less I care about distracting candidates. So many of them fail even to explain the basics clearly left to their own devices.
Dove 14y ago
Really? Because I've said no to folks five layers of management over my head, when I knew their comments to be technically inappropriate. I said it diplomatically, to be sure, but firmly and without hesitation. I think the question is set up properly for the trap to be fair. Having been given clear responsibility for presenting a topic, a time limit, and the floor, I wouldn't think twice about directing the discussion. Though I also don't perceive the balance of power in an interview to be that asymmetric, either. Usually they're courting me as much as I'm courting them. If anything, it offers a nice opportunity for a reverse test: management that has a problem with technically appropriate direction is not management I want to work for.
- Jd 14y ago
  I have mixed feelings about this. I had an interview at Palantir with a self-described "front-end" guy, who asked me to write an algorithm to find a number between zero and infinity, where you could pick a number and you would get a response that would tell you whether or not the number was lower or higher than the secret number. The dude had a particular form of approaching the problem that was not at all the fastest form, in fact, he insisted on starting at zero and using an algorithm that was "2x," which he insisted was "fast enough." I thought that a system which started at zero and went up by multiples of two was obscenely slow, and I hinted at this, but he insisted on having things his way. In the end I'm sure he wrote me a bad review and I wasn't offered the job (I didn't really want it anyways, given my impression that the team I was interviewing for wasn't that focused). In any case, I didn't go right now and say this is dumb, but I hinted at a better way, and even this hinting lead to some conflict. In the end I didn't get the job. I'm conflicted if this was the best approach. I could have pretended to be dumber than I actually am and gotten the job offer at least, which at this present moment I could probably use for leverage in the search for contracts or a job, but I couldn't bring myself to accept his not particularly good algorithm (full disclosure: the process was also affected by the fact that my flight was delayed from the east coast, that I got 4 hours of sleep, the fact that I insisted in wearing a tweed coat to the interview, which may have impacted ever important perception of "fit," and that the interview in question was a "surprise" interview after several other interviews).
  - 14y ago
Estragon 14y ago
"Don't worry about it. It's not important to the objective of getting you to understand X."
njharman 14y ago
> It feels like a trap. Reality is filled with traps. > steer the candidate off on a tangent Customers, coworkers, managers, do this intentionally or not, maliciously or not. Any good candidate can do the technical job. Great candidates can survive and thrive in the work place.
- flatline3 14y ago
  > Customers, coworkers, managers, do this intentionally or not, maliciously or not. None of these situations are the same as an interview. If you're providing an explanation at the behest of the interviewer, why not also depart on a tangent, also at the behest of the interviewer?
  - TWAndrews 14y ago
    If you're explaining the value of your software to a prospect, why not also go off on a tangent at the behest of the prospect. The role whose function an interview most resembles is that of a sales person. Having been in hundreds of sales meetings, I can say with total conviction that the ability to direct the conversation and deflect tangential questions is absolutely critical to being successful. That said, every role doesn't require that skill, but OP specifically said that it's only for more senior/customer-facing positions.
kevinpet 14y ago
I have to agree. The question hinges on how the interviewee interprets the game being played in the interview. The interviewer seems to be offering the original instructions (explain something to me in five minutes) "out of character" and then gets into character and starts trying to undermine his original instructions. You're not really learning whether they can handle a meeting with interrupters, or whether they can figure out your silly games.
vacri 14y ago
I loathe this kind of question in HR interviews as well. The far more common one around this way is for the HR staffer to just 'turn' on you halfway through the interview to 'see how you deal with conflict'. Thing is, that's really unnatural, and people do not do this in the outside world. I've worked in tech support, as a medical tech, with adults and kids and autistic kids, done phone surveys, done general customer support... never have I ever had someone 'turn' once I'd built up rapport with them. Sure, you could argue that they must be out there, but if so, they're such an edge case that it's pointless choosing on that basis. I've also got to agree that 'teaching the uninterested' is hard for someone who likes to do the very thing he's asking. Job interviews are nothing like the workplace for the interviewee. Things like silent time can be death - I've had interviewers ask things like 'take as much time as you need to think before answering' and then getting annoyed because I was thinking for all of 20 seconds...
jmilloy 14y ago
The interviewer does not have all the power. Any good interviewer knows this, and finding out whether the candidate knows this can be indicative of the candidates maturity, perspective, confidence, and leadership abilities. Not every position requires these, but some do.

bollockitis 14y ago

I would never, under any circumstances, tell my interviewer to "stay on topic." How should I know what he believes to be relevant? If he no longer wants to quiz me on my abilities as a developer but would rather discuss the airspeed velocity of swallows, I would assume that he has a reason for doing so, and I would gladly share with him with my limited knowledge of avian aeronautics.

nooneelse 14y ago
Also, the trap question could easily have the opposite "right response" as it does in the post and still be defensible as something important to learn about a candidate. Another interviewer performing the same test sequence might want to see if the candidate can change subjects quickly, roll with new circumstances, and not get flustered or stuck on a single, obsolete outcome.

engtech 14y ago

"In an interview, the interviewer literally has all the power, and saying "no" or refusing to answer a question posed by the interviewer seems rather difficult." If you feel like the interviewer has all the power in an interview, then it'll be difficult to negotiate your salary. You'll do things like give a concrete number when they ask you what your salary was at your last job. The only time I would feel like an interviewer has all the power over me is if I was a new grad with no work experience. An interview is a two-way street, you're trying to find out if you want to work for them as much as they're trying to find out if they want to hire you.

jazzychad 14y ago
Doing an interview (specifically a tech interview in this situation) and negotiating salaries after you have an offer are two completely different things. I would fall for the trap, but I can (and have) negotiate a really great deal for myself in the offer phase.
- TWAndrews 14y ago
  The whole interview process is an implicit negotiation over salary.

bduerst 14y ago

They refer to the "leader" star candidates as the ones to say no, which makes sense. Typically when hiring upper level managers you are interviewing someone who is going to be your peer - not someone who will be below you. Part of being a good leader includes pushing back on the people who are going to be your peers, if it means interfering with your tasks.

alabut 14y ago

I'm glad you're conflicted! Because it is a trap, an intentional one meant to simulate the unintentional randomization that happens in real life at work. I'm sure we've all had that thing happen when someone threatens to accidentally scramble your work queue because they don't understand the problem domain as well as you do, so you need to be able to steer and guide the work requests that are coming your way and push back when it doesn't make sense. My dad's a teacher too and boy does he love to lecture. About anything - digital signal processing, the price of gas, whatever - and that mode of communication is useful in its own context, but not so much when a team of people are trying to get something done together. If it makes you feel better, I fell for the trap too. I asked Kevin for a demo of the question in action so I could see what it was like to be on the receiving end before I used it on candidates myself. I was the guy he referenced in the blog post that compared poker to backgammon and I was in the middle of explaining how Texas Hold Em taught me essential skills of entrepreneurship when he asked me how many board pieces were in a typical backgammon setup. I lost a good 20-30 seconds there trying to remember, until I laughed out loud and called him out on trying to randomize me :)

xanados 14y ago
I think this would be ok if they said upfront that this is a simulation of a meeting and so to pretend that you are someone attending the meeting, and so explicitly take it out of the context of an interview. When I've been interviewed, we are often friendly toward each other and it's not uncommon for them to just want to chat and go on tangents, especially for throwaway questions that assess fit and culture. And you wouldn't know as the interviewee if this was such a throwaway question. Basically, no matter what reasons you have for thinking people should do the right thing, you have to keep in mind that their reference set for YOU is all the people who have interviewed them in the past, many of whom were likely dumber and less competent than you. They are going to be acting accordingly.

kscaldef 14y ago

> Hmm, I'm not sure I like the idea of intentionally trying to steer the candidate off on a tangent. It feels like a trap. And, yet, it's quite a realistic model of what happens in meetings and presentations all the time. > In an interview, the interviewer literally has all the power, and saying "no" or refusing to answer a question posed by the interviewer seems rather difficult. You could say the same with regards to managers or other higher-ups in real workplace environments. It's an important skill to be able to say no, or deflect gracefully. In this situation, saying "I'm not going to answer that question" is the wrong response. Something like "that's an interesting question, but it will take more than 5 minutes to answer. I'd be happy to go into more detail later if you'd like." is.

debacle 14y ago
I think it depends on the job. If I'm in project manager or manager mode, I might say "That's not relevant," but if I'm wearing my developer hat part of my job is providing information and so I'd be more than willing to jump down the rabbit hole.
jazzychad 14y ago
> And, yet, it's quite a realistic model of what happens in meetings and presentations all the time. Yes, absolutely. In a real work environment where we all know each other I would not hesitate to shut down a conversation that takes the discussion off course. An interview is not like a real work environment at all. It can try to be a simulation, but it is still just a simulation where the candidate and the interviewer may not know each other very well. Maybe it's my southern upbringing (a topic of much mirth in my office), but I would consider pushing back on a stranger I am trying to impress to be somewhat rude. I have noticed that people out here in SV tend to be more aggressive than I am used to.
mikeash 14y ago
It's a realistic model, sure, but the stakes aren't the same. In a meeting or presentation, you have a subject and an agenda and many people present who expect you to cover them. In an interview, it's one-on-one. If the interviewer asks you A, then stops and asks you B, there's no reason not to move to B. If the interviewer is suddenly asking about B, they must want to know about it. There are no other stakeholders present who might care more about A. You didn't even know you were going to be talking about A until a few minutes before! It's an important skill to be able to say "no" and stay focused on a subject. But this is a shitty test for finding out whether a person has that skill.

mmcconnell1618 14y ago

"Leaders have the guts to say no." Are you hiring a leader or an employee? In my experience leaders tend to make poor employees and employees tend to make poor leaders. If you're looking for leaders don't expect many of them to walk through the door and sit through an interview. They're off doing something already.

kevin_morrill 14y ago
When I first learned about this question, I thought this "trick" part of it was the most interesting. The more I've asked this, the less I care about distracting candidates. So many of them fail even to explain the basics clearly left to their own devices.

