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Blowing Up a Pointless Job Interview
Nemo the Magnificent writes "Ever been asked a question in a job interview that's just so abysmally stupid, you're tempted to give in to the snark and blow the whole thing up? Here are suggested interview-ending answers to 16 of the stupidest questions candidates actually got asked in interviews at tech companies in 2013, according to employment site Glassdoor. Oil to pour on the burning bridges."
"Do you have any weaknesses?"
"Yes, I hate stupid interview questions"
Somewhat interesting concept, but those were really lame.
Then again, the closest I have done was when asked if I had any experience with clearcase or rhapsody. My response was something along the lines of "yes, but I've been trying to put that behind me".
How to successfully end an interview.
Spud's interview [NSFW]
None of the ones in the article even come close.
http://xkcd.com/1293/
"I would be equipped to become a pizza delivery woman."
ahahahaha blatant transphobia on a tech blog what a surprise
wait it's not a surprise at all
The ones I hate are the ones designed to make people angry for "psychological" reasons (they really just want to bait people), although nobody who has even read a book on the topic is involved. If it's not NASA, and even if it is and you haven't been warned that they would be such stuff, then it's not on. When the military do that sort of stuff it's not completely out of the blue.
Crazy enough to do so? Hell. No. The vast majority of tech positions in my area are contract-to-hire. If I blew up every interview that involved stupid questions, I'd be blacklisted from every staffing agency in the state.
When you are young, desperate, and eager to please, they ask you all the stupid questions. Their apparent motive is just to fuck with you and assert dominance.
When you are older and have a resume, they don't bother with the stupid questions. They just ask you about code and projects.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
If you're that certain you do not wish the job, don't make peoples day any more difficult by being a dickhat. Just politely end the interview saying you are no longer interested in the position.
That kind of response sends the message loud and clear that it was their interview that drove you away and may push them to explain why they were asking such shitty questions. If nothing else it avoids creating an instant adversarial position where your indignation is written off as "you being a dickhat" not that there might be something wrong with their interview process.
We're adults, grow the hell up and stop assuming anyone gives a crap if you act like a smartypants.
My response was never, stress gets no work done, I budget for it after the issue resolution.
My response did not change inspite of the question being asked 3 more times, the interviewer got stressed and ended the interview. Interviews are crappy, if the manager does not know what the deliverable is
For director-level types, not engineers ("How does the Internet work?"), especially with follow-ups to nail someone who has googled and memorized the canned "answer".
This could filter out those who have the requisite charisma and social skills but who don't have a clue about the technology.
Q: "What's your least favorite thing about humanity?"
A: "You"
Can't believe the interviewee didn't think of that one.
just answer the questions like you're talking to another human, because you are.
You're too elitist if you think someone's question is stupid. Not all people are geniuses, and most employees aren't trained in interviewing.
Plus the question might be weird on purpose to see how you react. Don't be an ass.
The clouds talk to each other though the use of touch.
We receive the data via a stream of electricity in thunderstorms.
Its all in the cloud, so simple, everyones happy.
first post fail.
"What professional achievement are you the most proud of?"
First post.
was how I ended a skype interview for a job in New Zealand.
"you Western Australian's eat gold and shit diamonds, why would want to come to some backwater like (name of city) for half the pay"
OK so the organisation was losing a lot of their staff left right and centre to mining companies in the Australian city I live in but do you really want to work for someone who talks down one of the most beautiful rural cities in the world
most of our employees have to do trouble shoooting at clients, so we give them a test early in the interview
The candidate is seated in aroom with a secretary type person, who after a few minutes, says, hey are you a tech guy - my printer isn't working
The candidates who say you need to download linux to install drivers don't get hired
The ones who say, hey, no problem, the printer was unplugged, get to the next stage
I actually thought a lot of the 16 questions were pretty good...fuzzy tennis balls at xerox and how does the internet work at akamai are ok questions, depneding on the job
This post is as pointless as the Interview questions.
You want to be snarky? Go ahead - enjoy it and feel good about yourself. But remember that the professional world in which you play is a VERY small one, and word gets around.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I would be reluctant to blow up an interview just because there aren't that many people in my field, and no matter how ridiculous this particular interview, I might run into these people in some other environment where I *wanted* the job.
But this calls to mind a time I was trying to get an associate a job, who had been out of work more than two years. I had aced the interview, but we could not agree on price (they were offering a little less than what I was currently making) so we parted on good terms. I got in touch with them later, told them I personally vouched for another IT professional who would be a good fit for the position. They called him in for the interview. A few questions in, this happened:
"Describe a good work day."
"Well, I suppose that'd be a day when I haven't killed anyone."
Interview over.
Sigh. You just can't help some people.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
But then I'm well known for not suffering fools quietly, so I don't think anyone would dare. However, I also don't apply to places reported to indulge in such BS.
Truth is I'd probably be so astonished I'd just stare. The best response to fools is silence.
The best way to light the path to your future is by burning the bridges of your past.
"How would you move a mountain using only a spoon?
If you were in a box, how would you think outside it?
Last question: What is the difference between a duck?"
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Remember that a job interview is a 2-way transaction - you should be checking out the company and staff as carefully as they are checking you out. Put them on the ropes, ask them questions that make *them* uncomfortable, see how they handle it. "How has the company stock been doing?" Whatever the answer (Good/Poor), ask "Why?". Maintain eye contact and look for shifty glances. Keep your bullshit detector on high sensitivity. "What things does your competitor do better than your organization, and what is your plan to change them?"
It's one thing to be new to the profession and just want to steer your way to a first job. But later, after you've worked through a couple crappy companies, you'll see that it is important to be on the offensive during the interviews. Walk in like a boss and probe their weaknesses. Any organization worth their salt should be impressed at your command of the situation. And if they really were looking for a meek wallflower that would spout the most PC response - do you really want to work there? And if the responses from the interviewer are stilted and confused, do you really want them as a co-worker?
