Re:Eric Engstrom, co-creator of DirectX, has died
by gfxgirl on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @10:05PM
(#25451930)
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.
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.