

The most important job interview question to ask an R&D candidate - techdog
http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/05/most-important-job-interview-question.html

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justlearning
Just a few hours before, I commented on few bloggers linking their own blogs
with anything/everything. They almost treat HN like their auto-post to
everywhere.

perspective: <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog> _(the
submitter)_

The content may be(or not!) worth reading, but I'd rather have 'discovered
content' please!

~~~
diN0bot
I see you point. Certainly, if a blogger is constantly spamming HN and other
social news sites it's kind of a annoying.

On the other hand, that's the whole point of social aggregation: to
democratically filter the good stuff to the top. Some variation in submission
is good, as long as there's not too much off-topic spam.

It's a hard balance.

Social news sites are the perfect venue for (non-advertising) bloggers to
self-advertise. If someone thinks their own blog post is relevant, why not
post it to hacker news? Why shouldn't a blogger think all his articles are
relevant?

~~~
justlearning
I didn't say that a blogger shouldn't link to any of his posts. Of course
every blogger has a interesting bend of thought which at time he/she feels the
need to have feedback.

The spam is when "every" post comes in.

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lisper
I think this post seriously misses the mark. For R&D (actually, I think
lumping R and D together like that is a serious mistake, but that's another
issue) I don't think coding matters very much at all. What matters more is raw
problem-solving ability, understanding of core mathematical concepts, etc.

Project Euler is a good source of questions for R&D candidates.

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ramchip
_If the talk turns immediately to formatting issues, that's not good._

Amusingly, however, I've noticed that bad/newbie coders tend to indent stuff
all over the place and have no consistency in the whitespace (this is C++ so
the compiler doesn't care). Often you can tell the code is bad because it
literally looks bad.

I prefer the suggestion commenter 'John' gave rather than the OP's: "Can you
draw me the architecture of your most complex project?"

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Deestan
I was asked if I had any hobby projects and would like to explain their
architecture on a whiteboard. In addition to the benefits of seeing into the
candidate's mind, it eases the nervousness quite a bit to talk about something
you definitely know more about than anyone else.

I was then asked if I drank beer. Then I was hired.

~~~
cnlwsu
hobby projects are never looked at enough, especially open source ones. I
think open source projects and real code the interviewer can look at should
speak more at an interview then johnny-on-the-spot-clever-answers.

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pieter
That's really his one question he'd ask to someone working in R&D, and writing
code?

How about asking somebody about the problem domain he'll be addressing? Past
experiences on that field, or related fields?

Recognising bad code might be nice, but I'd pick someone with 20 years of real
and relevant experience over someone just new that can say "whoa, that looks
like bad code!"

~~~
rdr
completely agree, I don't see why this post is specific to R&D ... seems like
it's a useful question to ask of any candidate who has to write code, but the
essence of R&D seems to be knowledge of the research literature and ability to
advance the company's interests through performing innovative research, which
this question doesn't at all cover

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dmolnar
The "special extra credit" makes me think this question is fishing to see
whether the candidate can step back and look at the big picture. That's part
of the job of being in R&D, no matter where you stand on the research to
development spectrum. One of the reasons companies keep R&D departments is to
have people around who are technically knowledgeable _and_ who have the vision
to think ahead about where the company should go next.

The fact that it's about code quality is an artifact. Yes, as others have
pointed out, a question about code may not be so relevant if your candidate is
a theorist or will have a role with no development. Still, because most or all
candidates will have experience with bad code, and because fewer will have
intimate knowledge of the business at hand, it's a better question than "so,
where do you think our company should go in three to five years?"

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viergroupie
>What about evidence of design patterns? Does it look like the person who
wrote the code doesn't know about things like Observer, Visitor, and Decorator
patterns?

This is his criterion for a _research_ position? Understanding of the unsolved
problems in a domain? "Irrelevant."

Mathematical sophistication needed to abstractly model complicated-seeming
scenarios? "A dime a dozen."

Know the decorator pattern? "omg, you're hired!"

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gfodor
A spin on this that I do is give them a piece of code that I know has some
major flaws (a very small piece of code) and ask them to tell me why it sucks.

