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How Would You Move Mount Fuji?
Now comes a new book, How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers by science writer William Poundstone. Poundstone talked to various people who have been involved in Microsoft hiring, including those who were interviewed, and those who gave interviews (full disclosure: I worked at Microsoft for ten years and was one of the people he talked to). He includes a lengthy list of questions, and most interestingly for many people, he also includes answers.
In the book, Poundstone traces the origins of this type of question, providing some fascinating information on the history of intelligence testing. He then chronicles how a certain type of puzzle interview caught on in the high-tech industry. Microsoft was not the first company to ask such questions, but it certainly popularized it.
Poundstone explains that responding to a problem you can't solve could be thought of as the fundamental problem in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and then continues,
"The problems used in AI research have often been puzzles or games. These are simpler and more clearly defined than the complex problems of the real world. They too involve the elements of logic, insight, and intuition that pertain to real problems. Many of the people at Microsoft follow AI work closely, of course, and this may help to explain what must strike some readers as peculiar--their supreme confidence that silly little puzzles have a bearing on the real world."
It could be--or maybe Microsoft employees assume that since they were hired that way, it's a great way to hire (and complaints from those who were not hired are just sour grapes). Most developers I knew thought of AI as a pretty academic discipline, and were more concerned with putting a dialog box up at the right location on the screen than trying to pass the Turing Test.
Nevertheless, as companies seek to emulate Microsoft, the questions have caught on elsewhere. And as Poundstone put it, such questions have now "metastasized" to other industries, such as finance.
This makes the effectiveness of these questions an important issue. Poundstone first presents evidence that "Where do you see yourself in five years" and "What are you most proud of" are fairly pointless questions. In one experiment he describes, two trained interviewers conducted interviews with a group of volunteers. Their evaluations were compared to those of another group who saw a fifteen second video of the interview: the candidate entering the room, shaking hands, and sitting down. The opinions correlated strongly; in other words, when you are sitting in an interview telling the interviewer what you do on your day off and what the last book you read was, the interviewer has already made up his or her mind, based on who knows what subjective criteria. As Poundstone laments, "This would be funny if it weren't tragic."
Puzzle interviews could hardly be worse than that, but it turns out the evidence that they are better is doubtful. Poundstone shows how intelligence tests are on very dubious scientific standing, and points out that Microsoft's interviews are a form of IQ test, even though Microsoft does not admit that publicly. In his 1972 book of puzzles Games for the Superintelligent, Mensa member James Fixx wrote, "If you don't particularly enjoy the kinds of puzzles and problems we're talking about here, that fact alone says nothing about your intelligence in general". Yet virtually every Microsoft employee accepts the "obvious" rationale, that only people who do well in logic puzzles will do well at Microsoft.
There is another important point about puzzle-based interviews: although you would think that they were naturally more objective than traditional interviews--more black or white, right or wrong, and therefore less subject to interpretation by the interviewer--in fact, interviewers' evaluation of answers can be extremely subjective. Once you have formed your impression of a candidate from the enter/handshake/sit-down routine at the start of the interview, it is easy to rationalize a candidate's performance in an interview, either positively or negatively. They needed a bunch of hints to get the answer? Sure, but they were just small hints and it's a tough problem. They got the correct answer right away? No fair, they must have seen it before.
Given the ease with which the answers to logic puzzles can be spun, it is highly probable that Microsoft interviewers are also making fifteen-second judgements of candidates, without even realizing it.
Three years ago Malcolm Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article about job interviews called The New-Boy Network. Gladwell quotes much of the same research as Poundstone, and relates the story of Nolan Myers, a Harvard senior who is being recruited by Tellme and Microsoft. He has done a one-hour interview with Hadi Partovi of Tellme, and spoken to Gladwell, the author, in a coffee shop for about ninety minutes. His initial interaction with Microsoft was much briefer: he asked Steve Ballmer a question during an on-campus event, which led to an exchange of emails.
As Gladwell writes, "What convinced Ballmer he wanted Myers? A glimpse! He caught a little slice of Nolan Myers in action and--just like that--the C.E.O. of a four-hundred-billion-dollar company was calling a college senior in his dorm room. Ballmer somehow knew he liked Myers, the same way Hadi Partovi knew, and the same way I knew after our little chat at Au Bon Pain."
So Steve Ballmer, who obviously does not feel that he is choosing people based on traditional interviewing techniques, and in fact was one of the originators of the "Microsoft questions," is more prone to making fifteen-second judgements than he would probably admit.
The flaw, if any, may simply be in ascribing too much value to the puzzles themselves. The actual questions may be secondary: the company might do as well asking geek-centric trivia questions, like "What was the name of Lord Byron's niece?" That does not mean Microsoft is hiring the same people that an investment bank is going to hire. The cues they look for may be different: instead of a firm handshake and the right tie, they may be looking for intelligent eyes and fast speech, or whatever non-verbal cues ubergeeks throw off.
A Microsoft interview candidate will typically talk to four or five employees, and in general must get a "hire" recommendation from all of them. Even if the employees are actually basing their recommendations not on puzzle-solving ability but on a subconscious evaluation, it is unlikely that all of them will be subconsciously using the same criteria. Emitting the proper signals to satisfy four different Microsoft employees may be as good a judge of a candidate as any, and Microsoft may be good at interviewing simply because it tends to hire people that are similar in some unknown way to the current group of employees. If another company adopts puzzle interviews, they may discover that they are not hiring the smartest people, just the people most like themselves.
In the end, the best thing that can be said about puzzle interviews is that as a screening technique, they are no worse than traditional interviews. And there are some side effects: some candidates may be more prone to accept a job with Microsoft because of the interview style, and imparted wisdom about the technique may function as a useful pre-screening of prospective applicants. And of course, employees may get a kick out of showing a candidate how smart they are, although this can have a downside: How Would You Move Mount Fuji? has several examples of interviewers who seemed more concerned with proving their intelligence than in gauging that of the candidate. One former Microsoftie admits they asked candidates a question they did not know the answer to, just to see what they would do.
Two chapters of the book, entitled "Embracing Cluelessness" and "How to Outsmart the Puzzle Interview," attempt to help interview candidates who are confronted with such puzzle questions. The official advice is scarce: Microsoft's Interview Tips page advises candidates "Be prepared to think," which isn't much help, since presumably nobody is advising the opposite. Some of the recruiters who go to college campuses have their own little tips; for example, one recruiter named Colleen offers a quote from Yoda: "Do or do not, there is no try." Other recruiter tips include "Stay awake" and "Always leave room for dessert." Luckily, Poundstone gives advice that is a bit more concrete than that.
