** UnhandledExceptionEventHandler :: OFFICIAL LC / CHATTER THREAD **

[NoahSD]

Originally Posted by clowntable

I'm reading "A new kind of science" on the side. Pretty interesting but the author seems to be quite fond of himself (got the same impression watching some talks he gave)

Yeah. Wolfram's ego is probably the single most blatant characteristic of any human being.

[NoahSD]

Originally Posted by tyler_cracker

it seems to me that interviews are the worst way to hire someone except for all the other ways.

Well said.

There really isn't much substitute for meeting somebody, and if you're gonna meet the guy, you might as well ask them questions. The questions will end up being stupid, but meh, you'll actually come out of the situation knowing a lot more about the person than you would by reading a resume.

In particular, you'll do a little bit of screening out for people who are so horrible that they end up being an ******* to the interviewer....

[clowntable]

Originally Posted by kerowo

The more you argue your point the less experience you appear to have in an actual workplace. I don't want someone who can't speak trying to tell me how their code works, it makes me feel uncomfortable and I still can't support their code.

not-so-ninja-edit to add:
The idea that everyone who does poorly in an interview will be fine in a normal work environment is also pretty lol, an interview is a nice simulation of a pressure environment. Not being able to handle one is good information to know for lots of jobs.

Not to mention that you'll face way more idiotic customers than these interviewers could ever pretend to be.

There's also the "seriously how hard is it to be prepared for this stuff" aspect. I expect programmers to read stuff loosely related to work in their free time so I kind of expect a decent programmer to read some sort of "interview questions 101" primer.

[e i pi]

How does digg (now linkedin?) have a patent on an upvoting system?

I don't know anything about patent law but how is that not "obvious"?

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/c...6_mn_not_500k/

[jjshabado]

Originally Posted by MinusEV

FFS... really...? Still..?

Whatever dude. Way to ignore the rest of my post that pointed out why what you're saying is ridiculous.

A better way of interviewing seems to be to look at how people act on a programming forum...

[MinusEV]

Originally Posted by clowntable

There's also the "seriously how hard is it to be prepared for this stuff" aspect. I expect programmers to read stuff loosely related to work in their free time so I kind of expect a decent programmer to read some sort of "interview questions 101" primer.

So then what's the point of the interview at all? If it's so easy all anyone has to do is to read a quick primer to do well, then it sounds like it's nothing more than a symbolic act?

Programming/system development is an area where a pretty big pool of the work force are going to be introverts. A lot of introverts are by their nature going to do poorly at interviews - and it has nothing to do with what they know or how good they are/can be at their job.

Originally Posted by jjshabado

Whatever dude. Way to ignore the rest of my post that pointed out why what you're saying is ridiculous.

A better way of interviewing seems to be to look at how people act on a programming forum...

The rest of your post was exactly the same point repeated over and over... how will they deal with managers? How will they deal with executives? How will they deal with cllients? These are not separate points "pointing out why what you're saying is ridiculous" - they're the same point repeated over and over and completly ignoring my multiple previous posts saying that my point is that doing poorly in an interview situation does not mean much when it comes to deciding how that person will do in an actual work situation.

Also, if you feel you have to include pointless insults in your posts, at least make them make some sense or at least be somewhat clever/amusing.

[jjshabado]

Ok.

[YouR_DooM]

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

[jjshabado]

Originally Posted by e i pi

How does digg (now linkedin?) have a patent on an upvoting system?

I don't know anything about patent law but how is that not "obvious"?

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/c...6_mn_not_500k/

There's tons of ridiculous patents. One click shopping. Dynamically loading content on a web page, etc. etc.

[jjshabado]

Originally Posted by YouR_DooM

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Sadly, I think you're a couple posts too late. My "Ok" is my, I no longer care about this argument.

[clowntable]

Also what's the right answer? "Since Mt.Fuji is clearly an object I just call the .move() method on it and pass the distance"?

doing poorly in an interview situation does not mean much when it comes to deciding how that person will do in an actual work situation.

