Why You Should Ignore Google's Interview Questions
A recent article in "The Business Insider" here reveals some of the questions Google uses to interview applicants. Google's smart, right? So, we should emulate Google?
A sample of the questions:
* How many golf balls will fit inside a school bus
* How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle
* A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?
Feel stupid yet? Well, that's part of the title for the linked article. Let's stipulate (as the lawyers say) that Google's questions will indeed reveal really smart people. But is that all we're looking for?
What about the ability to translate that raw brain power into a product that provides value? What about the issue of whether anyone can live with the fact that the brainiac in the other cube showers only on days not ending in "y"? Or that she's so abrasive that customers that interact with her leave for another company?
I don't mean to disparage intelligence. It's a wonderful thing. If you don't believe me, start hanging around people sorely lacking in this area and you'll claw at the walls for relief. (If you're not sure where to look for such people, you might want to find some local homeopathic remedy groups. Lacking any in your area, search for a religion that involves spaceships.) But is it enough? Or is it so valuable that it trumps all other concerns?
I don't think so. To work in an area like programming, one must certainly be smart...enough. But once this hurdle is passed, for most programming jobs, other considerations become more important. Hiring a really smart person who can come up with amazing algorithms but has a poor work ethic, who can't deliver on time and on budget is a short road to failure. A single, really smart person is akin to an extremely powerful processor. There's a limit to how fast such a processor can be. But distribute the same problem to multiple, less-impressive processors and you may get the results you're looking for faster.
My brother once remarked about a noted luminary: "She may be smarter than any of us, but she's not smarter than all of us." And he should know: after all, he's smarter than I!
I agree with you in terms of not evaluating for intelligence alone. I have to evaluate based on the needs for the situation we are hiring for. So I adjust my questioning not only for the technical level of the position but also how the current team is made up and how that person provides value to the company and for our clients as well.
Don't mess with a language Geek...
"He's smarter than me"
Actually both are correct, depending on whether you are a "conjunctionist" (Hal) or a "prepositionist" (stealth). Personally I've always been a prepositionist ("than" is preposition in a single clause with the first person pronoun as object, therefore "him"), but I can see the merit of the conjunctionist argument, especially in cases where there may be ambiguity:
She likes ColdFusion more than me.
She likes ColdFusion more than I.
The second doesn't sound right to me (to I?), but is less ambiguous.
But "not sounding right" is important: most people would say/write "than me" not "than I", and grammar is there primarily to "describe" what the majority of people do at a point in time.
Hmm. Maybe best to avoid questions on English grammar in interviews... Got a feeling Hal wouldn't be offering me the job.
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring