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Job interview stories.
Today's tale comes from Evan Wade...
I had the unique treat of interviewing for my replacement after accepting a promotion in the state agency for which I worked.
Through the much of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, Cambridge-based Thinking Machines was ahead of its time. As innovators in parallel computing, they developed a massive, 65,536 processor supercomputer known the Connection Machine. Visually, it made Cray’s distinctive look seem like a piece of outdated furniture, and was even stunning enough to star as the “impressive blinky-light server” in Jurassic Park.
Of course, that’s just about all it was good for. The Connection Machine was an AI researcher’s dream that no AI research lab could afford. Its inability to run FORTRAN – and every other programming language aside from a specialized Lisp dialect – made it pretty much useless for business and scientific purposes. Its baffling inability to even do floating-point operations mostly guaranteed that no one would buy it. But, hey – who needs customers when there’s lots of money from daddy!
Let's All Reinvent the Wheel... Again (from K.D.)
I was interviewing candidates for a junior web application development position. The candidate had, so far, seemed very knowledgeable and more than met the requirements of the position. I had, in fact, almost made my decision that I would make Joe an offer, but I had to ask just one more question.
Apr 08