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I once was asked the old job interview chestnut, "What is your greatest weakness?" I knew that you were supposed to lie and answer that one with a strength such as "I'm just too honest and hard-working." However, that technique always seemed too transparent to me, and I'm not a good liar. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to answer it honestly. After that, the interviewer took a breath and said, "I appreciate your honest answer."
I took that as a bad sign at the time, but everything else went well so I was hopeful overall. Ultimately, though, I got turned down for the job. I've always suspected that my honest answer was the reason. Maybe they were looking for a gifted liar. But the job opening was for a software engineer, not a used car salesman, so that seems an odd qualification.
Q: "If you were trapped alone on a desert island, what three books would you want to have with you?"
A: "Escaping Desert Islands for Dummies, How to Swim With the Sharks (Without Being Eaten Alive), and Teach Yourself Stupid Interview Questions in 24 Hours."
I once got asked a question which I found hurtful and offensive, and felt tempted to 'blow up' the interview at that point. Fortunately, I resisted the temptation. As it turns out, the question was his way of introducing the next thing, which was telling me that he was offering me the job.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Once when it looked pretty much gone, and the interviewer repeatedly kept implying OOP was about GUI's, I corrected him, which brought the interview to a quick(er) end. Probably was bad form, but it felt cathartic. Sometimes you don't want to work for complete idiots, even though it was a tough market at the time.
Table-ized A.I.
Best. Interview question. EVER.
"Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis?"
Former dessert company executive faked his death and comes back under assumed identity to lead a new life. He is willing to start at the bottom.
Reggie Perrin's job Interview
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I once was given a "security" questionnaire that asked, "Have you ever had sex with animals or office equipment?"
I was very tempted to write in, "Do hair-dryers count?".
Table-ized A.I.
You can be selective with who you work with, but don't burn bridges. If the interviewer is not capable of accessing the position or your capabilities, then the politely and assertively ask to speaking with someone who can.
Interviewers all too often forget that this is a two-way process. I am evaluating them as much as they are evaluating me. In a recent interview a manager (not the hiring manager) really started to put the screws to me about my job history, really harping on how long I'd been at certain places that are just plain normal these days. Engineering has become somewhat nomadic, moving on as contracts dry up, or after the place gets bought up to be run like a puppy mill.
My takeaway was they were out of touch the industry they were looking to break into, and further probing by me bore this out. At that point I was still smart enough not to "blow up" the interview, as as others have noted, niche industries are alarmingly small and interbred. You never know who you will run across again down the road.
During an interview the HR guy asked me 2 questions that had the rest of the folks at the table offer me the job...
Q1: What 2 words best describe you?
A1: I would have to go with "Springer Guest"... Wait... the judge said "Repeat Offender"
Q2: What is your greatest weakness?
A2: I have a great distain for trick questions. I know you only want me to say something positive about myself because the negative thing about me is somehow a positive. But I am pretty grumbly hateful about it instead of humbly grateful.
I had a flame... but she had a fire.
Interwebs flow through Intertubes, until the little termite cops redirect some traffic to your laptop. Termite traffic cops hang out in Interpoles, those tall wooden poles with wires all over them.
Table-ized A.I.
I commend your professionalism. I do believe if asked why I would take a given job given I "eat gold and shit diamonds", I couldn't stop myself from answering "constipation".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
var pizzaRadius = 1; // one foot // 3.14... // pi * r^2, or 3.14 sq.
var pizzaPi = Math.PI;
var pizzaArea = pizzaPi * pizzaRadius * pizzaRadius;
well. I know that i'm not gonna hire you.
The only thing you learn about an interviewee by asking them things like the tennis ball or manhole cover questions is whether or not they are a good candidate for a game show.
Obscure trivia is obscure trivia. It is meaningless.
Attempting to provoke an emotional response via trick questions or questions designed to insult or get the interviewee to take the bait and say something offensive is also dishonest, unless you are administering a voigt-kompf test.
Fortunately I have only ever had to interview for a job during one time in my life, and it was an employee's market so it was easy.
The one oddball question I had was actually a cool one. "Which Star Wars film is the best one" This was before the new ones came out. Any die hard old school star wars fan will typically agree that Empire Strikes Back is the best one, and I answered correctly. I was given a job offer but turned it down and took a job with another company that I really wanted to work for.
The Star Wars question was actually job related, it was a visual effects company and they wanted people that were also fans and had an appreciation of prior art.
Most of my work has come from networking, or running my own businesses. I can't imagine anything more soul sucking than having to submit hundreds of resumes and sit through dozens of interviews.
If you find yourself in this question just say something along the lines: "This interview is over. I am only interested in companies that have a passion for quality and making a difference as opposed to playing pointless games."
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I haven't had to interview too many people at my current job (boo, federal budget cuts), but when I did, on 80% or so of people, I asked the question:
"Star Wars or Star Trek?"
The thing is, I didn't really care which one you picked, so long as you could explain why. And if you picked something else (Firefly, Battlestar Glactica, Dr. Who, Red Dwarf, etc.) and could give a passionate answer, that's even better. The only wrong answer is the 'I'm not going to pick one or the other because I don't want to offend anyone' unless you could really impress me some creativity in the process.
And for anyone who complains that there might be people who haven't seen any of 'em (I still know some people who are almost 30 and qualify) ... I work at a NASA center ... if you haven't seen any of the TV shows I've listed, there's a *really* high probability that you wouldn't fit in.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Younger applicants (or simply those with less relevant employment history) are often asked questions that are abstract or seemingly unrelated to the position.