Microsoft puzzles can be divided into two types: those where the methodology is more important than the answer, and those where only the answer matters.
The "methodology" puzzles break into two classes, "design" puzzles ("How would you design a particular product or service?") and "estimation" puzzles ("How much of a certain object occupies a certain space?"--for example, "How much does the ice in a hockey rink weigh?")
Design questions exist because at Microsoft, responsibility for product development is split between two groups, the developers and the program managers. Developers write code: program managers design the user interface, trying to balance the needs of users with the technical constraints from developers. As Poundstone points out, while estimation questions and general logic puzzles are universal, the design questions are reserved for program managers.
The reason is that program management does not require the specific skills of development. Designing software is something any reasonably intelligent person can attempt, so the design questions are aimed at finding people who are really good at design. In fact one program manager I worked with told me that the best way to distinguish a potential program manager from a potential developer was to ask them to design a house: a developer would jump right in, while a program manager would step back and ask questions about the constraints on the house.
(Developers, meanwhile, are usually asked to write code on the whiteboard, an experience that program management candidates are spared. Books exist that discuss coding problems in more detail, such as Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job by John Mongan and Noah Suojanen, which covers many standard programming questions and even includes answers to a few of the logic puzzles that Poundstone addresses).
Poundstone does include some of these design questions and provides sample answers. But the "answer" to these questions is really the process involved: ask questions, state assumptions, propose design. That's all you need to know about them. If you are wondering why Microsoft did not use this logical procedure when confronted with the question "Design a response to the open source movement," but instead seems to have spouted off the first five things that popped into its collective head--that's just more proof that performance in interviews is not necessarily a great indicator of future job performance.
Another recruiter, Stacey, gives the following interview tip: "The best interview tips I can give you are to relax and think for yourself. For a Microsoft interview, be prepared to answer both technical and problem solving questions. Ask clarifying questions and remember to think out loud. We are more interested in the way your are thinking through a problem then we are in your final answer!"
That approach works for the "methodology" questions: design and estimation. What about the other kinds--the more traditional brainteasers? For those questions, forget your methodology. What Microsoft interviewers want is the right answer.
James Fixx, writing three years before Microsoft was founded, offers some advice that may hearten potential Microsoft recruits: "One way to improve one's ability to use one's mind is simply to see how very bright people use theirs." With that in mind, we can follow along with Poundstone as he explains the solutions to the puzzles that the very bright people at Microsoft ask during interviews. He certainly delivers the goods: 100 pages of answers. Unfortunately, it's not clear whether seeing those answers help you tune up your brain to answer problems that do not appear in the book.
In his book, Fixx spends some time trying to explain what, as he so delicately puts it, "the superintelligent do that's different from what ordinary people do." For example, trying to describe how a superintelligent person figures out the next letter in the sequence "O T T F F S S", he advises people to think hard: "Persistence alone will now bring its reward, and eventually a thought occurs to him." Talking about how to arrange four pennies so there are two straight lines with three pennies in each line, he writes "The true puzzler...gropes for some loophole, and, with luck, quickly finds it in the third dimension." Further hints abound: "The intelligent person tries... not to impose unnecessary restrictions on his mind. The bright person has succeeded because he does not assume the problem cannot be solved simply because it cannot be solved in one way or even two ways he has tried." This advice sounds great in theory, but how do you apply it in practice? How do you make your mind think that way? As Poundstone quotes Louis Armstrong, "Man, if you have to ask 'What is it?' you ain't never goin' to know."
Poundstone recognizes that the flashes of insight that Fixx describes, and that Microsoft interviewers expect, are more of a hit-or-miss thing than the inevitable result of hard thinking by an intelligent person: "What is particularly troubling is how little 'logic' seems to be involved in some phases of problem solving. Difficult problems are often solved via a sudden, intuitive insight. One moment you're stuck; the next moment this insight has popped into your head, though not by any step-by-step logic that can be recounted."
During interview training I participated in when I worked there, Microsoft would emphasize four attributes that it was looking for when hiring: intelligence, hard work, ability to get things done, and vision. Intelligence was always #1, yet despite this, Poundstone says that the official Microsoft people he talked to would shy away from the word "intelligence", preferring to use terms like "bandwidth" and "inventiveness". Indeed Microsoft's Interview Tips web page says "We look for original, creative thinkers, and our interview process is designed to find those people." No mention of the word intelligence or any notion that interviews are some sort of intelligence test.
In fact, although I think that most Microsoft people would consider the puzzle tests to be mainly a test of intelligence, they may do better at testing some of the other desired attributes. Psychologist and personnel researcher Harry Hepner once said, "Creative thinkers make many false starts, and continually waver between unmanageable fantasies and systematic attack." Poundstone explains that you have to figure out when your fantasies have become too unmanageable: "To deal effectively with puzzles (and with the bigger problems for which they may be a model), you must operate on two or more levels simultaneously. One thread of consciousness tackles the problem while another, higher-level thread monitors the progress. You need to keep asking yourself 'Is this approach working? How much time have I spent on this approach, and how likely is it to produce an answer soon? Is there something else I should be trying?'"
This is great advice, not just for a puzzle, but for a job, and life in general. So watching someone think through a puzzle might be a great way to see how they would tackle a tough problem at work--the "hard work" and "get things done" abilities that Microsoft is also looking for. As James Fixx writes in the sequel More Games for the Superintelligent, "While the less intelligent person, unsure of ever being able to solve a problem at all, is easily discouraged, the intelligent person is fairly sure of succeeding and therefore presses on, discouragements be damned."
Unfortunately, the typical Microsoft interviewer is not looking at the approach to puzzle questions as a test of perseverence. Someone who tries five different attempts might demonstrate more resourcefulness than someone who just "gets it"--but they would get turned down. Interviewers who ask puzzle questions are probing the "intelligence" category, and they want the right answer.
The last chapter of the book is titled "How Innovative Companies Ought to Interview" and deals with a soon-to-be-problem: How will the industry be affected by the publication of this book? Will interviews still work if everyone knows the secrets?
Knowledge of Microsoft-style questions is already out there on the Internet. Since the candidates who participate in the interviews do not sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, they are free to tell others the questions they were asked, and from these reports databases of questions have been built up. Poundstone includes the URLs of several sites, including Kiran Bondalapati's "Interview Question Bank", Michael Pryor's "Techinterview", Chris Sells' "Interviewing at Microsoft", and William Wu's "Riddles". These sites generally don't include answers, but certainly knowing the types of questions to expect can be an advantage.
