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Comment by pdpi | Hacker News Reader

Not really, no. It's part of a whole class of similar puzzles, and they're easy to solve formulaically, so all it proves is that the candidate has done these puzzles before (which I don't personally find to be a good indicator for job aptitude). It's also the sort of thing that will make nervous candidates who haven't seen such a problem choke without giving you any indication as to their quality.

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That also is why the GRE discontinued the old analytical puzzle section, which used to be 1/3 of the exam (along with math and verbal). The scores were bimodal: Those of us who'd done a lot of logic puzzles in school got perfect scores, and those who hadn't did much worse. It turned out not to be a good indicator of anything meaningful.

But do you want your new employee to choke as soon as they see a new problem? To me, being able to solve the problem doesn't reveal anything; however, how they handle the problem can. I think its about context and what information you're trying to glean.

I recall reading that these sorts of problems were popular at one stage at places like Microsoft and Google for precisely that reason- they allegedly revealed problem solving abilities. They were subsequently dumped when it was found that they showed little correlation with job performance. I don't have the citations offhand, but I would probably personally be wary of working at s place that subjected me to brainteasers in an interview knowing that they were somewhat discredited already.

I'd like to see the data on this, or a variation.

First variation is with the candidates ability to solve the problem. Like you said, Microsoft and Google seem to have determined there's no correlation between that and job performance.

Second variation is with a panel of interviewers who propose the problem. Based on how the candidate responds, the panel chooses whether to 'hire' the candidate, based on their ability to reason about the problem and communicate, rather than on their ability to solve it.

I wonder if there's a correlation between the yes/no of the interviewers and the candidate's job performance.

By that logic you could have them do the problem under time constraints and constant interruptions, you wouldn't want a new employee that can't handle stress and distractions.

I realize you were trying for a reductio ad absudum, but actually I kinda like your idea, because it suggests a wide range of other promising ideas. Imagine a software company whose programmers were chosen for being immune to procrastination. They would run circles around competitors!

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