How to conduct a good programming interview - lihaoyi
http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/HowtoconductagoodProgrammingInterview.html
======
thiscatis2
So reading over some of the questions posted on technical programming
interviews I must say that I would definitely fail such an interview without
studying for it for a month first. Having recently discussed job interviews of
ex-colleagues that went to EBay, Facebook, Google, etc.. I wouldn't even pass
the whiteboard test.

However I'm shipping scaleable API's used by web and native apps, using
Continuous Integration and Deployment on an AWS infrastructure that I set up
myself. Furthermore I'm responsible for hiring developers that I work with on
agency projects and most important of all getting projects delivered within
time, scope and budget AND getting paid for it. Yet I would fail most
technical interviews.

I've been doing this for about 10 years and never ran into any major problems.
I've worked both as a freelancer and in-house permanent dev and never had any
complaints about my work. (Feedback and improvements yes, big failures never).
Yet I would fail most technical interviews.

I talk directly to clients and vendors, I sell projects, I take over projects,
I end projects and I've created 2 startups, one of which I sold but I would
definitely fail a purely technical interview.

I completely understand the need for these technical interviews and weed out
obvious bad programmers and get experts on board but sometimes from a business
point of view it just doesn't make sense.

At a previous company I worked for the team almost crashed & burned because of
the TL's focus purely on technical skills. No code was being shipped but hours
of meetings and Slack conversations and discussions on PR's for no good reason
about 0.01% improvement gains.

I know I'm not the best developer out there and never will be. Often I'm in
awe of the technical skills of people out there but I rather have a less
skilled dev with great "people & shipping" skills as I call it than some of
the people that would pass all these tests but that I couldn't put in front of
a client or even let them email a vendor.

~~~
nolemurs
> I completely understand the need for these technical interviews and weed out
> obvious bad programmers and get experts on board but sometimes from a
> business point of view it just doesn't make sense.

The thing is that the main goal of the technical interview is _not_ to hire
all good candidates. The main goal is to _avoid_ hiring bad candidates. A
large high paying company like Facebook has plenty of candidates to choose
from, and the main priority is avoiding expensive bad hires. The cost of
failing to hire a good engineer is small - they can just take the next guy.
The cost of hiring a bad engineer is large.

With this in mind, the process makes a lot of business sense. Someone who is
capable of learning what's needed to do well on a technical interview has
demonstrated a fairly high level of competence, and is (relatively) unlikely
to be a really bad hire.

This filter does limit your applicant pool a little, but if you're Facebook,
the largest chunk of your applicant pool are recent comp. sci. graduates. If
they can't solve an algorithms problem reasonably gracefully then that's a bit
of a red flag. For non-recent-comp-sci-graduates, a competent candidate really
should be able to prepare pretty well in a month or two of spare time.

Facebook might miss out on hires like you who would likely be quite good at
the job but aren't willing to put in the effort to prep for the interview, but
that's a trade off they'll make happily if they minimize bad hires.

Smaller companies with lower pay and access to fewer qualified candidates
would probably be ill advised to copy the Facebooks and Googles of the world
though. I'll grant that.

~~~
sidlls
> Someone who is capable of learning what's needed to do well on a technical
> interview has demonstrated a fairly high level of competence, and is
> (relatively) unlikely to be a really bad hire.

Sure, as long as their only role is repetitive coding tasks that require
limited amounts of broadening their experience beyond the DS&A trivia places
like Facebook require.

However then Facebook ends up with stuff like their iOS app ("iOS can't handle
our scale"), which had a lot of (probably) very talented CS folks putting
together an app that was pure garbage (from an engineering and usability
perspective).

The filter limits the applicant pool to that set of people uninterested in
solving problems outside the scope of a CS textbook. Capability has little to
do with it.

~~~
nolemurs
> The filter limits the applicant pool to that set of people uninterested in
> solving problems outside the scope of a CS textbook.

The only way this would be true is if being good at textbook CS makes you bad
at solving other problems. I'm assuming you don't actually think that, 'cause
it's kind of crazy.

Even giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming you mean that the filter
makes the pool less likely to contain good problem solvers, it's hard to see
where this idea is coming from. In my experience, being good at one sort of
problem solving makes someone _more_ likely to be good at other sorts of
problem solving. The correlation between skill in problem solving across
domains is weak sometimes, but it's definitely not negative!

~~~
ubernostrum
_The only way this would be true is if being good at textbook CS makes you bad
at solving other problems._

The way the typical interview process works, basically, is "we have a list of
6-12 algorithms we will ask about; if you have memorized implementations of
them, and certain key phrases to identify which one to regurgitate on command,
you pass the interview".

This is then touted as a test of "CS knowledge" and "problem-solving ability".

Tech interviewing is Goodhart's law in action.

------
tptacek
It's good to think carefully about how you interview candidates. Most of the
ideas in this post are good. You should definitely let candidates type answers
on computers. You should definitely work to put them at ease, in an
environment that approximates their actual working environment.

But really, this is window dressing. The problem is that technical interviews
just don't work reliably. We have better ways to qualify candidates.

Rather than trying to read subjective, noisy signals from in-person
interviews, give candidates a small battery of _work-sample tests_. These can
be bug-fixes, small features, diagnostic challenges, or even specification
writing assignments.

A properly designed work-sample challenge has a _rubric_ : a set of
instructions for scoring a result. Ideally, the rubric is straightforward
enough for someone who hasn't met the candidate to quickly score their result.
"Runs correctly". "Passes a battery of unit tests". "Includes appropriate
documentation". Whatever is important for your team.

Work to give every candidate the same set of challenges, so you can track
results over time. You'll find that after refining and iterating for a few
months, you'll rapidly build confidence in the tests, to the point where in-
person interviews become superfluous for technical qualification.

Working on technical qualifiers is stressful. Most candidates will perform
more poorly on them than they would on normal work. You should build that into
your rubric (though, really, data from candidates will ultimately determine
how strict the rubric becomes).

Understanding how stressful qualifying work is, you should consider not
requiring candidates to work on problems on-site. Instead, administer them
online. Suggest the amount of time you expect the problems to take to finish,
and offset that amount of time from the amount you demand on-site.

When you must interview, you should work hard to _standardize the interview_.
Interviewers _hate_ this. Everyone has their favorite questions. People want
interviews to be conversational and adaptive. Interviewing isn't supposed to
be fun for the interviewer; it's supposed to be reliable.

~~~
balls187
Other than the pain of being rejected (or rather the lack of validation),
where does this reliability problem manifest?

Elite tech companies have no problem with the current implementation of
technical interviews.

Engineers whos skills range from Great to Mediocre don't have a problem
finding a job.

Software quality has generally improved or stayed the same.

~~~
tptacek
This is demonstrably false. Lots of great engineers are terrible at
interviewing. If you ask around, you can get even some very high-profile devs
to tell you stories about why they're not working at Google or Facebook or
Amazon because of how badly their interviews went. Equally importantly: lots
of terrible engineers are _great_ at interviewing, and most people in the
industry have had the experience of working alongside someone who is failing
up, 2-year-stints at a time.

What's true is that Google and Facebook have such enormous budgets and such
huge positive profiles in the talent market that they don't need to work hard
to put together functioning teams. They're paying more than they need to and
having to deal with more bad hires than they should, but it's for them a
marginal problem.

~~~
balls187
> lots of terrible engineers are great at interviewing and most people in the
> industry have had the experience of working alongside someone who is failing
> up, 2-year-stints at a time.

You mean lots of companies are terrible at firing terrible engineers.

The argument is basically the current implementation leads to false negatives.
What impacts does that have?

Presumably those very high-profile devs aren't lacking employment
opportunities, even if it isn't at the elite tech companies.

Companies, from Elites down to pleb-tier, while perhaps pressed for resources,
are still able to execute.

So why is the problem of false negatives a problem we should focus on?

~~~
tptacek
Almost every company is terrible at firing ineffective engineers. Even some of
the companies that are famous for doing so ("'meets expectations' earns a
generous severance package!") don't necessarily manage to accomplish that in
less than a year. This stuff sounds very simple on message boards, but is much
harder to do in real life.

The first N months of a developer's tenure at a job is difficult to measure
because of ramp-up and calibration (even good developers might hop to
different teams after getting hired based on work style fit issues). Whole
projects can flounder and need rescuing so that attention to ineffectiveness
gets deflected to group leads. Most good development shops will try to make
things work for a new hire that isn't performing at the 6 month mark, and that
process takes a few months.

Once the decision is made to fire, most big companies will PIP rather than
fire. Sure, once you've hit the 7-8 month mark of poor performance, your
severance from the firm may be a fait accompli. But the ultimate process to
make that happen can easily be made to take more than 12 months.

Once you have a year-long stint at a company on your resume, you can bank that
"experience" on your resume.

And that assumes a relatively well-run companies. Most companies aren't well
run in this regard, and you can be a terrible developer but last 2+ years in
most jobs. If you can reliably put more 2+ year jobs on your resume than
1-year jobs, you will end up with what will appear to most companies to be an
extremely attractive resume.

Remember, many management-track developers only write code for ~8-10 years.
Once you fail up to Dir/Eng, you're basically tenured.

