[davnicwil]

Brilliantly put.

When I'm giving interviews I really like it when a candidate posed with a fairly complicated problem or design question pauses and actually thinks, then says something like "..well, I don't really know, I'd probably want to think about it more, but here's an idea" before putting forward their likely non-optimal but totally plausible and on-the-right-track design or solution that they thought of on the spot.

Under-confidence in an answer (straight up asking for validation i.e. is this right?) or over-confidence (expecting to shoot straight from the hip with the perfect, 'right' solution, or just a plain old bullshitter implicitly insisting that anything they say is correct) are usually red flags for an extreme personality type - always exceptions to this but as a general rule, I've found it to be true - and the happy middle ground, coupled with answers that obviously point towards a depth of knowledge and skill, is what you're looking for.

Trying to follow my own advice, I've done this myself as well when I'm the interviewee. Side benefit - if the interviewer actually is looking for a 'right answer' to complex questions out of the blue and on the spot - good for them if that's what they want but I'd want to self-select myself out of that type of expectation and working relationship. So everybody wins.

[IndianAstronaut]

I recently interviewed at Facebook and they seem to want the shoot from the hip type person who is extremely confident (borderline arrogant) about their answers. Theh drill and drill amd expect rapid fire responses.

[plonh]

That may be true for the person who interviewed you, but that isn't any sort of official standard

[IndianAstronaut]

Could be, but this was the second time I interviewed there and I have had friends interview there, and all pretty much recount a similar experience.

[Mithaldu]

Reviews at a company not following any kind of standard is a red flag in itself.

[d23]

And if they do follow too many standards, it's a red flag. Or if they follow a mix of standards and non-standards. Big red flag there. If the person is wearing nice shoes, definitely a red flag. But you don't want them to be too normal, because that could be a red flag also.

This hypersensitivity goes in both directions. One company may be worse than another at hiring, despite having an equal or better engineering department. Sometimes, you might just get bad luck. Your interviewer might not have had their coffee that day. Or their dog may have just died. Or you may get a guy who just proposed to his now-wife and is having the best day of his life. Giving a reasonable benefit-of-doubt mixed with a bit of critical thinking is probably the way to go, rather than resorting to hard and fast rules that will end up just making you conclude no company is good enough for you.

[thaumasiotes]

> One company may be worse than another at hiring, despite having an equal or better engineering department.

I don't understand this. As far as I can see, the entire goal of hiring is to have good workers, so the company with a better engineering department is better, by definition, at hiring engineers.

It might be that their hiring prowess comes in part (or in whole) from factors largely outside the hiring process specifically, something like "you get to work for Elon Musk", but their hiring is still better.

[redblacktree]

Or they could hire a lot of people and quickly fire poor performers. I would class that as "bad at hiring," even though they manage to build a good team with the process.

[collyw]

Just had an interview this morning. To almost all of the "how would you go about this" type questions, my answer was well, it depends on the data type / volume / customer needs.

[robodale]

Your response - totally. Similar experience: I was asked in a technical interview to use the "correct" collection class given the (very academic) sorting problem. I responded with "there is no right answer, so my answer will be the simplest one". According to them that was wrong. The "right" answer was the best performing scenario (although more complex of a solution).

So, again. "It depends".