[vineyardmike]

> Why? You're testing their ability to produce the right answer to a given problem - not their problem solving ability. To that end it shouldn't matter if they've seen the problem or not.

Pretty sure most people want to test problem solving ability, and hopefully your problem solving ability solves the problem correctly. If you method to solve the problem is to find the answer online and repeat it... that may not be how the company wants you to solve their problems.

[o10449366]

Really? In my position as a senior member on my team, one of the biggest mentoring costs is just teaching junior members how to search and find answers for themselves.

Yes, day to day I'm not copy and pasting huge blocks of code from Stack Overflow, but when I need an answer and I don't immediately know it my first move is always to search internally or externally for others who may have already shared it.

Why is being able to effectively search for for answers not considered good problem solving?

[MauranKilom]

> Why is being able to effectively search for for answers not considered good problem solving?

Memorizing interview questions is decidedly not "effectively searching for answers".

Effectively searching for answers requires breaking the problem down into separate pieces that you can actually search for. This is one of the skills that can actually be demonstrated during the interview. And then showing that you can also come up with the solution (or be guided towards it in discussion with the interviewer) is the natural way to round it out, instead of "ok, now google for this sub-problem while I'm watching you".

[vineyardmike]

Yes really.

Go ask your manager if you should copy and paste something you found on a chinese forum as 100% of the output you generate. Nothing original, no actual thoughts for yourself, JUST copy paste.

Search and find answers for themselves is not the same as blindly copy/pasting, which is basically what the scripted forum answers are.