Since almost nobody qualifies candidates effectively, failing up is a super
powerful strategy for this field.

~~~
balls187
Why are the terrible engineers terrible, leading to them being fired (after
1-2 years?)

I've not hired anyone who turned out to be bad at coding, but I have hired
people who had other performance related issues, which were difficult to suss
out during an interview.

From my own personal performance, my approach to interviewing has led to far
more true positives, than false positives, so I am biased towards continuing.

~~~
Jhsto
> other performance related issues

What are some examples of these?

~~~
balls187
Typically it's patterns of repeated performance issues, such as providing
estimates then routinely not completing work on time.

Or, failing to complete tasks they've taken on, requiring other teammembers to
step up in order to meet deadlines.

There are more extreme cases, like insubordination, theft etc, but they are
pretty rare.

------
sillysaurus3
_While there are a variety of ways you can conduct a programming interview,
the goals typically are the same:

Will the candidate be able to write working code if they join the team?

Can the candidate discuss code and problems with the people they'll be working
with?

Can the candidate reason about arbitrary problems and constraints?

Is the candidate someone we would enjoy working with?_

All of these can be solved directly by asking the candidate if they'd be
comfortable doing an actual task on the actual codebase, having them sign an
NDA, and then giving them a bugfix to perform. They're compensated for their
time, of course.

I'm doing it right now as a candidate and it's by far the best interview
experience I've had. The others were all artificial.

A lot of people have a problem with this model for one reason or another, but
in terms of effectiveness it's probably at the top 1%.

~~~
wjossey
I also agree. As someone who has recently co-founded a startup, this is
something my co-founder and I have spent a lot of discussing and exploring.

My personal experience with this style of interview was that it really helped
me to personally demonstrate my abilities. I was interviewing at a startup in
San Francisco in 2012 who wanted me to do a quick version of "battleship" as
part of their hiring exercise. I proposed, mid interview, "how about I help
you solve a performance problem with your current system. What's your biggest
issue right now?" My interviewer actually showed me, and we ended up solving
the problem together and then deploying out the change.

The funny thing about that experience was that when we were done improving
their platform, the VP of engineering was told what I did, and then had the
interviewer go back and do the battleship exercise anyway. They needed to
"benchmark" me against other candidates, and the only way to do that was with
a consistent "test". I did far more poorly with the battleship exercise than I
did helping them on their platform.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _They needed to "benchmark" me against other candidates, and the only way to
> do that was with a consistent "test"._

If your employer were ever sued by a candidate for discrimination and it came
to light that you had received different treatment than other candidates, some
very uncomfortable questions regarding the reason would be asked in the
courtroom. An unfortunate bit of fallout from the litigious environment we
live in today, but it is what it is.

~~~
e12e
Wouldn't it be (well, look) even worse if any number of the non-hires dud
great on the battleship test?

------
kevmo314
> If you ask the candidate the define the requirements for the task you're
> going to give them, you can't be surprised if the candidate imagines a use
> case with entirely different requirements from what you expected!

This section really resonated with me. I've had a few interviews where I came
up with a different answer than what the interviewer expected and this
resulted in a lot of tension, as the interviewer asserted they were correct
with zero exception. This often led to a lot of dead-end scenarios and the
interviewer trying to get me to see an alternate solution without telling me
explicitly.

I once had an interviewer tell me that O(k) was constant if k was a config
parameter (I disagreed because in practice, k would need to be tuned as a
function of the size of the data, and it would be like saying O(n) is constant
if you just fix n = 1M), and an interviewer tell me that you could solve an
optimization problem without an objective function (in actuality, he had an
objective function, he just thought it was obvious and didn't want to specify
it). In both cases, I understood what they were trying to get at _after_ they
explained their solutions, but in the process it was incredibly frustrating as
they seemed to just disregard my answer all together.

~~~
baddox
I love interview horror stories! In my most recent job search, which was early
this year, I debated with one interviewer whether checking for key existence
in a hash was a constant time operation. I insisted it was, and the
interviewer insisted otherwise with the same amount of conviction. That was
just a small portion of an all-day onsite interview. After leaving, I was told
they were looking for a more senior candidate. I was not upset.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
Could just be a terminology mismatch. Checking for hash existence should
always be constant, but checking for _key_ existence is generally only
amortized constant (that is to say, not constant across all lookups) - he may
have wanted you to talk about addressing schemes and degradation at high load
factors?

~~~
baddox
There was no subtle argument. It only came up because I was on the whiteboard
solving some simple word game that involved matching user input against a list
of valid words (e.g. the Scrabble dictionary). When asked to explain the
running time of the various operations, I said that we can store the
dictionary in, well, a _dictionary_ , and checking whether the user input is a
valid word will be a constant time operation. The interviewer insisted, with
no subtle argument about amortization or collisions or addressing, that this
was in fact a linear time operation.

~~~
fencepost
So likely thinking of it in terms of checking a tree based on characters
instead of hashes of full words. Which is more viable would likely depend on
what kind of memory constraints and dictionary size was being considered. Also
very implementation dependent, what's the size of the hashes generated?

Edit: curiosity got me looking at this for Python, with an answer of "it
depends, and both have correct aspects" based on Python's implementation [1].
The hashing varies by string length, the lookup is fixed unless there's a
collision and probing, probing will be minimized by growing the dictionary as
items are added. In any case, better than O(n) but worse than O(1) and with
some possible slowdowns during loading unless you can set an expected final
size during initialization.

Edit again: since I brought it up, turns out initialization doesn't really
matter, resizing is not a speed factor. Relevant discussion starts from
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1298636/how-to-set-
initi...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1298636/how-to-set-initial-size-
for-a-dictionary-in-python)

[1] [http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-dictionary-
implement...](http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-dictionary-
implementation/)

~~~
kevmo314
It's also possible the interviewer meant linear time as a function of the
length of the word, which would be true. Regardless, not being able to express
this clearly is a sign of a poor interviewer which unfortunately the candidate
takes the hit for.

~~~
baddox
That was certainly not the case. Multiple times the interviewer "explained"
that with my approach you have to run through every entry in the word list
which is linear time. My guess is that the interviewer wanted me to mention a
prefix tree of some type, and was completely blind to any other approach.

------
Goopplesoft
> 5 minutes of resume discussion > 45 minutes of coding

As anyone else found that a good resume discussion is often much better than
the coding component? I've concluded that implementation difficulties,
decisions made (tradeoffs, technologies, etc.) and the collaborative
environment around projects, are much better signals than the code part of my
interviews.

If you've dealt with a broad range of tech and can ask the right questions,
it's relatively easy to get a strong signal from a candidate by having a deep
discussion on their work on prior projects. Both are needed and very useful.

~~~
majormajor
Yeah. If they can't tell me about what they've built before, and aren't a
less-than-one-year-away-from-school new grad, I'm going to be wondering how
they deal with real problems regardless of whatever they can do algorithm-
wise.

If someone can talk about what approach they took, what other approaches they
considered, what made it hard, what made it easy, how often the requirements
changed, etc, then I'd rather ask them questions about that then spend the
whole time in code. Just do some small spot checks to make sure they aren't
taking credit for the work of others.

~~~
Goopplesoft
> Just do some small spot checks to make sure they aren't taking credit for
> the work of others.

Agreed, asking tough technical questions on this front gives a really solid
indicator of a 'bullshitter'. For example, I often ask people to diagram a
prior project architecture they worked on, and then ask them very fine details
of how things work and try to challenge them with alternative approaches to
see how they react. I get to experience working with them during the interview
through which I learn if they're smart and capable.

------
HugoDaniel
Here is how to do a good coding interview if you are a recruiter:

1\. Do your homework: know what projects drive the interviewee (what kind of
things she likes to code, what recent projects has she been involved in), make
sure they are a match for your company projects and goals

2\. Ask the interviewee for a git repository and take a careful holistic look
at it (commit messages and code, timespan, branches, merges etc...)

3\. Go for a 2h lunch with the interviewee in a relaxed environment to check
speak communication skills (talk about whatever you think is interesting, if
you can't have or don't know how to have 2h lunches you shouldn't be
interviewing, check your life first and learn how to enjoy it before doing
interviews).

4\. Stop asking programmers to write code in 40 minutes. Learn how to respect
before expecting respect in return, if you didn't take the time to read
through their code repositories then don't ask for a 40 minute code problems.

~~~
mwcampbell
I think you missed the part where the OP said not all candidates are willing
or able to work on open source projects.

~~~
HugoDaniel
Well the .2 "Ask the interviewee for a git repository" can be a private
repository. It is a very hard problem to solve if they have no visible code to
show but it does happen in other areas. Imagine asking for a management
candidate for the private e-mails he shared in certain tricky situations of
previous jobs. Or even public e-mails. Or even to take 40 minutes to write in
a whiteboard a team statement for a certain conflict scenario.

Trust is entailed when recruiting in most areas. But in programming not as
much.

~~~
jonathankoren
> Well the .2 "Ask the interviewee for a git repository" can be a private
> repository.

If someone shares a private git repo, they should not be hired, and in fact
should be fired from their current job, and possibly sued. (Think Anthony
Levandowski sharing Google lidar designs as an example of his work with Uber.)

This isn't promoting trust. This is a violation of trust.

~~~
HugoDaniel
Yes I agree with you but I was not making the point of sharing a repository
you shouldn't share to a recruiter (I do own a few private repositories that I
wouldn't mind sharing to recruiters).

