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posted by martyb on Friday October 05 2018, @03:21PM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday October 05 2018, @04:07PM (11 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday October 05 2018, @04:07PM (#744663)

    I am not extroverted by nature. But I can both explain some of the work I've done, and can demonstrate my skills to others. And yes, I expect any coder I hire to be able to do that as well, because they're going to need to be able to explain their thinking to me, to their colleagues, and possibly their counterparts at other companies.

    Sure, the code also speaks for itself. And I want to make damn sure that the code not only does what it's supposed to do, but correctly communicates what it's supposed to do so somebody trying to debug or maintain it has an easy time of it.

    The stereotype of a great coder being an autism-spectrum geek going off on his own and coming up with some sort of brilliant algorithm that no one else would have thought of is inaccurate at best and downright damaging at worst. I've worked with guys like that, and their stuff was decidedly not brilliant, but they got away with it because they fit the stereotype.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:17PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:17PM (#744669)

    The work for which you are trying to hire someone is NOTHING like the situation in which you put them in the interview.

    It's not just stupid for that person being interviewed, but it's also stupid for your as the employer.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:30PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:30PM (#744711)

      You need to be explain to be able to talk about your work and your field. You don't need to be an extrovert, dumbass. Part of being a professional is sharing your ideas with your peers.

      I mean, otherwise all you're going to amount to is an autistic retard in his mom's basement modding some shit FPS game that nobody's heard of.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:50PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:50PM (#744723)

        Indeed, the OP even put the word extrovert in quotes.

        I wouldn't hire you; you seem incapable of abstract thought.

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:07PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:07PM (#744736)

          Why would I want to work for an autistic retard?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:55PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:55PM (#744793)

            That's one reason, any way.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday October 05 2018, @05:35PM (2 children)

      by RS3 (6367) on Friday October 05 2018, @05:35PM (#744715)

      I see both sides of this, but strongly agree with you (AC), and have felt this way about HR / interview insanity most of my adult life. I've been there doing the work, and I've hired people. I remember a job (long ago) where the basically non-technical boss hired a tech to work with me. I remember feeling great fear and trepidation because during the interview they were laughing and joking and telling stories, and sure enough the guy got the job. It involved, among many things, logic circuit troubleshooting, mods, etc., and sure enough after being there a few days the very nice likable guy asked me to explain the difference between an AND and OR gate. Ugh. As much as it bothered me, I learned from it, and now more than ever "soft skills", personality, social skills, adaptability, are more important in hiring because "hard skills" can be taught / learned more than "soft skills".

      But I digress. One of the major points I agree with you (AC) on is the time factor. I'm very happy and able to explain my thoughts, methodology, analysis, etc., about technical work I do, but it's rare that I have to quickly come up with a complex solution, on a stage with audience, and explain it. Some people simply have stage fright. For much of my life I had a gripping fear of speaking in front of people. I remember for years being afraid to make phonecalls. I simply didn't have good command of language, and frequently got flummoxed in conversations. Standardized tests show I'm very strong in critical / analytical / logical / rational thinking, but weaker in verbal communication. I've been working on it and it's been getting better.

      All that said, I've been very good at technical writing, documentation, manuals, etc. But again, I can edit and correct, as opposed to being on stage where there's great time pressure (people get bored very quickly) and you can not take back misspoken words.

      tl;dr: If you hire based on presentation skills, you'll hire a good showperson.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday October 05 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)

        by sjames (2882) on Friday October 05 2018, @08:36PM (#744787) Journal

        The whiteboard/audience thing is a non-starter for many, including many of the best. A typical workflow is to learn what the problem is, mull it over for a bit (sometimes days), then it all comes together leading to the code being pounded out in a couple hours and debugged and tested in a couple more hours. At that point, I can explain it quite well though I tend not to use diagrams to do it.

        Naturally, for simple tasks, the above workflow runs much quicker, but would still result in an awkward people watching me sit and think with the sensation of my neck being breathed down.

        Use the whiteboard test and you'll select for people who will crank out a sub-optimal pre-mature design that more or less works today but breaks tomorrow.

        If you want to see if the candidate can explain something, have them explain a solution they have already done. However, be aware that they may not be able to explain every detail for non-disclosure reasons if you insist on something they have solved as part of their previous employment.

        • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:12AM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday October 06 2018, @02:12AM (#744917) Homepage

          This seems to be a two-minutes' hate thread for people with no social skills. Look, when somebody throws a brain-teaser at you, you respond quickly with something stupid if you don't have something smart to say. Seriously, it's okay to look like a fucking idiot there, just do it quickly and with a smile on your face.

          " How would you adapt to your job in zero-gravity? "

          I'd wear heavier fucking shoes. See how easy that was? That's an actual example I was asked during an interview.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @04:30PM (#744678)

    the op's point has fuck-all to do with explaining one's work(that's what comments and readable code are for). it had to do with the creation of a solution to a problem, or the code, and that process not being facilitated by being treated like a goddamned show pony by some dumbass suit.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:48PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:48PM (#744752)

    A coder who can't explain their work is useless. I don't care how well it works. If and only if the spec is for a black box with an acceptance test set is that ok.

    Otherwise the work is write-once read-never, and I won't take it.

    Good code expresses ideas both correctly and clearly, and the map of desired idea to code must be clear, or it's bad code.

    If there's a tricky one line hack, take the paragraph to explain it in comments. That's life.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:12PM (#744777)

      Good code expresses ideas both correctly and clearly, and the map of desired idea to code must be clear, or it's bad code.

      I would then ask the candidate to demonstrate code with those properties.