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Comment by kmonsen | Hacker News Reader

This is really weird and should not be happening. I am a software developer and do a lot of interviews including phone interviews.

These kind of questions are not expected, but I would say the lightbulb one is not super horrible as long as it is the discussion that was valued and not the answer. I have gotten weirder questions for sure when interviewing.

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It makes sense if they want a firewall from the public, a legally defensible position, while behind the scenes they hire via other channels ( close friends )

I didn't hear about the light bulb drop question until this thread, and was surprised how in-depth it can go.

Can you really "fail" an interview on a question like that? I assume the person conducting the interview is reviewing your process of coming to an answer rather than getting the most correct answer - right?

By most correct I found this article that broke down the question/answer: https://pointlessprogramming.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/2-ligh...

In theory, that's basically the idea of most questions asked during interviews (except maybe very basic CS ones). The idea is that they will look at how you approach the problems. If you already know it and spew out a memorized answer, it's much less interesting to them than if you've never heard it before and you approach it with a clever way (even if you don't get the answer).

But yes, in practice, YMMV.

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