My point was that seeing code is not as mandatory for a recruitment as we
currently make it so. I gave the comparison to management but it happens even
in engineering areas. It is worth to know your candidate before asking to
write a solution to an air conditioning problem in a whiteboard in 40 minutes
when applying to a mechanical engineering position. Specially if your company
never solves air conditioning problems.

------
XCSme
Interviews suck for both parties, a world without interviews would be a better
world. Why can't we just hire someone based on his experience and projects he
previously worked on? You can have a first month as a "trial" where both
parties can cancel the contract.

Why interviews suck is because they are very, very biased and subjective and
also not a good way to estimate the actual performance of a candidate.

Say no to interviews! If you like what someone did, hire him. You can't get to
know a person after 1 or even 10 interviews, because the interview environment
is totally different from the work environment.

PS: I have been interviewed by 14 different people at Google. I didn't get the
job. The overall conclusion was that some interviewers loved me, my skill and
my work, others didn't like me from the start or simply didn't care about me.
Some of them had a good day so they gave a good "review" even though I made
mistakes, some of them had a really bad day (one fell of the chair) and gave
me a really bad review even though, related to the actual interview questions,
I did really well.

(14 interviews = applied twice, 2 x (5 on-site + 1 online), and they also
wanted 2 extra interviews to take a decision)

~~~
CJefferson
I'm sure most businesses would love that situation, but for employees it would
require you quit your current job, but have a good chance of being fired after
a month at your new job.

I imagine young employees would be happy (I did a bunch of short-term
contracts myself), but once you have a mortgage and kids, it's nice to be a
little more certain about your new job, before quitting your old one.

~~~
nolemurs
> I imagine young employees would be happy (I did a bunch of short-term
> contracts myself), but once you have a mortgage and kids, it's nice to be a
> little more certain about your new job, before quitting your old one.

And just to make this really explicit - this means that a company with this
hiring practice would have a _very_ hard time hiring experienced competent
engineers. If I were looking for a job, I'd have lots of options, and I would
_not_ waste time on a company that demanded this.

------
sidlls
Some points are quite good, and in particular the author calling out the
rubbish of asking "neat little algorithmic" questions (e.g. asking things like
"implement mergesort").

However one thing I'd point out is that this guide still falls far short of
being a good guide for finding _engineers_. Particularly noteworthy, in my
opinion, is that the measurement criteria are still applicable only to the
coding question itself. For example, "how well the candidate manages time"
still applies only to this limited 40-60 minute question. It doesn't really
help evaluate how the candidate might consider prioritization of tasks
(implementation or otherwise) in a broader, bigger sense.

------
mwcampbell
Here's another disadvantage of whiteboard coding: it's inaccessible to blind
people, and impractical (even more than usual) for people with only a little
vision (like me). Such candidates will need to do the coding on a computer, so
one might as well make that the default, as the OP recommends, and eliminate
one variable and a possible source of bias. Of course, once a blind or low-
vision programmer stays at a given company long enough, they'll probably be on
the other side of the interview at some point. So for consistency among a team
of interviewers, I imagine it would be best if all of them have their
candidates do coding problems on a computer, not just one of them.

I'm curious about why whiteboard coding is still a thing in the first place.
Is it a matter of convenience or cost? If so, surely that equation has changed
now that we have ubiquitous, cheap, portable computers. Or do some
interviewers really think that it's good to deny a candidate access to a real
computer while solving a coding problem during the interview?

~~~
mahyarm
These places use the computer for interviews already for the visually
impaired. It's just a name for a type of interview.

I even give people the option to use the computer if they are more comfortable
with that or a whiteboard. It can be 50:50 in who choses what.

------
Xoros
Those white board stuff reminds me when I was a CS student in the beginning of
the 90's in France.

We had our exams on paper. And believe me, writing LISP on paper, knowing if
you forgot one parenthesis you got 0 point ("if I type it on a computer, it
fails !"), was pretty and unnecessary stressful.

So I relate with candidate facing that. Dude, on your day to day work, you
WILL have a computer to check those !

How can you decently check those skill on a white board ? I totally agree with
what's stated in this post.

~~~
e12e
If you think writing lisp by hand is bad, try implementing a linked list
interface in java on paper... _shudder_. (in fairness, we were sanely graded,
minor syntax errors didn't subtract terribly from the grade...).

------
bostik
A year ago I wrote a (shorter) post on the same topic:
[https://smarketshq.com/notes-on-interviewing-
engineers-a4fa4...](https://smarketshq.com/notes-on-interviewing-
engineers-a4fa4383968a)

A reasonable question should never require the candidate to know "just a
single trick". Questions that require to combine approaches are far better -
they can actually measure if the interviewee can reason about the problem and
identify the points for trade-offs.

Btw: if you're interviewing more senior candidates, a code review question is
often a good idea. It turns the situation around, from "how do you build
this?" to "how would you fix this?"

------
balls187
Being a better interviewer is important.

As stated, some types of questions aren't good judge of skills, like implement
mergesort. If you can implement mergesort, you probably studied up for your
interview. You're not testing anything, other than did the candidate care
enough to study.

Interviewing should test the candidates ability to write code that is:

1\. Correct (solves the problem)

2\. Efficient (solves the problem without unnecessarily wasting resources)

3\. Understandable (goes hand in hand with maintainable)

4\. Maintainable (can be modified by another developer, or even yourself after
a few months)

Coding on a computer can lend itself to all of these (no brainer there), but
you lose a key aspect of whiteboarding that I think is really important--how a
candidate approaches solving a problem.

Knowing how to implement merge sort, or memorizing every possible linked-list
question isn't all that valuable--but having a concrete approach to tackling
problems is, and I want to understand that process from my candidates. I want
to know the design tradeoffs you make, how you think about optimization, how
do you reason about constraints as you learn about them.

It seems that explaining your process while coding on a computer would be
difficult to do without practice--and if you're going to practice, why not
instead just practice whiteboard coding, which is how most tech companies
interview.

~~~
rimliu
So do you want someone who is good at explaining how they are looking for the
solutions, or someone who is good at finding the solution? For me personally
approaching a problem never involves a whiteboard.

~~~
balls187
I don't think I've ever been at an engineering company that didn't have
whiteboards, at the very least in conference rooms--I infer from that that
some portion of employees find them valuable.

Clearly someone who is good at solving problems is preferred. However, between
someone who is good at solving problems, and someone who is good and can
explain/demonstrate their process is more desirable.

------
jonathankoren
I have to disagree with this trend of having people write code on a computer
instead of a whiteboard. Sure, it mimics the real world, but in practice you
spend a bunch of time dealing with crap about syntax errors, and argument
order mismatch instead of dealing with the actual underlying algorithm. Even
worse, you may end up with a candidate that realizes that there's probably a
library that would be really useful for this, but then has to spend time
googling for the name of the library, then installing it, and then desperately
skimming for a quick start in documentation because the question isn't, "Can
you work google and run pip install?", but rather some other task. So now
you've probably lost 15 minutes just dealing with that shit.

If you're going to do this, it simply doesn't work in a 40 minute setup
without some sort of provided scaffolding and test cases.

~~~
jpatokal
Is doing interviews in an IDE and expecting fully functional code actually a
thing? My company uses a simple text editor: perfection is not expected, and
it's still way better than a whiteboard.

~~~
jonathankoren
I can confirm that this is a thing at multiple companies. Instead of of
testing the actual algorithm, you'll encounter such blasts from the past like:
"Network Socket Debugging", "How The Fuck Does Java Read From STDIN?", and
everyone's favorite, "Why The Fuck Did You Give Me Text Data In CSV Format?"

I have seen this go well exactly once. And they provided an environment with a
working (albeit do nothing) scaffold along with test data. Also it was like a
three hours in a room.

------
cbanek
> Hopefully in your realistic setting, the challenge comes from the difficult
> tasks you are given to solve, not some jerk that's sniping at you from the
> sidelines.

I wish I could say that's true. If you're getting sniped from the sidelines in
your interview, it's probably a part of the culture where you are
interviewing. So it's quite likely to be a non trivial part of the problem
you're solving.

------
pnw_hazor
There is no reason to haze potential employees.

Just fire them if they don't work out. You set expections by telling them up
front they are on probation and that they will be fired if they fail to live
up to their resume.

