[gameprogrammer] Re: Interview transcript and a lesson from it

On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 21:09, Kevin Jenkins wrote:
> I had an interview with Flying Lab software a couple of days ago.  I 
> didn't pass what should have been an extremely easy interview covering 
> basic C++ such as inheritence, virtual functions, 1st year student stuff.
> 
> Here's a semi-accurate transcript of the last few minutes that sums it 
> all up:
> 
> Interviewer: "How would you store enemies in an RTS?"
> Me: "I generally store game objects in a dynamic array of pointers. 
> However, sometimes you might want to also store the pointers in a tree 
> for searches"
> Interviewer (Paraphrase): If the enemies were being used to render you 
> would store them in a rendering tree.
> Interviewer: Is there any case where you wouldn't want to store objects 
> as pointers but store them directly?
> Me: "I can't think of anything.  There was one case in my last game." <I 
> pointed out a case where you would store a unique value in a tree for 
> fast searches>.
> Him: "You would store an object directly that if the object took less 
> memory than the pointer.  You aren't experienced enough so we don't need 
> to continue this interview." <Click>
> 
> Basically, my failure was in not being able to read the guys' mind.  It 
> might mean I wouldn't want to work for such a person, but there was no 
> reason for me to not pass the interview.
> 
> The lesson I learned from this and that I would like to share is it's 
> important to be more assertive than I was with loaded questions.  Don't 
> even try to guess because you are sure to fail.  The correct answer 
> would have been, "There is no answer to that question because it is too 
> vague"

I've been through dozens of interviews that ended like that. The person
doing the interviewing has one pet answer and anyone who gives them a
different answer is going to fail the interview. Very little you can do
about it. 

I was in an interview just last Tuesday that went pretty much that way.
I made the mistake of saying that the product looked like it was
affected by second system syndrome. And then had to explain what that
meant. Which means that the lead developer had 0 training in software
engineering. The interview went down hill from there.

This kind of stuff happens so often... it is a wonder that any software
gets written at all.

                Bob Pendleton

> 
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