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Comments (39)

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  mceachen
  In almost every interview I gave at the last several companies I worked for, I'd start with "This may feel a bit odd, but with this coding problem, I'd appreciate if you spoke through your problem solving. If it helps, pretend like I am your intern. Good ideas, bad ideas, pros and cons of whatever you're considering, it's all valuable information for me to learn a bit about how you approach problems."I feel like being explicit like this put candidates at a bit more ease than having them try to suss out what the interviewer is expecting from them implicitly (and I know there are many interviewers that will auto-veto any candidate with the audacity to suggest a possibly imperfect approach).
• vjerancrnjak
  Articulating thoughts out loud is a horrible requirement. Conscious verbal thinking is a detriment to thinking, thinking unconsciously is much more efficient, only requirement is involvement with the problem that does not need to be verbal at all.Problem is solved before the solution is consciously perceived. The reverberations after perception can be of many different styles.There is little value in chain of thought and I think humans are implicitly or explicitly instructed to verbally think and hinder their problem solving facilities. There are many examples of individuals that went much further with their own internal but externally indecipherable thinking models because they avoided language as a thinking faculty.On top of that to ask for clear communication and decoding of the verbal thinking mush into sounds is just an extra hinderance. Id prefer to ask questions to evaluate understanding of the problem solved than force someone to dump their mush into a clear spoken summary.Interviewing process is just a mush of nonscientific nonsense , a theatre for all involved, a sad affair.
• sinuhe69
  In some cases, it can certainly help. However, it isn't helpful for deep thoughts or when innovative, creative ideas are needed.I have found that speaking the steps out loud helps, especially with new, confusing working steps. For example, it helps when tying a complex knot or following the steps/work of others without explicit instructions. In such situations, speaking out loud helps me to remember the steps much faster (simple repetition through multiple pathways) and also helps me to detect and correct spatial and sequential mistakes. It also helps enormously when working with or teaching someone else.I have a funny memory from my youth: one time, I had to solve a particularly difficult maths problem on the blackboard. I don't remember exactly why, but while I talked out loud about solution A, I wrote a slightly different step (B) on the board. Looking back, I realised I had made mechanical mistakes, so I had to correct them to get the final valid solution. My teacher laughed and joked, 'A sign of genius is to write A, say B, but only C is the true solution.' :) (no, he was just too kind).I have often experienced my handwriting being much slower than my speaking, so sometimes they don't sync and funny mistakes are made (one line contains the words of the next line). But I fondly remember that particular moment.
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  xorvoid
  I basically "chain of thought" to myself in my own notes when working through a hard task. Mayne we can call it "live tweeting in private".Aometimes it feels like a super power because it takes away the "starting anxiety" and makes everything a trivial sequence of "following simple steps"
• armcat
  I’ve been doing this with voice mode in agent harnesses. In Codex for example I often speak orally and I find that (1) I discover something new myself, (2) agents seem to understand much better than pure text prompts. The only downside is it costs lot of tokens.
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  Waterluvian
  Witnessing a candidate’s thought process is probably the most valuable part of the interview process for me. Nothing else comes close. Just let me listen/watch you solve problems.
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  florkbork
  This is basically https://www.christopherroosen.com/blog/2020/4/20/how-the-rit...
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  algoth1
  I wonder if the author is one of those people that doesn't have an audible inner monologue?
• jamienk
  "Free association" in psychoanalysis just asks people to let themselves speak, to fall into their speech, let it unfold - but it is very, very hard to do, because what you say tends to not be what you want to say. You want to avoid certain things, you can see your chain of speech leading up ahead to somewhere you don't want to go. So you stop yourself, or resist, and then what you are saying is not at all free but strained, hedging, tense and anxious.
• clivedup
  > eh, "Chain of Thought for Humans" sounds stupid> but maybe it has some nuance?> eh, I think I still don't care enough to click> but maybe I could post a funny comment> it doesn't sound that funny, and besides, HN doesn't usually like these sorts of comments> okay, let's just read the next story> unless
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  1auralynn
  We use this in my science education platform: we make students talk out loud about what they're thinking. Not a chatbot, but guided inquiry that's designed to make them actually mentally engage with what they're seeing
• akoboldfrying
  I often find it helpful to type comments (starting with a # character) directly in a shell session, to remind myself where I'm up to, what I need to do next, or what I've just done. Especially handy at the end of the day or when switching context to something else.
• whattheheckheck
  Just make a theoretical minimum type test like the landau physicist
• senectus1
  holy shit this would break my ability to think completely.I think and chase alternate chains of thought way faster than i can speak.