Microsoft employees are aware of such sites. Once, when I sent email describing the questions I had asked a Microsoft candidate, I got a nasty reply from someone else at the company: Didn't I know that the question I had asked was posted on a website of known Microsoft interview questions? On the other hand, with no official internal Microsoft list of questions, some employees are undoubtedly using these sites to come up with material. Even within Microsoft there is debate about which questions are reasonable. In an unscientific survey I took of former Microsoft program managers, opinion was divided on the validity of some of the questions. A question described by one person as a good test of a candidate's ability was dismissed by another as foolish.
Poundstone does point out that some questions are silly and should not be asked ("Define the color green"), but he gives serious answers to others which I don't think are worthwhile either, including "If you could remove any of the fifty U.S. states, which would it be?" and "How do they make M&Ms?" Furthermore, I would argue that if an entire class of questions can be "tainted" by How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, they don't deserve to be asked in the first place. Estimation questions might be invalidated by the revelation that the way to solve them was to multiply together a bunch of wild guesses. The strategy of using a design question to to differentiate program management candidates from developer candidates might also go the way of the dodo. Is that necessarily a bad thing?
How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is worth reading even if you don't plan on interviewing at Microsoft. It has some interesting history, a few good Microsoft tidbits, and puzzles that are entertaining on their own. For those considering a job at Microsoft, the book may ratchet up the "arms race" of questions. Microsoft employees may assume that people interviewing have read the book--so if you are going to interview there, or anywhere else that imitates their style, you should probably read it too.
You can purchase How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
In true Zen fashion... it is not the mountain that must move, but you.
Or was it one spoonfull at a time?
Manhole Covers are round so they can't fall down the manhole. Simple.
:)
Standard lateral thinking interview question
I suppose something like...
/dev/fuji
umount
You'll have that sometimes...
That one is simple.. because any other shape would allow the cover to fall in.. But what about the others??
What kindof answer do you think you would say? What are you supposed to reference for the gas station question?
Does microsoft want me to say that I would assemble my blinds with the latest bluetooth spec and then controll it from my computer?
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
My answer - I have no tolerance for idiotic canned interview questions and the morons who use them.
Really, this has got to be the worst, most moronic question that can be asked. It really is a red flag that the interviewer doesn't have anything intelligent to discuss - you should head for the door. What's even worse are the moronic answers people give in a hackneyed attempt to make a weakness look like a strength - "I'm a perfectionist!!" or "I work TOO hard!!".
Then again, ask a moronic question and expect a moronic answer.
Which of the following would you most prefer?
A: a puppy,
B: a pretty flower from your sweety, or
C: a large properly formatted data file?
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
In one of his interview questions he asked me how many "weighings" I would need on a scale to find the one marble that was differently weighed from the other ones. I think the idea was for me to come up with some log-base-2 of n weighings. Since he didn't specify that the unique marble was specifically heavier (or lighter), he couldn't figure out why I needed an extra weighing for my result, until I explained my methodology to him.
Then he realized that he had presented the problem somewhat incorrectly and grudgingly said, "Well I guess you get that right, since I didn't explain the problem completely."
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
manhole covers, when they are round, are round because the manhole is round. manholes are often round because its an easy shape to make, is structurally sound, and is a nice shape for a person to crawl down.
... They're not red. Some of them are red, and the reason those ones are red is because they're red. Round manholes are round because they are round.
There are other shapes that won't fit down the hole they're covering.
And there are pleanty of non-round manholes, which means that manholes aren't by definition round. So the question is akin to 'why are cars red?'.
--Sean
Manhole covers are round to fit the holes.
Pffff... I'll sit back on a lawn chair with some beer and let plate tectonics do all the work.
Trolling is a art,
Make everyone that sees it sign an EUSA (End User Seeing Agreement) that prevents anyone from disclosing the current location of Mt. Fuji. Put out statement with new location.
Basically the whole point was to see how people would react under stress. Kinda important when dealing with a nuclear reactor 300 meters beneath the sea.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Interview Question:
1. Collect underpants.
2. ???
3. Profit!
What is step 2?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
He first calibrated against all of the regular employees. Then he used that calibration to benchmark prospective candidates.
I was also involved in the interview process, though my questions would be more like, "What is the directive that throttles the number of Apache processes."
The results of his calibration were pretty close to what we all expected. The candidates we interviewed sometimes surprised us, and one of our best hires (a Ph.D. physicist who decided that he wanted to do something other than physics) pegged the scale.
While it was a useful piece of information, however, I tended to find the technical questions, who really separated the interviewees, were more useful and provided a better correlation to job performance. The technical managers who interviewed the candidates (and who all did technical work in addition to their management duties) could tell inside of 5 minutes whether someone knew what they said they know on their resume and whether they had a "knack" for the work or not.
The "IQ test" questions generally did their job and enabled us to tell who was smarter than whom, but there are alot of really bright people out there who are not necessarily the best employees.
The CTO himself couldn't have answered the technical questions though he was extremely bright and could have pegged the IQ test. So I suppose it was the most effective way for him to evaluate folks. However, when interviewing for a technical position, the best way to evaluate any prospective candidate, in my opinion, is to have other technical people talk the candidate up on technical topics.
Then again, he was a CTO and I was not
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
RTFA
Microsoft was not the first company to ask such questions, but it certainly popularized it.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
When I first saw the heading "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?" I assumed this was an Ask Slashdot question. Finally, I said to myself, an Ask Slashdot question that can't be answered by a google search. Then I realized it was a book review. (sigh) Oh well, one can dream, can't one?
GMD
watch this
It's how WMDs got in Iraq, the Patriot Act was written for 'patriots', the RIAA lost billions of dollars to piracy, and how Microsoft became the most secure OS ever.
I rather use the zen-ish answer.
One rock at a time.
There's a lot you don't know about the problem, so engineering such a simple question is virtually impossible.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Just like they accept the "rationale" that a 2-month refresher course in secure coding makes up for 2 decades of stupidity.
The correct answer for "How would you move mount Fuju?" is "I wouldn't - it's fine right where it is." This is meant to be more than a facetious remark. Too often, we tend to add a feature because we can/think it will be nifty/were asked to, without reflecting first about whether we should. This is the number 1 cause of bloatware - coders not putting our feet down and saying - No, you don't need that! It's stupid, badly thought out, and won't work anyway!
No, I don't usually bring that up. But, given the topic, I think it is relevant.
