Archive an interview

Original link: https://xlog.app/api/redirection?characterId=50159&noteId=395

Last year, I interviewed an overseas company. During the two rounds of interviews, I chatted with both interviewers for more than an hour and asked each other a lot of questions. The interviewers were also very candid and patient. I personally felt that the whole process was a good experience, but in the end I didn’t go.

The following is a topic that the company asked at that time. I spent more than an hour writing it. There should be no problem if I post it now. It is just an archive of some of my thoughts at the time.

topic:

Please cite a question that you have thought deeply about recently (no limit on the scope), and give your thinking process and conclusion.

Please talk about your observations and thoughts on a product that you have paid attention to recently.

Is there a mainstream perception in the field in which you work that you have a completely different perception? Please briefly describe this mainstream understanding and your own understanding, and briefly describe your thinking process to arrive at this understanding.

In your daily life, what is a product that you are unhappy with but have to use? The product form is not limited to apps, it can be a physical product, such as a toothbrush, or a service, such as buying train tickets online, etc. Why does it make you feel bad? If you are a user, please imagine what it would ideally look like? If you had to combine the current technological level and ethics, how would you transform it (at least 3 items) when you were fully responsible for this product? What was the motivation for each renovation?

Please list a product that you think is of very high quality and explain why its quality is high.

1. Please cite an issue that you have thought deeply about recently (no limit on the scope), and give your thinking process and conclusion. #

Question: The difference between common conversions and citations on social platforms.

The reason why I pay attention to this issue is because I have recently used Mastodon, and this social platform only forwards, but does not quote (repost and comment at the same time), so I thought about the difference between the two and why the platform made this choice.

I think the most essential difference is that reposting is about spreading self-identified content, while quoting is about making socializing into discussing others instead of talking about each other , while diluting the value of the dynamic. To expand, when quoting tweets, they usually bring their own comments, and their own followers will focus on the quoted content. In the end, most of the comment areas become mutual comments on the quoted tweets or The user being referenced. This often has very damaging consequences.

From the perspective of the original needs of social interaction, that is, paying attention to each other and knowing each other’s dynamics, the comments guided by the quotation will deviate from the original intention to a certain extent. This is one of the reasons; from the perspective of the quoted, one’s own dynamics are quoted to others. In the timeline, the context is cut off, and it is easy to take things out of context, and then be misunderstood or even attacked . This is the second reason.

However, most of these consequences are not taken seriously. The biggest reason is that they are covered up by the data. As we all know, it is difficult to produce original content, but it is easy to process existing content; it takes a lot of brainpower to say a beautiful word, but you only need to blurt it out to comment on others . Quotes make it easier to speak on the platform, thereby “prospering” the activity of the platform. On the surface, the platform is profitable.

However, if left unaddressed, it will greatly harm the platform in the long run. First of all, top users, as the earliest and largest contributors to the platform, are most vulnerable to such harm. Uncontrolled forwarding will amplify misunderstandings and malice, causing them to evacuate; secondly, it breeds a disharmonious community atmosphere and forces more interested parties to Valuable users leave one after another, leaving mediocre people behind in the end, causing the community to lose value and enter a vicious cycle.

2. Please talk about your observations and thoughts on a product that you have paid attention to recently. #

Product: Mastodon – a social product

This is a Twitter-like product. The information flow updates, comments, forwarding, likes, collections, private messages, lists and other functions that Twitter has are all available in Mammoth. The biggest difference is that Mammoth is not a centralized product. , the technology is open source , so others can create multiple sites (officially called instances), and different sites can communicate with each other based on the common protocol ActivityPub.

Why care about woolly mammoths?

The main reason is that after Twitter was acquired by Musk, it seems to have a tendency to learn from domestic platforms, such as censoring and banning competitors’ accounts and even banning related tweets. More and more people are expressing their desire to move to a new platform, namely Mammoth.

Preliminary observations and thoughts on woolly mammoths:

Operation mode:
1. Different people can create sites based on open source technology and attract users to join. Currently, there are 340+ sites, created and operated by people from different countries around the world. The largest site is maintained by the founder Eugene, and the funding source behind it is a foundation. .
2. Dynamics are displayed in time series and there is no algorithm recommendation, which means cold start is difficult.
3. Users can select and register for a site and interact with others across sites .
business model:
1. At present, there is no mature commercial model. The examples are basically public welfare , and different site operators are generally funded by foundations/crowdfunding/individuals.
2. Today’s mature advertising profit model is feasible in Mammoth, but the effect will not be very good. The fundamental reason lies in the decentralized mechanism of the platform, which cannot do a good job in traffic distribution and accurate advertising recommendation.
3. Subscription payment may be a way out . It depends on how Mammoth will develop in the future and whether the value provided can make users willing to pay, just like today’s E-MAIL services or telephone services.
User and dynamic observation:
1. Currently, the total number of registered users is 8 million+, with about 30,000 daily registered users (data comes from the official robot). Judging from the registration growth rate, it is very optimistic. Of course, the recent influx of a large number of new users has benefited from Musk’s assistance . However, for a social product that does almost no promotion and relies solely on word of mouth, the future of Mammoth is still worthy of attention.
2. There are currently about 2 million monthly active users (data from the official website). It can be seen that the active proportion of registered users is very high.
3. Dynamic observation of the site, taking the largest Chinese site Strawberry County (16k active users) as an example:
  1. User dynamics: Observed for several days, sampling 300+ dynamics, the frequency is about 4 messages/min. Considering the low frequency at night, the total is 2 messages/min, so it is estimated that the daily dynamics in Strawberry County are about 2 x 60 x 24=2880 messages. Among them, most of the updates are posted by highly active users, with an average of 2 posts per person per day. The number of truly heavily active users is estimated to be 2880/2=1440 (excluding interactions such as comments). Based on the trends, it can be roughly observed that the types of posts are mainly life updates > current affairs complaints > book, video, and audio tags, and entering the homepage of sampled users, it can be concluded that more than 50% of these users come from Douban and Twitter .
  2. Popular updates: Observed for several days, sampling 100+ updates, the proportion of update types is approximately: opinions (political/social events): life updates = 80:20. The factor that makes you popular is expected to be related to interaction, so those with more followers will have an advantage. However, it can be seen that users on the site tend to complain about government actions/pay attention to social events . This is also the result of users on the site fleeing after being censored.
  3. Popular trends: The participation rate of popular topics is about 10-30 people / 2 days. For example, the current topic of winter solstice only had 27 people participating in the past 2 days. This shows that the users on the site are not very involved in the topic , and more often post updates in their own way. However, it also shows that the Strawberry County community has almost no operational actions and is completely active by users.

Summarize:

I think Mammoth is a somewhat idealized product, friendly to users but unfriendly to operators. It is unlikely to replace Twitter in the short term. The main reason lies in its decentralized design, which naturally leads to difficulties in cold start. , commercialization difficulties.

But in the long run, I think it may create another form of social networking–when users meet someone they are interested in, they don’t have to register an additional account on the platform in order to follow them. Of course, this premise is that a large enough number of users, especially top users, have settled in, and more and more communities and tools support the ActivityPub protocol. However, the biggest question is why large companies currently do things that harm their own interests. If a way to balance interests can be found, the above situation may occur.

3. Is there a mainstream perception in the field you work in, and you have a completely different perception? Please briefly describe this mainstream understanding and your own understanding, and briefly describe your thinking process to arrive at this understanding. #

Note: Since this part contains information related to the company’s business, it will be skipped here.

4. In daily life, what is a product that you are unhappy with but have to use? The product form is not limited to apps, it can be a physical product, such as a toothbrush, or a service, such as buying train tickets online, etc. Why does it make you feel bad? If you are a user, please imagine what it would ideally look like? If you had to combine the current technological level and ethics, how would you transform it (at least 3 items) when you were fully responsible for this product? What was the motivation for each renovation? #

Continuing the above, take Twitter as an example. There are several places that are often used but have a very bad experience:

Search: Chinese searches are seriously polluted by pornography, as are some English keywords. It can be seen that Twitter has not dealt with it, resulting in an extremely poor search experience;
Popular trends: This section is also easily contaminated by pornography. More than once, I saw popular trending topics being various pornographic promotions;
Optimization of references: The source of uncontrolled arguments is the abuse of the reference function.

The first and second points are easy to modify. I think Twitter has no intention of doing it, so I won’t focus on it. Next, I will continue the first question above and focus on my thoughts on the third point.

First of all, I will not ban the use of this function, because there are direct commercial interests behind it. At the same time, platform users have already developed inertia, and easily banning existing functions will cause a certain degree of resistance.

Secondly, I will focus on how to retain functions while trying to avoid further misinterpretation in the process of citation dissemination, and how to save problems after they occur, so as to achieve a more balanced state.

Quotation switch : Dynamic publishers can set whether the news can be quoted from the beginning, and can adjust the citation switch midway to avoid further citations and proliferation on controversial topics, which will backfire on themselves. (Although Twitter currently has a tweet lock setting, the authority is too large in this scenario.)
Corrections and tips : In addition to controlling the disease at the beginning, it is also important to save it if it has already begun to spread. Since the context is often lost when being quoted, and even if the original tweet has been supplemented, corrected or even deleted, the quoter and his followers do not know it. At this time, it is easy to continue to trigger subsequent arguments on the wrong content. This kind of situation Very common. Therefore, the best way is to support original recommendation tags or supplementary explanations and effectively display them in all citations.

5. Please list a product that you think is of very high quality and explain why its quality is high. #

Product: obsidian – a local-first note-taking tool.

I think its quality is high in the following aspects:

Sustainable business model : all basic and even core functions are free, and value-added services (synchronization, publishing) require subscription payment. This model is user-friendly and suitable for founders. The free and open model attracts a large number of users, thereby enriching the community ecology. At the same time, the core synchronization and publishing functions are used to obtain continuous funds.
The lower limit of product usage is low enough, and the upper limit is high enough : users who are used to markdown can use it immediately after opening it. If they have a certain ability to toss around, they can create extension functions that are completely suitable for them. This benefits from the open API and rich plug-in ecosystem (community Thousands of plug-ins). From interviews with the founders, it can be seen that their initial vision was to create an IDE for personal knowledge bases.

This article is reproduced from: https://xlog.app/api/redirection?characterId=50159&noteId=395
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.