Agree on 1,2 and 3 - they are jobs you don't want really.
I don't get offended by 4 (although I don't have 17 years of coding experience :); I understand the need for them to weed out the really incompetent ones. Think of this as a store clerk asking for your ID when you purchase cigarettes.
6 is, IMO, the biggest cause for false negatives. The interviewer feels that she gave ample hints, but really all she ascertained was that you did not have a crystal ball.
_Well, back when I was at Amazon, we did (and they undoubtedly still do) a LOT of soul-searching about this exact problem. We eventually concluded that every single employee E at Amazon has at least one "Interview Anti-Loop": a set of other employees S who would not hire E._
I don't get offended by 4 (although I don't have 17 years of coding experience :); I understand the need for them to weed out the really incompetent ones. Think of this as a store clerk asking for your ID when you purchase cigarettes.
6 is, IMO, the biggest cause for false negatives. The interviewer feels that she gave ample hints, but really all she ascertained was that you did not have a crystal ball.
I also think that the interviewer anti-loop that Steve Yegge mentions (http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...) contributes to the false negatives.
_Well, back when I was at Amazon, we did (and they undoubtedly still do) a LOT of soul-searching about this exact problem. We eventually concluded that every single employee E at Amazon has at least one "Interview Anti-Loop": a set of other employees S who would not hire E._