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by epolanski 775 days ago
I'm a chemist by education, so all my college friends are chemists.

Being asked a theoretical chemistry question at a job interview would be...odd.

You can be asked about your proficiency with some lab equipment, your experience with various procedures and what not.

But the very thought of being asked theoretical questions is beyond ridiculous.
2 comments
esafak 775 days ago
Why, don't they get imposters? You sure run into people who can't code in coding interviews.
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epolanski 775 days ago
Because to be a chemist you need to graduate in chemistry.

What would be the point of asking theoretical questions?

There's just no way in hell people can remember even 10% of what they studied in college, book knowledge isn't really the goal, rather than teaching you how to learn and master the topics.

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godelski 775 days ago
Because to actually have those types of conversations you have to have legitimate experience. To be a bit flippant, here's a relevant xkcd[0]. To be less so, "in groups" are pretty good at detecting others in their groups. I mean can you not talk to another <insert anything where you have domain expertise, including hobbies> and not figure out who's also a domain expert? It's because people "in-group" understand nuance of the subject matter.

[0] https://xkcd.com/451/

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dclowd9901 774 days ago
Doesn’t that comic more closely hew to the idea that some fields are complete bullshit?
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godelski 774 days ago
That's one interpretation. But that interpretation is still dependent upon intra-group recognition. The joke relies on the intra-group recognition __being__ the act of bullshitting.
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moregrist 774 days ago
Hmm… I have a twist on this. Chemistry is a really big field.

My degree is in computational/theoretical chemistry. Even before I went into software engineering, it would have been really odd for me to be asked questions about wet chemistry.

Admittedly it would have been odd to be quizzed on theory out of the blue as well.

What would not have been odd was to give a job talk and be asked questions based on that talk; in my case this would have included aspects of theory relevant to the simulation work and analysis I presented.

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dclowd9901 774 days ago
And software and computing isn’t a big field? Ever heard of EE?
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