The reason for this, if the interviewers aren't trendy or trivial idiots, is to ascertain how the applicant thinks, approaches problem solving, or might work in a group setting. It's the reaction to the question and the thought process they display coming up with and defending an answer that you have to pay close attention to.
With little employment history, 80% or more of what they end up working with day to day will be learned or refined on the job. So it's important to understand how they will deal with this shift from another organization or academic setting into your group with your unique workload.
99 weeks of unemployment, also known as three weeks shy of two years.
You may be somehow unable to find a job in two years, but it has nothing to do with jobs not being available. It merely means that you have absolutely no skills to offer an employer, you have the wrong skills, you are not as skilled as you think you are, or you are unwilling to lower your standards. Decent engineers do have trouble finding work. Perhaps you were a liberal arts major looking to use that Art History degree for something other than working in a museum, but many people actually got worthwhile degrees, and that is completely your own fault.
I stopped working to pass an interview after the Director level-interviewer was bragging about looking back 30 years at people's grades when hiring software engineers; if they ever received a C or below or did not graduate, then they would not get hired. Two things: I was not even 30 years old, and my grades passed the bar, but that is ridiculous. Good thing they would the miss the likes of Bill Gates and John Carmack.
Also--and I hate to point this out to you--Democrats hold the Senate and the Presidency. Anything passed has their seal of approval on it more than the Republicans by that fact. In fact, the Democrats held all of Congress (that includes the House and Senate, since I expect you are unaware of that) from 2008 to 2010. Since then, they have only not held the House. Certainly you cannot believe that things like ObamaCare were lead by those pesky GOP-ers.
For reference, I am white, but I am not connected; I imagine that I am by default a racist according to you. And, lastly, I am no fan of the GOP (in fact, I particularly dislike the GOP), but you need to get real.
Remember it's a 2 way thing, you don't want to dick the other guy as much as he doesn't & shouldn't want to dick you over.
Are US pizzas actually 1 foot in radius or did the person who answered that mix up radius and diameter?
Several years ago I was looking for a tech writing job. Found a local company advertising for a lead writer to (among other things) redo their user manuals for networking gear. I sent them my resume, the HR guy called, we spent an hour on the phone and it sounded like we had a perfect match. He asked me to download one of their user manuals (about 100 pages) from their web site and critique it and bring it to an interview. I grabbed the doc, spent about three hours reading and annotating it and writing up a recommendation (and it needed a hell of a lot of work).
I get to the interview a few days later and the head of engineering is in charge, and the HR guy is there. Engineering guy obviously thinks there's no need for anyone, ever to employ a technical writer, engineers can do everything (which no doubt explains the train wreck I saw in the manual I reviewed), and was very rude. I stayed upbeat and polite, even though it was clear I had zero chance to get a job that he didn't think should exist, until he pointed to the marked up document I'd brought along and said, "I don't know why we would care about what you thought of our current work." I pointed to the HR guy and said, "I did this at his request. Who's doing the hiring here?" They looked at each other, and it was clear I had just poured salt into a fresh wound.
The interview ended shortly thereafter, and when the HR guy walked me to the door he apologized for what had happened. I told him to keep my resume on file in case they figured out how badly they needed professional help. Never heard from them, and their manuals are still a train wreck.
The point of the tennis ball question (or overly-cliched manhole cover question) is not to see if the candidate already knows the answer, but to assess how he deal with a problem he hasn't thought about before. Can you reason from what little you know, and make some sense of a strange problem. Microsoft's famous (and now long retired) "how many gas stations are there in Seattle" question is the same way. Of course you don'know, of course you normally google stuff like this, and of course you won't get a precise answer. None of that is the point - the point is: can you reason about a problem from minimal data?
But IMO those are stupid questions for a programmer, as you can get the same sort of assessment while getting the candidate to write code on the board.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I had a job interview where I was asked to tell a story. I asked for confirmation on what kind of story they were after and was told to start right at the beginning of my life, so I told them in the beginning my parents had sex at which point I was conceived then born, then grew up and was now attending this job interview.
I actually got the job.
A local electric utility wanted me to put an engineering document configuration control system in place. They thought too many engineers were circumventing their manual processes out of laziness/obstinacy. It turns out that their construction crews hated management and engineering with a vengeance and would just build stuff the way they wanted. Engineering was struggling to produce as-built drawings of the work, which barely resembled the design documentation.
I told them that what they had was a culture problem within the organization that needed to be fixed first. And unless they were planning on offering me the utility superintendent's position, there wasn't much I could really do. Not 'blown off'. I told them what I thought they needed to do.
One of the staff I spoke to during the process filled me in on the organizational problems. He told me that all of the utilities problems could be fixed with one clip in a .45. I decided not to repeat that little nugget of wisdom to the hiring committee.
Have gnu, will travel.
staffing agencies / recruiters that ask very basic question.
As one that can have you done X and X is a very generic part of IT that just about any thing can give you the skill.
Have you worked with Y and Y is a setup that is impossible / a very odd way doing stuff all most if that job requirement some how got miss written.
and so on
The CEO's of these companies are very smart people. Be fair. Perhaps they would be willing purchase some of the quantum computers I'm selling. They could be used for search optomisation or advertising or some other some such.
ask a question where only they are told how to answer the right way.
My personal fave:
After the spending the first gulf war in the military and then working a decade in extremely active security companies (we're talking 200+ combats a year and solo commercial and industrial armed alarm responses) I was ready to break into IT. On my first interview (for @Home phone network support) the hiring panel asked me "how I would handle the extraordinary stress of having to deal with people who were so very angry with me".
I started laughing like a lunatic, and couldn't stop until the tears were rolling down my cheeks. I realized they were horrified at my behavior and had been serious. I asked if they'd even read my resume and cover letter, and when they hemmed and hawed I explained further.
