[John23832]

> There's a good chance at my career phase I have more experience than the interviewer.

This happens a lot.

I was once in the process for google and was asked a time series systems design problem. I said, “lets throw this in a time series db”. The interviewer had no idea what a time series’s db was. Mind you this was an interview for Google Cloud and the person worked on SPANNER. They also has been at the company for 2 years (by their own admission).

Left a sour taste.

[nfoz]

What's the sour taste -- what's the problem? Like, what's wrong with being interviewed by someone with less experience than you?

[John23832]

How can someone less experienced that you gauge your competency for a position that requires more experience than they have?

That’s before wondering why they’re asking a question to gauge my competency when they don’t even understand the nuance of the question themselves.

An interviewer working on google’s enterprise nosql db but not knowing about (at least on a surface level) the breadth of nosql dbs doesn’t seem crazy to you?

The tech interview circuit has really become a bunch of people asking questions that they couldn’t really answer themselves without a rubric in front of them (whether leetcode or system design).

To be crude, it’s a bunch of nerds hazing for jobs.

[nfoz]

If my house had a pest problem, I would need to hire an expert in pest-control. I need to do that without being an expert myself. How should anyone be able to hire someone with more experience than themselves, in your view? I've sometimes had to 'hire my own boss'.

Maybe the criteria for the problem was less "did they check these boxes" and more "could they be a collaborative mentor willing to work with even the junior members on the team" in the context of designing a system.

[John23832]

> If my house had a pest problem, I would need to hire an expert in pest-control.

The result from the expert is that you as the layman can look around and see no pests (which anyone with their naked eye can do)… you’re not judging them on their knowledge of pesticides.

> Maybe the criteria for the problem was less "did they check these boxes" and more "could they be a collaborative mentor willing to work with even the junior members on the team" in the context of designing a system.

This is a fantastical maybe. The interview was system design.

[aix1]

> They also has been at the company for 2 years

> How can someone less experienced that you

This argument seems to conflate two different things, how long someone has been at a particular company and their (overall) level of experience.

[John23832]

Sure, I was responding to the question purposed.

[operatingthetan]

Right, that means the interview is on easy mode. A clear indication that the candidate has something to offer to the org.

[sophonX]

why not design it ? Anyone can say to throw in a time series db but what about it's internals ? How do people judge if you can build or add a feature without asking you to design something ?

[John23832]

The proposed problem was not to build a time series database. It’s a system design interview.