Someone that does well in an interview is more likely to do well in actual work situations imo. Assuming both did equally well on the programming related parts.
The questions people usually call idiotic and irrelevant are usually questions you can prepare for pretty well. And even if you have no idea or think the question is just plain dumb there's really nothing wrong with being nice about it.

Is it really that unlikely that someone like the first blog poster will just be an ass when some new intern asks him a simple question? Or maybe when some coworker asks him something he deems trivial. Or maybe if he gets some task to finish that may seem like moving Mt.Fuji to him he'll just argue endlessly instead of finding a solution?

[jjshabado]

Originally Posted by clowntable

Also what's the right answer? "Since Mt.Fuji is clearly an object I just call the .move() method on it and pass the distance"?

I actually think the answer that tyler posted is "the right answer" or at least the right approach. You show that you can think critically and that you know how to object to stupid projects in the right way. I think a good interviewer (who for some reason was forced to ask a stupid question) would be able to take that candidate and run with the question.

[MinusEV]

Btw - for those interested the book 'Are you smart enough to work at Google?' deals with these kinds of interview-questions, giving a lot of examples and explaining different interpretations and "correct" answers as well as the general thinking behind this process. Some are nonsensical like the mt. fuji one, like "you are shrunk to be an inch tall and thrown into a blender that will start in 2 minutes - what do you do?", but a lot of them are interesting and good puzzles also.

[NoahSD]

Originally Posted by e i pi

How does digg (now linkedin?) have a patent on an upvoting system?

I don't know anything about patent law but how is that not "obvious"?

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/c...6_mn_not_500k/

There's nothing in patent law that says that you can't patent something obvious.

However, that vague description of that patent might suggest that it's a lot stronger than it is.

[candybar]

Originally Posted by greg nice

disagree completely. the douchiness is appropriate given the sht that was pulled

Hi Greg,

In my experience, this sort of response comes from defensiveness. No one responds this way simply because he thinks a question doesn't do a good job of distinguishing between good and bad candidates. Very few interview questions survive this sort of strict scrutiny and almost any question that gets the candidate talking has the potential to help the interviewer.

The candidate's ego was obviously threatened by this question and he's trying to soothe his ego by trying prove that the question and the interviewer are stupid. This is a natural response - I'm not good at X, but I'm a smart/good/valuable person, thus X is not a good test - but inability to deal with this natural response to present a more constructive attitude does not bode well for the candidate's ability to work with anyone other than his mother. This is especially terrible attitude for a technical hire, because technical situations are full of ego traps of this kind.

if you play, you are immediately in submissive mode. but maybe thats what they want, someone to follow orders, and if you don't play, then its an easy way to filter candidates.

This is an overly defensive way to frame the situation (answering questions -> submissive) but if you do follow this frame, yes, having an ego that doesn't allow you to be in "submissive mode" is going to be a problem in any organization. When you join an organization, the hope, on the part of the organization, is that you will subordinate your own personal goals to the goals of the organization, when inevitable conflicts arise.


Hi MinusEV,

Originally Posted by MinusEV

how will they deal with managers? How will they deal with executives? How will they deal with cllients?

How do you assess these skills? Say you're a hiring manager and you have to hire people. What would you do?

my point is that doing poorly in an interview situation does not mean much when it comes to deciding how that person will do in an actual work situation.

But interviews are all you have. Doesn't any attempt to judge the candidate degenerate into an interview situation? Good interviewers instinctively know what instances of "doing poorly" in interview situations correlate with "doing poorly" in work sitautions and what instances of "doing poorly" don't. No one thinks how you act in interviews is a mirror image of how you act at work. But how you act in interviews does give the interviewer an idea of what kind of person you are.

I'd argue that the main problem with interviews isn't that they don't tell you much about how the person will do in an actual work situation, but that interviewers' agenda don't always line up with the organization's.