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Comment by inopinatus | Hacker News Reader

I've interviewed at Google. Years, years ago. I didn't get the job. Similarly, no brainteasers, but something worse: they made me write syntactically correct code on a whiteboard. I have never written code without using a keyboard; turns out, I just didn't have the neural pathways for anything else. My brain kinda seized up. I specifically recall failing to recognise the fibonacci sequence (especially horrifying given that I read mathematics at Edinburgh). Things went downhill from there.

Ever since, whenever I've interviewed someone, I ask them to demonstrate their strengths to me first.

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> Similarly, no brainteasers, but something worse: they made me write syntactically correct code on a whiteboard

Interestingly, I believe Google are slowly moving over all their coding interviews from whiteboards to Chromebooks - this is what I was told by my Google recruiter when I last interviewed with them, anyway.

The whiteboard can be a bit polarising...I love whiteboarding code, but I suspect many people detest it with a passion (I used to teach CS, so it's something I picked up on the job). I do think it is rather unfair to have candidates whiteboard and demand syntactically correct code, especially when under pressure. There's room for flexibility.

"I ask them to demonstrate their strengths to me first"

Nice. That agrees with some of the other comments here. For example, about asking about past work or projects that they are proud of or that demonstrate their skills.

Another hard issue is what to do, as an interviewer, if things start to go downhill to the point where the candidate becomes flustered and you can tell they're not at their best.

What do you mean by "read mathematics at Edinburgh"?

I presume he means studying Mathematics at University of Edinburgh.

A quick googling sessions confirms this, inopinatus studied maths in Edinburgh according to his Linkedin.

Studied

It's standard (or slightly pretentious) British English; I guess the US equivalent would be "majored in math at Edinburgh" (which would be equally incomprehensible to a Brit)

It's not really pretentious – it kinda depends on what university you went to. I typically say 'studied', but my friends who went to other unis say 'read'. I would take 'read' as a pretentious term.

> It's not really pretentious

> I would take 'read' as a pretentious term.

I'm confused...

I think he meant "wouldn't". It's not pretentious per se, it just would be interpreted that way to an American because we wouldn't use that phrasing, therefore we can only imagine it being spoken in an upper-class English accent, pinky fully extended.

Quite so. Having been raised by the BBC World Service I actually do have a somewhat received pronunciation, albeit gently deflected by many years abroad.

The disposition of my pinky, however, shall remain a mystery.

If only it were tea time in Australia. Blast, foiled again.

As a brit my experience is that "read" is used exclusively by oxbridgers and contestants on university challenge.

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