Some of the worst programmers I ever worked with could pass hazing interviews
like a champ. Whereas some of the best would refuse to step foot in companies
with a reputation for hazing their prospects.

~~~
Clubber
That's a funny term to apply to this type of interview process, but it fits.
Kudos.

Agree on the invalidity of technical interviews. We hired a guy who correctly
answered every question I asked, but he could never ship a product. He always
got distracted by silly things. He was great at solving tough little problems,
but never could grasp the big picture.

------
amriksohata
For me I have interviewed many people with a technical test, that was the
easiest part i.e determining their competency. The hardest part is figuring
out what their work ethic is, can they pull their own weight and will they
cause friction in a team, sadly you only find that out often AFTER hiring
them.

------
zerr
_Small_ take-home _paid_ project.

------
Jemaclus
I have a lot of thoughts about this particular topic, probably ideas that are
unpopular and definitely go against the grain, at least in the way the Bay
Area operates.

In my opinion, if you bring a candidate on-site for a 4+ hour interview and
you ask them to write code, you've failed to properly vet the top of your
recruitment funnel. As a software engineer, writing code is the BARE MINIMUM
of your job. Imagine hiring a construction worker by merely asking them to
hammer a nail for 4 hours.

You should have a thorough understanding, through various means such as phone
screens, code samples, portfolio work, and simple tech challenge, to determine
whether they can write code _before you even bring them on-site_. Once they're
on-site, you should _quickly_ verify that they can actually do what you
previously learned that they can do. I'm talking 15-20 minutes worth of time.
The remaining time should be 100% on the "soft skills" and other things
mentioned, including but not limited to my big criteria: "Can you quickly get
up to speed and learn the things you don't already know?" and "Do I want to
sit next to you for the next 6 months of my work-life?"

If your on-site interview includes 45 minutes of coding (much less multiple
sets of 45 minutes of coding!), you're doing it wrong. Very wrong.

Keep in mind you've asked your candidate to effectively take a day off work
from their current job. They're calling in sick, taking a vacation day, or
somehow lying to their boss and taking a risk of not being in their office
when they're in yours for the interview. If they're smart, they've lined up
multiple interviews with multiple companies, because putting all their eggs in
your basket is just a terrible idea. Imagine having to take four days off to
interview with four companies. And they probably aren't four days in a row, so
you can't just pretend to have the bubonic plague or something.

You're asking them for a huge commitment of their time. And if you're willing
to kick out a candidate because they didn't know how to invert a binary tree,
then you should have found that out before they even walked in the door and
saved everyone a whole bunch of time.

IMO, an interview should be a _max_ of 4 hours. Any more than that and the
candidate is simply repeating themselves over and over to different people,
potentially solving the same tech problems (that should have been evaluated
beforehand), and generally making it a huge waste of time.

My two cents. Happy to debate these ideas with anyone interested.

------
ilaksh
Mostly makes sense but your ability to write a parser is still going to depend
on how many parsers you wrote or when you wrote them or whether you are able
to use a framework/tool to do it.

------
the_mint
All his example interview questions are stuff that were actually used at
Dropbox!

~~~
kevmo314
His resume ([http://www.lihaoyi.com/Resume/](http://www.lihaoyi.com/Resume/))
suggests he worked at Dropbox for quite a while. :)

------
spraak
What are some good resources for developing good algorithm skills for a non CS
grad? Examples in JS, Python or Go preferred.

~~~
SmirkingRevenge
There's lots of stuff online.

Check out hackerrank.com for example. There are other sites like that out
there.

Its becoming a real cottage industry, this whole IT interview prep thing.


Demon Core: The Strange Death of Louis Slotin (2016) - BerislavLopac
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/demon-core-the-strange-death-of-louis-slotin
======
mjb
I've always found this story fascinating, because it's such a clear example of
the role of operator error in safety. Both Daghlian and Slotin were experts in
the work they were doing, and both were well aware of the danger of getting it
wrong. Still, they made a mistake. As people do.

On one hand, the mistake was the effect of time and schedule pressure. Some of
that was real, but some also illusory (as shown by the fact that Los Alamos
could stop doing those experiments entirely as still deliver). They chose the
approach they did because it was the easiest. But not only that - at least in
Slotin's case he chose the approach he did because he didn't believe that he
would make a mistake. He'd done this a bunch of times. The danger had become
routine, an idea captured in Diane Vaughan's books as "normalization of
deviance", and in economic and sports research as "the familiarity heuristic
("I know this, so I'm safe").

On the other hand, the experiment itself set them up to fail. Minor tweaks
with near-zero cost impact, like bringing the tamper up from the bottom rather
than down from the top, would likely have saved both men. My understanding is
(and it's hard to get clear evidence of this) that both men designed their own
experiment. Both were in a position to do it in a safer way with no additional
cost. With hindsight, both likely would have. In Slotin's case it seems like
the commitment heuristic ("I want to be consistent with my past actions")
played a role in him doing something he knew to be dangerous "one last time".
In Daghlin's case, there seems to have been some role of the scarcity
heuristic ("if I don't get this done tonight after the party, I might not get
another chance").

This all goes to show how fallible we are. Not only these guys, both extremely
smart people. We take irrational risks all the time. The big take away here is
that systems need to be safe _even though_ people are going to make bad
decisions for bad reasons. One extremely effective way to do that is to
separate design from implementation, using our rational decision making
processes to make the hard decisions ahead of the moment. Then write the
decisions down. Then follow them in the moment.

~~~
ska
A more mundane and perhaps relatable version of this is the relaxation of key
automobile driving skills once the operator has become comfortable. It is not
unusual to see someone performing maneuvers that are only "safe" under
assumptions that cannot be strictly true but are statistically likely to be
true (e.g. there is nobody coming the other way around this blind corner,
there is no cross traffic this late at night, whatever). I doubt people
consciously think of it as a dice-roll every time they do it, but it is. Over
time you may get comfortable doing things simply because nothing bad has
happened but if the assumption fails you will likely crash.

~~~
ethbro
I can't seem to find the statistics, but I've always wondered if there's a
secondary peak around ~1-2 years of driving experience.

Hypothesis: at that point you feel comfortable, but you haven't accumulated
the full spectrum of experience.

I'd expect the relevant statistic would be accidents per person, by age. But
everything seems to normalize per miles-driven (where no such effect is
apparent) or against total accident rate.

------
liability
Slontin was a cowboy (in the derogatory sense of the term) who thought bravado
would keep him safe from intense radiation. The demon core incident wasn't an
isolated incident, one of his less famous exploits involved swimming in an
active nuclear reactor, which obviously irradiated him badly.

> _" In the winter of 1945–1946, Slotin shocked some of his colleagues with a
> bold action. He repaired an instrument six feet under water inside the
> Clinton Pile while it was operating, rather than wait an extra day for the
> reactor to be shut down. He did not wear his dosimetry badge, but his dose
> was estimated to be at least 100 roentgen.[12] A dose of 1 Gy (~100
> roentgen) can cause nausea and vomiting in 10% of cases, but is generally
> survivable.[13]"_

~~~
ethbro
That seems unfair. As a trained nuclear physicist and engineer, he was no
doubt quite clear on the risks related to radiation.

Just because I choose to jump a motorcycle through a flaming hoop doesn't
indicate that I think my body is impervious to flame.

It means I weighed the risks and made a choice.

In other words, ignorance, chance, and bravery are different things. And
accidents are some mix of all of them.

~~~
liability
Extreme risk taking is characteristic of young men. It's not so much a
rational decision as it is a mind clouded by testosterone. Sometimes it's
entertaining good fun. I enjoyed _Jackass_ as much as anybody. The problem is
when such men do it without consideration for the wellbeing of those around
them. Slotin didn't, he regularly performed his "tickling experiment" with
other people in the room.

------
BurnGpuBurn
Stories like these will forever remind me of Hisashi Ouchi who died horribly
from a different kind of criticality incident in Japan in 1999 [0]. He had
received 17 sieverts and they tried to keep him alive for as long as possible
in a human experminet. I won't post links to articles about this as you can't
unsee pictures like that, putting his name in a search engine will get you
there.

[0] [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/1999/12/22/national/jco-
wo...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/1999/12/22/national/jco-worker-
succumbs-after-83-days/)

------
roryrjb
Also discussed a couple of months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205876)

------
fnordfnordfnord
The incident that caused Slotin's death was discussed a bit in a recent
documentary: _The Half-Life of Genius Physicist Raemer Schreiber_ (2017)
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4870510/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4870510/)

It's available on Amazon Prime.

------
larrydag
This sounds a lot like Fat Man and Little Boy movie. The John Cusack character
was killed by radioactive exposure from a mishap at Los Alamos. The movie is
really interesting.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097336/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097336/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt)

------
watersb
There is a replica of the Demon Core in the Bradbury Science Museum in Los
Alamos.

A sphere of metal, a bit larger than a basketball, it's just the right size
and shape to be manipulated by hand tools.

I wonder if that contributed to normalization of deviance. It doesn't look
weird enough to kill you.

------
hmahncke
> "Four of the fatalities were just bad luck, involving a group of janitors
> who shared muscatel wine that was laced with antifreeze"

I'd like to hear a little more about the "bad luck" that caused a bottle of
muscatel to get laced with antifreeze...

~~~
Abekkus
Small amounts of antifreeze can be used to make bad wine taste better, and
kill you faster.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_diethylene_glycol_wine_sc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_diethylene_glycol_wine_scandal)

~~~
sp332
More recently, Fireball whiskey was recalled in a few countries for high
levels of propylene glycol. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fireball-whiskey-
recall_n_606...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fireball-whiskey-
recall_n_6067486) Note that it had the same levels in the USA but was not
recalled because our standards are laxer. Still, it's unlikely to to kill you.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Propylene glycol is a food additive. It is also used in "safe" anti freeze. It
is not the same as Ethylene glycol which is common automotive anti freeze and
very toxic.

~~~
simcop2387
It's also one of the primary ingredients in most e-cigarette vape fluids too,
and used in fog machines for the same reason.

------
wernsey
This video "A Brief History of: The Demon Core" on the Plainly Difficult
channel showed up in my YouTube recommendations just the other day:

[https://youtu.be/VE8FnsnWz48](https://youtu.be/VE8FnsnWz48)

------
Halluxfboy009
Love Alex's archival research work. Never seen a couple of those pictures or
heard that particular account of the airglow from Schreiber before. I'm glad
to see it finally falling out of favor to paint Slotin as some kind of
'Canadian hero' as it was fashionable to do 15-20 years ago. He was a fool who
regularly courted fate, doing things like diving to the bottom of a cooling
pool of an operating reactor to repair an instrument he didn't want to wait
another day to do, giving himself a nice 100R dose.


Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016 - submeta
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-21/tesla-s-musk-paid-at-least-593-million-in-income-taxes-in-2016
======
tdehollain
That's $593M taxes on $1.34B earnings on exercising stock options...44% tax
rate is pretty harsh!

~~~
WJW
For the US maybe. Income tax in the Netherlands (my country) in the top
bracket is 52%. On the second hand, we have no capital gains tax so he might
come out ahead when exercising options. On the third hand, we have a wealth
tax of 1.2% on your entire capital above a certain floor (of about 20k) so he
might not come out ahead in the end.

It's always interesting to see the opinions of different cultures about how
much tax is reasonable :)

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Not bad, but doesn't that come with social services like free medical care and
greatly subsidized education?

Here in he US the middle income pays taxes and receives almost no directive
social benefit, as most social programs are geared towards lower income and
the rich can afford accountants and lawyers to keep their tax burden very
light.

~~~
kareemm
I'm not sure how you can say that the rich keep their tax burden light when
the topic of this thread is how Musk paid tax amounting to 44% of his income
totalling over half a billion dollars.

~~~
CocaKoala
If it were common for rich people to pay 44 percent of their income in tax, it
wouldn't be a newsworthy story.

~~~
jstelly
Are there people who receive millions of dollars in income via stock options
who pay a lower rate? If so, how does that work?

~~~
CocaKoala
Here's a Bloomberg article from 2012 that lists ten techniques:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-17/how-to-
pa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-17/how-to-pay-no-
taxes-10-strategies-used-by-the-rich)

~~~
jstelly
It's worth mentioning that none of these techniques actually apply to the case
where you exercise stock options - other than the one that says basically
"take options as compensation if you can because you don't pay taxes until you
exercise them" which is true for everyone who gets options (because you don't
get any liquidity) not just rich people with expensive accountants.

The only techniques that apply to income taxes are the "borrow against stock
technique" (has a big caveat about a rich person who lost in court when he
used it) and the deferred compensation example (which is also zero liquidity;
presumably you pay all of the income taxes when you actual get the money).

The article makes a better case for ways to avoid death taxes or real estate
taxes though.

------
throwaway999a
It's very strange how people now seem to feel like they are entitled to see
the tax returns of public or well-known figures. Tax returns are nobody else's
business! Would you demand to see their medical records as well?

The implicit subtext (especially with highly successful people like Musk) is
that we do this to "make sure they pay their fair share". Here's the reality:
the top 1% of US tax filers pay nearly half of all US income taxes[1]. The
bottom 80% of filers (by income) pay only 15% of all taxes. This myth that the
rich don't pay taxes is completely, utterly false. It is a myth promulgated
for political purposes.

1\. [http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-
fede...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/13/top-1-pay-nearly-half-of-federal-
income-taxes.html)

~~~
accountyaccount
I think people care that the rich pay a smaller proportionate rate[1] than the
poor. People who make under $19k a year pay twice the rate of those making
$470k+

Comparing total of taxes paid and leaving it at that is generally a tactic to
distract from the proportion problem.

1.[http://www.itep.org/whopays/full_report.php](http://www.itep.org/whopays/full_report.php)

~~~
propman
45% of Americans pay 0 federal income tax. That is a very small rate

~~~
c0nducktr
Federal income tax isn't the only tax out there...

------
engx
The video clip seemed unusually harsh. The reporter said he'd announced the
Hyperloop to "thrill and confuse"? Followed by several skeptical tones and
questions all while contrasting it with saying he'd done things no one else
had.

------
submeta
On the other hand this: "Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion
in government subsidies"

[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-
subsidies-2015...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-
subsidies-20150531-story.html)

~~~
marricks
Sounds like money better spent to me than the 5 trillion dollars in global
fossil fuel subsidies in 2015, or 500 billion just in the US[1]

That 5 billion number for Musk I think is a grand total of all subsidies,
spanning all time.

[1]
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867)

~~~
kolbe
I don't have to click any like to know that the US did not spend $5t on fossil
fuel subsidies. I'm pretty sure the US only spent like $5t total in 2015, and
most of that is in medicare and social security.

~~~
adventured
That $5 trillion figure isn't actually spending at all. It's entirely an
invented figure, meant to supposedly cover all estimated environment damage
for example. Really what it's meant to do, is be massive enough to enable
people to throw it around when arguing in favor of obliterating the fossil
fuel industry.

Why does the invented aspect matter? Because it's comical. It leads to the
premise that over just the next 10 years, the subsidies are a likely
cumulative ... $56 trillion or so (about 20%-25% of all wealth on earth). Aka,
greater than the combined profit of every oil company in world history going
back ~140 years.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Imagine you ran a small, successful business. Imagine, as part of that
business you killed someone every year.

Now, we could look at your tax returns and see that you have a successful
business. Or we could "invent" some figure to represent the lives you ended.

Is it really crazy to imagine that the total we invent would be higher than
your yearly, or even total profits?

Just scale that up to the point that you're starting wars, causing a crime
epidemic with lead poisoning, overheating the planet, etc.

------
jkchu
The article mentions that he kept the remaining shares (as opposed to selling
them as well). I wonder what is the general strategy for founders to cash out
their stocks? Of course holding the shares for 1 or 2 years to get short/long-
term capital gains tax breaks makes sense. But outside of that I imagine there
is a balancing act of not selling so many shares to raise investor's eyebrows,
but also freeing up money to diversify your assets.

------
joatmon-snoo
Imagining this scaled down to options that someone might get for joining a
startup early... wow.

------
SEJeff
Not sure about everyone else, but I'd love to have this problem. Oh I have to
pay $593 million in taxes? Boo hoo, let me cry all the way to the bank to
write the check.

~~~
user5994461
Imagine that you are a GAFA CEO 2 years before you IPO and you are asked to
pay 593 millions based on the estimated value of your shares.

~~~
accountyaccount
I keep trying to imagine it, but I can't get past the part where I'm excited
about having hundreds of millions of dollars.

~~~
throwaway999a
Just having hundreds of millions of dollars wouldn't be particularly exciting
once the novelty wore off. The exciting part is _earning_ hundreds of millions
of dollars via the immense success that it implies/requires.

------
submeta
I wonder how much the founders of Google paid. Or the CEO of Apple. Or Uber's
founder. Or for instance Mr Trump.

~~~
r_smart
It really depends on the year. The people who top income tax payments one year
will generally not be anywhere near it on subsequent years because they don't
draw a steady income, but instead cash out periodically. So while none of the
people you've listed are likely to be in this years top earners, at some point
in the years prior, or in the years to come, you'll likely see their names pop
up. And when they do, they'll have paid some massive amount of money in taxes.

------
Alir3z4
$593M could be used for developing the company and its products.

~~~
Archio
What is the point of this comment?

I initially misread "company" as "country" \- and in that interpretation I
wholeheartedly agree.

------
econner
Wow. That's a yuge amount of income.

~~~
neaanopri
A narrow and literal reading of events makes Musk the richest african
american. It's pretty depressing the richest african american is white

~~~
gotodengo
I'm not trying to deny the (until very recently legally enforced) class
difference between whites and blacks in South Africa, nor the social issues
causing hiring discrepancies in the States.

However, it's not a narrow reading of events. Musk is African. Head a bit out
of the way in South Africa and you'll find white kids who spend all day
running around with black friends with the whole group speaking fluent Zulu.
They've grown up there and their families have been there for generations.

~~~
bmmayer1
The problem here lies with the imprecise term 'African American', a
designation which, according to customary usage, includes many native-born
Americans who have never been to Africa, as well as excludes many native-born
Africans (like Musk) who are also Americans.

~~~
gla8
As a thought experiment, if you define Americans as those with natural rights,
then every human being on Earth could be considered African American.

Although I've met a surprising number of intelligent people who somehow do not
believe we are all descended from Africa. Which I suppose is related to people
failing to understand that all individuals have innate inalienable rights,
regardless of their citizenship.

~~~
bmmayer1
Sure, we're all descended from Africa. But we all know that ethnographic
definitions are arbitrary, and how long ago you or your ancestors immigrated
apply more or less to your demographic label depending on a host of cultural,
social or economic factors. The definitions are convenient only in labeling
populations in broad strokes anyway; every individual has multiple ethnic,
religious, cultural, racial identities that can be sliced/defined/labeled any
way that society deems 'normal'...

------
youdontknowtho
I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should
be 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need
the resources to tackle problems and we can't if people hoard them.

I know that it sounds simple, and lots of people on this site will disagree,
but I'm having trouble justifying this kind of extreme wealth to myself
anymore.

There are so many people in poverty and ignorance. What's it for any way if
people are starving and illiterate?

I'm really not looking forward to some of the responses to this comment, but I
find myself thinking more and more about the morality of letting people
accumulate massive sums when the resources that wealth could muster go unused
by the people that need them most.

I don't know. I'm genuinely interested in hearing what other people here have
to say if you can keep from being condescending or mean. Please be nice.

~~~
jcsnv
>I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should
be 100% Remember, Elon funded SpaceX and Tesla with the wealth he generated
from the sale of Paypal. Where would the funding have come from for those
entities if he was taxed at 100% after 1.5mm?

