6 ms·

Interviewing for Intelligence

31 points by kevin_morrill 14y ago

khitchdee 14y ago
Confidence: If asked a question completely outside their domain of expertise, they wouldn't bail on it but instead start trying to find an answer.
- entangld 14y ago
  It's a weird balance that people are looking for confidence and intelligence at the same time. Some intelligent people are humble about the subjects they lack expertise in. Doesn't looking for confidence carries a risk of finding people who sound better than they are?
  - epoxyhockey 14y ago
    I agree. If I am asked a question outside of my domain of expertise, I'm not going to BS around it. I will say that I don't know and start asking questions so that I can learn the topic. If you want someone to BS answers all day long, then you're hiring for a CEO.
    - khitchdee 14y ago
      Each one of your employees should fit the bill for future CEO. I see that as the point for hiring smart employees. It's someone who will pick up your stuff and run with it in directions you might not have thought about.
- thisone 14y ago
  That's also the sign of a bs'r You know, the person who knows nothing about a topic, but will talk for hours on it? There should never be shame in admitting "I don't know" and then following it up with, "but if faced with that I would..."
  - ams6110 14y ago
    What I have found to be interesting is that the more I learn about a technical topic, the less confident I become. Because I am now more aware of how much I don't know, or about how a small detail can make a big difference. I used to think I was pretty knowledgeable about web security. The more I learn about it, and about how easy it is to get it wrong, or overlook something important, the less confident I feel in my ability to implement a secure web app.
technotony 14y ago
I've heard the Singapore civil service, renown for recruiting smart people, have what they call the 'helicopter test'. Specifically they are looking for people who are just as able to converse intelligently flying 1000 feet above a topic as they are skimming the surface and getting into the details, and will specifically test candidates on both perspectives and their ability to fly between the two. Seems well aligned with what you are looking for.
- 98709870987 14y ago
  anecdotal
mvanveen 14y ago
> It's surprising to me how many candidates explain these algorithms' performance as if the hash table was a magic black box that instantly works. Here they've lost the tree for the forest! They know what hash table is, at least at a high level, but forget that it has specific implications. A lot of advice I've read about interviewing suggests that a candidate should leave answers open and provide room for the interviewer to poll for more info. I'm curious to know if the author goes out of their way to poll about the specifics of the hash table implementation? In fact, one of my favorite interviews in recent memory was a hash table discussion not unlike the one the author is hoping for. I was happy to find an interviewer whose questions balanced theory with practice and was happy to drive to a solution with them. However, I wouldn't have offered up this analysis without first understanding that this is where the interviewer wanted to drive the discussion. Every good programmer knows that premature optimization is the devil. The author may instead be trying to raise the point that its up to the discretion of the interviewee to see that the hash table implementation is the critical performance detail. e.g. gotta do open addressing here b/c our hashing function has weird edge cases where it collides all the time and chained hash would bring us closer towards a log(n) traversal on that edge case. However, in my limited interviewing experience, interview problems such as this are often designed to be open-ended conversation rollers moreso than where implementation specifics like this are able to jump out easily.
- junkilo 14y ago
  The whole "forest = knowing how a hastable works" is interesting! I'm trying to ascertain if the author's forest is a tree. I think there's good and evil in that statement. Good being that its groovy if you love what you do are curious. Evil in that he could be optimizing the wrong thing. Does every great software engineer have the inner workings of every data structure committed to memory? (I don't)
  - fyi80 14y ago
    If they aren't committed to memory, performance is far worse, as fetching from disk is 10-1000x slower.
- kevin_morrill 14y ago
Kerrick 14y ago
Wait, when did refer.ly pivot from being a startup helping people with affiliate marketing and social shopping, to an online magazine?
- changdizzle 14y ago
  i have the same question - i could have sworn just the other month when the betapunch post came out referly was still the referral tracking system
  - dmor 14y ago
    Referly CEO here - We've been headed in this direction for awhile, but just crossed over (with the new tagline) about a week ago. An in-depth blog post from me about the change and our new direction, plus a ton of stuff we learned, is forthcoming - probably this weekend if I can sit down for a few hours and knock it out. I'd really appreciate any feedback you have on the new experience, both as a reader and as a contributor (if you decide to go that far).
    - junkilo 14y ago
      lean ninjas at work.
    - grandalf 14y ago
      I'm curious about how YC and your other investors influenced the pivot. Did you get good advice? What was the dialog like? Was code refactoring involved? Did this change your marketing strategy?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
bromang 14y ago
the author seems to be in the business of creating fairly simple internet apps, so I'm not sure why his interviews would ever need to deal with the implementation of hash tables...
martinced 14y ago
In which alternate universe would the exact formula needed to compute the GDP be absolutely crucial to explaining what a liquidity trap is? And of course his "appeal to authority" consists in citing an article from the totally and utterly overrated Spolsky... Dismissed.
- aaronc 14y ago
  I don't understand what you mean. The author said "Despite his confidence, he couldn't even explain what GDP is, which was essential to his explanation." which seems like a perfectly reasonable complaint. If you are trying to describe a concept to me that I don't know about, I might ask you to explain to me a much more basic idea that you are referring to. If they can't explain the basics then all of the explanation of the original subject matter is wasted.
- kevin_morrill 14y ago
  I wasn't asking the guy an exact formula for GDP, but at least some definition of what it was trying to measure. Aaronc's point below is exactly my concern. As per appeal to authority, I didn't think I was asseting anything controversial. I doubt you are saying it's better to hire dumb people or just ignore intelligence, so I am confused what you're arguing with here.
saosebastiao 14y ago
This is confusion of intelligence and knowledge. I don't know how a hash function works...but that is a reflection of my experience, not my intelligence. I did not study to be a computer scientist...but I sure as hell can optimize your supply chain.
orangethirty 14y ago
I interview for maturity, discipline, and honesty. My codebase is made to be maintainable by most programmer. I dont include any magic and make sure that it is understandable. But I don't interview for intelligence. Because intelligence without the three factors I look for does not mean a thing.
fellytone84 14y ago
I agree with the value you place in intelligence and like how you qualify your essay as a discussion, but in perspective, your methods are simply imprecise and as you said, anecdotal. You humorously contrast your essay to a "randomized clinical trial," but to be matter-of-fact, these trials exist: IQ tests or their politically acceptable stand-in, the SAT. I guess what I'm asking is this: what's stopping you from requesting something like the SAT even if it's only for curiosity's sake?
justin 14y ago
"You’re looking for people who are 1) smart and 2) get things done" Number 2 is a lot harder to determine than number 1 in my experience. You can determine if someone is a good programmer by having good programmers ask them increasingly challenging programming questions. The hard part is figuring out if they are an effective and productive employee.

31 points by kevin_morrill 14y ago

Confidence: If asked a question completely outside their domain of expertise, they wouldn't bail on it but instead start trying to find an answer.

entangld 14y ago
It's a weird balance that people are looking for confidence and intelligence at the same time. Some intelligent people are humble about the subjects they lack expertise in. Doesn't looking for confidence carries a risk of finding people who sound better than they are?
- epoxyhockey 14y ago
  I agree. If I am asked a question outside of my domain of expertise, I'm not going to BS around it. I will say that I don't know and start asking questions so that I can learn the topic. If you want someone to BS answers all day long, then you're hiring for a CEO.
  - khitchdee 14y ago
    Each one of your employees should fit the bill for future CEO. I see that as the point for hiring smart employees. It's someone who will pick up your stuff and run with it in directions you might not have thought about.
thisone 14y ago
That's also the sign of a bs'r You know, the person who knows nothing about a topic, but will talk for hours on it? There should never be shame in admitting "I don't know" and then following it up with, "but if faced with that I would..."
- ams6110 14y ago
  What I have found to be interesting is that the more I learn about a technical topic, the less confident I become. Because I am now more aware of how much I don't know, or about how a small detail can make a big difference. I used to think I was pretty knowledgeable about web security. The more I learn about it, and about how easy it is to get it wrong, or overlook something important, the less confident I feel in my ability to implement a secure web app.

technotony 14y ago

I've heard the Singapore civil service, renown for recruiting smart people, have what they call the 'helicopter test'. Specifically they are looking for people who are just as able to converse intelligently flying 1000 feet above a topic as they are skimming the surface and getting into the details, and will specifically test candidates on both perspectives and their ability to fly between the two. Seems well aligned with what you are looking for.

