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Do Netflix's interviews have any trick questions (e.g. manhole covers) or coding questions that have nothing to do with the job (e.g. Write a function that can

Do Netflix's interviews have any trick questions (e.g. manhole covers) or coding questions that have nothing to do with the job (e.g. Write a function that can detect a cycle in a linked list)? I would never interview at major tech' companies because from what I've read of their interview process, it is all about knowing random Computer Science trivia and studying a book of trick questions. I like more traditional corporations/business who give you questions actually applicable to the job and your experience. Silicon Valley interviews are pretty insufferable, due to their pseudo-intellectual elitism. Companies should take their interview, and then give it to what they consider their most successful employees. If the employees wouldn't be "hired" then the interview process is completely broken.

mjr578 12y ago
As always, it depends on the group or team you are applying for. Some groups actually have a lot of applied computer science concepts and benefit from these type of questions. On my team, Web UI, we typically try to ask questions that pertain to the tasks they would encounter day to day.
jghn 12y ago
I feel your pain on coding questions which have nothing to do with the job, but this can be difficult. We recently tried to identify such a question, with a scope such that the candidate should take about an hour and a half to complete - where complete also implies documentation, tests, etc. We couldn't find an appropriate question which would be something that would be highly indicative of the specific work they'd be doing that a) Didn't require a ton of domain knowledge (we don't expect people to have that domain knowledge coming in) or b) Would be too specific to particular technologies such as which ORM type library one is using, which type of DB, what libraries, etc. Typically when I've seen examples of these questions where they are fully relevant they're in a space that's tightly defined - you're using say RoR, MySql, etc and candidates are expected to be proficient in those. That's not us.
CrankyFool 12y ago
I'm a hiring manager at Netflix and spend a bunch of time talking to other hiring managers at Netflix. I don't know anyone who does trick questions (most people I know find them anathema, and even Google -- famous for them -- acknowledges they're useless). I definitely do know some people ask the 'cycle in a linked list' question (or others like it); honestly, I don't see a problem with that set of questions.
- pja 12y ago
  even Google -- famous for them -- acknowledges they're useless When I interviewed at Google (four years ago now I think) there were no trick questions. Hard questions? Yes. But none that had "gotcha" answers that you'd either have to know already or be some kind of genius to come up with on the spot in an interview.
jspiral 12y ago
Can I ask for your thoughts on the cycle in a linked list question? I asked someone that today, and it didn't go very well. I gave him the hint to start with writing code to print out all of the children of a node, then when that stack overflowed, he was able to make progress. Do you think there are senior generalists engineers who would be great who could struggle with that question? Its hard for me to put myself in those shoes but I believe it could be possible. The goal of that question from my perspective is to watch them solve a problem that requires recursion. I've always found that people who do well on that stuff tend to get stuck less designing software in general. I do worry that it cuts out people who would actually be good. I'm very interested to hear thoughts on this from others.
- jerf 12y ago
  It depends on how you ask it. If you ask it as an exploratory question, it can be useful. If you ask it as a question where you're expecting the "right answer", it's awful for interviewing, because the insight is difficult to spontaneously come up with, yet easy to have already encountered online. Neither result is very informative. It seems to me to still be very poorly understood in general that the purpose of a question in an interview is not to see if the candidate gets the right answer, but to see how they function. (In those interested enough to read the discussion this deeply it's probably somewhat better understood.)
  - jspiral 12y ago
    The reason I ask the question is that I want to see if the person can handle thinking about recursion, and how their debugging process works, and how they built toward a solution. I always stipulate that they can use whatever brute force approach they want, and that i'm not judging on the algorithm. (Though we'll then discuss the big O complexity of what they've done and i'll ask them to brainstorm some avenues for optimization). The main drawback of this particular problem is that it's biased toward people with more formal CS experience who have probably seen more tree and graph stuff, when i'm not really trying to measure for that experience directly. I'd be interested in a problem that doesn't have that aspect but still takes up a fair bit of brain space when thinking through. What I mean by that is that when you're trying to build and debug something recursive, you have to hold in your mind some representation of what the stack will be at various points, and not everyone has a great aptitude for that.
brendangregg 12y ago
I did not get trick questions, which is good. The focus was on if we were a good fit for each other. I wanted to know as much detail as possible about projects I could begin work on, to see how much value I could bring, and to confirm that I could perform. We spent a lot of time discussing that. Netflix does like to hire senior staff, who often have previous public accomplishments they can refer to, and discuss in interviews.

