This happens a lot.
I was once in the process for google and was asked a time series systems design problem. I said, “lets throw this in a time series db”. The interviewer had no idea what a time series’s db was. Mind you this was an interview for Google Cloud and the person worked on SPANNER. They also has been at the company for 2 years (by their own admission).
Left a sour taste.
That’s before wondering why they’re asking a question to gauge my competency when they don’t even understand the nuance of the question themselves.
An interviewer working on google’s enterprise nosql db but not knowing about (at least on a surface level) the breadth of nosql dbs doesn’t seem crazy to you?
The tech interview circuit has really become a bunch of people asking questions that they couldn’t really answer themselves without a rubric in front of them (whether leetcode or system design).
To be crude, it’s a bunch of nerds hazing for jobs.
> How can someone less experienced that you
This argument seems to conflate two different things, how long someone has been at a particular company and their (overall) level of experience.
Maybe the criteria for the problem was less "did they check these boxes" and more "could they be a collaborative mentor willing to work with even the junior members on the team" in the context of designing a system.
The result from the expert is that you as the layman can look around and see no pests (which anyone with their naked eye can do)… you’re not judging them on their knowledge of pesticides.
> Maybe the criteria for the problem was less "did they check these boxes" and more "could they be a collaborative mentor willing to work with even the junior members on the team" in the context of designing a system.
This is a fantastical maybe. The interview was system design.