Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
Search - "trick question"
-
I have a bunch of contesters fort the worst interview.
#1 The Dishonest Ignorant
Me: *asks question*
#1: *stumbles*
Me: It's okay to say that you don't know.
#1: *continues to ramble on without making sense*
Me: Well, okay. That is all. I don't think that this will be a fit.
#2 The fraud
Me: How would you rate your knowledge in object orientated programming?
#2: Very advanced! I am an expert!
Me: Can you state the difference of an interface and an abstract class?
#2: *surprised pikachu-face* Well not that advanced!
#3 The trickster
During a skype call (without video):
Me: *asks question*
#3: *keyboard sounds aclacking*
Me: Are you googling?
#3: No *click clack click a clack* ... and to answer your question: *starts reading from the first search results*
The real bummer is, that in all of these cases, just saying "I don't know" would have been fine. (The "expert" OOP-guy would still have some explaining to do.)
It's not like that our interview process resolves around trick questions or that you'd get kicked out for getting one answer wrong. Though how can I trust somebody not to lie to me on a daily basis if they fake their interview?
We keep the interview relatively basic and rely on real-word coding exercise anyway and it helps us to get an idea on where we would gain support from them and where we need to support them.
As a developer you spend a lot of time learning new stuff anyways.
It blows my mind.39 -
This is what happens when you make style more important than function.
Pop quiz: when you lift the handle, what temperature water do you expect to come out? (This isn’t a trick question; assume you have an awesome water heater with instant warm-up time)
“Hot,” you might say, because the “H” is pointed towards you and aligned with the faucet.
“Cold,” you might say, because the handle is turned in the direction of the “C”.
There wouldn’t be any ambiguity if the H/C markings were on an immobile part of the fixture so that the relative position of the handle made the answer obvious.
(If you instinctively answered “cold” then congrats this is the perfect faucet for you.)14 -
Unity3D Game Dev Interview
Interviewer: What is reflection and why would you use it?
Me: Gives overview of system and how I've used it in games before.
Interviewer: Sorry that was a trick question, Reflection is really dangerous and slow. You need to go back and learn the basics.
Me: ???...
A huge portion of Unity is built upon Reflection based systems, the entire Monobehaviour base relies on it. Their events system uses it, animation and timeline. I guess their team needs to go back to the drawing board.
How is this person a senior dev?2 -
Never had one due to this trick I borrowed from an old friend.
So we all know about those meetings where its all crap flying around right?.
First go in there with your alarm clock set on vibration every 7 minutes(trust me on this-makes you look important and you ought to be somewhere else)
Actually the alarm is a reminder that you need to bring yourself back online.
At this point just listen to the speaker for a couple of seconds(especially if its marketing dept) and being the engineer your are; rephrase parts of their presentation in a question-comment hybrid( at this point you're the wisest looking person in the room)
Now go back to thinking about that pizza slice you left in the fridge as they discuss the "lean production" methods that they can use based on "your opinion"..
To more happy meetings..cheers3 -
Still fail to see why people give a fuck if you're self taught or have a degree. (By people I mean other developers, not employers.)
Why does it matter? Trick question: it doesn't matter. All that matters is their code.
And fun fact: both educated and self taught people can write shitty code.
Idk it just seems like unnecessary division in a group of people that all do the same fucking thing: program.29 -
Why is the interviewing process becoming worse over the years?
About 2 years ago I applied for a company and got into 2 interviews: one with the hr to see if I am bsing them and one with the tech people, to be sure I am not using buzzwords without context. Pretty straightforward, could be done in a single interview IMHO, but it's making me waste max 2 weeks.
Fast forward to one year ago: 1 interview with the hr, 1 interview with the tech people, 1 interview with CEO (why? Just.. why?)