Yes, I do well on various kinds of IQ tests. I also have some real world accomplishments to my credit. To get a flavor of some of my abilities, check out my personal web site. Some of it is serious, some not. The software side isn't fancy -- the point of the site is the content (words, pictures) not software. I have also done reasonably well in life. I make enough money to live indoors, sometimes do interesting work and have lots of friends. OK, I go in for understatement and I can be weird.
These sorts of tests can screen out the obviously unqualified. They also can offend those of us who are good enough for the job. I've deliberately blown such tests a few times in my life. Once I walked out without even taking the test -- the company made that bad an impression on me. The recruiter who set up the experience was surprised.
Hiring people is still a black art. Once you've eliminated the obviously unqualified, you might as well use some random criteria. Is there any alternative? Yes -- hire people who are already somewhat known to you. That way you get a fuller idea of what the person is actually like. It's easy (well, it is for me) to maintain an act for a few interviews.
These puzzle tests do test intelligence to some extent. They also help make sure that the person being hired is at least somewhat like the people doing the hiring. And are willing to put up with something the corporation thinks important.
Do such measures make me think well of a company? Not really. There are many things that can limit what you can do. Yes, a lower intelligence can be a handicap. So, unfortunately, can a dysfunctional corporate culture.
I don't think I would like working at Microsoft. Gates seems too much of an autocrat. Yes, it's nice to work with intelligent people. But it's also nice to work in an enviroment where you're reasonably free. I don't know how Microsoft stacks up in that regard. Their lack of innovation doesn't speak too highly for them.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
In the UK, at least, they aren't.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
... reminds me of the poster ... Eat shit - can 10 trillion flies be wrong?
Actually, the whole article sounds like a cross between "Management Interviewing Techniques for Dummies" and "Trolling for I.D.-10-T's" (I.D.- 10 - T error == idiot user, for the clueless)
About 20 years ago I tried to get a holiday job as a salesman and was handed a questionaire, many offbeat questions. Upon reflection, they were probably very interested with how quickly I could think on my feet, considering I would be confronted by customers with all questions (often unable to describe in the correct terms, what they needed versus what they thought they wanted, and so on.) A bad salesman makes the business suffer. (I was offered the job, but the cost of clothing would have eaten everything I'd make, so I had to turn it down :-(
One short-lived job involved an interview where the manager looked at my resume' and figured I was qualified and a good fit. He spent the rest of the interview joking about Monty Python. Nothing against MP, I love the stuff, but this should have been a clue that the guy was disorganised and had no idea what he was hiring me to for. It lasted two weeks, two weeks longer than I should have stayed there.
At possibly one of my best jobs, the interview ran through the usual questions, but turned in the last to opinions. What were my opinions on various things. Bit of a shocker there, but apparently I answered satisfactorily. Usually opinions are a no-no for a candidate to express in an interview, particularly strong ones. Best to find what the employer's expectations are and see how they fit his/her opinions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A Microsoft interview candidate will typically talk to four or five employees, and in general must get a "hire" recommendation from all of them.
This is lowest common denominator stuff. Your chances that at least one of them has a personality clash with you, finds you a bit threatening or other totally irrelevant judgements skyrockets.
Basically they're going to get the same guff that produce the same mediocre output that Microsoft does now.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
1. Claim that the Japanese are hiding weapons of mass destruction in Mount Fuji
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
As a former Microsoft employee of five years, I was never much into asking brain teasers and always asked more straightforward algorithmic questions when interviewing candidates. Regardless of the type of question however, the questions really serve one main purpose -- to see how the candidate thinks under pressure.
I favored algorithmic questions because, like brain teasers, you got to test the candidates ability to reason but you also got some information about their ability to write algorithms and/or actual code. You'd be suprised how many candidates professed knowledge of an alphabet soup of industry technologies and languages, but had a difficult time correctly forming a "for" statement in C. Programming questions were also nice because once they were answered they lent themselves to further exploration such as optimizations.
I was never particularly concerned about anybody getting the answer "right" or "wrong". Interviews are tremendously stressful for most people and it's often difficult to think very clearly under such stress. What was much more valuable was observing how they handled that stress and the thought process that they used in trying to solve the problem -- what questions did they ask? What mistakes were made and were they found? Did the candidate declare the solution to be complete even when it was terribly flawed?
I think the most valuable person is one who isn't afraid to admit that he/she isn't sure and is willing to ask for clarifications. The scariest candidates were the ones who just plowed right in when they didn't really understand the question. I always assumed that I hadn't formed the question clearly (I wasn't deliberately vague, though that could be interesting too), but I expected the candidate to recognize that the problem was unclear and seek to understand it better.
Following up with questions about optimization was really nice since it really lent some insight into whether they really knew how computers and compilers make use of their code. Of course, being able to optimize wasn't critical to getting an approval from me, but you can bet that somebody who demonstrated knowledge of how to write tighter code got a stronger recommendation than somebody who didn't.
I asked 'Whos Best?' as a interview question - I was looking to see how the candidate would react to quite a nonsensical question (though if you've seen Dougal and the Blue Cat, you'll know the answer).
Naturally there was no answer that was right - anything would do for me, and some people made something up, but 1 chap (a techie) completely lost it there - he just sat there with an expression of 'does not compute' on his face. He didn't get hired, but mainly because my boss at the time was in the habit of asking us to do completely useless and totally irrelevant tasks. If he didn't have the flexibility to cope with that question, no way would he have coped with my boss.
So, yeah, there are so many questions that are asked in interview where the interviewer doesn't care about a right answer - its *always* how you think, react and interact.
A few weeks in advance before your interview, you are given some class files and are told to write a solution that fits with the classes/executables you are given. So you download the files and guess what? They don't work. So then you call up and say "hey buddy, the files you gave me don't work."
If you make that call, you're automatically out. Your interview is cancelled. Rather, you're suppossed to work with what you have without prior knowledge that the classes you were given do not work.
Then if you survive that part, you come in for a interview, meet with a person for a hour, and get a 15 minute break. If that interviewer decides you are worth of going to the next interviewer, the first interviewer will forward what s/he considers your weaknesses to the next interviewer. People usually do not make it through lunch, so it gets relaxed at bit if you get to lunch at least ...
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
I had never thought of it, but now that you mention it can. The absolute value of the minimum integer is greater than the maximum integer, so dividing the minimum integer by -1 will overflow. I just tested it with gcc 3.2 and the result is the minimum integer again.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
There is only one acceptable answer: "because I enjoy programming." Answers such as "because that's where the money is" or "I wanted stable employment" or "because nobody will pay me to surf the web" are indications that they will be bad or mediocre programmers. People who like what they do will usually do it well.
