What was the most intriguing question you were asked during an interview?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41407129

by pervysage • 2 years ago

6 9 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

pervysage• 2 years ago

To me : How would you explain your previous job to a 10 year old?

karmakaze2• 2 years ago

I think of it as simplifying a Rube Goldberg machine in large part.

palata2• 2 years ago

I like how this xkcd explains it: https://xkcd.com/722/

cranberryturkey2• 2 years ago

What’s your favorite snack?

ddorian43• 2 years ago

How would you build a search engine fir the hidden web (all sites behind tor, logins, captchas etc)

karmakaze2• 2 years ago

Why do I want this job?

Which isn't unusual, but was in context where I was applying at a retail sports clothing store with a degree in engineering, because I had too much free time on a few weekdays. Ironically I outlasted many generations of turnovers for most of the fall/winter, and finally quit from rushing to get there on time after my day job and excessive parking tickets.

b20000• 2 years ago

solve this coding problem which has nothing to do with the job you will be doing

palata2• 2 years ago

"When did you last fail your colleagues really badly and what did you do to fix it?"

Saying "I don't think I ever fucked up really badly" was not an option, and the interviewer clearly told me "listen, I have to fill this form and it asks this". So I started making up bullshit answers, but of course I didn't want to make up something so bad I would fail the interview. And every time, the interviewer would say "hmm, but that is not really a big fuck up. What else do you have?".

Interviews are weird. Makes me think that when a company behaves like this, I should just tell them that I am not really interested anymore. But usually when you apply somewhere you want the job, right?

cranberryturkey2• 2 years ago

I accidentally did DROP DATABASE; on the development database everyone used at PayPal back in 2004. I was in ok with the sysadmin and he restored a backup in like 10 seconds when I told him -- "I think I fucked up pretty good and need your help to fix it...I dropped the dev database and I'm hoping you can restore it.". I guess I wasn't the first and probably wasn't the last either.

What was the most intriguing question you were asked during an interview?

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