[artmageddon]

> Interviews are a two-way street. If you're looking to hire an experienced developer and the best you can do is ask him to do something that he'll probably never have reason to do on the job, you're sending a pretty strong message about your company.

I know others will probably disagree, but I feel this way about brain-teaser questions. I remember one very specifically from a ex-Microsoft employee who interviewed me: "If you're alone on a deserted island and you have two unmarked jugs, one that can hold 3L of water and the other 5L of water, how would you make sure you had exactly had 4L of water?"

To his credit, he helped me through the question and I was able to figure it out.. but the first minute was spent trying not to be a smartass and ask "Is this a problem that programmers in this company frequently have?" (I did get the job fwiw)

[VLM]

That's technically a memorization test or a trivia test, because its really easy if you remember the trick, and a total PITA if you don't remember the trick. If I recall correctly the trick is something along the lines of pouring a full 5L into a empty 3L and when the 3L is full there's 2L left in the 5L, so then you dump out the 3L then pour the 2L in the 5L into the 3L such that the 3L contains 2L of H2O, and then refill the 5L and pour the 5L into the 2/3 full 3L till its full such that about 4L remain in the 5L bottle. Ta Da, I've just proven I can memorize meaningless trivia, does that mean I am now a C++ developer or whatever they were interviewing for?

If you started life as a chemist this is kind of a lab joke as in its funny but if anyone in the lab tried something this wasteful of time and product or risky of contamination if you reuse the product, they're too stupid/lazy to work in your lab. The correct answer is supposed to be walk to the stockroom and ask for a 4L container.

Its about as useful as a practical programming test as asking who won the 1984 baseball world series, in other words a complete waste of time.

Fizzbuzz at least is an excellent test of the modulus operator (oh boy is that ever useful to me on a daily basis LOL) and a so so test of control block and conditional knowledge which is actually useful on a daily basis.

[gregors]

Brain teaser questions are great at finding candidates who have heard the brainteaser before. They are useless at finding people who are good at coding. Even Google accepts this now.

[Killswitch]

I would ask why if I had 8 L of water containers why I would try to figure out how to have no more than half of that and just fill both jugs, then I'd say that's a stupid question and has nothing to do if I can code or not. I hate these stupid job interview things just be frank and lets talk about my skills and what you're looking for, not stupid brain teasers, fizzbuzz, or anything like that.