Everytime that I read these kinds of posts I remember an extremely ridiculous interview I have some years ago.
The interviewer, who was CTO presented the first problem: an architecture one, where to put cache, where a REST Api, etc.
At first I feel very welcome for this type of real world problem.
But suddenly the interview changed, the archiecture problem ended and he claimed that was time for something more "practical".
He said: "When I was a kid in my school we played this game on blackboard (something like a tic tac toe but a little harder), so first I will explain you the rules and then you have to write an algorithm to solve it".
He explained the rules and then we played some rounds on paper, he always won and everytime he smirked really proud.
At the time to write the algorithm I was really stressed and anxious, I was trying to write a solution for a game that one hour ago was completely new for me and the rules were hard.
I remember tried a solution, he of course completely destroyed it and even write one himself.
In an interview for a software development position, I was asked why manhole covers are round. I incidentally knew the answer and I responded without skipping a beat. The interviewer was disappointed because I gave the correct answer. He admitted that he asks the question to hear about the various weird explanations that people come up with.
This is also a warning sign to me, because it implicitly tells me the interviewer wanted to be the smartest person in the room. One should steer clear of these types of places.
That's one of those silly questions because there are so many right answers. My favourite is, "because the hole underneath is round." :)
It's so unoriginal though. If people want to see creativity, and thought process, they should ask unusual things, preferably related to software development.
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Everytime that I read these kinds of posts I remember an extremely ridiculous interview I have some years ago.
The interviewer, who was CTO presented the first problem: an architecture one, where to put cache, where a REST Api, etc.
At first I feel very welcome for this type of real world problem.
But suddenly the interview changed, the archiecture problem ended and he claimed that was time for something more "practical".
He said: "When I was a kid in my school we played this game on blackboard (something like a tic tac toe but a little harder), so first I will explain you the rules and then you have to write an algorithm to solve it".
He explained the rules and then we played some rounds on paper, he always won and everytime he smirked really proud.
At the time to write the algorithm I was really stressed and anxious, I was trying to write a solution for a game that one hour ago was completely new for me and the rules were hard.
I remember tried a solution, he of course completely destroyed it and even write one himself.
I remember this and cringe haha.
In an interview for a software development position, I was asked why manhole covers are round. I incidentally knew the answer and I responded without skipping a beat. The interviewer was disappointed because I gave the correct answer. He admitted that he asks the question to hear about the various weird explanations that people come up with.
This is also a warning sign to me, because it implicitly tells me the interviewer wanted to be the smartest person in the room. One should steer clear of these types of places.
That's one of those silly questions because there are so many right answers. My favourite is, "because the hole underneath is round." :)
It's so unoriginal though. If people want to see creativity, and thought process, they should ask unusual things, preferably related to software development.