Interviewer: How would you move mount fuji? ... time passes...
Interviewee: One sec
Interviewer: Well?
Interviewee: *BSD is dead.
Interviewer: You're hired!
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Manhole covers and Gas stations in not the point.
When these questions and other, better ones are asked, the first point of evaluation is the reaction of the candidate. Some will freeze, some will quess, some will actually become upset about the question. What is being gauged first is whether the challenge is responded to emotionally or logically. Whether the candidate knows the answer or not hardly matters.
Second; how and how QUICKLY does the candidate begin to work the problem towards a solution. If the candidate just quesses, he will be challenged about the answer to determine how he came to it. It is best if the candidate explains the process for breaking the question down into solvable chunks, or agreeable perameter assumptions.
At Microsoft, it is assumed that if you got through the phone screening and invited out for an interview, that you are smart. Brains are not in question at this point. What is in question, is how easy or hard it will be to get those brains working the way Microsoft prefers.
How agressive is the candidate towards solving the problem? How afraid was the candidate in getting the wrong answer? How did the candidate respond after answering rightly or wrongly? Was he sheepish or reserved, afraid to say anything else?
When I was asked these questions, I asked to use the white board in my future supervisor's office, and drew diagrams while explaining the answers I came up with. Major plus points. Microsoft is competitive in the extreme. They want to know if you can back up your ideas with force, and not be talked down because someone challenged you. What good are you to them if you are brilliant, but afraid to speak up?
This is why Microsoft gets a reputation for arrogance. Most everyone here is ready to defend their point of view to the death, until proven wrong. The challenge is leaving those battles on campus, and not bringing them home with you, which is all but impossible. Many great ideas get left on the table and forgotten, because someone lost an argument with a better debator. When that happens, you almost want to kill someone. I witness many occasions where discussions almost came to blows, and heard of a few that actually did.
Those interview questions are designed to find out how wimpy you are, how committed you will be to getting something right, and defending your point of view. Naturally, you cant determine 100% accuracy through the interview process, but it is a start.
And set up a cheap SEP field... oh wait, that's how you'd make it invisible...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I see interviews as much a way for me to evaluate the company, as for the company to evaluate me.
People need to realize they are unique and that they are selling a product (themsleves) - and the supply is limited. "If you want to buy me, what are yo offering?"
But on the other hand, if you scale your job searches correctly and only apply for gigs you are qualified for, it saves everyone a lot of headache.
Crapshooting a job three clicks above your last, or which clearly requires skills or credentials you aren't close to possesing just wastes everyone's time and turns the interview into a hunting trip.
My personal experience and skiils don't work well agasint resume filters - but then again, I probably don't want to work for a company that would miss out on me because they are so short-sighted as to rely on credentials or diplomas to evaluate me.
I interview well, and am a "real" person. If I get my foot in the door, the job is mine.
"You're either outstanding, or outprocessing"
Given Microsoft's track record with security problems, buggy code--such as infinite registration, and the famous blue screen of death, it's probbably not a good idea to ask Microsoft type questions with Software Engineering candidates because something isn't working.
Because remote root holes in sendmail, OpenSSH, apache, and samba, and linux kernel panics, are so much better than Microsoft's flaws? Sure, Linux never has a problem with infinite registration, but then again, they don't have any problems with registration, nor any of those ugly cash flow problems that registration would bring.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Easy. They 'cut corners' to save manufacturing costs.
"Is this not a rare fellow, my lord? He's as good at any thing, and yet a fool." -from "As You Like It", Act 5,
Ask me about structure layout, how to optimize a function, when and where I've used OO inhereitance to enhance a design and when it's a horrible idea to use OO at all. Ask me how I'd deal with an abusive coworker or a boss with a substance abuse problem. Don't waste my time asking about manhole covers and pretending your company is like Microsoft. You're not. Get over it.
It's reminicent of what I call the Hemmingway Effect. Ask anyone who absolutely loathes Hemmingway's writing and they'll immediately rant about the imitators who ape the original but do a poor job of it. Remember a few years ago when every half assed film student thought he was the next Tarrentino? Even if the original is any good (and I'll leave that an open question with regards to the folks in Redmond), the imitators are enough to turn mild dislike into full fledged hatred.
Microsoft didn't get where it is by trying to be the next IBM. Only a fool buys into the notion of being the next Microsoft. The puzzle cult is yet another example of this.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
how they hire people for their security group.
Interviewer: How would you make a critical, large, distributed application more secure?
Interviewee: Round!
Interviewer: Congratulations. Welcome to Microsoft.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
The blind people of Venice are human beings just like the rest of us. I find the notion of controlling them remotely not only morally repugnant, but a blatant misuse of technology. That Microsoft might have come up with this one is disappointing but -- sigh -- not such a great surprise.
Ada Lovelace
h tm l
p ut ers/19980911_Who_invented_the_computer
By some accounts his neice, by others his daughter, the latter of which seem more accurate.
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/ada-bio.
quote:
After she wrote the description of Babbage's Analytical Engine her life was plagued with illnesses, and her social life, in addition to Charles Babbage, included Sir David Brewster (the originator of the kaleidoscope), Charles Wheatstone, Charles Dickens and Michael Faraday. Her interests ranged from music to horses to calculating machines. She has been used as a character in Gibson and Sterling's the Difference Engine, shown writing letters to Babbage in the series " The Machine that Changed the World" and I have gathered her letters and writings in "Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer Though her life was short (like her father, she died at 36), Ada anticipated by more than a century most of what we think is brand-new computing.
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html
http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.com
quote:
Since we've strayed onto this topic, I'll throw in a story I've heard in a number of contexts. I have no historical support for any of this - it's just a story I've encountered. Ada Lovelace was a student (the first female mathematics student at Oxford, I believe, and a true genius at it to boot) of Babbage. Babbage was a commoner, and Lovelace was the niece of Lord Byron (an elevated commoner, and poet laureate). Byron was determined that his niece would marry well, and when Ada and Babbage met at Oxford and fell in love, Byron nixed the relationship, because Babbage was a lowly commoner, not well paid as an Oxford don, and had no real future.
-elf
"What is the directive that throttles the number of Apache processes."
Oh, this is classics. The better question would've been "There is a directive throttling the number of Apache processes - true/false".
