Absolutely yes. I like games. The purpose of games is to have fun. This seems like a fun game for like the first $20, a sum I can afford to play a fun game for 10 minutes.
Then at the end, I get to say "I once lost $20 to Steve Balmer playing binary search", which is a fun sentence I can dine out on, and is worth more than $20 to me.
I feel like perhaps this is why MS under Balmer lost relevance. Too busy looking at the technical and not the human.
Underrated comment. His point was to see how they approached the problem regardless of the answer, which is a much different criteria than having the right answer.
I don't know why you'd make this comment... I find it hard to believe you're actually stupid enough to not understand the implicit "(i.e. is your expected profit greater than 0)".
If you answered like this in an interview I would definitely not give you the job. I did actually interview someone once who was like this - "How would you do this?" "Well you shouldn't do it. I think you should do this other thing.". He did not get the job.
This is greyed out, but I tend to agree with the sentiment that there’s a right way and a wrong way to approach these “EV” questions. OP was a bit harsh with the stupid comment, and for SWEs EV understanding is not usually a critical thing, but ultimately you’re being asked about the probability and the ability to make good decisions. Trading firms make use of this when hiring traders (most famously Jane Street and also SIG); The thinking is that if someone makes bad decisions with toy games, and their thought process is not analytical, they’re going to make for a bad trader, not making good decisions with millions of dollars on the line. A good example of something that would rule out a trader is: You can flip a coin, if you win you get $1m, if you lose you lose $1m. Would you play? The EV is zero, but the question is about bankroll management and disaster avoidance. As an individual the downside risk of a $1m loss (usually) significantly outweighs the upside of a $1m gain.
I would be glad not to given a job then, if that's how you react to someone taking the quiz and giving it its own twist.
It's like interviewers don't understand the power dynamics going on during an interview: for the interviewer, this is just their job. Nothing will change for them whether they pass the candidate or not. This could be their 100th interview. On the other hand the interviewee is not paid to be there, they could be doing something else and they are stressed as who knows what kind of egocentric asshole might be interviewing them for a job they want.
If I get a candidate who can make a fun and clear headed remark in such a tense situation, I would read that as them being comfortable with problems and with stress. I would move forward and ask further questions to see their thought process but rejecting someone out of a single question is ludicrous.
Absolutely yes. I like games. The purpose of games is to have fun. This seems like a fun game for like the first $20, a sum I can afford to play a fun game for 10 minutes.
Then at the end, I get to say "I once lost $20 to Steve Balmer playing binary search", which is a fun sentence I can dine out on, and is worth more than $20 to me.
I feel like perhaps this is why MS under Balmer lost relevance. Too busy looking at the technical and not the human.