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Ask HN: What are job interview questions that can be used to reject regardless

18 pointsdangban28 comments

What are some job interview questions that can be used to reject candidates regardless of how they answer? (Double Bind.)

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"Tell us a story about how you took down production."

A reasonable question. But if you really need to reject the candidate (for instance, if you're attempting to resist, or provide cover for resisting, someone brought in e.g. by the bad kind of nepotism), no matter how much they talk about how it led them to build systems to prevent similar disasters, as an interviewer you can selectively choose to focus on the mindset that led them to break the system in the first place.

In general, though, if you're looking for ways to disqualify a candidate based on other than merit, you should examine your own biases against the candidate. Don't be evil.

"Tell us a story about how you took down production."

We had a real need for batch queries, so I built a declarative batch query mechanism for our in-house ORM. To do this, we needed to make actual objects representing database relations. Unfortunately, the "collections of lambdas" we were using as an ORM had started getting polluted with buisness logic. So I used a parser/rewrite engine to match the un-polluted DB transformation lambdas and to substitute DB column and relation objects implementing the same logic in the un-polluted lambdas.

I checked in a massive change affecting 2500 of the ~5000 lambdas, syntactically matching the logic in all 2500 of those with the parser framework, and then also vetted everything by hand. I was 100% sure the logic was duplicated exactly. This would allow us to introduce the objects, and it would also stop the march of business logic into the DB framework. Everything checked out in QA, so we moved it to production.

Production immediately came to a screeching halt. However, in under an hour, I discovered that a coworker had polluted an even lower level of the ORM framework with business logic. (The code that called the lambdas in the first place.) We replicated that logic in the new framework, and everything worked 100%. I also came out a huge hero in the end, because the batch query mechanism I introduced reduced the average number of queries for opening a portfolio from ~2500 to only 50, and because it was declarative, it could be reused by any programmer very easily.

> Production immediately came to a screeching halt. However, in under an hour, I discovered that a coworker had polluted an even lower level of the ORM framework with business logic.

"I see. So you failed to communicate effectively with a coworker, which resulted in an hour of downtime. I didn't hear you mention anything about seeing this as a problem, let alone addressing it. Thanks for your time."

So you failed to communicate effectively with a coworker, which resulted in an hour of downtime.

Nope. He was privy to our stopping the flow of business logic into the DB/ORM code. He failed to realize the implications and communicate with us.

I didn't hear you mention anything about seeing this as a problem, let alone addressing it.

Pure projection. Of course that's a problem. Thanks for disqualifying yourself up front.

I figure you wanted to defend your take regardless, but the quotes indicated to me that the parent was posing as the company that wanted to reject the candidate no matter what the answer was. :)

And I was roleplaying as myself, rejecting the company.

That was nicely done and I agree - I'd rather be unemployed than work for a company that would think through something like that! Great job. :)

That's right. I was trying to play devil's advocate by showing that a sufficiently malicious interviewer can throw mud on almost anything.

I was trying to play devil's advocate by showing that a sufficiently malicious interviewer can throw mud on almost anything.

Or try too hard to, and reveal their true intentions.

A very long time ago, for a job not in the software industry, I had to take one of those multiple-choice exams they use to screen employees. There were probably 100 questions. One of the questions was something like "Have you ever been dishonest?". I probably dishonestly answered that question (with a no) and was thus probably red-flagged by the "Machine" and never proceeded in the interview process.

This sentence is a lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox

None! There's no question that is needed to reject you. You can answer all questions correctly and be rejected. There's no reason to really think too much of this, go in, answer to the best of your knowledge and be a pleasant person. If the interview decides to reject you due to any prejudice of their own, you probably escaped a nightmare, and the companies loss.

A long while ago I was in an interview where the interviewer retold a story about a white (yes, skin color was relevant) adventuring motorcyclist in Africa. Anyways, he was driving by himself in southern Africa in Namibia or so. Then outside a village the motorcycle broke down and he got into a horrible accident that broke his leg.

The villagers came and saw that he was wounded. So they started to take pieces of his packing, of his motorcycle and even his expensive wrist watch. He laid there in pain outside the village for several hours as none of the natives helped him. Until another white motorcyclist came and helped him up on his bike and drove him to a hospital. The end.

To this date I have nfc why he told me this story or why he thought it was relevant in a developer interview. Fairly sure it was an elaborate test though with only bad answers possible.

Most weird interview anecdote ever

How many years of PHP/JavaScript/Python/C++ experience do you have?

We are looking for a lot of experience in the latest version using the latest testing and development practices. We don't want to hire people with bad habits.

The double bind :) You've got to love a good double bind.

An interviewer doesn't really have to ask you anything. They can just decide on the basis of what you didn't say instead.

"When asked about his JS experience, he mentioned Y without mentioning X."

A more interesting question would be, can you think of a double bind that allows the interviewer to take either side without looking like a hypocrite over multiple interviews?

I found from my own experience both on the hiring side and the candidate side, that there isn't always such a good correlation between getting answers right and being hired or not. Sometimes you get everything right and still don't get the job. On the other hand, sometimes someone might fail miserably and still get the job. It's not like school, where everything is objective.

"Have you ever used company computer to search for information unrelated to your job?"

Yes => We cannot hire you

No => Liar! We cannot hire you.

Not an interview question itself, but rejecting based on lack of "culture fit" seems to be pretty standard practice. I'm not sure why such a trick question is even needed however, since regardless of how the candidate does the decision to hire is ultimately a black-box that the candidate won't know anything about.

I think the OPis asking for something that can be used for internal debate/procedures, not the reason communicated to candidates.

This is evil. But, perhaps also inevitable. "Would you mind providing a DNA sample"? You can always find some "liability" within the multitudes of potential markers.

See Gattaca for a vision of this possible future ;)

any question would be eligible for that. What if you don't spit out the exact answer your interviewer is excepting? Well, you're out.

Regardless of how they answer? Like a trick question? Sounds sinister. Why would you want this I wonder?

I do not think that you need justification to reject someone. It is waste of time for you and candidate.

You can reject a candidate based on any conversation you may have, regardless of what they say. But why?

Any question works for this:

• What's your favorite color?

• What are your weaknesses?

• What are your strengths?

• When's the last time you did something unethical?

Tell me about a time you put your own self-interest ahead of your employer's.

Right now as I am interviewing instead of working overtime for free.

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