

What are the best interview questions you know? - danjayh

Context - I was reading some of the comments in the &quot;what happens when you type google.com into the address bar and press enter&#x27; article and wondered what are considered <i>good</i> questions.  Also, I would like to know if the following sequence of interview questions would be considered &quot;bad&quot; by most of you (for an embedded software position):<p>&lt;Interviewer&gt;: &quot;It says on your CV that you know VB .Net, could you tell me what some of the primitive data types are in that language?&quot;<p>&lt;Inteviewee&gt;: &quot;What do you mean?&quot;<p>&lt;Interviewer&gt;: &quot;You know, storage types ... like &#x27;Integer&#x27;.&quot;<p>&lt;Interviewee&gt;: &quot;Um...?...&quot;<p>&lt;Interviewer&gt;: &quot;Thats OK ... Could you tell me what programming language are you the most comfortable with?&quot;<p>&lt;Interviewee&gt;: &quot;Assembly&quot;<p>&lt;Interviewer&gt;: (surprised) &quot;Really? That&#x27;s great! Of the different architectures, what processor&#x27;s assembly are you the most familiar with?&quot;<p>&lt;Inteviewee&gt;: &quot;Umm ... the 68HC11.&quot;<p>&lt;Inteviewer&gt;: &quot;Cool ... I actually built a 68HC11 board back in school. Could you describe some of the addressing modes that are available on that?&quot;<p>&lt;Interviewee&gt;: ...?...<p>FWIW, these are questions that I asked. Just wondering if there was a better way to go about it.
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staunch
Those are perfectly fine. Assuming they weren't just temporarily flustered,
it's likely they were bullshitting.

If they made it into your office though, you did make it a mistake. You should
have a very brief and simple phone interview where you ask basic questions
like this.

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danjayh
Large company. I was but a single cog in the process ... had nothing to do
with anything prior to the interview, and little to do with anything after,
other than noting my conclusions.

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smt88
In my experience, knowing the ins and outs of a language (any language)
doesn't make someone a good employee.

It's more important that they understand concepts. I'd rather hire someone
who's weak at a language but understands that code is read many times, even
though it's only written once.

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Klockan
If you are weak at every language then it certainly is a problem.

