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Comment by Robin_Message | Hacker News Reader

I believe Paul is using "random" (in particular, "random access") in the programming sense of "arbitrary" – the interview is there to dig deeper into the bits they are interested in/concerned about.

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Yes. As opposed to sequential access. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_access

Is there any benefit in a cache? What penalty is there for a cache miss? (Analogy: rehearsed points, needing to say "I'll have to get back to you.")

This is why you don't use analogies when speaking with hackers. We take them way too far ;)

What about level 2 and 3 cache?

If you faint during the interview, does drinking caffeine afterwords work like a ramdisk or an ssd?

If we presume your cache analogy holds, all it costs is a little time.

Suppose you are using very slow media and it takes a tenth of a second to retrieve the information. That's an acceptable performance penalty ;-)

On the other hand if you are using external storage, with indirect lookups in order to find the information, that might not be so great.

At the same time, networked responses are great. There isn't a problem with having a different node respond to the request, since this approach uses a sort of strange architecture and session state is shared between all nodes.

I'm trying to picture the RAM chip designed by a literal-minded electrical engineer (even more so than most engineers!). It stops responding if it detects any predictable pattern in the memory addresses you're accessing.

Sure, I get that. What I was saying is, would it not potentially be better go give the founders some time to give their thoughts in the order they have them in... before starting to go off on tangents and probe specific areas? Especially considering that the question you're about to ask, may be something they're going to be answering anyway.

I guess that if pg and crew believe that they learn something by intentionally knocking people out of their planned routine, then that's one argument for it. That is, if the idea is "we want to evaluate your ability to think on our feet, react to unplanned questions, etc." then OK.

Remember that YC backs founders much more than ideas. Also remember that they've already vetted both the founders and the idea, with the help of YC alumni, prior to the meeting. I would also imagine they have a strong aversion to BS and a well-honed BS detector.

Ignoring the pre-packaged pitch you have spent months preparing and asking you some unexpected questions would seem to be a great strategy to quickly figure out what they really want to know - which may or may not have any relation to what you want to tell them.

As I understand it, random access just means asking you about different facets of your products, probably in the same way you and your teams have been thinking about and solving problems related to your product. You did not sit during Day 1 and outlined every single problem and feature you will support did you? There is randomness involved in your journey towards evolving a products, and that randomness already answered most of the questions PG might have asked.

They've already explained their ideas in the form they chose in the application. So the interview starts with questions we had after reading it.

We don't try intentionally to knock people about to see how they respond. We don't have the time or the energy for such games. We just have a lot of questions and not much time to get them answered, and empirically the questions we have almost never turn out to be the ones answered in prefabricated pitches.

We don't try intentionally to knock people about to see how they respond. We don't have the time or the energy for such games.

That's good to know. I think some people have somehow gotten the perception that you guys do just that.

We just have a lot of questions and not much time to get them answered, and empirically the questions we have almost never turn out to be the ones answered in prefabricated pitches.

Fair enough.

Do I understand it right then that what one might call "idea pitch" has already been passed once you are being interviewed? Because in this case it makes sense to ask "random" questions.

Before I read the discussion I kind of shared the op's point. But seeing it from the other perspective, it almost seems like the basic "fault" (if you might call it that) the op made was preparing for a test he already passed.

In my preparation between the accepted application and the interview, I was cautioned that the interviewers will not remember your application when you walk in the room.

Is there truth to this?

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