It went something like - "Look, 6 months out of boot camp I spent a night in ops watch at a flag command as the 4th link in the chain of nuclear response...that means that had anything happened I would have been one of the first people to get the ball rolling towards global nuclear armageddon. In security I was called upon to rush alone into a warehouse in the middle of the night with hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise all around me and find out if it was on fire, or if a half dozen armed criminals were robbing the place. I had to put myself (unarmed and unarmored) into melees with a pack of armed gangbangers out for revenge over a recent shooting. I had to restrain psychotic killers who were on PCP before they could murder the 19yr old nurse on duty. Look I realize you take your job seriously, but quite honestly none of you have the slightest idea of what stress or anger are. Next question please."
I figured that was gonna wash me out in a heartbeat, but surprisingly I got the job.
Just to see how the interviewer reacts to stupid questions. In business you are surrounded by stupidity and incompetence. A good employee can approach these situations with grace.
I walked out of an interview at ebay. In the middle of the interview, they told me the position had been filled but they wanted me to talk to one more person to complete the process. I didn't know until after that it was a "stress interview". The interviewer was clearly enjoying watching me struggle. The first question the interviewer asked was which java packages I felt comfortable using. After I told him, he said "those are the ones I won't ask you about". The best question from that interview: "If you were given a technical design document how would you tell if it is good without reading it?" Later, I ended the interview when he told me I couldn't use the whiteboard to make it easier for me to show him the answer.
So, the conversation went like this:
Jimmy: so, Mr Max, um, what was the worst job you ever had? M: Pulling the gold teeth out of the mouths of people who had just been shot. JImmy (appalled, but compelled to follow form): And, uuuuh, why did you leave that job? M: No career advancement - what was I supposed to do, graduate to actually shooting people? I don't think so. That requires skill. Jimmy: OK... well let's change subject to more psychological questions. What is your favourite colour? M: Clear. Jimmy: Clear's not a colour. M: I have a crayon that says it's clear. Crayons have colours. If I had said teal, or Forest Green what that have been OK? They have crayons for those too, ya know. Jimmy: Right. Well one more question... What do you like best about yourself? M: (leaning in closely to Jimmy and in a low voice): I'm a good friend.... Jimmy: Well, thank you very much and we'll call you if we feel there is a position for you here. M: Right. Have a nice day! Jimmy: good bye... (throws resume in trash...)
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Interviewer: Describe your dream job.
Me: I will have to sleep it, I will be right back.
(Put the phone down and let them eat crickets until the line disconnected.)
Best nap I ever had too.
-Hack
PS: Oh, as for the Dream. I forgot to write it down when I woke up. Go figure.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
A couple of years ago, I sat in on a few interviews for a non-profit and was stunned on the type of questions asked. It was very odd to hear questions about things not even remotely related to the actual job. I was under the impression you interviewed people interested in a certain job to see if they knew what they were doing, at least vocally. The person they eventually hired "worked smarter, not harder" so I guess it met their expectations because nothing got done.
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
What is your greatest weakness?
Peppermints.
Peppermints?
Yeah, I can't leave 'em alone. You don't want to get between me and the peppermints. Oh hey! [Grabs mint from interviewer's candy bowl]
When interviewing for a tech support manager position with a company in San Diego - I went through a whole slew of interviews on the same afternoon. director of sales, director of product development, director of software engineering and finally the director of customer service.
That last interview had to be the best interview of my life. Not because I had good answers for all of the questions (I did). Not because I was a great fit for the position (I was). And not because I really wanted the job (I really did). It was the best interview of my life because I sat and had a long conversation with what I believe to be the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Mmm, Mmm Anna.
At the end of the interview, she asked "Do you have any questions for me". I had only one. "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"
Sadly, Anna said she was married.
That afternoon, I was hired. On my first day, I met Christina (Anna's assistant) the second most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Mmm, Mmm Christina. I spent the next 2 years flying around the country with Anna and Christina going to trade shows (to set up the equipment), and to customer sites to assess their needs.
I loved that job. The scenery was great.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Back when location services were just ramping up, I was interviewed for a position on a team building such services. By the WHOLE 15 person team (warning #1). After a few rapid fire questions they hit me out of the blue with "What kind of tree would you be, if you could be a tree?". My response was "Who'd the fuck want to be a TREE!!??!!" Needless to say I didn't get the job. Been thankful ever since - that company was not there less than a year later.
... of the interview; e.g. to test the candidates reaction to stupid questions. Depending on the job, he might have to face those on a regular basis and certain response patterns may not be considered adequate.
I was interviewed for a position at the BBC, back in the early days of digital TV, working on their digital "teletext" service (i.e. that pseudo-HTML stuff they shove down the DVB channels).
Application went fine, was asked to interview (from thousands of candidates). Went in, did some tests (technical, editorial, etc.). Seemed to all be going well. Went to interview where the panel were half-technical, half-management.
Was all going alright right up until the last question. It was so wrapped up in management-ese that honestly, even as a vaguely intelligent person, I could not understand what it meant (let alone provide an answer). It was literally that impenetrable, and not even something that made any sense whatsoever. I couldn't even begin to waffle some management-ese in reply, it was that bad.
So I told them. "I don't understand, sorry". They repeated it, word-for-word. "No, no, I heard. I don't understand what you're asking." This went on for several minutes. The management in the room looked quite annoyed. Meanwhile, the techies in the room were making a show of writing a large "tick" (check) symbol on my application in front of them and grinning inanely.
Sadly, I think the management overruled or outnumbered them, and I wasn't offered (though I was told that I still came quite close).
