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Comment by Toutouxc | Hacker News Reader

You only have to understand how to move your character using WASD, the concept of Inventory and pointing at different places on the ground with a cursor. Failing to understand this simple set of rules would disqualify a person from most jobs ever invented.

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> You only have to understand how to move your character using WASD, the concept of Inventory and pointing at different places on the ground with a cursor.

You make it sound so easy. Once I gave my PS4 controller to my dad to play a driving game. Even though he's a better driver than I am, it did not go well.

Game controllers are different beasts altogether. It's always fun watching a hardcore PC gamer struggle with a DualShock (or the asymmetrical weird thing they use on Xbox) for the first time. I know what you mean, but Factorio is really much slower and much easier to pick up than a driving game on a controller. I'm not saying it's a great choice for a one-hour interview, but anyone should be able to do whatever they want in Factorio after a couple of hours.

Using a controller for someone who has never used a controller for and mentally mapping the act of driving to it is probably more difficult then handing a mouse and keyboard to someone interviewing for a software development job.

It's not about understanding the set of rules, it's about applying it in real time while playing. It adds a huge mental burden on the interviewee if they aren't familiar with it already. And the older you get, the harder it becomes.

But its biased against people who can't use mouse and keyboard :)

But on serious note, People who played the game could just hide the fact that they know the game mechanics. And act like they are catching up faster then normal person would.

Most interviews in other industries try to figure out how much a person knows at that point in time. Software interviews try to do the impossible and try to figure out how quickly someone learns. That’s because this can be gamed, as you mentioned. I know people that have memorized 800 leetcode questions and got jobs at all the FAANGs, even though they were average developers. For the record I’ve never gotten into FAANG (although I have gotten into FAANG-adjacent) so my evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt.

The best interview is one that can’t be gamed. Just like Hollywood auditions. Give the people the script and see how well they do. Tell the interview candidate you are going to give them 3 questions and they pick the one they want to do, even if they know it already. This strips away all pretense that they are figuring it out on the spot. At least then you are on a level playing field.

>People who played the game could just hide the fact that they know the game mechanics. And act like they are catching up faster then normal person would.

This is a universal problem with all interview techniques. Interested in any ideas for how to fix it.

It's even a problem with "personal interviews," because some people have had more experience with optimizing one-hour first impressions than others.

Isn't that a common criticism of every interview style? Whether it's whiteboard questions, take-home projects, soft skill questions, lots of people will lie and say they've never seen the question before.

At this point, you would be foolish to admit that you’ve seen a question before. Everyone is faking it, and if you be honest, you’ll just keep getting harder and harder questions from the interviewer. The only time you should not fake it is if you’ve been asked that question at the same company. I think they would keep track of that and if you didn’t mention it, they would look deceitful on your part if they catch you.

> you’ll just keep getting harder and harder questions from the interviewer.

Well, there is a counter strategy that works even in this situation.

The counter strategy would be to just know way more interview questions than the interviewer, and know the answer to every question that they have, so that they run out!

When I was full time applying for jobs, a couple years ago, it got to the point with me. It turns out that people interviewing others, only have a couple questions that they use for interviews, and it is not that hard to know all of them.

>Failing to understand this simple set of rules would disqualify a person from most jobs ever invented.

I think you dramatically over-estimate most people's literacy with games and movement in a virtual space, let alone most people's hand-eye coordination. How many people can touch type these days?

Why would the amount of software engineers that can touch type be down?

You literally only place your fingers on the WASD keys and you move your character in a 2D (!) virtual space. With Minecraft it would be a completely different story, but Factorio is really accessible.

Yeah it's not about "failing to understand", or "being able". It's about having advantage if you are already familiar with similar things. It's about those few extra things that you don't have to spend a single thought on anymore, giving you more headspace to think about the problem at hand. And it's also about feeling less stressed because you are in a rather familiar environment.

Can you really not see how such an interview would bias towards Gamers?

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