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from the boss-wants-to-see-how-you-handle-pressure? dept.
I recently applied for a job in Silicon Valley.
The recruiter had me take a battery of tests that measured my verbal, mathematical and visual aptitude. I'd guess it was a mini-IQ test; it wasn't a mini-MMPI. As a result of the tests I was invited to interview onsite.
At the end of the interview the manager declared that he wanted me to take some tests.
His tests were brain teasers he had downloaded from a random website. The brain teasers had nothing to do with the work I was interviewing for. He seemed to ignore the battery of sophisticated tests I had been subjected to, and to believe that he could do better.
What is the REAL purpose of using brain teasers during an employment interview?
Is it just to make the candidate feel stupid? Are any of these people qualified to interpret the results? Are any of them industrial psychologists? Or is this all about power and control?
Please advise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @04:18PM (4 children)
User facing or not, solving problems like that one are also known as "writing an algorithm to perform a necessary task" which can be pretty important as far as programming goes.
A candidate that is literate in n programming languages is not necessarily capable in writing something useful in any of them, whereas a candidate that can figure out the significance of the fact that wolves don't eat grain is potentially able to write useful software that solves actual problems.
The problems do not need to involve livestock and feed management because the idea is that problem solving skills are more important than in-depth knowledge of farming to solving the task. Those problem solving skills can come from having a creative mind, or from experience, or both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:33PM (3 children)
Most algorithms of any note are designed slowly, as the concepts and corner cases and percolate through the mind.
You know that such in-your-face, judgmental riddle-solving has ZERO bearing on the kind of work that you as a programmer from day-to-day.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @05:01PM (2 children)
I do know that this sort of spring-it-on-you puzzling has very little to do with job performance.
At the same time, I note that had this been part of the interview process when I got my first freelance contract in 1983 (to port software from some CP/M based BASIC on a DEC Rainbow into Applesoft for the Apple II) I might not have got the job, not having the critical thinking and creative skills to envision the solution, whereas now, after decades of (hopefully) improvement, I would probably see the answer to something like that at once--so it might be some sort of indicator after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:06PM (1 child)
That's why software sucks. You guys are tinkerers, not engineers.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @05:17PM
No argument there. I lay no claim to being an engineer. After initially declaring an Engineering major, I soon switched to Business and there I graduated.
If you know of a way to enforce engineering first, code second, especially in the wild, where most free software communities do their bad-engineering-code-tinkering, you would be doing the world a great favor.