Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of things it tests for:
* Ability to reflect on and critique their own ideas, using technical common-sense. If someone has never had a reason to research or think too hard about how GPS works, then it might be reasonable to initially assume that it sends a signal to a satellite. But hopefully, when prompted to think about it a bit more, they would realize: "Hey, if that's true, then somehow these satellites that were launched in the 80's and 90's were able to scale up their capacity and handle orders of magnitude more demand, now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Maybe that's not how it works?"
* General curiosity and interest in areas outside their field of specialty. This might not be strictly necessary to get a job done, but it probably has some correlation with other measures of technical aptitude that are hard to probe directly.
> General curiosity and interest in areas outside their field of specialty. This might not be strictly necessary to get a job done, but it probably has some correlation with other measures of technical aptitude that are hard to probe directly.
I think this is a bit misguided, since the scope of things outside of a candidate's field of specialty is tremendously large. Picking a random piece of tech within that space and drilling the candidate about it seems rather unfair.
A better way to handle this would be to actually ask the candidate about what else interests them outside of their specialty. But hey, maybe that doesn't stroke the interviewer's ego enough (:
You either find out the candidate knows how GPS works or you find out the candidate's willingness to say "I don't know".
It's valuable to know how someone will handle a question they don't know the answer to -- whether they recognize their own ignorance and whether they are willing to admit to it.
There are plenty of ways to get to the bottom of what a candidate knows without resorting to unreasonable questions. What you're really testing for is a candidate's patience for being toyed with.
teraflop|4 years ago
* Ability to reflect on and critique their own ideas, using technical common-sense. If someone has never had a reason to research or think too hard about how GPS works, then it might be reasonable to initially assume that it sends a signal to a satellite. But hopefully, when prompted to think about it a bit more, they would realize: "Hey, if that's true, then somehow these satellites that were launched in the 80's and 90's were able to scale up their capacity and handle orders of magnitude more demand, now that everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Maybe that's not how it works?"
* General curiosity and interest in areas outside their field of specialty. This might not be strictly necessary to get a job done, but it probably has some correlation with other measures of technical aptitude that are hard to probe directly.
alesua93|4 years ago
I think this is a bit misguided, since the scope of things outside of a candidate's field of specialty is tremendously large. Picking a random piece of tech within that space and drilling the candidate about it seems rather unfair.
A better way to handle this would be to actually ask the candidate about what else interests them outside of their specialty. But hey, maybe that doesn't stroke the interviewer's ego enough (:
bobthechef|4 years ago
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unknown|4 years ago
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Mindless2112|4 years ago
It's valuable to know how someone will handle a question they don't know the answer to -- whether they recognize their own ignorance and whether they are willing to admit to it.
daenz|4 years ago