I just got done reading the Google Interview Questions over at Gizmodo and came to only one conclusion about them, and it is the same problem I have with most “clever” interview questions. Why bother?

So you’re asking clever questions in an interview, what does this tell you about the candidate?

Can they perform under pressure?

Can they think on their feet?

Do they already know the answer?

Have they heard this one before?

I am sure that somewhere in the whole wide world, someone found that in the framework of an actual interview these questions have some utility, but mostly I find that they serve only three purposes for the company doing the hiring:

1. To demonstrate how clever the interviewer, not the interviewee, actually is.
2. Give a poor interviewer a crutch to lean on.
3. Give a lazy interviewer something to ask rather than actually do real work during the interview process.

I guess I have been lucky when hiring employees for my company in that they are all people I have had the pleasure of working with in the past at other gigs. I don’t think I have ever asked a “clever” interview question in my entire career. I’d rather the interviewee demonstrate a clear understanding of their chosen profession than their ability to “answer a pop quiz.”

I have been asked “clever” questions, and they are mostly unoriginal and something the interviewer looked up on the internet.

What the questions are supposed to do is provide insight in to how you think, how you perform under pressure, and so on.

The problem is that the lazy interviewer doesn’t give a damn about how you perform, just whether your answer matches up. And the poor interviewer doesn’t have the skills to usefully evaluate your performance so they, again, focus on the answer you gave.

Usually if you don’t give the exact right answer they have memorised or have written down in front of them, in their eyes, you failed. It’s this pedagogic culture of only one right answer that John Gatto and many others rail against through their works. On the whole, the interviewer generally isn’t smart enough to actually understand the question themselves, or even come up with an original question, again, it is the lazy and/or poor interviewer.

I’m angry at lazy, poor interviewers the and companies they work for. But I am even angrier still at people, the potential interview candidates so enamoured of the company they want to work for, who focus so much on these questions, because the questions themselves are self-serving, self-fulfilling prophecies – “Look at how clever we are to ask these kinds of questions!” and so it goes “Gosh darn it, that must be a top-flight company if they ask interview questions only they know the answers to.”

Perhaps I am sore because I cannot answer the questions satisfactorily? Well, I have to admit I am of below-average intelligence and mostly self-taught due to life-long learning difficulties, but I found the questions neither difficult nor interesting.

So how did I do on these “mock” interview questions? I answered each and every one, except for #8, to a satisfactory level in under a minute, with the CTO of the company I am currently consulting for, acting as the “heckling interviewer.” And boy can he heckle. The heckling provided a “realistic interview scenario” to apply a little pressure.

Question #8, “How many lines can be drawn in a 2D plane” stumped me because I simply didn’t understand the question as stated until I got up and drew it out on the whiteboard. Total time to solve: less than 3 minutes.

And question #9 is just plain silly. The answer is obviously 0×10000000000000000. Proof that the interviewer was attempting to be clever but the interviewee can be cleverer. Also, the question ignores the fact that any competent software engineer knows their powers of two, off by heart, all the way up to 128 bits, in decimal. And if they don’t, they probably have no business calling themselves a developer. It is one of the basic skill sets of being a programmer.

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Look, I need you to listen to this very carefully because your future career as a software developer or domain expert relies on you not doing this stuff.

I know it is really difficult to come up with your own content at times, and really, why bother when anything you want to say or write has already been, but the Internet these days has opened up a whole new vista for douchebaggery (does douchbaggery have one g or two g’s? Is douche bag one word or two?) but if you are going to plagiarise another person’s work, I have two really important tips for you:

1. You can actually write your comments and prose as well as you can write your “original” article so that it isn’t quite as obvious that you are actually, in fact, a douchebag.
2. Fix the typographic bug in the original code that you so expertly copypasta in to “your” article to prove what an expert you are in your chosen subject.

Here’s to moronic douchebags everywhere! Allowing entrepreneurs and software developers the world over to quickly and effectively discount you as a possible employment candidate due to your inability to comprehend the code you ripped off from somewhere else.

The original article:

http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/tutorial-09-cs.aspx

The copypasta douchebag:

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/dhananjaycoder/HtmlHelperMethod02222009235703PM/HtmlHelperMethod.aspx

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Thomas F. from CA e-mailed and asked about how to get in to the games industry.

