The most important job interview question to ask an R&D candidate

http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/05/most-important-job-interview-question.html

by techdog • 17 years ago

22 14 17 years ago

asserttrue.blogspot.com

pieter• 17 years ago

That's really his one question he'd ask to someone working in R&D, and writing code?

How about asking somebody about the problem domain he'll be addressing? Past experiences on that field, or related fields?

Recognising bad code might be nice, but I'd pick someone with 20 years of real and relevant experience over someone just new that can say "whoa, that looks like bad code!"

rdr• 17 years ago

completely agree, I don't see why this post is specific to R&D ... seems like it's a useful question to ask of any candidate who has to write code, but the essence of R&D seems to be knowledge of the research literature and ability to advance the company's interests through performing innovative research, which this question doesn't at all cover

justlearning2• 17 years ago

Just a few hours before, I commented on few bloggers linking their own blogs with anything/everything. They almost treat HN like their auto-post to everywhere.

perspective: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog (the submitter)

The content may be(or not!) worth reading, but I'd rather have 'discovered content' please!

diN0bot• 17 years ago

I see you point. Certainly, if a blogger is constantly spamming HN and other social news sites it's kind of a annoying.

On the other hand, that's the whole point of social aggregation: to democratically filter the good stuff to the top. Some variation in submission is good, as long as there's not too much off-topic spam.

It's a hard balance.

Social news sites are the perfect venue for (non-advertising) bloggers to self-advertise. If someone thinks their own blog post is relevant, why not post it to hacker news? Why shouldn't a blogger think all his articles are relevant?

justlearning2• 17 years ago

I didn't say that a blogger shouldn't link to any of his posts. Of course every blogger has a interesting bend of thought which at time he/she feels the need to have feedback.

The spam is when "every" post comes in.

kulkarnic• 17 years ago

Perhaps we could have a filter that detects if a particular user consistently submits links from a particular domain only. I wonder if it'll work (maybe it targets too uncommon a special-case).

Really, we do need a way to custom-query news.yc so we can see the effects of prototype filters. Any way to do it already in existence?

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Isn't that the entire point of the filter process? Some of the stuff gets voted up, some gets voted down. The submitter gets feedback on their work.

What's the point of the "New" heading if it isn't a firehose of stuff that the community on HN think might be interesting? Why would I be annoyed by whatever appeared there?

Now when yahoos keep voting up material from the same famous people (and I'm not referring to PG) then THAT kind of fanboy stuff gets annoying -- much more annoying that somebody who likes writing and wants to share.

I write one article a week or so. Most of it is technical. So I submit them here. Sometimes I submit other stuff.

But I don't worry about how much material I'm submitting of my own vs other sites. There's nothing magical about "discovery" In fact, it's really not discovered at all until the community decides they like it (or not). That's the entire point of why the board exists.

ramchip• 17 years ago

If the talk turns immediately to formatting issues, that's not good.

Amusingly, however, I've noticed that bad/newbie coders tend to indent stuff all over the place and have no consistency in the whitespace (this is C++ so the compiler doesn't care). Often you can tell the code is bad because it literally looks bad.

I prefer the suggestion commenter 'John' gave rather than the OP's: "Can you draw me the architecture of your most complex project?"

gfodor• 17 years ago

A spin on this that I do is give them a piece of code that I know has some major flaws (a very small piece of code) and ask them to tell me why it sucks.

Deestan• 17 years ago

I was asked if I had any hobby projects and would like to explain their architecture on a whiteboard. In addition to the benefits of seeing into the candidate's mind, it eases the nervousness quite a bit to talk about something you definitely know more about than anyone else.

I was then asked if I drank beer. Then I was hired.

cnlwsu• 17 years ago

hobby projects are never looked at enough, especially open source ones. I think open source projects and real code the interviewer can look at should speak more at an interview then johnny-on-the-spot-clever-answers.

dmolnar• 17 years ago

The "special extra credit" makes me think this question is fishing to see whether the candidate can step back and look at the big picture. That's part of the job of being in R&D, no matter where you stand on the research to development spectrum. One of the reasons companies keep R&D departments is to have people around who are technically knowledgeable _and_ who have the vision to think ahead about where the company should go next.

The fact that it's about code quality is an artifact. Yes, as others have pointed out, a question about code may not be so relevant if your candidate is a theorist or will have a role with no development. Still, because most or all candidates will have experience with bad code, and because fewer will have intimate knowledge of the business at hand, it's a better question than "so, where do you think our company should go in three to five years?"

lisper• 17 years ago

I think this post seriously misses the mark. For R&D (actually, I think lumping R and D together like that is a serious mistake, but that's another issue) I don't think coding matters very much at all. What matters more is raw problem-solving ability, understanding of core mathematical concepts, etc.

Project Euler is a good source of questions for R&D candidates.

viergroupie• 17 years ago

>What about evidence of design patterns? Does it look like the person who wrote the code doesn't know about things like Observer, Visitor, and Decorator patterns?

This is his criterion for a research position? Understanding of the unsolved problems in a domain? "Irrelevant."

Mathematical sophistication needed to abstractly model complicated-seeming scenarios? "A dime a dozen."

Know the decorator pattern? "omg, you're hired!"

The most important job interview question to ask an R&D candidate

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