<story><title>Gaming CS Interviews</title><url>https://transitivebullsh.it/gaming-cs-interviews</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>leetrout</author><text>&amp;gt; Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer.&lt;p&gt;I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance.&lt;p&gt;And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said &amp;quot;nothing&amp;quot; and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions. For a Django tooling position. He asked me how many prime numbers there were and I said &amp;quot;optimus prime&amp;quot; and he looked at me and asked if I was serious and if he should record my answer. I said yes followed by &amp;quot;autobots roll out&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Such a waste of my time to fly out there.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>atoav</author><text>In such situations I tend to ask that question directly:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It was my understanding that you looking for someone who will help you with Django tooling. I can do that. Although number theory sounds interesting, I never felt the need of diving into it in order to solve any Django-related issue. I would be happy to learn more about how you think number theory relates to Django tooling should I start working here.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;When people try to be important like that, it is paramount to take them at face value. In a lot of geek environments this happens all the time. People trying to push that &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; niche topic they &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; know about, because this is their comfort zone. The problem is: that one niche topic will rarely be a natural fit for any given conversation. More often than not just asking how they think this relates to the conversation at hand is enough to tame them a little bit.&lt;p&gt;Many times the stuff people say will contradict with the stated (or implicit) goals of a conversation. in this case the chosen topic was one with which the interviewer felt at home.&lt;p&gt;So another approach would have been to make it even more about them by e.g. instead of answering their question showing that you did your research: &amp;quot;Ah number theory! I saw you majored in number theory, I admittedly never had the need to dive too much into it — what role does number theory play in $Companyname?&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Gaming CS Interviews</title><url>https://transitivebullsh.it/gaming-cs-interviews</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>leetrout</author><text>&amp;gt; Guidance is expected; a great interview should be more of a conversation than a one-sided question and one-sided answer.&lt;p&gt;I had a particularly awful interview at Google where the interviewer scoffed at me needing assistance.&lt;p&gt;And in an interview at Twitter with a xoogler they asked me what I knew about number theory and I said &amp;quot;nothing&amp;quot; and they said they majored in it and proceeded to ask me number theory questions. For a Django tooling position. He asked me how many prime numbers there were and I said &amp;quot;optimus prime&amp;quot; and he looked at me and asked if I was serious and if he should record my answer. I said yes followed by &amp;quot;autobots roll out&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Such a waste of my time to fly out there.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bodge5000</author><text>I remember being told once in an interview &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ll be your google, your stackoverflow, so anything you&amp;#x27;d usually search for on there ask me&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Eventually I got to the point where I forgot how to do something simple where you&amp;#x27;d usually just google it to refresh your memory. I decided to take his advice seriously and asked him, to which he responded to me basically by rephrasing my question as another question back to me.&lt;p&gt;I can tell you now there is no chance Stackoverflow would be as big as it is if the responses you got back where riddles.</text></comment>