Dove 14y ago

Really? Because I've said no to folks five layers of management over my head, when I knew their comments to be technically inappropriate. I said it diplomatically, to be sure, but firmly and without hesitation. I think the question is set up properly for the trap to be fair. Having been given clear responsibility for presenting a topic, a time limit, and the floor, I wouldn't think twice about directing the discussion. Though I also don't perceive the balance of power in an interview to be that asymmetric, either. Usually they're courting me as much as I'm courting them. If anything, it offers a nice opportunity for a reverse test: management that has a problem with technically appropriate direction is not management I want to work for.

Jd 14y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. I had an interview at Palantir with a self-described "front-end" guy, who asked me to write an algorithm to find a number between zero and infinity, where you could pick a number and you would get a response that would tell you whether or not the number was lower or higher than the secret number. The dude had a particular form of approaching the problem that was not at all the fastest form, in fact, he insisted on starting at zero and using an algorithm that was "2x," which he insisted was "fast enough." I thought that a system which started at zero and went up by multiples of two was obscenely slow, and I hinted at this, but he insisted on having things his way. In the end I'm sure he wrote me a bad review and I wasn't offered the job (I didn't really want it anyways, given my impression that the team I was interviewing for wasn't that focused). In any case, I didn't go right now and say this is dumb, but I hinted at a better way, and even this hinting lead to some conflict. In the end I didn't get the job. I'm conflicted if this was the best approach. I could have pretended to be dumber than I actually am and gotten the job offer at least, which at this present moment I could probably use for leverage in the search for contracts or a job, but I couldn't bring myself to accept his not particularly good algorithm (full disclosure: the process was also affected by the fact that my flight was delayed from the east coast, that I got 4 hours of sleep, the fact that I insisted in wearing a tweed coat to the interview, which may have impacted ever important perception of "fit," and that the interview in question was a "surprise" interview after several other interviews).
- 14y ago

Estragon 14y ago

"Don't worry about it. It's not important to the objective of getting you to understand X."

njharman 14y ago

> It feels like a trap. Reality is filled with traps. > steer the candidate off on a tangent Customers, coworkers, managers, do this intentionally or not, maliciously or not. Any good candidate can do the technical job. Great candidates can survive and thrive in the work place.

flatline3 14y ago
> Customers, coworkers, managers, do this intentionally or not, maliciously or not. None of these situations are the same as an interview. If you're providing an explanation at the behest of the interviewer, why not also depart on a tangent, also at the behest of the interviewer?
- TWAndrews 14y ago
  If you're explaining the value of your software to a prospect, why not also go off on a tangent at the behest of the prospect. The role whose function an interview most resembles is that of a sales person. Having been in hundreds of sales meetings, I can say with total conviction that the ability to direct the conversation and deflect tangential questions is absolutely critical to being successful. That said, every role doesn't require that skill, but OP specifically said that it's only for more senior/customer-facing positions.

kevinpet 14y ago

I have to agree. The question hinges on how the interviewee interprets the game being played in the interview. The interviewer seems to be offering the original instructions (explain something to me in five minutes) "out of character" and then gets into character and starts trying to undermine his original instructions. You're not really learning whether they can handle a meeting with interrupters, or whether they can figure out your silly games.

vacri 14y ago

I loathe this kind of question in HR interviews as well. The far more common one around this way is for the HR staffer to just 'turn' on you halfway through the interview to 'see how you deal with conflict'. Thing is, that's really unnatural, and people do not do this in the outside world. I've worked in tech support, as a medical tech, with adults and kids and autistic kids, done phone surveys, done general customer support... never have I ever had someone 'turn' once I'd built up rapport with them. Sure, you could argue that they must be out there, but if so, they're such an edge case that it's pointless choosing on that basis. I've also got to agree that 'teaching the uninterested' is hard for someone who likes to do the very thing he's asking. Job interviews are nothing like the workplace for the interviewee. Things like silent time can be death - I've had interviewers ask things like 'take as much time as you need to think before answering' and then getting annoyed because I was thinking for all of 20 seconds...

jmilloy 14y ago

The interviewer does not have all the power. Any good interviewer knows this, and finding out whether the candidate knows this can be indicative of the candidates maturity, perspective, confidence, and leadership abilities. Not every position requires these, but some do.