[jpeterson]

Having "extremely basic understanding" of prime numbers immediately at one's command is important for approximately 0% of software engineering jobs. If you instant-fail a candidate for this, it says a lot more about you and your organization than the candidate.

[SideQuark]

Approx 0% of devs need to know what the earth is, but from lots of interviews I've given I've found consistent correlation between lack of basic knowledge and lack of ability to solve many things. It was so strong we found it much more cost effective to cut people early that didn't know at least a few of some standard knowledge items.

[chaxor]

This is some really good advice here. It's always a good idea to throw out all candidates that can't immediately recall what the first theoretical result of the rest mass of a Higgs boson was in the first paper describing was. Basic knowledge like this just correlates so well with ability to make proper decisions in API architecture.

[SideQuark]

I'd also save time and money cutting people that read as poorly as you're demonstrating.

Try actually measuring basic knowledge with competency at programming before thinking your opinion is better than measured data. Peer reviewed research finds similar results [1].

And yes, we tested all this carefully before enacting it. Interviews cost time and money, so giving 100% on every candidate despite quick signals is a waste of time and money that would be better spent on other candidates. If you want the best outcome then you allocate scarce resources based on expected returns, not on unfounded beliefs.

[1] https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/articles/hw12-language-sk...

[blibble]

> If you instant-fail a candidate for this, it says a lot more about you and your organization than the candidate.

yes, we expect professional software developers to have basic maths skills

"what is a prime number" is taught to 7 year olds, it's not vector calculus

what else would you consider to be an unreasonable thing for an employer to require?

reading and writing skills of a typical 7 year old?

[daok]

You probably do not have a child of 7 years old because they do not know at that age what is a prime number.

Second, basic math still that you never or rarely use or with very large time between usage might get rusty. You may understand the concept but not find the optimal solution. The way you are responding here shows quite a lot about how you are short sighted by instant-failing someone with a single question instead of trying to asses the whole person as much as you can. On you side, you are wasting opportunity to have a great person that could be a key player in your team by bringing other set of skill on the table.

[blibble]

> You probably do not have a child of 7 years old because they do not know at that age what is a prime number.

it's part of the curriculum for children of this age where I grew up (I did check)

> The way you are responding here shows quite a lot about how you are short sighted by instant-failing someone with a single question instead of trying to asses the whole person as much as you can. On you side, you are wasting opportunity to have a great person that could be a key player in your team by bringing other set of skill on the table.

it may also be the case that I have more in depth knowledge about the roles that I've interviewed candidates for

most recently: hiring people to work for quants

not instantly knowing that even numbers (other than 2) are not prime is a very strong signal

[hyperbovine]

> You probably do not have a child of 7 years old because they do not know at that age what is a prime number.

A few do. And in 20 years you're reallyreally going to want to hire them.

[jpeterson]

You're not testing for "basic math skills" here. What you're testing for is more like "immediately retrieves an irrelevant math fact after many years of having no need to think about it."

Look, if you think this sort of thing allows you to identify great candidates, good for you. But in my experience, not only is this kind of practice stupid on its face, but it leads to engineering orgs packed with people who are good at memorizing trivia but terrible at solving real problems.

[ungruntled]

I think the key problem here is that is is a bad programming question. If you know anything about prime numbers then coming up with an answer is trivial. If you expect a more optimized solution, then you are really only gauging the interviewee’s understanding of prime numbers. So effectively the interview is more about mathematics than it is about programming or problem solving.

[Mawr]

You happen to remember a particular piece of knowledge, so you project that expectation onto others. Theory of mind.

> yes, we expect professional software developers to have basic maths skills

Skill != knowledge. "What is a prime number" can be looked up and understood by any competent programmer in <5 minutes.

> "what is a prime number" is taught to 7 year olds, it's not vector calculus

Then it's reasonable to expect that an interviewee would be able to learn it as well, given the same resources. It does not however follow that an interviewee would inherently have that knowledge, just because 7 year olds are taught it.

Bottom line is, you're making too many assumptions about complete strangers.

[rini17]

If they know "prime number" is some technical term to look up. They might confuse it with amazon prime or anything else depending on context. You waste time explaining, they get indignant they are supposed to coding not do maths, complete mess.