A Tale of Two Interviews

Here's a story about my experiences interviewing for a job, some job, any freaking job. I went to this interview on Monday where I ran into one of those know-it-alls from computer science after computer science class. He wasn't interviewing me or anything, he was just being off-putting as usual.

The real interviewer — the first interviewer — was explaining the company's product to me... and I was understanding him. I signalled my understanding with my trademark yeah-nod, in which I nod and say "Yeah" to indicate my comprehension. Apparently the yeah-nod is the interview equivalent of bluffing with a pair of tens showing; maybe I'm telling the truth, maybe I'm bullshitting just to make you happy. "Don't just say yeah..." Interviewer Guy tells me, as if I'm not a relatively smart person. General rule of thumb for Interviewer Guy: if you can understand the concept, then I can understand the concept. But I digress. Point is, now I'm self-conscious about blurting out "yeah." If only Usher were as self-conscious as I was (am).

But that's not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about the second interviewer, who seemed just as inhuman as the first. (Note: I've already got the feeling that I won't be hired for this job.) We were shooting the breeze, chatting about my favorite classes when out of absolutely fucking nowhere, the guy asks me: "What is first-order predicate calculus?"

I'm stunned. I thought the pop quizzes were over now that I graduated. It's not that I don't know the answer; it's that if my artificial intelligence professor gave me that question on a test, it'd take me a minute or two to figure out how to word it. "Well, uh, it's, first-order predicate calculus, it's this type of logic, it's the most expressive logic that there is, it's with the universal quantifier and existential quantifier." It's a B- answer for content and a D+ answer for cogency. Where the hell did that come from?

I guess it came from the same place as "What's the universal quantifier?" and "What's the existential quantifier?" and "What's a predicate?" and "What's special about predicates?" That's like asking what's special about a hammer? It's a tool for accomplishing a task. I have no idea what this guy's asking. But he keeps going.

"What's Gödel's incompleteness theorem?"

"Do you remember the proof?" No. Do you?

"What's a Turing Machine?" It's sort of this theoretical computer model, there's this tape divided into cells and the machine writes symbols on the tape and moves left or right based on a transition function δ—

"Let's pretend I know what a Turing Machine is. What are they used for?" A Turing Machine is just a computer, it can do anything a computer can.... I mean, numbers, what are they used for?

"Well, there's one thing in particular." The Church-Turing Thesis? "What's that?" Sorry I asked. "No, there's one type of problem that whenever you say 'Turing' everybody thinks..." The halting problem? "Well, the halting problem is one example. This is a problem that Turing famously resolved..."

Undecidability? "Yes." Okay, Reader, note there's no exclamation point. Nothing. Not impressed at all that we were finally on the same wavelength. You see, when I think of undecidability, I think of Cantor and the whole proof by diagonalization listing the Turing machines against the inputs...

"Well, I can see that you know the proof. But you won't be doing any of that on this job."

Asshole!

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So, today I went to another interview, against my better judgment. Difference between the two companies: one had money to offer, the other didn't. See if you guess which was which.

My Wednesday interview went something like this...

Interviewer: So, I see from your resume that you have a college degree.

Me: Yeah.

[Shit! There's that word again...]

Interviewer: When can you start?