To this day, I still can't even remember what the question was (it was just random words strung together than didn't even seem to ask a question), let alone work out what kind of answer they wanted. And, surely, if someone doesn't understand something, what you want them to do is stop you and say "Sorry, no, I don't understand", not plough on regardless making up some rubbish?
Needless to say, I actually felt quite sympathetic for the people who DO have to work under that person all the time.
Q: "Where do you see yourself in five years?"
A: "Firing you."
I don't, but no one will pay me for my real passion, which is being completely lazy and worthless, and I need money to survive.
The thing is, I think someone so forthright as to ask that question would probably appreciate that answer.
Thing is, given that the interviewer was Akami, that's a pretty reasonable question.
It's not vague, up-in-the-air bulshit like some of the questions. Neither does it need rampant speculation and guesswork. It is a real thing with a real answer, being asked by an employer who provides a non-trivial amount of internet infrastructure.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"Can you instruct someone how to make an origami 'cootie catcher' with just words?" -- LivingSocial, Consumer Advocate interview.
I could honestly give a snarky answer to this. I had to do this 2 months ago at work for a project. My approach was:
To the office: "Does anyone here know how to make an Origami Fortune Teller?"
Intern: "I do."
Me: "Great. Please make me one approximately 10" wide."
It was closer to 8" but I fell like my instructions were pretty well followed.
Drake's equation is garbage - just some alphanumeric soup.
Obscure trivia is obscure trivia. It is meaningless.
If you think the tennis ball question or manhole cover are about trivia, then you're exactly the kind of person they work well on. Spoiler- it's not actually about getting the right answer, it's about coming up with a good answer that you can justify. The purpose is not to test your knowledge of City Sewage, it's to test you and how you react. The specifics of your answer rarely matter.
Anyone applying for a directors position at Akamai had better know the answer to this. Anyone who thinks it is a silly question has no business either working at Akamai or being an Information Week journalist. I have actually been asked this question in an interview and aced the question, it is a serious question and quite far reaching in scope. Almost anyone can answer it to the extent or limit of their knowledge and so it is a very illuminating question. Saying "I don't know" is not the worst answer.
I work at a startup with between 10-20 employees. When we interview someone, it's really a battery of cultural fit rather than technical prowess. The idea is that if someone's inexperienced, they can gain experience, and any question that can be correctly answered is also subject to pre-interview research and mid-interview anxiety.
What does this mean? If they walk into an interview, they get *only* questions that are similar to the ones in the article. The candidate is heavily researched and "background-checked" before they get invited in. The interview usually starts with a question that's specifically tailored towards them and is primed to get a detailed response. Then, they're transitioned through a small standard set of interview questions, but there's always custom-tailored followup to see how they respond to certain weird situations. A few hints are given, and it becomes a "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"-type lifeline thing. In-between interview segments, we quietly discuss how it's going and then modify the custom-tailored questions as we go. The actual answers aren't important; the approaches and responses are considered instead. For the type of questions mentioned in the article, the responses better be snarky; otherwise, they've just failed the cultural test.
If some candidate just isn't willing to play this game, chances are, s/he just simply isn't a cultural fit. That's OK: the interview ends and both sides avoid wasting each others' time. Will this alienate a lot of talented people? Sure. Are we OK with that? Well, if you get some talented people to join a company and they just manage to fight an incite an internal civil war, that's going to cause some serious damage.
There's a very distinct culture at my startup, and it's not for everyone. There's a lot of talent out there, but cultural fit is much harder and much more subjective.
As for what'd happen if the article writer came in for an interview at my company? There'd probably be several hints that indicate that snarky responses are expected, and depending on whether or not the he's able and willing to play along will decide whether or not he's a good fit.
Posting anonymously because this is a detailed post about hiring procedures.
Then why not just be direct and ask, "how do you react when people waste your time?"
Thing is, given that the interviewer was Akami, that's a pretty reasonable question.
Appears my answer regarding the clouds is still reasonable.
(Google search)
Akamai: Cloud Services, Enterprise, Mobile, Security Solutions
uk.akamai.com/
As the leading cloud platform for media and content delivery, application performance, and Web security, we enable any experience on any device.
1) "If you could throw a parade of any caliber through the Zappos office, what type of parade would it be?" -- The Zappos Family, Customer Loyalty Team Member interview.
Zombie Strippers
2) "How lucky are you and why?" -- Airbnb, Content Manager interview.
Lucky enough to get a content manager interview with content like this.
3) "If you were a pizza delivery man, how would you benefit from scissors?" -- Apple, Specialist interview.
I'd get criminal level tips.
4) "Are you more of a hunter or a gatherer?" -- Dell, Account Manager interview.
Gatherer?
You sure you're not the NSA
5) "If you were on an island and could only bring three things, what would you bring?" -- Yahoo, Search Quality Analyst interview.
Vicodin, Solar powered satellite internet PC, and the 1989 Denver Broncos
6) "Why is a tennis ball fuzzy?" -- Xerox, Client Manager interview.
Because
7) "What is your least favorite thing about humanity?" -- ZocDoc, Operations Associate interview.
People
8) "How would you use Yelp to find the number of businesses in the U.S.?" -- Factual, Software Engineer interview.
By getting a court order to sue them.
9) "How honest are you?" -- Allied Telesis, Executive Assistant interview.
I like money.
10) "How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the U.S. each year?" -- Goldman Sachs, Programmer Analyst interview.
42
11) "Can you instruct someone how to make an origami 'cootie catcher' with just words?" -- LivingSocial, Consumer Advocate interview.
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Cootie-Catcher-%28Origami-Fortune-Teller%29
12) "How does the Internet work?" -- Akamai, Director interview.
Porn
13) "If there was a movie produced about your life, who would play you and why?" -- SinglePlatform, Inside Sales Consultant interview.
Eddie Murphy
Because I'm white.
