It’s not necessarily irrelevant (depending on the role). After interviewing a lot of people, I’ve found you can ask a handful of questions and get a pretty good sense for their work style (outside of technical knowledge).

That can be helpful in hiring.

If you’re looking to hire someone for a technical role on some big hairy project that might not work or seems crazy, it’s helpful to select for people who won’t say “this idea is dumb”.

I don't fully understand why every question needs to be 100% relevant.

If you have two candidates equal in technical aspects, then a point of difference is in problem solving and dealing with the unexpected.

That's a very good question though. It allows assesing how other people approach problem solving, how they think and how they communicate. A question like this will often tell you more about a candidate than seeing them invert a binary tree.

I disagree. You're asking the candidate to guess what kind of answer you're looking for.

Possible answers, all valid, all tell you absolutely nothing

* I'd change nothing, it works "AS A PHONE' just fine. There are better things to to work on

* I'd attach it to the side of a rocket so you could use it as a handle. I'd much rather ride a rocket than use the phone

* I'd double the speakers and mic and offset them at 45 degrees so two people could hug cheeks while talking to the same person

* I'd give it a display, add a computer, and have it pocket size and it would annoy you all day long with notifications and distract you from getting anything done. People would stop using it as a phone and mostly only write text messages to each other which would be way less efficient than voice. Oh wait, you said "improve". Yea, ok, bad suggestion

You don't understand. When you get a question like this as an interviewee, they want to see how you arrive at your answer regardless of what the answer is. The answer by itself is less important than what made you pick it in the first place.

For example, possible takeaways from your answers:

* Lacks critical thinking, takes things for granted, doesn't show initiative or not comfortable with it.

* Elevated smartassness, possibly as a defense mechanism or due to inability to read between the lines. Maybe just nervous at the moment.

* Better. At least this solves some specific problem based on one's personal experience. It's possible to discuss that and see what else surfaces.

* Also good. Miraculous even if you'd managed to produce all that in the early 90s. Again, this also opens things up for further discussion.

See the point? It's a meta question.

The fact that you think "leave it alone" is an example of lacking critical thinking skills shows just how subjective this is.

On the assumption that not many people being interviewed by Microsoft in the 90s had an iPhone style plan or a desire to revolutionize cell phones, "leave it alone" is the most realistic, objectively useful answer a candidate might give. Sure, it demonstrates zero creativity, but it's totally unfair to say that person lacks critical thinking skills as their answer is the most rational.

To pass that question, you need to know the interviewer is looking for creativity and be able to make something up on the spot. That's obvious to many of us, but depending on the role I wouldn't fault someone for not being in tune to that question or ready for it.

> That's obvious to many of us, but depending on the role I wouldn't fault someone for not being in tune to that question or ready for it.

The job interview gets debated endlessly, week after week, on HN. There isn't one interview method or question that numerous people would consider unfair, irrelevant, broken, etc.

Eric was interviewing people for very high paying jobs. A decision has to be made about the candidate based on something. A person who wants such a job should go in eager and ready to convince the employer that they're a great fit for the job, and do what it takes.

And yeah, Eric's question was pretty obvious. It's open ended, and you can interpret it as you like, which is part of the point. But being a smartass and/or complaining about the question isn't likely to leave a favorable impression. A "faster horse" answer isn't likely to, either.

That's not the point. The point is the judgement of the answers to "how do you improve the phone" are totally subjective. Maybe as the interviewee I guess you want some crazy answer like "well we could built it into your car" but what you really wanted was proof that I wouldn't waste time on this but instead focus on getting stuff done.

As an aside, IMO smartphones are not an improvement on phones. They are an improvement on PDAs. As phones they've utterly failed. People called each other (as in use a phone) way more before smartphones. So smartphones are not better "phones". They're worse phones and better something else.