Fast forward to today: 1 interview with hr, 1 interview with tech people, 1 interview with the CEO (again... why?), 1 coding assignment which "it's only going to take a couple of hours" and punctually has either poorly documented APIs to rely on or has trick questions/points. So "it takes a couple of hours", but if you want to pass it you need to spend a day on it... (and let's add that they may be using old docker versions so if it doesn't work cause they are using docker 1.0 and it fails too bad, you lost time for nothing, we are not trying to solve it, you just don't pass!).
Not kidding the last assignment I took and dropped required: external API, testing, don't use CSS libraries and make your own CSS, you must use TS and it was supposed to take "3 hours max".
My question is: why? Why is the interviewing process slowly becoming less of a: "I understand that your code may not be perfect for us but that you are a human being able to reason and adapt your code to our standards" and more of a: "You must do everything PERFECTLY and we don't give a sh*t about your time, start giving us your free time and then we see if we want you."
I just keep giving up after I analyze the assignments, cause a part of my brain thinks that if this is the way a professional relationship starts it's too easy to foresee weekend shifts and lots of overtime cause some manager thinks that "come on, it just takes a couple of hours!"10 -
Me: If humans lose the ability to hear high frequency volumes as they get older, can my 4 week old son hear a dog whistle?
Doctor: No, humans can never hear that high of a frequency no matter what age they are.
Me: Trick question... dogs can't whistle.3 -
More WTFery from official corporate training.
This gem of a quiz comes right after the slide saying not to click on or open emails you suspect are spam. To reinforce the idea, click on the spam!
It's the kind of test that makes me go, "is this a trick question?" -
Prequel to my previous post:
I received an offer from a startup that did not meet the originally advertised salary range. In every other aspect this place seemed like where I'd enjoy working the most and each previous interaction made a very good impression on me. So needless to say this was quite a shock.
They immediately apologised and explained the situation. They only now started to expand to and hire from my location (which can be verified) and I would be the very first person from this location (seems true too but I could only really verify this after joining). They explained the salary range I had seen was for their main hub location (accurate too) and said that the recruiter who posted the ad did not adjust it to mine. I asked why tf they didn't notify me of this earlier and they said they are super busy with everything, are new to location based salaries and normally don't check the recruiters posts as it should be her work.
Now, even if this is totally true, it was an awful sudden shock and felt a bit like a scam - totally contradicting my previous impressions.
Here are a couple of other points that I'll just sum to save time:
- before seeing the job ad I had a *reasonable* salary expectation even lower than their actual offering
- on the ad, the bottom end of their salary range far exceeded my reasonable exp.
- the relative level of my position would be even higher up the range that I have seen realised would be top 5%
- having had seen the ad, I started to have an *ideal* expectation being the bottom of the range
- in first interview I told them my exp. is the bottom end of their range +- a bit
- I told this to a dev guy who has no fucking idea about this stuff and I don't blame him but he noted this down to higher management
- generally I have not been very precise of my expectation as previously I only had lower class dev jobs, this would be the first decent.
- Hence I have seen an enormously high variation in salaries offered to me so this advertised range whilst high seemed possible
Now, with all this in mind I posted here a question about what some of you would do in my position.
I received the following group of responses:
- it's a scam, bad place, run
- it's an intentional (common) trick
- people make mistakes like this esp. startups so find out if this is intentional or not
- just decide if their current offering is reasonable for the position and location, ignore the rest
- just decide if the amount is enough
- location based salaries are retarded, don't work there (I kinda agree and also don't)
- if they can afford the higher pay in another place they should have no prob. meeting the range
- it's more important that you'd enjoy it there if the pay is sufficient for general needs
- company culture is generally more important these days
- fuck recruiters and hr people (amen to that btw)
Here is what I did:
Regardless of whether I believe them or not I hyperfocused on the potential scam/trick aspect.
I told them that every other interaction with them was positive and would love to join them but this was a really bad impression and feels like they are playing with me. I made up some bullshit previous examples of companies trying the same trick on me (which obv. never happened).
Then I said that I think to resolve this they should invite me to their main office for a day (all interviews had been online) and if after that they are still not ok to offer me at least the bottom of the adv. range then we can part ways. Otherwise this should ensure both of us that we are a good match, etc.