mjr578 12y ago

As always, it depends on the group or team you are applying for. Some groups actually have a lot of applied computer science concepts and benefit from these type of questions. On my team, Web UI, we typically try to ask questions that pertain to the tasks they would encounter day to day.

jghn 12y ago

I feel your pain on coding questions which have nothing to do with the job, but this can be difficult. We recently tried to identify such a question, with a scope such that the candidate should take about an hour and a half to complete - where complete also implies documentation, tests, etc. We couldn't find an appropriate question which would be something that would be highly indicative of the specific work they'd be doing that a) Didn't require a ton of domain knowledge (we don't expect people to have that domain knowledge coming in) or b) Would be too specific to particular technologies such as which ORM type library one is using, which type of DB, what libraries, etc. Typically when I've seen examples of these questions where they are fully relevant they're in a space that's tightly defined - you're using say RoR, MySql, etc and candidates are expected to be proficient in those. That's not us.

CrankyFool 12y ago

I'm a hiring manager at Netflix and spend a bunch of time talking to other hiring managers at Netflix. I don't know anyone who does trick questions (most people I know find them anathema, and even Google -- famous for them -- acknowledges they're useless). I definitely do know some people ask the 'cycle in a linked list' question (or others like it); honestly, I don't see a problem with that set of questions.

pja 12y ago
even Google -- famous for them -- acknowledges they're useless When I interviewed at Google (four years ago now I think) there were no trick questions. Hard questions? Yes. But none that had "gotcha" answers that you'd either have to know already or be some kind of genius to come up with on the spot in an interview.

jspiral 12y ago

Can I ask for your thoughts on the cycle in a linked list question? I asked someone that today, and it didn't go very well. I gave him the hint to start with writing code to print out all of the children of a node, then when that stack overflowed, he was able to make progress. Do you think there are senior generalists engineers who would be great who could struggle with that question? Its hard for me to put myself in those shoes but I believe it could be possible. The goal of that question from my perspective is to watch them solve a problem that requires recursion. I've always found that people who do well on that stuff tend to get stuck less designing software in general. I do worry that it cuts out people who would actually be good. I'm very interested to hear thoughts on this from others.

jerf 12y ago
It depends on how you ask it. If you ask it as an exploratory question, it can be useful. If you ask it as a question where you're expecting the "right answer", it's awful for interviewing, because the insight is difficult to spontaneously come up with, yet easy to have already encountered online. Neither result is very informative. It seems to me to still be very poorly understood in general that the purpose of a question in an interview is not to see if the candidate gets the right answer, but to see how they function. (In those interested enough to read the discussion this deeply it's probably somewhat better understood.)
- jspiral 12y ago
  The reason I ask the question is that I want to see if the person can handle thinking about recursion, and how their debugging process works, and how they built toward a solution. I always stipulate that they can use whatever brute force approach they want, and that i'm not judging on the algorithm. (Though we'll then discuss the big O complexity of what they've done and i'll ask them to brainstorm some avenues for optimization). The main drawback of this particular problem is that it's biased toward people with more formal CS experience who have probably seen more tree and graph stuff, when i'm not really trying to measure for that experience directly. I'd be interested in a problem that doesn't have that aspect but still takes up a fair bit of brain space when thinking through. What I mean by that is that when you're trying to build and debug something recursive, you have to hold in your mind some representation of what the stack will be at various points, and not everyone has a great aptitude for that.

brendangregg 12y ago

I did not get trick questions, which is good. The focus was on if we were a good fit for each other. I wanted to know as much detail as possible about projects I could begin work on, to see how much value I could bring, and to confirm that I could perform. We spent a lot of time discussing that. Netflix does like to hire senior staff, who often have previous public accomplishments they can refer to, and discuss in interviews.