14) "It's Thursday; we're staffing you on a telecommunications project in Calgary, Canada on Monday. Your flight and hotel are booked; your visa is ready. What are the top five things you do before you leave?" -- ThoughtWorks, Junior Consultant interview.
blowjob, Sex, Sex, BLumkin, and furry orgy
15) "Describe to me the process and benefits of wearing a seatbelt." -- Active Network, Client Applications Specialist interview.
Keeps you Locked Up nice and tight during car fires.
16) "Have you ever been on a boat?" -- Applied Systems, Graphic Designer interview.
The Love Boat
Those are sometimes funny smart-ass answers, but not interview-ending much less "blowing up". Chances are, the guy has heard variations of them before.
Personally, if I were ever to be presented with these bullshit interview questions, my response would be that I'm seriously interested in the job, but they apparently aren't seriously interested in me, and I prefer to work for someone who doesn't rely on bullshit pop-psychology standard interview questions whose purpose he only halfway understands himself. Bye.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
quickly! must google: job interview site:xkcd.com and post whatever is returned. Seriously what relevance does that have? He doesnt even ask an interview question.
Hey, I googled one which is relevant: 1088.
/. refugees on Usenet: news:comp.misc
I have your CV, your references, and usually the results of a written test. So why would I spend a lot of time asking about your technical expertise?
The things I need to know are,
These question are relevant in almost any job, and the writer of this daft article has answered all of them.
A: Insert the metal fitting into the buckle. Benefit: You don't fall out of the chair when the Klingons fire on you.
Attempting to provoke an emotional response via trick questions or questions designed to insult or get the interviewee to take the bait and say something offensive is also dishonest, unless you are administering a voigt-kompf test.
I had an interview where the interviewer offhandedly threw in "Of course, no one like doing [job]" while complaining about having to do the job I was applying for.
To this day, I still don't know whether it was meant to be a "trick question", or they really had no sense of irony.
"...but.. I... do."
[The manhole cover question annoys me, because the supposedly correct answer is probably wrong. Pointing out the probably correct answer then makes you look like a smart-arse, and costs you the interview anyway. (Manhole covers are round because manholes are round, because pipes are round, because a cylinder is the strongest shape cheaply/easily manufactured with basic technology.)]
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
If we're on the subject of stupid interview questions...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_bsMGsBjWc
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
and asked questions of that ilk, there were several reasons:
1. You might get asked an oddball question at a client and I'd like to see how you respond.
2. I wanted to see if you pass the airplane test; i.e. would I mind sitting next to you for 8 hours on a plane ride.
3. I've mad dup my mmd on wether or not recommend hiring you and still have 5 or 10 minutes of interview time to kill
There are no right or wrong answers. It is interesting to see how people respond.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
First, you would be surprised how inter-connected a lot of these HR departments and technical team are - people moving from one company to another, or simply talking to each other about "asshat" candidates is very common.
I find that is more of a problem in smaller countries and specialized industries, such as the banking sector in Stockholm or Oslo... less of a problem in London or New York.
However, the rule is, as always, keep it professional in the interview. If you get the feeling that the role or the people or the company are not for you, explain to the interviewer calmly and rationally that you are not getting a good feeling about the situation, thank them for their time and wish them luck in filling the position. Then make your way out of the office and be thankful that you have only wasted an hour or two of your time. Certainly, that is not as satisfying as making a snarky comment, but you will find that all the pre-prepared snarky comments you walked in with are not appropriate for the situation, and all of the appropriate snarky comments you can come up with on the spot are insufficiently snarky to correctly encapsulate your sarcasm.
Plus, if you think the interview questions are stupid, wait until you meet the users. Asking stupid questions in the interview is a good way of weeding out the people who will be incapable of suppressing the urge to strangle the third user who asks a mortifyingly stupid question.
The best questions are the ones where you have to write code on a whiteboard but where the person asking the question doesn't know the answer.
You can confidently say yes to that question, unless they're trying to weed out the virgins..
If I'm convinced that I don't want the job, I simply answer "Yes" to all questions asking me how or why. You have to do it very confidently and act as if it was a legitimate answer. Works all the time.
True story: A typical HR person going through her standard interview question list asked me, "Do you ever think outside of the box?"
I responded, "No. I just live in a very big box."
She didn't know how to handle the answer. It was outside of her box, I guess.
Save everyone a lot of trouble and just say you've decided you're not interested. I've had good success for this. I actually had someone cut out all the BS when I said that because apparently they were really struggling to find someone
A friend of mine was interviewing for a level 2 technical position at a large computer company. They asked him "If you could be any kind of tree, what type of tree would you be?". He thought about it for a second and said "deltree". Amazingly the interviewer got it right away and liked that it was both a DOS command "deltree.exe" and the fact that the company was Dell. He got the job.
Last interview I was on, they asked Justice League or Avengers. Not a super fan of the JL but no interest in Avengers outside of the movie. So I had to saw JL because, well, Batman. I don't know if that hurt or helped. I got the job but I haven't seen anything that makes that question relevant. They have meetings to discuss buzzwords and I've been bored to death with it all.
I was about to graduate from Purdue with a BSEE. I already had an offer I planned to accept from IBM but a friend told me I had to interview with HP.
It was all standard BS until the interviewer drew a circuit and asked me to balance the transistor. I was fed up by then so I looked at him and said "if you think balancing a circuit is a better test of my skills than 4 years at a major university then I don't want anything to do with your company." And then I walked out.
I then spent 30 years at IBM.
If they are going to play games at the interview you can imagine how bad it's going to be when you start.
Walk away.
Now.
While that particular job may be a lost cause, what about when you meet this guy at another company for a job you really want? Or if he talks to other companies at the local golf club?