The answer for the original question is "I'm not interested in working for your company as you expect me remember some junk, which I would normally look up on as-needed basis". Duh.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
How many open source projects that you know of use strange questions to filter out possible developers? It's not the same thing because most OSPs don't ask questions like those presented here. Instead, they wait for a developer to prove themselves.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Someone once told me about a job interview he had at Microsoft. This was circa 1992. One of the questions they asked him was, "Why is there no eject button on VCR remote controls?" He was proud of himself for knowing the answer. "Because if you're going to eject a tape, you're going to have to get up anyway to do anything with it, so it's unnecessary." Microsoft was pleased with his quick-wittedness, and he got the job.
Two things bothered me about this question and expected answer. One, there are VCR remote controls with eject buttons. (My parents had one at the time, and I thought it was great.) Two, there are valid reasons to want to eject a tape without wanting getting up. For example, you may have just taped something really good that you want to be sure not to tape over accidentally. Eject the tape, and your chances of doing that drop. Also, many VCRs take several seconds to eject a tape (I don't know, maybe they're checking to make sure they're not playing it at the time). By ejecting the tape from the comfort of your seat, it'll be all ready to put away when you get up there.
This story, to me, explains a lot of Microsoft's behavior.
I've gotten that one several times, and I always
have the same reply: "So the covers won't drop in.
Now, can YOU tell ME why manhole covers in Nashua,
NH are triangular?"
It's a pity we are losing those covers as the city
tries to rebuild its infrastructure. For those
not in the know, Nashua and one other city in this
country had manhole systems designed by a man in
the early part of this century who realized that
a three-point support system for a manhole cover
would minimize the "clunk-clunk" effect of an
even slightly warped round manhole cover as you
drove over it.
And what other city shares this distinction with
Nashua? Well, they've mostly replaced those old
covers, since you can't get them anymore, but that
town which shares this distinction with Nashua is
New York City.
And I've never had anyone at an interview be able
to tell me any of THAT.
How many times have people cried uot for a decent GUI to bebuilt into the kernel? Thousands! And that's because it's a good idea. But programmers are stupid and think that people want the network transparency which makes X slow.
Built into the kernel? You've got to be kidding me. Not only is that a bad idea, but I seriously doubt that end users really know what they're asking for. Most people don't even know what the kernel is, let alone have the knowledge to know what should go into it.
As for the network transparency - um... most users I've worked with over the last decade or so absolutely love the network transparency of X, and wouldn't live without it. In fact, people ask for the same thing with Windows and Mac OS environments. As for it being slow, you really need to do more research. As another AC pointed out, slowdowns in X are not generally due to network transparency.
Yes, these days it's best to do the following:
...
1) Post 3 job openings in a job search web-ring which is used by 100,000+ job seekers.
2) Collate the 8,412 responses to the 3 job openings
3) Spend 3 weeks finding the 7,000 or so applicants that haven't been coding for at least 10 years.
4) Have a meeting of the minds, let your 10 or so engineers sift through the remaining 1,412 on a big round table. Allow them plenty of leaway to reject candidates they don't like for whatever reason.
5) Take the remaining 300 candidates and verify that they have engineering degrees, or have at least twice as much experience neccesary for the job.
6) 150 left, verify those references.
7) 34 left, time for those phone interviews.
8) 10 remaining, first round of interviews.
9) 6 now, second round of interviews.
10) Ask obscure technical questions and judge according to how much they squirm.
11) Hire the 3 who squirm the least.
12)
13) Layoffs.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
for five years. In my time I interviewed lots of candidates, probably around 80 or so. Probably 1/3 were for summer internships, 1/3 for full-time, and another 1/3 were a special category of contractors interviewing for full-time lab positions (i.e. no programming, and this was mostly in 2000 when Microsoft decided to convert qualified contractors to full-time).
;)
I always hated puzzle interviews, and did my best to avoid giving them. Because at a certain level all you are testing for is whether they've heard the puzzle before.
I used puzzles to break the ice, just to get them thinking of something for the first 5 minutes. I always used easy puzzles (e.g. two containers, one 7 liters, one 4 liters, measure 6 liters exactly) so the candidate wouldn't get too nervous.
I would generally ask some CS or EE (my grad and undergrad respectively) theory related question. For interns, I would start by asking what classes they were taking and then ask them question related to their coursework.
I switched between two programming questions:
1) iterative and recursive Fibonacci
2) find the longest repeated letter in a string
If they got both parts of #1 correct, I'd ask about efficiency and then if they had any ideas about making it faster.
#2 has a couple of interesting test cases I'd have them step through.
Anyway, that was about it. I could go on about lame questions I've had while interviewing for other positions inside Microsoft
"It's already moving."
Something about it being Mt. Fuji does invite pseudo-Zen one-line responses, I'm afraid.
On a related note, from Joel on Software is The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing.
This reminds me of another interview question I got, "What would you do if you were chased by Big Foot, a Raptor, and a pack of wild wolves in the middle of the forest far from civilization?"
I'm not joking, this was an actual question for a project management position.
I don't know what answer they were expecting, but I answered, "I'd try to figure out who spiked my drink since there's no way that situation could be real."
He didn't seem amused, but personally, I think that was precisely the answer any good project manager should give. If marketing wants something unrealistic in an unrealistic amount of time, you have to stand up and say so. Pretending it's real and pretending to figure out how to do the impossible only hurts the team of suckers who has to work on your schedule and ultimately yourself (unless you can find another sucker to be the scapegoat).
It seems obvious to me (YMMV) why this kind of interview technique would lead to buggy code. These kind of questions attract people who like to solve odd thought puzzles in intriguing ways. The people who will show up best are those who will come up with novel solutions, because a new solution is inherently more interesting than a correct solution. This means that the kind of people who will perform best on this are those who come up with new ideas for existing problems.
New ideas for existing problems can be good. However, proven ideas that are known to solve existing problems are better. Why reinvent the wheel if you don't have to do so?
Perhaps what MS really needs is to come up with an interview process that finds people who can handle the boring and mundane, rather than the new and exciting. The kind of people who can slog through acres of code to find errors and inconsistencies.
In the article it mentions that the main effect of these kind of questions is to get a lot of people with the same mindset. Perhaps MS needs more people with different mindsets who complement each other rather than supplement each other.
I'd imagine the correct answer would be to hide behind Big Foot since he's never been known to kill people. The raptor will attack the wolves since Big Foot is not the natural enemy of the raptor and because raptors can more easily swallow wolves whole. Either the pack of wolves will win or the raptor. If the wolves win, they will be so full from eating that raptor that they won't be interested in eating you. If the raptor wins, it'll be so full that it couldn't eat anymore. Just in case either is hungry, you're hiding behind big foot so if anyone goes next, it's him.
