New ask Hacker News story: The Elon Musk interview question

The Elon Musk interview question
5 by daly | 2 comments on Hacker News.
I've interviewed. The interviews are generally what I call "clown nose" events. "WE all wear clown noses. If YOU want to work here you need to look sharp in a clown nose!" In more concrete terms, the "clown nose" interviews these days have moved on from the "trick question" (aka "why are manholes round?") to questions on data structures. Why? Well, for the obvious reason that the initial interviews are with people who recently graduated and Data Structures was likely their last course at school. Elon says HIS question is "What are 3 problems you've solved and how did you solve them?". He points out that people who ACTUALLY solved the problem can describe the problem exactly and describe how they solved it in great depth. People who "sort of helped" are much less clear about that. The brilliance of this question is that it selects for the quality he needs. He wants people who not only know how to solve problems but also know how to implement the solutions. He rewards problem solvers that implement. Tesla is the new IBM Research / Bell Labs. Why would you want to work anywhere else?