I'm starting to wonder if design interviews are not only useless, but actually contributors to poor design. I'm still thinking through this, by my reasoning for this is:
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5. The usual design interview nonsense, boxes and arrows, Fermi estimates, say "pubsub" a few times, etc. The interviewers very patiently explained to me that solutions 1-4 were invalid and kindly didn't fail me for those (I think most would've), but what's the point of this?
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I see a lot of systems that look like they were designed by skipping straight to step (5). Of course I can't prove a causal link from design interviews, but it seems plausible that design interviews train people to design real systems without understanding the problem domain.
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People say these interviews "measure how you think", but
@hillelogram has looked into the history for other kinds of interview questions, he found "how you think" was a post hoc rationalization for questions that were originally asked for other reasons. Likely same here.Show this thread -
But even without looking at the historical record, "how you think" seems bogus To answer a Fermi estimation question, you just need to know how to play the Fermi estimation game. Make up numbers, multiply them together, and then you pass. Basically ditto for design interviews.pic.twitter.com/zoOU85g5ac
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