See, there's a solution. It's called the "sick marketing against the tech support people and QA people" approach to project management. While their fighting each other, you can safely reduce the problem down to something reasonable.;-)
There are downsides to Microsoft's competive nature, but that is easily outweighed by the positives. You lose good people; Brad Silverburg is probably the best example of what can happen if you dont know how to fight as good as the other guy; but overall, it is a huge benefit to know that your company is staffed with people willing to back up what they say.
Contrast that with companies like Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Each headed by someone who considers himself a "street-fighter", but staffed with pussies, unable to get their ideas beyond the boardroom for fear of taking a risk. Sun and Oracle talk big, but that's all. No one even pays attention to the rantings of McNeely or Ellison anymore, because what do they deliver? Both have great technologies, that they cant manage at all. What does it say about a company, when your most important product(Java) was a fucking accident? These companies can only talk about what Microsoft does wrong, instead of what they do right.
The most unethical thing that a business can do, is FAIL. I would rather work for a company that has the occasional fist fight, then the company that has the occasional retreat or ass-whooping, courtesy of Microsoft. Say what you want about Ballmer, but that man is the heart and soul of the company, and were it not for him, Microsoft would be a shell of what it is.
The "distructive forces" can, and are channeled into productivity; something Microsoft's competitors could learn from. Everyone loves to bitch about our company, but funny thing, no one seems to actually get around to shutting up long enough to beat us.
Look at Linux. Great opportunity, with practically NO chance of beating Microsoft. Not because there are not some very smart people trying, but because too many people would rather devote their energies to being pissed off about Microsoft, then improving their own products.
Sure, lots of good stuff falls through the cracks, but a lot less good stuff gets lost here because someone didn't fight for it. Sometime shit gets out the door too, only because someone argued well for it. Microsoft is the only company that I know of, that takes HUGE risks in developing new products. Sun doesnt and neither does Oracle. They just flail their arms and bitch about Microsoft, then go to court and cry when all else fails. You dont win customer loyalty that way. "We'll ship this, but if it doesnt work out, we'll just sue". Yeah, that works.
Like I said before, everyone working here is already pretty bright, or they would not get through the interview process to begin with. What matters in not being smart; what matters is can you be smart and kick ass at the same time.
You dont have to like it.
What? You wanted it moved somewhere other than 15km down the earth's orbital path? You should have specified that in the original problem!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Not exactly a job interview, but a similar situation in a military context.
:|
I was on my Armoured Recce Troop Leader's Course, and I was being tested on Patrol Commanding in the Advance.
A Patrol consists of two light armoured vehicles. A student is in charge of each vehicle, and one of them is the Patrol Commander who is in charge. The driver and observer in both vehicles are instructors.
In the advance, you're out looking for the bad guys, so you take turns leapfrogging each other. One vehicle watches while the other vehicle moves forward to a new position of observation. If you encounter obstacles, the bad guys, etc there are a series of drills to carry out.
If you fail the course, you lose your job, no possibility for a do-over. The course was broken down into sections, and each section had a practical exam. You could fail it once. Fail your second crack at it, and you were gone.
So anyway, we're on my exam for Patrol Commanding in the Advance, and the guy assigned as my junior is a complete fuckwit. Couldn't find his own ass in the dark with both hands and a flashlight.
He takes the first bound while I observe, encounters a blind corner, and fucks up the drill. The I take the next bound, leapfrogging him, and that goes OK. He leapfrogs me, encouters some other obstacle, and fucks it up again.
In order to pass the exam, you had to do four bounds without error within a time limit, and by this time, we're starting to get close to the limit and there's only one good bound in the bag.
So I'm looking at him floundering around through my binos, and I realize that I've already failed the exam... but By God I'm not going to let this whole experience go to waste. So I hop out of the callsign, storm forward to his position, drag him out of the vehicle, and tear him a new asshole.
Normally, this Just Isn't Done - students don't yell at other students so that they don't look bad in front of the instructors. But as far as I was concerned, the damage was already done, and if I didn't do something about this numbnuts then the next poor bastard who he is assigned to as junior is going to get screwed too, so I have to sort him out right now.
Once I've finished expressing my displeasure and explaining how he SHOULD have been carrying out his job, I tell him we're going to carry on with the exam until time runs out - but with one major difference. Instead of leapfrogging, we're going to catapillar, and I'm going to take the lead.
This means that he drives forward to my position, and I move forward to find the next one. Lather rince repeat.
It's slower than moving leapfrog, and it exposes me to all the risk because I'm always up front, but it also prevents him from screwing anything up because all he has to do is take up position in the spot I just vacated.
We get two more bounds in and then time runs out.
So I'm being debriefed, and the first thing the instructor asks me is how I think I did. The answer is obvious - not enough bounds done correctly, chewed out another student in the middle of the exam... it's pretty clear to me I've failed.
But he passed me.
Up until the point when I went foreward to have words with junior, I had been failing miserably. Chewing junior out (when it was clear he needed it) got his attention, but didn't necessarily _mean_ anything - anybody can get angry.
Nope, what passed me was taking effective steps to solve the problem, by taking the lead and moving to catapillar movement to ensure I kept it. As soon as I did that, he passed me.
I was told that a leader who can carry out a plan effectively is good to have around, but a leader who can take a plan that is all FUBAR and turn it around is something else again.
There is, however, a rather unfortunate epilogue.
The message that junior got out of this was rather different. The way he understood what had happened was "yelling at subordinates will get you passed" so he spent the rest of the course screaming his head off any time he had command of anything. Icing on the top of a perfectly enjoyable experience.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
20 min ago my co-irker came up to me asking me for some weird proprietary cable. She needs to connect a floppy drive to a PC and it's a proprietary job, so the cables to connect it are all wierd. In other words, she needed to move Mt. Fuji, but didn't have the right tools.
The proper way to handle this is to step back and look at what the real problem is. The problem is not that the floppy drive won't connect, it's that a 1 MB file needs to be copied onto this Windows PC. It's not that we need to move Mt Fuji, it's that I need to see around it.
Ok, what do I have for copying this file? I have a parallel port, a serial port, an external CDROM drive, and an ethernet connector. The external CDROM needs drivers, which reuqires a floppy drive. The serial/parallel option might work, maybe I could set up SLIP/PLIP on my linux laptop and set up direct connect in Windows. Well, that might need cab files, which are not on this machine. What about the ethernet connector.. it will require a driver, but maybe that driver's loaded. Yes it is, and TCP/IP is also loaded. Problem solved.
