posted 14 years ago
Well, I read about their work before I interviewed them. And I've always had a pretty broad (if possibly somewhat shallow) interest in the field so I started with at least some familiarity of a lot of topics. The hardest interview, in that respect, was Simon Peyton Jones because functional programming was one of the areas I had the weakest technical background. And I'm sure there were places where I could have dug deeper in my follow ups if I knew more; if you're a particular expert in some area you may still find yourself asking, "Why didn't he ask ..." But hopefully overall I got deep enough into each area to provide something to chew on.