is it? If I was forced to ask this question as an interviewer, and the candidate said, "actually, you're wrong, here's why" that's a very good signal. Do most people not do this?
(typically there's discussion with all the interviewers and it isn't just "did the candidate get the question right or not). I personally think a lot of big tech interview questions are dumb but I think the process isn't as broken as I thought, seeing it from both sides.
>If I was forced to ask this question as an interviewer, and the candidate said, "actually, you're wrong, here's why" that's a very good signal. Do most people not do this?
The question is whether Ballmers ego would allow him this flexibility if it's his own question.
Some people might be very emotionally attached to the questions they created, but not so much to those they've been given as an interviewer.
I've fared well pointing out issues with questions in the past and gotten the job. I'd try to be diplomatic about it though and not outright say they're wrong. Instead pointing out how with a classical binary search the expected value is negative, but there are strategies from game theory to deal with adversarial picks and here you could reach a positive expected value.
Kind of a "yes, and..." approach. You acknowledge their view, and then you add a new perspective. But don't say they're wrong.
Funny enough in situations where I suspect the interviewer was given the question it probably wouldn't have helped, not due to emotional attachment, but because the interviewer had a tenuous grasp of the topic themselves and couldn't stray from the script they were given.
I'd say it's impossible to answer this question conclusively within the time frame of an interview. That makes it, in my opinion, a bad interview question.
My answer to this question would be to show that I understand what it would take to answer this question correctly (you'd have to find a mixed strategy that has a positive expected value for every choice of number), I wouldn't be able to give a confident "yes" or "no" answer on the spot. I think that's the only correct answer.
In practice, I think this question is advantegeous for those who confidently blurt out an answer and then make up a heuristic argument for it. But a heuristic argument can be found for both "yes" and "no".
Presumably Balmer did ask this question. At least a few times. And yet he never heard of the correct answer, and believed the incorrect answer to be correct.
That tells you that if anyone did say "actually, you're wrong" he never listened to them.
(typically there's discussion with all the interviewers and it isn't just "did the candidate get the question right or not). I personally think a lot of big tech interview questions are dumb but I think the process isn't as broken as I thought, seeing it from both sides.