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Comment by fernandotakai | Hacker News Reader

the first one: depends on experience! i had a guy answer with a kernel nevel bug that honestly, i didn't understand the fix.

the second one: i think most (if not all) developers have at least one strong opinion -- even if it's just "i don't like javascript".

see, interviewing, for me, is not about right answers, it's about getting to know the person and getting to see how they approach different problems. these are just two of the things i might ask, depending on how everything is going.

>Does that say anything about me, according to your filters?

i don't know, i never saw your resume, i don't know your experience and we've never talked before. maybe it just means we have to have a 15min talk before i could ask those. and there's something i always tell every single candidate i've ever interviewed: there are no wrong answers -- if you don't know, you don't know.

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> there's something i always tell every single candidate i've ever interviewed: there are no wrong answers

That's just objectively bullshit.

If you don't know something, you probably are going to be marked down compared to a candidate that does know it.

Even in a subjective question, your answer depends entirely on your interviewer's subjectivity. One interviewer might find an answer good while another finds it lacking.

Interviews are one of few places where there are very clearly wrong answers.

i disagree with you 100%.

maybe for the jobs you are applying this is true, but for the places i've been searching for candidates, there are only answers and those answers will tell me (and other people in the pipeline) what to think of you.

for my own process, answers are only data points and the whole point of interviewing is looking at datapoints and getting to an answer. it doesn't mean "the person that get everything right gets the job".

once, i got a person that was incredibly smart, but they where not a cultural fit. we ended up hiring someone with less experience, but that person fit perfectly within the team.

the first person answered everything perfectly, the second didn't.

> the first person answered everything perfectly, the second didn't.

I mean... They clearly didn't otherwise they would have had the job.

> once, i got a person that was incredibly smart, but they where not a cultural fit.

Do you somehow think cultural fit is not part of "the right answer"? It's just as much if not more so given how subjective interviews are... Which just goes back to my original point.

> answers are only data points and the whole point of interviewing is looking at datapoints and getting to an answer

So... Some answers are better than others. Some answers will "give" higher scores while others will have low. Some may have no good data to provide, some may even give negative score. This is, quite literally, the definition of right and wrong answers.

As a result, there are very much wrong answers. Even though you say there aren't, you yourself have clearly shown there are. If someone gives an answer you don't like, they will be scored lower than someone that gives an answer you do like.

Just because you're obfuscating it behind a vague "overall answer" doesn't mean you're not taking the answer, evaluating and judging it, and then using it to make your decision.

Put another way, if there's no wrong answers then how are you rejecting people? Everyone has correct answers to all your questions, after all.

on the spectrum of “right <————> wrong” answers…

… because it is a spectrum as it’s not binary/mathematics we’re dealing with here, it’s fuzzy human stuff…

… there is a difference between “absolutely wrong” and “not right as much as that other person we interviewed”.

there are absolute wrong answers. if you tell me in the interview that you worked for north korea’s security services im noping the fuck outta that interview.

but if you say “i hate XYZ” and our team loves XYZ, then, like, i mean, yeah, that’s not ideal. it’s not wrong. maybe we could put you on something where you don’t work with XYZ directly. but are you going to be as happy and productive as someone who actually likes XYZ? cos you’re gonna have to deal with XYZ at some point working here.

there are absolute wrongs, but, 99.99% of people don’t say things like that in interviews.

and the things you seem to be referring to in a binary manner right/wrong are, really, more about where in the SPECTRUM of right/wrong you come out in the aggregate.

that’s why we tell people in interviews that there’s no wrong answer. it’s to help calm them down, help them feel comfortable, so we can find out where they sit on the spectrum of “fitting in” without interview anxiety getting in the way and making them give stilted answers where we, as interviewers, don’t get a chance to find out who these people are.

edit: sorry i added a bunch after posting. i’m having one of those days.

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