“I’m about to complete my degree at school and I really want to get in to the video games industry but I don’t see how with all the other people trying to get in too and getting noticed takes a lot of work. I found this list online which gives all the different ways of getting a job. Do you think its even worth trying?

1. You get a job because of who you know
2. Work your way up from Quality Assurance or help desk
3. Create something worthwhile
4. A job straight out of DigiPen or Full Sail
5. Start your own company
6. Attend the job fair at a conference or expo

What do you think? Should I even bother? I really want to make games but nobody will give me a job in the industry to let me.”

And my response:

Somebody won’t give you a job to allow you create video games?

All I read was someone asking for permission to "be allowed in" and lamenting the fact that when real work is required to prove themselves that this "work" is too hard to do.

You do not need anybody’s permission to "be in" the games industry. You are either "in" the games industry because you create video games or are in some way connected with the creation of video games or you are not. It is that simple.

You do not need permission to "be in" any industry, if you are attempting to "break in" by getting a job at one of the larger companies with no practical experience at your particular job then you will start on the lowest rung possible just like any other industry whether you are writing code for the latest and greatest MMORPG or laying down bricks to build a house. If you cannot prove yourself and you haven’t taken the time to prove yourself then that is the harsh reality.

I have always said "Show me a complete game and I will hire you on the spot."

I have hired people with no college degree straight in to a job because they came to me with a completed game. No, the games shown to me were not great, but they were complete. The game proved to me that the person who created the game had the determination to see the job through to the bitter end, and a lot of game development projects do have a very bitter end when you are up all of your waking hours fixing the last few bugs and re-cooking all of the art assets one final time to get everything tweaked just so…

What does it even mean to “be in the industry” anyway? Because you have a title published and on the store shelves? I know artists and programmers that have worked at various very real, very bricks and mortar game companies for five years and not had a title published due to misfortune and bad luck. Does that make them not in the industry? Does “being in the games industry” mean you must work at a legitimate company with a payroll system and managers? So someone needs to tell the chap who makes Pretty Good Solitaire or the person who made Snood or the person who made Dweep or Ethan Nicholas who wrote a tank game in six weeks and sold it on the Apple AppStore for the iPhone that they aren’t in the games industry because they all create games in their spare bedroom/den/basement/living room and work as a one man team.

Whether you are sat up late at night fixing bugs on the latest World War II game franchise with 400 other people in an office complex in Santa Monica or sat alone in your spare bedroom with nothing but a laptop and a can of soda to keep you company in Wyoming it is the same thing. You are "in" the games industry if you can create and deliver. With the ability to create and the ability to deliver, you are in whatever industry you choose to be in. I have the ability to create great cappuccinos and macchiatos but I cannot deliver them so I am not in the "café and restaurant industry." I am most certainly in the “journalism industry” because I write and get published, both on my own websites and in magazines yet I don’t consider myself to “be in” that industry. I am in the games industry because I create games and get them published, both on my own websites and through regular retail channels. I didn’t ask for permission to do these things, I just did. When you create value, and then deliver it, you will get noticed. You won’t be asking for permission to be in anywhere, you’ll be waving your hand dismissively at people telling them to leave you alone.

With the ability to self-publish easier today that it ever was before, with the ability to "create something cool" even easier than that, creating your own games, and getting them published has got to be the easiest (am I making this clear, it’s easy!) thing you could do.

If you create a website and create games for that website, you create value and you deliver it. After two years of consistently creating and delivering I guarantee I would not be able to hire you for my company, I’d be standing in line asking for permission to speak to you whilst you wave your hand dismissively at the executives from other companies.

The people who are worth hiring, who get things done, even when they aren’t working "in the industry", will never be begging for jobs; for everybody else, you’re in the lottery. Either become someone worth hiring or wait your turn for your numbers to come up.

It’s a harsh reality I know, but to be anything more than someone I or any other executive can pick and choose from means you have to stand out and you have to make it worth my time to pay attention to you. If you create and deliver enough value you won’t want to be hired, you’ll consider my company “the competition.”

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