~~~
youdontknowtho
To be fair, he has raised money from investors to start those companies. I'm
not advocating for the end of banking, so people would still be able to borrow
money and invest. I'm also not talking about taxing wealth, but income.

SpaceX is interesting because we could be doing that stuff at NASA if it were
funded well.

I get what you are saying though, it would have an effect on investment and
speculation. Maybe we don't need as much of those things.

I'm also not saying that this is particularly well thought out.


Less then 48 Hours until The TPP Vote - fur0n
https://openmedia.org/expression?src=156476

======
xxxmadraxxx
Dear America.

THEN != THAN

Thank you for your attention.


U.S. CEO to France: ‘How Stupid Do You Think We Are?’ - kruken
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/02/20/u-s-ceo-to-france-how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are/
======
jacquesm
Wow, what a total jerk. Regardless of the differences between US, Chinese,
Indian and French work ethics the least you could do as a CEO is to learn how
to write a polite refusal.

When you don't _have_ to insult someone it is probably better not to. Because
those pesky French just might publish your less than elegant letters, your
stockholders might read those letters and could very well think: "This guy
runs the company I invest in? I'd better move my money out before his loud
mouth causes him to lose business.".

Stockholders are fickle, and some stockholders actually care about more than
just the numbers (of course, that is a minority).

Also, if you communicate you negative interest when a foreign representative
has thought to offer you a chance at some deal you may want to think of the
future. Effectively you are saying 'if you are so kind as to think of me I
will repay you with trash'. That will likely not be repeated again and likely
the effect will be much further spread than just this one country and just
this one official.

That bulk deal for Tires for all the vehicles of the French armed forces
(Michelin?), the police force or their connections with the ministry of labour
and their counterparts in other countries. Piss off politicians in enough
places and it will backfire.

Maybe there is some hidden upside but I don't see any.

Finally, you are also representing your country when you do business abroad.
Every other American CEO lost a little bit of respect today by re-inforcing
certain stereo types that we could all do without.

If you are ever in a position like this, please say 'no' with some grace.

~~~
16s
I like people who tell it like they see it. Sure, he could tone it down a bit,
but I would prefer he does not. When you guard your words and hold back how
you really feel, you are not doing anyone any favors.

Saying nice, comforting things to them (while they fail and people lose their
jobs) would be a greater injustice than being honest and frank. I bet no one
else has ever spoken that directly about the matter. Sometimes, that's
precisely what is needed.

~~~
jacquesm
Sure, but this is not in any way productive.

Another thing that bugs me is the hypocritical stance of suing Chinese tire
manufacturers and then turning around and manufacturing in China.

If you do something like this - it's a pretty drastic departure from good form
- there ought to be a reason for it, some kind of upside to balance the
obvious downsides.

~~~
ericd
I think it is productive - a polite refusal would leave the minister with less
information about the opinion of business leaders towards French policies.
This way, he knows of a few specific issues that the CEO has with the idea of
operating in France.

~~~
jacquesm
All he succeeded in communicating is that he thinks in stereotypes and is a
jerk. Why do you think this letter is now on public display?

Workers in France work for three hours, eat for two and talk for another
three? Really?

Producing in France is only expensive because of the labour costs? Or is there
maybe also that pesky environmental controls issue?

~~~
oelmekki
French here. What I'm mostly concerned here is that the guy is basically
saying : "we will produce tires in China for cheap and then sell them to you,
because we can".

Europe has very low restrictions on imports, because it tries to implement
free market as purely as possible. Many voices in France say we must be more
aggressive on importation taxes, and that even US has a more protected market
than us. After all, no west country can beat China in production costs.

Problem is, those voices are mostly from nationalist and xenophobic parties.
Even current left wing french government would not touch total free market.

Now, there is the insult. Saying french workers work 3 hours a day is totally
stupid. Normal work day is 8 hours for private sector, and 7 hours for public
sector (but most public sector workers work 8 hours and then take a day off to
compensate over worked days). The reason because average hours per day is low
(see other comments) is because unemployment is high, so many people accept
part time jobs and short term jobs.

Now, combine the cynical stance "we can produce cheap products in China and
sell them to you with no penalties" and the insult, and you've got perfect
food for nationalist parties. Once again.

~~~
brousky
> Saying French workers work 3 hours a day is totally stupid. Normal work day
> is 8 hours for private sector, and 7 hours for public sector (but most
> public sector workers work 8 hours and then take a day off to compensate
> over worked days)

He didn't say workers came to the factory for 3 hours then left. What he said
was that out of the 7 hours of a work day, 1 is lost in breaks and lunch, 3
are spent chatting instead of working and there's only 3 ours of actual work
being done.

If you read the comments on the article the vast majority actually support
what that CEO says and disapprove the actions of the CGT.

------
nostromo
> Titan had to pay millions to Washington lawyers to sue the Chinese tire
> companies because of their subsidizing. Titan won. The government collects
> the duties. We don't get the duties, the government does.

This is how tariffs work. You don't tax imports to fork over free money to
domestic companies. The point is to increase the cost of the imported good to
compensate for illegal (from the WTO's point of view) Chinese subsidies.

I'm confused as to why he thinks those taxes should go to Titan.

~~~
OGinparadise
_Maybe_ he meant to say: we were harmed financially, paid lawyers, sued, won
and got jack in return.

~~~
rtpg
they got their tariffs, and made life generally harder for their competitors.
That's something.

~~~
OGinparadise
Yeah but generally you should be compensated for the already done damage.

------
rayiner
What's amusing about the letter is that it shows how even executives buy into
cultural stereotypes to justify their activities.

The substance of the letter is this: we'd rather buy an Indian or Chinese tire
company to get the government subsidies and take advantage of the low cost of
labor.

The stuff about French workers only working three hours a day is fluff, and on
top of that almost certainly exaggerated out of context and/or apocryphal.

See: <http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/>

The French work on average 1,554 hours per year, about 10% lower than the OECD
average of 1,749. Is that 10% breaking the backs of French tire manufacturing?
Of course not. Consider that South Koreans work on average 2,193 hours per
year, a staggering 25% higher than the OECD average. Why doesn't Titan
manufacture tires in South Korea?

The answer is that relatively small differences in the number of hours people
worked aren't driving the economics here. The French work somewhat less than
say Americans, but also make somewhat less money than say Americans (last I
checked, manufacturing jobs paid on an hourly basis). To be accurate, the
letter could have said: "we won't manufacture tires in France because the
French work 6.5 hours per day on average versus 7.5 per day for Americans."
But that would have sounded stupid. Hence the need to exaggerate and say: "the
French only work 3 hours per day!"

What's driving the economics is, as the letter points out, $1/hour wages in
China or India, where people are happy to get so little money because those
countries are poor and have low standards of living relative to western
countries. The rest is just handwaving and fluff.

~~~
gojomo
The "three hours a day" is obviously an impressionistic account, but he
reports having visited that factory more than once and spoken with its
workers. And, as someone who's managed similar factories in other
jurisdictions, he'd have some insight about what 'tempo' of production is
necessary for profitable operation.

So it's not fair to accuse him of imagining this based solely on cultural
stereotypes. He has expertise beyond that, both in the industry and the
specific factory; that's why the French government approached him.

Also, your OECD averages for France don't tell us anything about how a single
troubled factory works. Many French businesses are doing fine, but they aren't
looking for a foreign-buyer rescue. The Titan CEO is speaking of one, specific
troubled factory, with a specific (likely unfireable) workforce. Its work
environment might be among the worst France's traditions, unions, and
political influences has to offer. As thin as the anecdote in the CEO's letter
is, it's still stronger than an argument based on national averages that
include healthy businesses.

~~~
rayiner
The third paragraph is talking about that factory, but he's clearly
generalizing to French workers. He uses the word "French" three times in four
short sentences.

~~~
gojomo
It can be stretched to read that way, but I believe the context makes it clear
that he is primarily speaking about those he observed and spoke to in that
factory.

For example, the last sentence phrase "I told this to the French union workers
to their faces" is clearly referring to specific workers at a specific site,
not all French workers (or even French union workers) everywhere.

He does emphasize the descriptor 'French', but that seems both to rub a little
salt in the wound of the national official he's responding to, and perhaps to
contrast those he's describing with non-French workers at the same factory, or
with workers in similar tire factories outside France. It isn't evidence the
author has the same judgement of all French workers, even though that
expansive interpretation is an easier strawman to knock down.

------
iuguy
I have an idea that the differences in work ethic across Europe may be partly
to do with climate and partly to do with language.

In France, the verb 'work' is _travailler_. Traditionally this meant literally
to toil, a chore, an obligation. In Germany, the word werken means to build,
create, do. The German word more aligned with travailler is arbeit. This lack
of correlation in the word work I believe may explain the differences in the
approach and cultural views towards work that I see across Europe,
particularly with latin root romance languages.

The second factor I've seen is climate. In the more productive northern
European countries, it's generally colder. There's been a historical need for
produce and for people to work (not endure or arbeit) to trade in order to get
everything you need in terms of food and shelter.

South of the Olive line something strange happens. If you look at Spain you'll
see that there's a long siesta during the day. This is because for a large
part of the year Spain's too hot to work in during most of the afternoon.
While we have air conditioning now, hundreds of years of cultural differences
I feel may have led us with ingrained ideas about what work is and what it
means, with those differences reinforced by climate.