That bridge you just toasted may be a hell of a lot wider and longer than you can imagine.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I once was asked (by Avi Freedman) in an interview to draw a picture of the Internet. I drew a cloud and said something like "I don't feel like taking 3 days to put in any more detail," and he laughed. It was a trick question, he said - if someone tried to draw something with actual structure or detail (on an 8.5x11" piece of paper in a couple minutes), he knew they didn't know what they were talking about. So I don't consider it a dumb question in and of itself, though it can be depending on the intent of the asker.
the to every interview question is always "I'm sorry, there's been a mistake. If you'll excuse me."
I'll never go back.
I don't have to blow up interviews, they blow themselves up.
If I am in a pointless interview that is dragging on forever and I already figured it is a no go I can always say "I think I'm done here, I don't want us to waste each others time, bye bye".
"If there was a movie produced about your life, who would play you and why?"
Samuel Jackson, because we have the same wallet.
http://www.bmfwallets.com/
lose != loose
Start up The Lonely Island's "I'm on a boat" on my phone
Dance on the table while singing along then walk out chanting "I'm the boss!"
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The point of the tennis ball question (or overly-cliched manhole cover question) is not to see if the candidate already knows the answer, but to assess how he deal with a problem he hasn't thought about before. Can you reason from what little you know, and make some sense of a strange problem. Microsoft's famous (and now long retired) "how many gas stations are there in Seattle" question is the same way. Of course you don'know, of course you normally google stuff like this, and of course you won't get a precise answer. None of that is the point - the point is: can you reason about a problem from minimal data?
But IMO those are stupid questions for a programmer, as you can get the same sort of assessment while getting the candidate to write code on the board.
The problem is "reasoning from minimal data" and "making shit up because I have no idea and presenting it as fact" are not well distinguished by those questions.
Asking them is the candidate evaluation equivalent of choosing "password" for your password because "no one would think of it!".
10) "How many square feet of pizza are eaten in the U.S. each year?" -- Goldman Sachs, Programmer Analyst interview.
How many times have you ever seen square shaped feet made of pizza?
That's right: None.
So I said "Sometimes I'm a little too honest." He said "That doesn't sound like a flaw." And I said "I don't give a shit what you think."
My favorite similar question from an interviewer: "What Star Wars character would you describe yourself as, and why?"
After I got the job, I asked the fellow who'd asked the question about it, and he said, "Oh, I don't care which character you pick, what I care about is what qualities you like about that character."
I am officially gone from
No, really. Why do all of the people with sub-100 IQs end up in this position? I don't know anyone who has ever had anything nice to say about these troglodytes that beshit the modern workforce.
As one that can have you done X indeed, my friend. As one that can have you done X indeed.
But has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do more like?
I like the questions in the linked article. Sometimes you need to ask a fluff question to make the candidate feel comfortable, or see if the guy has a sense of humor.
No, I will not work for your startup
What other sport has fuzzy balls?
I swore if during an interview that no matter how much I ever wanted the job if I got asked a couple of key idiotic questions I would immediately bomb the interview.
For example, I had an interview I thought I was personally acing, the four people interviewing were watching me complete some task in front of them saying "oh I didn't know you could do that" and "thats an interesting way of doing it" etc etc. Then at the end of about a 45min interview they said "Use three words to describe /your name/." I preceded to sit there and hum and haw, look at the ceiling and act genuinely deep in thought for no less then 15 minutes while they stared increasingly impatient with me (timed it, no exaggeration). Eventually I also got fed up and said "bacon, wombat, rhombus".
The interview ended, I did not get the job.
Indeed. What 90% of the answers in this thread don't realize is that the interviewer is asking questions to learn about a person, not about their answers. Odds are that you're interviewee #6053 for this position and he's looking for any reason for you to stand out from the next 7,000 people to interview for that position that are just as under-qualified as you are. He's finding out if you're flexible, personable, or just a stubborn smartass. He's finding out what you look like after the armor of canned-responses has been pierced. The smart ones will use your answers, partly, to determine if you'll learn to use the company code or if you're going to sit down and complain about "what idiot wrote this?" for the next 15 years until he fires you for rewriting working code into a buggy spaghetti bowl every day of your life when you're not at the dentist again.
Job interviews are basically a game of poker where the questions and answers are just the cards. Your wagers, body language and overall demeanor are the real focus of the game.
I've been a little amazed at how often I run across the same people over and over again. Perhaps its just a Silicon Valley thing but I suspect its true in other industries as well.
Always be professional. If the people who are interviewing you ask really stupid questions then, of course they fail your interview of them. There are good ways to end the encounter. You can even finish the day and just send a polite "thank you but I've decided to select a different company" later.
If you turn into a jackass during the interview then you become the "horrible interview" story. You become the resume that gets left on the floor a year later when the smart person at that company, the one who asked good questions, the one keeping the whole place together is at his new job and gets the "oh, that guy" moment seeing your name.
Always be professional.
Dumbledore or Gandalf?
Correct answer: White or grey?
LOL.. I had the same happened to me... Answer was: "Yes, me! How did you figured it out?" LOL
Later they introduced me to a guy they said responded with: "Absolutely, but the real question is: Is there intelligent life on earth?"
And sometimes I just go philosophical on them along the lines of: "There is nothing good or bad, it is just a perception. So I don't know, I don't think of me of me on those terms. I just love who I am"
Offtopic.
Yeah, federal budget cuts. More, more, more...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1.) No where in the discussion so far is the US even brought up. The post is just designed to provoke argument.