They seemed to love the idea and said that I should go there for x till y (3 days) and if we don't hate each other by the end I'll get the amount at the bottom of the range and they apologised again about it looking like a scam, etc.
So thanks a bunch again to those of you who provided valuable input. -
So here's a random idea: DDoS defence swarm.
Install the daemon on your server, and every time your server gets DDoS'd, all members of the swarm will mobilise to defend you, but the catch is that your server will have to help other members of the swarm too.
The defensive technique in question can be one of many:
1. Automated IP blocking/reporting with a blacklist in distributed form.
2. Other swarm members counterattack and cooperatively DDoS the offending addresses.
3. Flood the ISP with automated emails to force them to pay attention to the problem.
...or a combination of all of the above.
The only issue I can see with this is abuse potential. A clever person can trick the swarm into DDoSing innocents.15 -
So... I was working in a dead end job where nobody cared about programmers, they were happy everything looked ok.. no standards, no interest in whatsoever about programming.... I was just about to start searching for another job, a better one. I started updating my linkedin and other profiles (ejobs, bestjoba, and so on...) and a few days later, even without applying I got a call for some company asking me for an interview...so I go there...and I was really confused, at the address was just a house, a regular house...anyway,I called them and someone gets out and invites me in, gave me a test with like 50 questions and problems to solve. Did the test and they made me wait for like an hour or so... then two guys in black suits comes to me and start asking me al kind of trick question (like why php 6.1 is better than 5.6) I answered them and then they are like "we want you here, but you have to start tomorrow... and by the way, the contract you will sign... you will can not tell anyone where you will actually work, and can not tell anyone anything about our project and after you will quit or you'll be fired you won't be able to work in programming for the next 2 years or we will sue you... but this is just as a precaution so you won't steal our ideas, code or anything else"... and now is about an year from when I started here, and I have to admit... I get it now, i get why they have all those clause and stuff in the contract...
Sorry for my english, I know it is not really good... and sorry for the long post8 -
So there is a company selling bullshit miraculous devices which they claim can heal everything from foul breath to cancer and autism by light and magnetic pulses. They trick old, naive, gullible, ignorant or simply stupid people into paying big money for their stuff which is always "on sale, just now just for you".
The question is: if they would ask you to build a website for them (which would help their shady business grow) would you refuse their actually pretty generous offer because of moral reasons, or do it like any other job?
(I know my answer, I'm just curious about others' opinions.)7 -
In
https://devrant.com/rants/4221216/...
Hes discussing confidence and I wanted to talk about that for a moment, from a guy who struggled with it a lot growing up.
Half of confidence is headfaking yourself into distracting the lizard brain portion that didn't evolve for the last ten thousand years of rabid human social change and thus detects a bunch of social interactions as varying forms of threats.
Same way NLP works, or stupid shit like seduction, or sales techniques.
It's all about slowing down and distracting yourself with the process.
People that do all this dont realize the trick is you're thinking less because you've slowed down and this comes off as confidence.
Think about it. What do nervous people do? Either talk way less, and/or when they *do*, talk fast and lack certainty. What does confidence techniques and all that shit do? Causes you to slow down, follow process which makes answers clearer usually, and causes you to speak more freely (even if its more structured).
Thats the entire game.
Give yourself time to think and room to answer, to think of a question and formulate a response. Assume nothing while you do so.
One trick I use that boils *all* the other processes down is this: Anything you go to say, pause, look the person in the eye, and wait 1-2 seconds to respond. Remember to blink, and remember to gesture as you normally would.
Treat every conversation as a casual dialogue over coffee with a friend discussing colors of paint for a kitchen. Its a slow process isn't it?
Same thing with any other conversation. People will find you a lot more deliberate, confident, warm and unassuming.3 -
See a trick question,
There is always a man of the match in Football.
There is always a man of the match in cricket.
Therefore, there will also be a man of the match in tenis.
Comment below.2