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A good interviewer won’t be looking for a single solution to the problem. I’d expect them to entertain the Google Sheets answer - it’s good signal that the cand
by jb3689 7mo ago
A good interviewer won’t be looking for a single solution to the problem. I’d expect them to entertain the Google Sheets answer - it’s good signal that the candidate will consider what already exists in the world. I’d rather extend the problem: the team is spending considerable time iterating with manual entry, what would you do?
- EthanHeilman 7mo agoComplete agreement. "Excellent answer, that is what I would do as well, now what if we wanted to build it in-house?"
- SteveNuts 7mo ago> "now what if we wanted to build it in-house?" "Well I would probably go home and work on my resume because that's a fool's errand." I hate going to work and reinventing wheels all day because the company I work for thinks it's so special that every business function needs a 100% tailored solution to solved problems. I much prefer working somewhere that's able to tailor business processes to conform to existing standards. But maybe that's just me.
- maccard 7mo agoI’ve interviewed a few hundred people. Probably approaching a thousand, if not already. An interview is a scenario, and if you aren’t willing to engage in the scenario that we all agreed to partake in, that’s a huge warning sign that you’re going to be difficult later down the line. The point of the question is to have something remotely understandable for both sides to talk about, that’s it.
- Quarrelsome 7mo agobut also maybe its a green flag in that this employee might see the wood for the trees and save the company a lot of money later down the line. In my experience, a lot of engineers can waste a lot of time dicking around re-inventing wheels and whatnot. While you consider it a huge warning sign, have you ever employed someone who would answer that way or are you assuming that you're not capable of making hiring mistakes? I can't help but think this "huge warning sign" might simply be a cognative bias where the interviewer is misdirecting their frustration in the poor design of their own process at the candidate [0]. For reference, I think both answers are fine and both perspectives (its a positive or a negative) are equally valid. Its just that I don't think we can confidently state either way. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ3ETK7-ZM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ3ETK7-ZM8
- pibaker 7mo agoI think you missed the point in GP's post. Not all organizations optimize for problem solving. Some organizations prefer subordinates who follow orders (or better, is able to read the mind of the boss to decipher what order he is actually making) than those who breaks out of the box and says ”just use gsuite, boss."
- Quarrelsome 7mo agosure but if its not a privately held business then using gsuite is better for the shareholders. Ultimately its the bosses choice, but for the board to fire them its worth knowing they were aware of being able to use gsuite instead of pissing away resource on a needless project.
- maccard 7mo agoThe question isn’t should we use gsuite, it’s can we talk about a tech problem. If you don’t understand that you’ve failed the interview.
- Quarrelsome 7mo agoand if you don't understand my position then you've failed to interview. Some people just seek reasons to disqualify candidates and I think that's a pretty basic approach to interviewing. Remember, we all have a cognitive bias to hire ourselves and part of improving interviewing process is about trying to mitigate that by creating an environment where the interviewee can show the best of themselves, which may not necessarily reflect our own strengths. This is why pop quiz questions are kinda crap and while 1337code is better, its still kinda crap
- maccard 7mo agoIf the interview goes: > What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? > I’d use google sheets > Excellent answer, that is what I would do as well, now what if we wanted to build it in-house?" > Well I would probably go home and work on my resume because that's a fool's errand. I’ve not failed to interview. The candidate has been a jerk. Could I have asked a better question? Sure. Could the candidate not have sneered at it and thrown a strop - definitely.
- AntiDyatlov 7mo agoI think the contrived scenarios you come up with need to not have a trivial solution. Everything about my brain is optimized for KISS, it breaks everything to turn down simple solutions to reach for something more complex.
- theli0nheart 7mo agoMost real-world scenarios aren't so arbitrary, and hardly any have a "right answer". If I had a candidate that broke out of the box of our interview to give a good answer, and that's not the answer I "want", I'd be more likely to believe the interview question is the problem, not the candidate.
- john_strinlai 7mo agoremember that we already did the "Excellent answer, that is what I would do as well, now what if we wanted to build it in-house?" part. the "good answer" was already acknowledged, the "real-world scenario" answer was accepted. the second part ("what if we wanted to build it in-house") is purely hypothetical to gauge how the interviewee would approach the specific technical challenge (shedding some of the "real-world" constraints so that the focus is technical). if they again say "well that is dumb i would just use sheets", that is absolutely an interviewee problem.
- johnnyanmac 7mo agoDepends on the dyanmic. If you have an excellent candidate you're trying to poach, it becomes an intervewing problem because you're wasting both you and their time. If they are a dime a dozen, then it becomes their problem. Whether or not they care it's their problem depends on their circumstance.
- john_strinlai 7mo agoim sorry but i do not understand any of your comment. >it becomes an intervewing problem because you're wasting both you and their time. how is it a waste of time to ask a technical question in an interview? >If you have an excellent candidate [...] If they are a dime a dozen how do you determine if they are an excellent candidate or an average one without asking any technical questions in the interview? >Whether or not they care it's their problem depends on their circumstance. care about getting the job? why would they interview if they didnt care about getting the job?