Mt. Fuji is in the same spot. The floppy drive still cannot be connected, that hasn't changed. I found an alternative solution that made the location of Mt. Fuji irrelevant to my problem.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I can't believe I just thre away the modding I've done so far to post this.
14.) Profit!
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
The correct answer for "How would you move mount Fuju?" is not "I wouldn't - it's fine right where it is." that is the correct answer for "Would you move mount Fuji?" Nobody asked if you wanted to.
Do me a favor and double it!
I have been programming (managing, designing) for a living since 1976. I have hardware patents for graphics chips (and, yes, the chips where actually made). I have designed, built and sold disc controllers, SCSI (SASI) interfaces, and some other stuff. I know typesetting and word processing. I have produced software and hardware that has been named "best of breed" by Seybold.
In other words, I am a very experienced developer. I am not a business person; I have made millions and LOST them again over my career.
Now, where is this going? I put my resume in to Microsoft (back in '99), and received a phone interview. In the interview, I was asked two questions -- and one was: "If you take apart a clock to fix it, put it back together, and have some screws left over, what do you do"? I asked -- does the clock work? Answer: yes. I asked -- is it my clock? Answer: yes. My answer: put the extra screws in a bag and tape it to the back of the clock. Put the clock into service.
I was not asked about ANYTHING on my resume, which I found interesting. The other question was "Why do you want to work for Microsoft"? My answer: I want to be with an organization that has potential and is aggressive in producing results.
I was not invited for an interview.
I have wondered, on and off, what was the desired answer to the question?
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
If asked to move Mount Fuji relative to myself, I could just walk.
Double Pluss Good! You have simply convinced yourself that it moved. Fuji is Fuji but you are ours. Other correct answers involve name changes and crossing your eyes.
If you need to move by only a small amount relative to some other mountain, and movement is judged according to the centre of gravity, then moving one rock from the side of the mountain to the other side would shift the centre of gravity a little and so count as moving.
Again, you see clearly the Microsoft spirit, do nothing and say it is changed! Once you have decieved yourself, you can lie to others as well.
We love you! With that kind of thinking, you could pass five, fifteen or fifty M$ employees without earning a blackball. When can you start, bright man? We will ink a copy of our 500 page unilaterally changeable NDA's and employee contracts right away. Welcome to the world's smartest soon to be extinct company, where delusions of moving Fugi are matched only by visions of world conquest and neo-Darwinian madness.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hiring and recruiting must be one of the most dysfunctional processes in business today. I just accepted a new position after having been unemployed for two months. The ridiculous crap that I saw and went through with more than a few companies amazes me still. Technology companies, including Microsoft, routinely fail this essential business practice. Idiots get hired and qualified candidates are overlooked on a regular basis.
I believe that most companies would do just as well to do a quick screen of the obviously, grossly unqualified candidates, then do a lottery to select the person (people) for the position(s). I seriously believe that this process would do no worse than what a typical company does today and it would waste a lot less time.
As far as Microsoft goes, I'm completely underwhelmed by their "clever" interview questions. Just because you do something that's different and inscrutable doesn't necessarily make it intelligent, innovative, or even useful. If you doubt that, then just think about some of the Microsoft employees that have been in the news (not in a good way) the last few years. This interview/hiring process apparently passed those jokers with flying colors!
As you can see, job hunting has made be old and bitter before my time! I need more beer to cure the pain.
HOWEVER I stand by my statement that the vast majority of Microsoft people don't deal with AI issues and consider AI to be nothing they have to worry about. They are not writing spam filters or expert systems. They are dealing with pretty basic issues: you have an API you can call, you have an API you have to provide, fill in the gap.
My point was that a) Microsoft people don't spend much time at all trying to justify to themselves that the interview questions are effective, and within that, b) if they do spend any time, they don't use an analogy with AI. I thought the comparison to AI that Poundstone brought up was interesting, but I don't think it is generally correct (one of the reasons I thought it was interesting was because I had never heard it before).
I agree AI suffers from a "I don't know what it is -- but it sure as heck isn't anything that I've seen so far" problem among tech people. I think people have seen problems they thought could only be solved by simulating humans (such as playing chess) instead solved by brute force computation. So the excuse then is, "Yes I said if a computer could do that it would be AI, but now I changed my mind."
- adam
because manholes are round. duh.
Actually its so the manhole cover won't fall in. Its not like they wanted to spend time looking at every odd shape.
I thin it went something like this:
wavey line wavey line wavy line
[man glanes at co-workers paper]
"uhh Bob, if you make the manhole square, the cover will fall in if they turn it sideways"
"why would someone do that?"
"I don't know, but it is a hazard"
"So, then they deserve to have it happen"
"umm, you could just make it round"
"Thats stupid, Al"
"why?"
"just is"
"what are you, a software developer? just make it round"
[Bob grumbles ]
"Fine."
[6 month later--Bobs boss comes walking in]
"Bob, that was genius making those covers round, you're now VP of RnD"
[Al jumpsout of window]
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll be honest, and admit that those "balancing behaviors" are pretty much in short supply at Microsoft, although effort towards them does exist. There is very little compromise going on that I can see, but I dont see that as a negative. Products like M.E.and NT4 were the result of too much compromise.
The worst thing someone can do is to pretend to know something when they dont, because it's always too late when it's found out. Therefore, people ask a lot of questions, and try to keep a good reputation. Having a bad rep is the single worst thing, and impossible to recover from.
On a group level, failure is usually a management issue; post-mortems are routine to prevent it happening again for the same reason. People usually quit, before having the chance to be fired. It is really easy to find out if you suck, and need to go. You wont have to wonder.
From a corporate perspective, it's really just herding cats, no matter what people will tell you. You cant control large groups of smart people, they will either fuck up or succeed in spectacular fashion. If assumptions are correct, things go fine. If not; = Microsoft Bob.
Bottom line; competition works to find the people best able to fulfill company goals, not so much to find the very best solution. This works, because the best solution is not always affordable or timely. Market pressures determine whether you have time to be elegant, and you usually end up doing what works FIRST, rather than works best. That is just reality. Look at Server 2003. You could argue that it is what Win2K should have been. If we waited until now to ship Win2k, we would have lost market share. Win2k works fine, Server2003 kicks ass.
You are correct though. Combative Individualism is a very accurate term for what goes on at MS. Is it the best way? I dont know. It works better than the competition, that's for sure.