I was reading this article, and it reminded me of a terrible interview I had looking for a job after graduating…
Some years ago, someone at Microsoft noticed that they were having a bit of a Resources problem. A Human Resources problem to be specific. There were a whole lot of job openings (thousands, in fact) and a whole lot of applications (hundreds of thousands, in fact), and no easy way to match the right applicants with the right jobs. So they decided to reinvent the Job Interview.
Traditionally, job interviews are used to ascertain two things: how competent the candidate is and how well his personality (or lack thereof) will fit in with the organization. With their introduction of Job Interview 2.0, Microsoft included both of those features and added one additional: how the candidate responds when presented with asinine, utterly pointless, and completely ridiculous brainteaser questions.
Of course, common sense tells us that a candidate who enjoys solving silly riddles would most likely enjoy solving a silly riddle at a job interview. The same can be said about pepperoni pizza: chances are, if a candidate enjoys eating pepperoni pizza, he will also enjoy eating pepperoni pizza at a job interview. Both are facts which, while completely enthralling (no way, you like pepperoni pizza, too?!), are equally as irrelevant when determining whether someone would make a good programmer.
