When I ask an interviewee a technical question, what I want is an answer that is correct technically.
If I want them to give me a different kind of technical answer, then I think it's on me to ask a question that actually requires what I'm looking for. It's not hard! All the Stripe interviewer had to say is, "Ok, great. It sounds like you have a good sense for system capacity. Now let's add another zero to all the load numbers." And then keep increasing orders of magnitude until they learn what they're looking to learn.
I am, just to be clear, not defending people being willfully obtuse or contrary jackasses. But that's not the scenario being described in either the Stripe story or the Google Sheets story I'm responding to. Two apparently reasonable people were asked technical questions and they gave answers that were the right thing for the business.
I think that's good and I like to hire people like that. I get lots of others don't, and I get the POSIWID reasons behind it. But I'm not going to pretend I think it's a healthy way to run an organization. And I also get that the people who like pretense and deference in interviews are not going to like me saying so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I read that as being his emotional reaction, not something he'd say in an interview context. This being an internet forum and all.
What I think he's sincere about is not wanting to work at a place that builds unnecessary stuff. And if people are asking for answers that require building unnecessary stuff, I think it's a reasonable inference that the place is not right for him.
I think interviewing is always a two-way street. If I got the feel that a place was going to have a lot of over-complicated code for me to deal with, or expected a lot of status-driven deference against actual user and business need, I wouldn't just give an interview-ending tart reply. But I would politely finish out the interview and then write them off unless there were other signals that redeemed the bad interview questions.
If I want them to give me a different kind of technical answer, then I think it's on me to ask a question that actually requires what I'm looking for. It's not hard! All the Stripe interviewer had to say is, "Ok, great. It sounds like you have a good sense for system capacity. Now let's add another zero to all the load numbers." And then keep increasing orders of magnitude until they learn what they're looking to learn.
I am, just to be clear, not defending people being willfully obtuse or contrary jackasses. But that's not the scenario being described in either the Stripe story or the Google Sheets story I'm responding to. Two apparently reasonable people were asked technical questions and they gave answers that were the right thing for the business.
I think that's good and I like to hire people like that. I get lots of others don't, and I get the POSIWID reasons behind it. But I'm not going to pretend I think it's a healthy way to run an organization. And I also get that the people who like pretense and deference in interviews are not going to like me saying so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