> Why do you ask questions that don't influence your hiring decision? Every question influences hiring decisions. Some questions just carry far more weight tha

> Why do you ask questions that don't influence your hiring decision? Every question influences hiring decisions. Some questions just carry far more weight than others. Also, the answers often aren't as important as the thought process. All else equal, the candidate that knows Floyd's algorithm would get the job over the candidate that doesn't. But we're talking about people here, and it's really rare that all else will be equal. > Why ask a question when you have empirical evidence that you can perform quite well (I'm assuming you are a good engineer) without being able to answer the question? We don't tell the candidate "write out Floyd's Algorithm". We say "how would you detect cycles in a linked list". If they can't derive SOME solution, that does count against them (and I'll be bold enough to say they probably aren't a good engineer). Someone who derives a decent but suboptimal solution to the problem isn't far behind someone that actually knows Floyd's. In the end we're ranking people here, not objects. Many things factor into the final decision.