- munchbunny 7mo ago> The point of the question is to have something remotely understandable for both sides to talk about, that’s it. I think a lot of people miss this point. Real projects are complex and have tons of context at the historic layer, political layer, and technical layer. If I have one hour to do the interview, I need to get to some shared context with the candidate quickly, or else it'll just be an hour of me whining about my job. And I usually don't need someone who is already a senior subject matter expert, so I'm not going to ask the type of question that is so far down the rabbit hole that we're in "wheels haven't been invented yet" territory. Fundamentally, that's why I'm asking a somewhat generic design question. I do also dig into how they navigated those layers in their past experience, but if I don't see them in action in some way then that's just missing signal I can't hire on, and that helps neither me nor the candidate. In another company or timeline perhaps I could run a different interview style, but often you're working within the constraints of both what the candidate is willing to do and what the company standardized on (which is my current situation).
- wpietri 7mo agoI'd call it an interviewer failure, not an interviewee failure. I absolutely want people I hire to be "difficult" when the moment calls for it. If the scenario is one where the right business/user choice is "let them keep using Google Sheets", then the answer I want is "Google Sheets seems fine to me", no matter what people with more power start out wanting. Too many developers have been encouraged to be minions, not professionals. Ditto for ones who act like everything is a nail for their coding hammer. A developer who can save a company a couple hundred thousand dollars by not turning something simple into a big coding project is a rare and precious commodity. Or should be, at least. The thing to do isn't to give demerits for "being difficult". The thing to do is to then add something to the scenario where they get into the thing you want them to get to. "For this, we need better access control than Google Sheets allows us." Or, "We need this to be more closely integrated with our accounting system." Unless, of course, what you're hiring for is the willingness to roll over for unreasonable requests from people with more power. Which, honestly, a lot of places are.
- Quarrelsome 7mo ago> I absolutely want people I hire to be "difficult" when the moment calls for it. <3. What do you think makes the difference here in orgs that respect this and those that simply try to hire yesmen?
- wpietri 7mo agoHumans are primates, and primate dominance dynamics are going to be the default absent some conscious choice otherwise. Our whole executive/worker dichotomy is a descendant of the British class system. (E.g., note that airlines specifically have a "business class".) And MBA-driven business culture is focused on short-term managerial interest, not societal value or long-term business success. I think all of those tendencies come to the fore at any organization that doesn't have either a strong sense of mission or a sufficiently desperate need for success that they pay attention to material reality rather than social reality. With a possible partial exception for things like co-ops and other places where the culture is fundamentally different enough. E.g., Mondragon, or Zingerman's. I think Google, back in its don't be evil/organize the world's information era, probably qualified. They started with a very strong mission-driven culture rooted in academics and engineering. It took a fair bit of time for MBA dogmas to make it like most other places. But from everything I hear, what once felt almost like a calling now is just another job.
- mv4 7mo agoI also feel it's very easy for a good interviewer to bring the conversation back to the desired scenario. Anything from "imagine we are in a parallel universe where Google Sheets has not been invented yet" to "how would you design a google sheets competitor" would do the trick. Source: interviewed hundreds, incl FAANG.
- maccard 7mo agoYeah - for sure. When I’m interviewing I want to give the candidate the best chance of success and to show off both what they know and how they will work with me. I generally give it three goes with questions like these - the initial ask, and two clarifications. If we’re not getting anywhere I move on.
- johnnyanmac 7mo agoDepends on the dynamics here. Remember that an interview is 2-way. Someone giving an answer like "that's a silly, unrealistic scenario" is more likely than not someone who isn't in need for that job to begin with. I'm sure it's something many wish they could say, because the interview pipeline can be very grating. But not everyone needs to play that game.
- rudnevr 7mo agodid it ever occur to you that you might be living in a self-reinforcing feedback loop? how long ago have been in interviewee's shoes?
- Tepix 7mo agoSetup Etherpad
- docmars 7mo agoThink of it this way: they're paying you lots of money to build something boring that has a lot of prior art/research available to you for free. This could be the easiest money maker in your life. It's not your problem they're hellbent on building a new wheel. They're willing to pay you! Chances are, you've thought of your own pain points in whatever they've asked you to build and you've now got an opportunity to shine by solving them and demonstrate your expertise.
- pavlus 7mo agoThere is a tool invented lately, that's very good for solving problems, that are well-researched and had been solved multiple times already. This tool is actually why there is a RAM shortage in the world right now. Some even say, this tool will replace a lot of workers soon(sic!).
- johnnyanmac 7mo agoBut if you're already paid lots of money to work on stuff you actually care about... why bother? That's the goal of "fuck you" money. You go through the politics and pantomimes until you have the power to stop playning those games.
- docmars 7mo agoVery true, that's the goal at least! Founders may just learn the hard way until the right people tell them no.
- 9rx 7mo ago"That does sound like something nice to have. However, recreating Google Sheets is a substantial undertaking. First, we need to evaluate the business case for duplicating something that already exists to ensure that there is a net benefit in doing so. Second, we need to determine if the business has sufficient capital to see the project through."
- rat9988 7mo agoThere is a difference between being smart and acting smart.
- docmars 7mo agoI suspect a lot of businesses are going to make this mistake in the "SaaS is dead" era as companies try to eliminate $50k/mo subscriptions for boring business software, and they figure it's easier to burn AI tokens creating an internal solution they didn't plan on maintaining in the far future. Funny times we're in right now.
- BurningFrog 7mo agoThat's a good real world answer, but a terrible SWE interview answer.
- BurningFrog 7mo agoThe obvious way is to put the spreadsheet file on some shared network location. You still need some "locking" mechanism so two people don't try editing at the same time. Which again probably means Google Sheets is the best answer!