Links for 2012-07-10
Sean Sherlock to science researchers: “see ya! don’t let the door hit you on the way out” : “In relation to the possibility of losing skilled people overseas, any vibrant research ecosystem will see an ebb and flow of capable people in the scientific fields – in some ways this is a good thing, as experience gained abroad has the potential to benefit Ireland in the future. The latest SFI data shows that SFI supports approximately 3,000 researchers, including some 2,000 postgraduate students and post-doctorals — a figure that has remained relatively stable for some time.” NICE
(tags: sean-sherlock jobs ireland science research)‘You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?’ : Brilliant responses to this stereotypically-annoying Google interview question: “Since being shrunk down like this is impossible, I can only assume this is happening inside a dream or nightmare of some kind. I sit down and meditate, summoning up my Siddartha/Neo like mental powers and realise that there is no blender, and that this terrible dream was created by the ego of a sadistic Google employee. As the kundalini fire races up my spine, and my spirit is liberated, I open my third eye and bathe said Google employee in the light of love. I forgive him, for he knows not what he does.”
(tags: funny interviewing google blenders reddit)
Craig Hughes said,
July 11, 2012 @ 5:00 am
My first thought when I heard this the first time is: nothing, you’re already dead even if the blades don’t turn on. All the surface area to volume ratios of every biological process in your body just went so out of whack that nothing is transferring across semi-permeable membranes in the right way any more.
Craig Hughes said,
July 11, 2012 @ 5:04 am
The mass/density thing I read as a clear red-herring to make you not think biologically about surface area to volume ratios but to think about mechanical advantage of now being super strong. Having good leverage don’t matter for shit though if you can’t oxidize glucose at the cellular level.
Keith said,
July 11, 2012 @ 9:30 am
I hate these questions too and make sure to stamp them out in any interviewers I talk to. I think we’ve managed to stop people asking them in SRE interviews (we already have enough stuff to find out about with networking, unix internals, troubleshooting, scripting, coding etc). I’m fairly sure that none of the more experienced interviewers (the ones you would meet in the initial phone screens) for SRE roles would ask such stupid questions.
It’s hard to persuade nerds they’re being dicks when they ask stuff like this though, they think it’s clever.
Justin said,
July 11, 2012 @ 2:36 pm
hey Craig — yeah. this one makes a similar point: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/w9vqd/you_are_shrunk_to_the_height_of_a_nickel_and/c5bi6on
Keith — tell me about it. I think at least it’s been narrowed down to the less-technical roles, product manager etc.; there’s plenty of more useful data to be gleaned from techie candidates through other questions. I have no idea if we use this kind of thing in Amazon, to be honest. Definitely not in our team ;)
Steve Ryan said,
July 15, 2012 @ 8:21 pm
I actually like these type of interview questions. The company is making it clear from the very start they’re not the kind of company I want to work for, so we can just end the interview…
Keith said,
July 15, 2012 @ 8:37 pm
Except that by that time they’ve wasted at least six hours of your life and probably more.