For example, in Turkey there's no such thing as a siesta (there's no time in
Istanbul for one anyway). Culturally it doesn't really exist, yet it's as hot
as parts of Spain that do.

I could be completely wrong about this, but it's just something I've noticed.
I do believe that the unions are crippling France's productivity, but France
is as likely to change in the short term as the rest of Europe to France's
view IMHO.

 __EDIT __: I'm not saying that Germans, Brits or whoever are harder working,
or that the French, Spanish, Moomins are lazy, far from it. I'm pointing out
some differences in how people perceive work (i.e. neutrally or with negative
connotations) based on language and culture, based solely on my own
experience. For what it's worth I've worked with lazy Brits and Germans and
hard working French and Spanish people. The Moomins I've never worked with,
sorry if you're a Moomin and my ignorance upset you.

raverbashing makes a good point here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5252446>

~~~
galactus
France is one of most productive countries in the world, when measured as GDP
per hour-worked:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita_per_hour)

~~~
hollerith
Right, but that is partly or wholly because French unemployment is higher than
it is in the US with the result that the less productive workers do not have
jobs and consequently are not included in the statistic. If we use a different
statistic, namely, GDP per capita, France is significantly lower than the US.

~~~
cpleppert
GDP per capita doesn't track unemployment either. France isn't 'significantly'
lower than the US either it is about where Germany is and Britain is far
behind them both.

------
rdl
I don't get why you'd ever send a letter like this (except anonymously, or if
you were a politician). There is no upside beyond just "Sorry, we're not
interested -- our new investments are focused on Asia, where demand for tires
is growing 200%/yr. Sincerely, CEO." There is downside -- you might provoke
some tariffs in EU/France, or disinvestment from the pension fund, or
whatever.

~~~
ctdonath
While scathing, it is also very informative. "Not interested" and a vague
"lookin' better elsewhere" doesn't get into the reality of "why?"

Methinks he did them a great service in being brutally honest. Those trying to
solve the obvious problems will make much greater progress with such a letter
in hand, rather than the usual apologetic tact. "Helpful are the wounds of a
friend..." I'm sure he would, in fact, _like_ to buy a French tire factory,
but ridiculous pay for minuscule work makes for an offer no less insulting
than his reply.

~~~
rdl
Yes, but there is no percentage in it for him. It's like telling a random fat
person on the bus that he's fat. Probably nothing happens, but there is a
small chance he will fly into a rage, or will tell everyone that you called
him fat (maybe blogging about it, with video!). There's a much smaller chance
that he'll suddenly start to diet/exercise, but how does that benefit you?
It's different if it's a friend/family member, or if you're hired as a trainer
or doctor.

~~~
ctdonath
There _is_ a percentage in it for him: I'm sure he _would_ like to own a
French tire factory IF they actually had competitive productivity. With a
verbal kick in the pants, perhaps the situation will change and he'll get a
viable opportunity there. That aside, he's giving someone fair warning they're
engaging in self-destructive behavior - a kind act.

And no, it's not like telling a random fat person he's fat. He was approached
with a request that he purchase the company. It's more like an obese slob
applying for a serving-staff position at Hooters or Tilted Kilt.

~~~
nraynaud
France is not the greatest manufacturing country, it's still one of the most
productive country in the world, by a lot of measures.

~~~
rdl
Somewhat ironically, it's also one of the best manufacturers for tires, the
product specifically mentioned in the article. Michelin (for passenger car
tires) is amazing, although their US-market tires (at least for everything but
some specific race/customs) are all made in South Carolina.

------
ChuckMcM
Quite the flame, I share others surprise that he would be quite so flagrant in
his discussion. It is something of an art, and perhaps a bit of fun, to tell
people 'no freaking way' with language that reads nicely. Clearly the guys at
Titan have no interest in that :-).

It would have been more effective perhaps if he had shared with the people of
Amien the context of the discussion. Something along the lines of "this is
what we can pay per worked hour if we want to sell tires to your neighbors.
More than that, and they will buy them from Chinese factories." And let the
unions be the ones who get to decide that the jobs go out of the country.

------
fatjokes
> Insulting the French doesn’t seem to be rewarded by the stock market, and
> Titan is down about 1% so far today.

Journalists should be forced to say "correlation is not causation" ten times
before writing each article.

~~~
lostlogin
Not sure where you live, but the national paper in New Zealand doesn't have
journalists write its articles. Badly written advert/infotainment.

------
daenz
One of Mr. Taylor's Titan commercials is pretty interesting
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exFF_2Eh9Ec>

------
kordless
Talk about a financial blowout. Sounds like his intent is to waste Titan's
time writing negative remarks and being disrespectful. I agree they shouldn't
do business with France, but to be so rude is, well...rude.

~~~
panzagl
Maybe he thinks you have to be rude to deal with the French? There is a
stereotype there, right or wrong.

~~~
jacquesm
But do you have to be rude _not_ to deal with the French? What is the upside?

------
eloisant
The CEO is Maurice Taylor, and he's used to say the same bullshit to US
politicians.

That guy is pretty crazy.

~~~
guizzy
I wonder if he's aware of how very FRENCH his first name is.

------
stfu
Is there somewhere already a translation of the French response?

[http://www.lesechos.fr/economie-
politique/france/actu/020257...](http://www.lesechos.fr/economie-
politique/france/actu/0202578488071-exclusif-goodyear-la-reponse-de-
montebourg-a-titan-540536.php)

~~~
guizzy
Here's my amateur translation...

Sir,

Your words, as extreme as they are insulting, pay witness to your complete
ignorance of our country, France, and its solid assets, such as its world
renowned power of attraction and its ties with the United States of America.

France is proud to host more than 20 000 foreign businesses, representing
nearly 2 million jobs, a third of it's industrial exports, 20% of its private
R&D and 25% of its industrial jobs. Every year, 700 foreign investors make a
decision to localize job and value creating investments in France. And this
strong attractivity is not waning, on the contrary, it is strengthening every
year.

Amongst these foreign investments, the United States take the first place.
4200 subsidiaries of american businesses represent nearly 500 000 jobs. The
presence of american businesses in France is not new: Haviland since 1842, IBM
since 1914, Coca-Cola since 1933, General Electric since 1974, and so many
others. These ties are renewed every year: in 2012, businesses like Massey-
Fergueson, Mars Chocolat, or 3M chose to grow their presence in France.

What were the decisive factors in these decisions? Foreign businesses come to
France for its quality infrastructure, its enviable living environment, one of
the most competitive energy in Europe and an enviroment favoring research and
innovation. But above all, in opposition to your ridiculous and disparaging
remarks, the bulk of these businesses know and appreciate the quality and
productivity of the french workforce, its engagement, its knowhow, its talents
and the competence of french workers.

To strengthen this power of attraction, the french government has just taken
35 measures in the "National pact for growth, competitivity and work". Amongst
them, a tax refund for competitivity and work lighten by 6% the salary load of
businesses of between 1 and 2,5 SMIC. Social partners have also reached an
agreement on job security, which illustrate the quality of the social dialogue
in France and its importance to our government.

Might I remind you that Titan, the company you helm, is 20 times smaller than
Michelin, our French technology leader with global reach, and 35 times less
profitable? This demonstrate how much Titan could stand to learn and gain from
implanting in France.

France is even prouder and happy to host american investments that our two
countries are linked by an old and passionate friendship. Are you at least
aware of what La Fayette did for the United States of America? And as for us,
we will never forget the sacrifices young american soldiers made on the
beaches of Normandy to free us from nazism in 1944. And since you chose to
criticise your own country in the email you sent me, I must tell you how much
the french government admires the policies put in place by President Obama. As
our minister of industry, I am particularly impressed by his action favoring
relocating industrial jobs in the United States and its radical innovation.
There is a certain link between our current policy and the one inspired by
your President.

You evoque your intention to use certain countries' workforce to flood our
markets. I have a duty to inform you that this condamnable short-term thinking
will one day face a justified reaction from States. Such is already the case
for France and it's growing amount of allies within the European Union who are
campaining for reciprocity of trading and are working against dumping. In the
meantime, be assured that I will make certain that our competent governmental
services will work twice as hard to inspect your imported tires. They will be
especially mindful of the respect of the applicable standards in matters
social, environmental and technical.

Please accept, sir, my greetings. ((That greeting is essentially
untranslatable)).

Arnaud MONTEBOURG

~~~
CamperBob2
Would have been a much more powerful response if he'd left out that last
paragraph. In two sentences he reinforced every incorrect stereotype of France
as a third-world chickenshit bureaucracy that any Americans might have held.

~~~
quicksilver03
Agreed, he's basically demonstrated (as there were any doubt by now) that he's
unfit for his position as minister.

------
api
Summary: "I'd rather pay slave wages."

Of course he would. Of course, the French union workers might be a bit too far
on the other end of the spectrum.

------
pcrh
So he's going to buy a Chinese tire factory and pocket Chinese government
subsidies? /s

------
aioprisan
He makes some great points. People don't care where their good come from, they
just want them to be cheap and high quality. # hour workday? Unbelievable.

