Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

I think the candidate made a simple mistake: the interviewer is always right. Your job in an interview isn't to be right or to teach the interviewer. Your job is to make the interviewer like you foremost, and second make the interview think that you're qualified. And of course no one likes being corrected or told they are wrong. In my opinion, it is better to do well on an interview and decide after the fact that you're not interested, than to do a poor job on the interview because you couldn't help yourself correcting the other person.

For instance during one interview I was being asked questions about a particular topic, and I started to guess that the interviewer didn't understand 100% the topic he was asking about. Rather than correcting him, I simply tailored my answers to what I thought he was looking for, not what was right. I passed the interview and got a job offer, whereas if I had corrected the interviewer the results may have differed.

> the interviewer is always right

That is an awful sentiment, and I find myself in violent disagreement with you.

A good number of my enjoyable interviews have been with candidates who clearly knew more than I did, and could expand from an interesting detail to a short ex-tempore lecture on the topic. I cherish each of those.

An interview where I, as an interviewer, learn something is a fine thing indeed.

> That is an awful sentiment, and I find myself in violent disagreement with you.

You find yourself in violent insistence that the world is the way you wish it was, rather than the way it actually is.