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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

You don't understand. When you get a question like this as an interviewee, they want to see how you arrive at your answer regardless of what the answer is. The answer by itself is less important than what made you pick it in the first place.

For example, possible takeaways from your answers:

* Lacks critical thinking, takes things for granted, doesn't show initiative or not comfortable with it.

* Elevated smartassness, possibly as a defense mechanism or due to inability to read between the lines. Maybe just nervous at the moment.

* Better. At least this solves some specific problem based on one's personal experience. It's possible to discuss that and see what else surfaces.

* Also good. Miraculous even if you'd managed to produce all that in the early 90s. Again, this also opens things up for further discussion.

See the point? It's a meta question.

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The fact that you think "leave it alone" is an example of lacking critical thinking skills shows just how subjective this is.

On the assumption that not many people being interviewed by Microsoft in the 90s had an iPhone style plan or a desire to revolutionize cell phones, "leave it alone" is the most realistic, objectively useful answer a candidate might give. Sure, it demonstrates zero creativity, but it's totally unfair to say that person lacks critical thinking skills as their answer is the most rational.

To pass that question, you need to know the interviewer is looking for creativity and be able to make something up on the spot. That's obvious to many of us, but depending on the role I wouldn't fault someone for not being in tune to that question or ready for it.

> That's obvious to many of us, but depending on the role I wouldn't fault someone for not being in tune to that question or ready for it.

The job interview gets debated endlessly, week after week, on HN. There isn't one interview method or question that numerous people would consider unfair, irrelevant, broken, etc.

Eric was interviewing people for very high paying jobs. A decision has to be made about the candidate based on something. A person who wants such a job should go in eager and ready to convince the employer that they're a great fit for the job, and do what it takes.

And yeah, Eric's question was pretty obvious. It's open ended, and you can interpret it as you like, which is part of the point. But being a smartass and/or complaining about the question isn't likely to leave a favorable impression. A "faster horse" answer isn't likely to, either.

That's not the point. The point is the judgement of the answers to "how do you improve the phone" are totally subjective. Maybe as the interviewee I guess you want some crazy answer like "well we could built it into your car" but what you really wanted was proof that I wouldn't waste time on this but instead focus on getting stuff done.

As an aside, IMO smartphones are not an improvement on phones. They are an improvement on PDAs. As phones they've utterly failed. People called each other (as in use a phone) way more before smartphones. So smartphones are not better "phones". They're worse phones and better something else.

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