~~~
anonymouz
Well, on the one hand people don't care where their goods come from when they
buy them (or more to the point, they don't care under which conditions they
were manufactured). But then, on the other hand, they don't want to have the
standard of living of the people working in those factories. Short-term self-
interest tends to make people ignore that in the long-term this model is not
sustainable.

~~~
ctdonath
Exorbitant pay for 3 hours of labor* is much less sustainable. The euro-per-
hour workers will (and do) work their way up to better conditions, while their
overpaid slothful competition will just get shut down.

(* - we may also presume those 3 hours do not constitute "hard" work.)

------
lutusp
The letter should include a p.s.: "We don't have a public relations department
and I am marginally literate."

~~~
tptacek
He's marginally literate because...?

~~~
lutusp
His letter shows the classic signs of someone uncomfortable expressing himself
in words. Reading his letter is like watching someone ice skate for the first
time -- all the expected motions are there, but without any familiarity or
sense of style.

~~~
tptacek
Interesting. It came off much more casual and dashed-off to me.

~~~
lutusp
> It came off much more casual and dashed-off to me.

Yes, but both can be true at once. :)

------
maceo
The letter is a good example of the cognitive dissonance so prevalent amongst
the privileged elite. In the same paragraph where he laments that the French
government "does nothing" while the Chinese ship tires to France, he predicts
French industrial degradation because "its government is more government."
Which is it, is it too much government or not enough?

It's this deafness to the meaning of your own words that would allow a
loudmouthed industrialist-type to shout "class warfare!" the moment new taxes
are proposed on the wealthy. This letter is an unprovoked attack on French
working people. And if French working people decide to non-violently retaliate
against the company by petitioning for import restrictions, organizing a
boycott, etc, it would be wholly justified.

------
fruzz
I find it somewhat odd that he rails against workers earning too much, when
what they earn is but a fraction of his own salary. I doubt they work any less
harder than him either.

~~~
brousky
> I doubt they work any less harder than him either.

Actually, his main gripe is that after visiting the factory, he realized
workers only do 3 hours of actual work in a typical 7-hour day. When he
brought that up to union reps, they bluntly replied that "it's the French
way".

------
mathattack
I can't see how taunting government leaders ends well for a company. You may
not agree with them, but what good comes from taunting? Will this really be
productive to getting France to ease up on union laws?

------
mariuolo
He could have got his point across in a more civil way.

I understand he felt the urge to vent his spleen at someone, but now they are
going to be blackballed should they ever need anything from the French
government.

------
pavel_lishin
The best part is "best regards" at the very end of a fairly insulting letter.
I long for the day when letters are signed honestly.

------
nraynaud
Don't forget this a member of the GOP talking to a member of the Socialist
Party. It might just be a posture.

------
eqreqeq
>>Alas, America isn’t what it used to be: Insulting the French doesn’t seem to
be rewarded by the stock market, and Titan is down about 1% so far today.

As if. Correlation is not causation.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
True. Also, the wsj article is dated today. Look at the market, EVERYTHING is
down today. The letter was dated Feb 8. As if this news is just getting around
to the big players today...


Tabula PDF: Extract table data from PDFs - scrollaway
https://tabula.technology/
======
scrollaway
So I started working with MCCs (Merchant Category Codes AKA ISO 18245) and I
needed some decent lookup tables for them.

I just spent several hours fighting with awful spec PDFs containing hundreds
upon hundreds of tables of these. Well, Tabula made quick work of all of them:

[https://github.com/jleclanche/python-
iso18245](https://github.com/jleclanche/python-iso18245)

It extracted over 200 pages of tables with nearly no errors, and maybe a grand
total of ~15 mins of manual cleanup work needed to have the data be
processable by the library.

Final CSVs: [https://github.com/jleclanche/python-
iso18245/tree/master/is...](https://github.com/jleclanche/python-
iso18245/tree/master/iso18245/data)


Open Letter from DHH to Jeff Bezos - auslegung
https://m.signalvnoise.com/dear-jeff/
======
htk
Demagogue.

Also, I’ve learned nothing from this blog post.


Google IO 2013 – Google Glass Sessions - ireadqrcodes
http://glass-apps.org/google-io-2013-google-glass-sessions
======
nolok
Where is the app from a few years back, where you pointed your phone camera at
some text and it switched it with a translated version of it live in-picture ?

Not only did it look awesome, but it would also be a perfect application for
google's glass. Imagine, you're in berlin, or tokyo, or madrid, you read the
menu in a restaurant and you have the exact translation displayed to you live
in the corner of your view ? Or in a museum, etc ..

~~~
nati
I think there is such a feature built in google glass or someone will
integrate google goggles into google glass

~~~
dombili
Not exactly. You have to talk to it in order for it to translate a text.
Something like "OK Glass, say something something in Japanese".

------
stuartmemo
The fireside chat had an interesting moment where they showed Glass on
prescriptions glasses, which made them slightly more inconspicuous I thought -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8OUSd8zqT4&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8OUSd8zqT4&feature=youtu.be&t=5m11s)

------
twiceaday
I like the Sharingan logo, very apropos. In Naruto, the Uchiha clan derives
their powers from having special eyes. A three-prong pupil indicates that the
bearer unlocked extremely powerful abilities by killing somebody very close to
them, usually a best friend.

~~~
nati
with google glass you only need to kill your best friends privacy :-)

------
spiritplumber
Saw some people with them at maker faire, you still have to interrupt a
conversation to take a picture and whatnot. I'm waiting (read: hacking at it)
for Neurosky integration, or at least blink-pattern reading.

~~~
Kiro
I thought winks were the standard way to take pictures with Glass now. At
least that's how everyone at Google I/O is doing it and is the feature most
people are praising.

------
ireadqrcodes
did you see the first cellphones?

------
StartupSushi
Google Glass only needs to get over its initial days in which it is viewed as
awkward and then it will be socially acceptable. Unlike the first cellphones,
its plainly visible even when you're not using it, and like Bluetooth headsets
there's a risk of being perceived as someone not caring about their
surroundings.

Even on a forum like Slashdot which is populated by uber-geeks, here's the
results of an ongoing poll with ~5000 people voting.

Head-mounted displays / sensors like Google Glass are:

Creepy 1823 votes / 32%

Cool 821 votes / 14%

Ugly 502 votes / 8%

Baffling 323 votes / 5%

Intriguing 1498 votes / 26%

Short-sighted 413 votes / 7%

I've got my own adjective! (Explained in comments.) 208 votes / 3%

[http://slashdot.org/poll/2577/head-mounted-displays--
sensors...](http://slashdot.org/poll/2577/head-mounted-displays--sensors-like-
google-glass-are)

The 40% positive outlook is still not bad though.

~~~
DanBC
I love the idea of Google Glass and I'd definitely use them if I had them.

But...

> Google Glass only needs to get over its initial days in which it is viewed
> as awkward and then it will be socially acceptable.

People said that about segway and sinclair C5s and etc etc.

I really hope that Google can manage to make Glass work. Lots of other
headmounted displays failed or didn't make it out of very small niches.

~~~
ams6110
I think the segway is a good comparison. It had similar hype ("it will change
the way cities are designed") and who uses them today: nerds, and obese mall
cops.

Unless Glass solves real problems in a way that is compelling to real people,
they will remain nerd toys.

~~~
mikeash
For all the discussion of "cool" and whatever, utility certainly seems key.

We can talk about the Segway's coolness all we want, but it's ultimately not
that important. Why did the Segway never become more than a niche product?
Because it's pretty much useless! It fills a mostly-unwanted niche between
walking and bicycles. Most people can walk. Bicycles are cheap. Given how
little it does, I can't fathom how one would have looked at a pre-production
Segway and thought, wow, I bet these will sell like hotcakes.

Glass is more of a platform than a product right now. The question of what
it's _for_ is still mostly unanswered. Find the killer app for it, and all the
questions of creepiness or uncoolness will melt away. Fail to find anything
useful to do with it, and the lack of coolness will just become an excuse for
the fanboys to use.

------
dror82
This can't be the future... Look how cumbersome the glasses are


I Just Presented as a Finalist at Launch Hackathon: Here's what I learned. - georgebonnr
http://georgebonnr.github.io/blog/2013/11/11/i-just-presented-at-launch-hackathon/

======
racerx
Congratulations - well done, sounds like a great experience.


We Are Legion - The Story of the Hacktivists - Documentary [video] - sathishmanohar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pGYKIRj5_8

======
rsingel
This is a leaked old version. The new cut will be released in theaters and
cheap download ala Louis CK very soon.


Good interview question - huhtenberg

Given that yesterday was a Pi day (03/14), here's a good interview question:

  Write Pi in a hex base

A written test version asks for 3 digits after the dot; in person interview version - for 2.
The question is really good because very few people have experience dealing with fractions in non-decimal base, so it forces them to really work on the answer. It also a very quick way to separate "hackers" from hackers :)
======
ejs
I never understand these types of questions, is that really important to job
function? Maybe ask them to do it in octal too? Or just use a random number as
the base, how about base 47? Will that weed out the slackers?

~~~
bkrausz
I find that interviewers are more interested in the method than the
answer...if you just sit there and say "I was never taught this" you probably
won't get the job. On the other hand, if you stand up, go to the whiteboard,
and start writing things down, while talking them through your train of though
("Well I'm not positive how to do fractions in other bases, but this way makes
sense to me" and then proceed to work out the problem as best as you can) then
you show more motivation and enthusiasm.