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reason enough to fail the interview (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Your candidates aren't mind readers though. If you want people to ask clarifying questions, you have to ask them things other than comp sci trivia questions.

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago

    I thinks that's the whole point, they can't read minds so they need to ask questions to gain information. So you can makean better response.

    When I've done support and customer says "This isn't working I need this bug reported"

    The first question I ask is "Why do you need to do that?"

    Because just fixing what they asked solves their current issue, but not the underlying pain they have in their process.

    100s of techs would just solve the bug, but they you never find out the deeper issue or lack of features that push the customer to using the other thing.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    It could be on a different subject, but it has to be a trick question. If they were prompted to ask more, that would undercut the whole point of the test, since OP wants employees that always ask or question.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    I don't think asking someone a trick question in an interview is a good way to gauge if they'll push back and ask questions on the job. Also, I think that behavior is more related to the employer creating an environment where employees feel safe doing that, and isn't really something you can draw out of a candidate during an interview, of all times.

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago

    Its not a trick question, its an ambiguous one. Ambiguity should prompt people to ask clarifying questions. Assumptions are often wrong.

    Part of ambiguity also lies in the English language. In a general conversation 35% is information and 65% is disambiguation.

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  • [–] 1 point 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

    Well, there's reason to think it is. Or at least, is for original, insightful questions; anybody can come up with "can I have more time off?". We live in a society that rewards reliably doing and saying whatever you're told to, and critical thinking (which isn't just skepticism!) is super rare when tested for. A lot of college kids with good grades got there because they learned to mindlessly repeat whatever stuff back when tested.

    Why that's rewarded so much, and if there's a way to encourage and teach actual independent though, are great questions, but that's not really relevant here.

    Also, I think that behavior is more related to the employer creating an environment where employees feel safe doing that

    It's also a big factor. Since that reply, it's come up that OP isn't actually management, but just does interviews. So, maybe they're looking more for a good colleague than a good employee.

    If memory serves, Google used to use these kind of questions, but they stopped because that isn't actually what they wanted or needed in their workers. A code monkey doesn't need to question anything, in the end.

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