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Comment by peterebailey | Hacker News Reader

Gathering and defining requirements is very much a part of the job. It is entirely unsustainable to rely on others to tell you what to implement in Google.

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How many interviews involve asking the prospective hire if they know how to gather and define requirements?

This is implicit in a coding interview, though. I, the interviewer, take a couple of sentences to describe a problem. What next? Way too often, rather than ask more questions - gather and define requirements - a candidate will launch straight into solving a problem different from the one I am describing.

Requirements gathering in reality can often require more soft skills or political skills, which doesn’t seem to be the primary focus of these interviews. Which isn’t to say the skills you mention aren’t important.

Most engineers at Google never talk to non-engineers, the requirements gathering comes instead from looking at code, reading design docs and talking to other engineers.

AKA "rush to keyboard" syndrome.

>> Gathering and defining requirements is very much a part of the job. It is entirely unsustainable to rely on others to tell you what to implement in Google.

It's like that everywhere. Nobody comes to you with complete requirements. People/customers come with problems they need solved. Sometimes an outline of a specific solution is specified, but there's always a lot of detail missing.

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