At work, would you rather have a boss that makes you implement dumb ideas? Or would you prefer a boss who recognises that your idea is better, then rewards you for it?
You are interviewing them too.
I would also have hired the candidate.
You are interviewing them too.
I would also have hired the candidate.
My reasoning is that the company advertised a position for a senior engineer with 4 years experience. Leaving aside title inflation and whether someone with 4 years experience is actually a senior engineer, and leaving aside the really dumb test, that position requires communication skills, common sense, maturity, and just generally knowing what's going on. A candidate who misreads the situation in an interview so badly that they can't take the interviewer's unsubtle hints is going to mess up other communication within the company, has likely never been on the other side of an interview before, and is at risk of allowing the kind of "clever" code that destroys companies.
Again, this is only a problem for a senior engineer. I want junior and mid-level engineers to be clever and enthusiastic. Senior engineers are meant to understand that I have five interviews this week and their attempt to channel Aphyr[0] is going to make my life harder when I want to talk about their thoughts on maintainability.
[0] https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview
FizzBuzz is the mind-killer.
All that being said, I would not be able to take the OP's side until I heard the interviewers side of the story as well.
It's not good, but it's an accurate reflection of the work environment.
if someone starts careening through the task using brainfuck, they ain’t thinking like a senior dev at day job i.e. simple, clear, easy to follow and maintainable code writing.
i don’t care how clever you are. i need to know you’re not going to rewrite the frontend in your first week because of a “big brain” moment [0]. using python or something simple without being told to helps me feel like you won’t do that, and that i might be able to trust you on day 0.
expectations on seniors are higher
Instead of talking the company relies on easily misinterpreted hints that he might or might not be someone able to work in a team. People can be both self confident and able to create a cheeky solution and be sociable people with decent team skills.
If your hiring process relies on psycho analysis of the candidates, it probably will not work very well.
But you should do both things, probably in 2 different interviews.
disscussions here universially show no evidence anyone knows it exists much less what it is. I at least know it evists but I don't know how to find it
Put aside your paranoia and just talk to your candidates. Ask them thoughtful questions that invite thoughtful answers. Probe gently to get at more challenging questions. Trust your ability to discern when they're BSing you.
The problem of “What does this do?” is prevalent enough, and occurs often enough under pressure, without adding excessive niftiness into the mix.
I do still like the solution though.
Also, this still properly fits the "you're interviewing the company as well" paradigm. If the author wanted a company that values cleverness or can deal with people who go unbeaten paths, they now know it wasn't the right place.
It gives off strong “your answer might be correct but it’s not on my answer key so I’m marking you wrong” teacher vibes. Avoid at all costs.
"Numeric types, number literals and their associated methods and operations are forbidden".
If this is how the interview behaved, I'm pretty sure this is a company that expects developers to write code in a certain way but doesn't really know how to guide them.
Kudos to the author, but shame on the interviewer.
But if you're doing anything unique, or experimental they might be a great fit.
Most of us are doing the second.
Anyone saying "you gotta check divisibility without math" on the job would get laughed out of the room.