98709870987 14y ago
anecdotal

mvanveen 14y ago

> It's surprising to me how many candidates explain these algorithms' performance as if the hash table was a magic black box that instantly works. Here they've lost the tree for the forest! They know what hash table is, at least at a high level, but forget that it has specific implications. A lot of advice I've read about interviewing suggests that a candidate should leave answers open and provide room for the interviewer to poll for more info. I'm curious to know if the author goes out of their way to poll about the specifics of the hash table implementation? In fact, one of my favorite interviews in recent memory was a hash table discussion not unlike the one the author is hoping for. I was happy to find an interviewer whose questions balanced theory with practice and was happy to drive to a solution with them. However, I wouldn't have offered up this analysis without first understanding that this is where the interviewer wanted to drive the discussion. Every good programmer knows that premature optimization is the devil. The author may instead be trying to raise the point that its up to the discretion of the interviewee to see that the hash table implementation is the critical performance detail. e.g. gotta do open addressing here b/c our hashing function has weird edge cases where it collides all the time and chained hash would bring us closer towards a log(n) traversal on that edge case. However, in my limited interviewing experience, interview problems such as this are often designed to be open-ended conversation rollers moreso than where implementation specifics like this are able to jump out easily.

junkilo 14y ago
The whole "forest = knowing how a hastable works" is interesting! I'm trying to ascertain if the author's forest is a tree. I think there's good and evil in that statement. Good being that its groovy if you love what you do are curious. Evil in that he could be optimizing the wrong thing. Does every great software engineer have the inner workings of every data structure committed to memory? (I don't)
- fyi80 14y ago
  If they aren't committed to memory, performance is far worse, as fetching from disk is 10-1000x slower.
kevin_morrill 14y ago

Kerrick 14y ago

Wait, when did refer.ly pivot from being a startup helping people with affiliate marketing and social shopping, to an online magazine?

changdizzle 14y ago
i have the same question - i could have sworn just the other month when the betapunch post came out referly was still the referral tracking system
- dmor 14y ago
  Referly CEO here - We've been headed in this direction for awhile, but just crossed over (with the new tagline) about a week ago. An in-depth blog post from me about the change and our new direction, plus a ton of stuff we learned, is forthcoming - probably this weekend if I can sit down for a few hours and knock it out. I'd really appreciate any feedback you have on the new experience, both as a reader and as a contributor (if you decide to go that far).
  - junkilo 14y ago
    lean ninjas at work.
  - grandalf 14y ago
    I'm curious about how YC and your other investors influenced the pivot. Did you get good advice? What was the dialog like? Was code refactoring involved? Did this change your marketing strategy?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

bromang 14y ago

the author seems to be in the business of creating fairly simple internet apps, so I'm not sure why his interviews would ever need to deal with the implementation of hash tables...

martinced 14y ago

In which alternate universe would the exact formula needed to compute the GDP be absolutely crucial to explaining what a liquidity trap is? And of course his "appeal to authority" consists in citing an article from the totally and utterly overrated Spolsky... Dismissed.

aaronc 14y ago
I don't understand what you mean. The author said "Despite his confidence, he couldn't even explain what GDP is, which was essential to his explanation." which seems like a perfectly reasonable complaint. If you are trying to describe a concept to me that I don't know about, I might ask you to explain to me a much more basic idea that you are referring to. If they can't explain the basics then all of the explanation of the original subject matter is wasted.
kevin_morrill 14y ago
I wasn't asking the guy an exact formula for GDP, but at least some definition of what it was trying to measure. Aaronc's point below is exactly my concern. As per appeal to authority, I didn't think I was asseting anything controversial. I doubt you are saying it's better to hire dumb people or just ignore intelligence, so I am confused what you're arguing with here.

saosebastiao 14y ago

This is confusion of intelligence and knowledge. I don't know how a hash function works...but that is a reflection of my experience, not my intelligence. I did not study to be a computer scientist...but I sure as hell can optimize your supply chain.

orangethirty 14y ago

I interview for maturity, discipline, and honesty. My codebase is made to be maintainable by most programmer. I dont include any magic and make sure that it is understandable. But I don't interview for intelligence. Because intelligence without the three factors I look for does not mean a thing.

fellytone84 14y ago

I agree with the value you place in intelligence and like how you qualify your essay as a discussion, but in perspective, your methods are simply imprecise and as you said, anecdotal. You humorously contrast your essay to a "randomized clinical trial," but to be matter-of-fact, these trials exist: IQ tests or their politically acceptable stand-in, the SAT. I guess what I'm asking is this: what's stopping you from requesting something like the SAT even if it's only for curiosity's sake?

justin 14y ago

"You’re looking for people who are 1) smart and 2) get things done" Number 2 is a lot harder to determine than number 1 in my experience. You can determine if someone is a good programmer by having good programmers ask them increasingly challenging programming questions. The hard part is figuring out if they are an effective and productive employee.