2.) the US DOES have extensive anti-discriminatory employment laws. There is possibly issue with enforcement of them and/or fear of employees to "whistle blow", but the laws do exist.
just a bit of background leading up to that question
I'd already, in emails and to a lesser extent in the skype interview, discussed the reason for me wanting to move to NZ and that region specifically,
what was being lost in income was been made up in quality of life upgrade and a heavy cut in housing costs
great snow skiing and trout fishing all within a 1 hour drive (as opposed to 8+ hour flight), hiking trails with walking distance (v's 2+ hour drive) river suitable for kayaking less than 10 minutes from the office (OK that's 5 minutes further than I have now), and housing rental and purchase prices much less than half of my areas etc etc
having lost many of their staff, both IT and mechanical, to the Western Australian mining boom the interviewer and his IT manager were so down on the organisation they worked for and their rural region in general and had a barely concealed contempt for either me or Australians in general.
in the end I decided that as much as it would be a terrific place to live (I've kept my ear to the ground for other job opportunities and I'll continue to occasionally holiday there) it would have been a terrible organisation to work for.
Nice one, will use this in my interviews as an opener.
I swear I'm going to ask, "Does your company believe in and practice PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE?" My current employer stopped doing preventative maintenance as a cost saver! Things have to break completely to get addressed. A great way to operate "mission critical" equipment. Their next move is taking away our uniforms because of laundry cost. I work for a multinational company in the beverage and laundry container field, P&G and Pepsico being two customers.
101 unoriginal snarky comebacks! This right here is why I have been moving from another aggregator towards slashdot...
X
What most readers does not appear to comprehend is that facing a stupid, pointless, irrelevant or annoying question tells a lot about how you will react facing the same situation when, part of the team you will be sitting in a brainstorming, design review, or worst simply sitting at your desk. Just saying "What a f** stupid suggestion, I'm leaving this pointless meeting" is not someone I want on my team. Or will you calmly try to understand why the comment was made and explain why it does not apply. Or perhaps keep an open mind and try to see if there is a benefit.
I hired people that fails so called "stupid questions" they are the types that sits there and wait to be spoon feed detailed instructions. I rather go with a passionate candidate, the kind that when asked a stupid question we end up on a totally different subject, where we both converse easily and without restrain. Extra point if I end up Goggling his hobby. I know that is an asset to the team, to everyone in the team.
The questions are unusual, I would have loved to hear the rationale behind them. One I like to ask, and was often asked why, was "What kind of car do you drive?" I found it a good personality indicator when other factors where taken into account. Such as income level, career level, family situation, age, and a number of other little things I pick up during the interview. It was also a great way to turn it into a conversation which tells you a lot more than an interview will.
So, why haven't we seen any sighs of it at all? I don't believe UFOs are sufficient evidence of E.T.
The answer may be that intelligent species don't last long enough to be in contact, an idea proposed by Enrico Fermi in 1945. They may appear in the universe, even in our galaxy with regularity, but when they get enough power to alter their environment, they exterminate themselves. If Climate change is caused by human technology, we are doing the experiment right now, and it may yield us a species-wide Darwin Award.
Fermi was worried about nuclear weapons as the downfall of mankind. I'd say that greenhouse gasses, which seem far less lethal, are a much more insidious downfall, and I have five major mass extinctions in the past half billion years of megafauna on earth to back me up. These were all nearly yielding the same result, even if the causes were different, they involved a rapid upset of the carbon cycle in earth's biosphere that the megafauna in particular had no time to adapt to. We are among the current megafauna; we have been exterminating the other megafauna by hogging their habitats as we are in the midst of the latest mass extinction, but if we mess up the carbon cycle even more, it will bite us directly as water and food are denied us.
The C Preprocessor....:
[17 years ago]
The interviewer started by asking me general programming knowledge questions.
This went smoothly.
Then it came to programming languages.. I ticked off a few assembly languages(8-bit and 16/32-bit CPUs), C, PASCAL, FORTRAN, FORTH, etc...
Interviewer runs me through a few C specific gotchas that young players get snagged on.
Then he starts showing me some basic C Preprocessor macros and asking me what they do...
dupe, swap, endian swap, etc.
So far so good.
Then he gets into some really weird Preprocessor macros that looked like they were obfuscations or abuse of the preprocessor. One in particular I noted would be undefined behavior for ANSI C. None of these examples appeared to be useful. They simply demonstrated rather extreme Preprocessor-fu.
At that point I stopped the interviewer and told him rather bluntly that if a subordinate of mine submitted code for review with these types of Preprocessor macros, there would be a very serious discussion regarding their future at the company.
"I'm not going to sit here and try and figure out these messed up macros. I do not use the preprocessor to make code harder to read. Relying on obscure behavior in the Preprocessor is asking for trouble. Can we please move along?"
The interviewer moved on to more productive questions.
I did get the job.
Employers prefer to hire a "highly skilled wage slave" in Globalization.
Casteism
crap?
now that's a stupid question, you'll get the answer they think you want to hear, not anything that actually tells you about the applicant.
This was popular back in the day. "What job title would you like to have someday?" "I always liked Lord of the Universe but lately I've grown fond of Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the East." The interviewer broke up laughing and said, "I always thought this was a BS question!" I was offered the job but never called back.
Extraneous use of cat, plus it doesn't work. It's not quite a no-op, but it changes the first Bush to Obama on each line, then changes the first Obama to Bush. Migght be a no-op, or might result in odd constructs.
[user@localhost ~]$ cat foo
President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment: "I blame Presidnet Bush."
[user@localhost ~]$ cat foo | sed -e s/Bush/Obama/ -e s/Obama/Bush/
President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment: "I blame Presidnet Bush."
[user@localhost ~]$ cat bar
President Obama said "I blame President Bush." Former President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment.
[user@localhost ~]$ cat bar | sed -e s/Bush/Obama/ -e s/Obama/Bush/
President Bush said "I blame President Obama." Former President Bush could not be reached for comment on Mr. Obama's comment.