Re:Ask HN: coding challenges as part of interviews: yes or no?
by scott_s on Thursday May 29, 2008 @01:26PM
(#203448)
I don't think he means open questions, but things related to the problem.
I interviewed once with a company that OCRed medical documents. One guy held up a sheet of paper and asked "How much memory does this take up?" which was a deliberately open-ended question. I was initially stumped, but then he started feeding me domain knowledge and assumptions, such as common DPI values and expected fidelity. Then I started coming up with estimates.
I don't think he expected me to have answer right off. I think he wanted to see how much I could figure out on my own if given hints.
I interviewed once with a company that OCRed medical documents. One guy held up a sheet of paper and asked "How much memory does this take up?" which was a deliberately open-ended question. I was initially stumped, but then he started feeding me domain knowledge and assumptions, such as common DPI values and expected fidelity. Then I started coming up with estimates.
I don't think he expected me to have answer right off. I think he wanted to see how much I could figure out on my own if given hints.