[HN Gopher] IBM's Asshole Test
___________________________________________________________________
IBM's Asshole Test
Author : johnpublic
Score : 233 points
Date : 2022-05-04 20:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (johnpublic.mataroa.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (johnpublic.mataroa.blog)
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Our team has done something similar to this for quite a while and
| I think it's been valuable. About ten minutes to read a page of
| high-level specifications regarding a general proposed system
| design, then the rest of the hour at a whiteboard (or remote
| equivalent) with a couple of other team members to sketch out and
| discuss what the implementation might look like.
|
| It's not quite an "asshole test" or a Kobayashi Maru or anything
| like that - but a general "can you communicate and collaborate
| effectively with others on a technical topic" test. I guess it
| does highlight "asshole" personalities sometimes, but I'd say
| rather than offering a negative signal it tends to more
| effectively highlight _good_ candidates.
| inopinatus wrote:
| When I interviewed with AWS, half the loop interviews were with
| remote staff. I was shown to a videoconferencing room and asked
| to wait. There was a pile of VC equipment but it wasn't
| connected. With five minutes before we were due to start, I
| decided this was part of the interview and plugged stuff in
| myself, powered it on, and clicked through some boot-time
| screens, guessing at the right inputs. A few minutes later a call
| came in and the interviews themselves proceeded normally.
|
| To this day I still don't know if it was a test.
| conorh wrote:
| Many years ago when applying for a somewhat similar program at
| another big company I went through something similar. Bunch of us
| in a room with a difficult to solve problem, not enough time, and
| at the end we had to do a group presentation on our solution. I
| don't know if it was exactly an asshole test, it was also to see
| how people worked in a group generally. Even if the it is
| somewhat artificial people's personalities quickly became
| apparent. I really enjoyed it :)
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| I've evaluated one of these group exercises for a grad program
| before. One thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was out of
| the four individuals there was one guy that continually
| derailed the group, and there was another guy who even though
| the other guy was always derailing things still showed courtesy
| towards him and listened to his opinions. The other two guys
| were both reasonable and I liked them too, but the guy whom I
| both liked and who showed courtesy to an individual I would
| describe as "difficult" was one of the ones we wound up hiring.
| He got glowing reviews from pretty much every assessor and went
| on to become a great colleague to work with. I think any of
| those three out of the four people would have been fine hires,
| and the other guy was a strong no-hire.
| amelius wrote:
| They probably have a similar test at NASA.
| tonnydourado wrote:
| Something about this doesn't sit right with me, but I'm not sure
| I can put my finger on it.
|
| When I go to a job interview I expect to be asked honest
| questions and intend to give honest answers. You want me to do a
| team activity? Ok, fair. You're giving me and a bunch of people a
| problem you *know* we can't solve, just to watch us panic? That.
| That just feels wrong.
|
| I am a strong opponent of the "in this company we're like a
| family" discourse, but I also like to work for people that I
| don't dislike. If this is an asshole detection test, I'm afraid I
| just detected the company.
| UUID_KING wrote:
| I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like working with a broad
| range of personality types.
|
| Certain kinds of behavior are not useful in the workplace. I like
| the idea of this test, but I think it is just one test of many
| that should be evaluated along with others.
|
| Some engineers and leaders thrive on flipping situations that
| they find initially frustrating into opportunities.
|
| They might appear grumpy for a moment and then elated the next
| after flipping their frustration into an opportunity.
|
| If we made a filter, that filtered out all grumpy interview
| candidates, what would be gained and what would be lost? Is this
| inclusive?
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| Am I the only one that finds it slightly amusing that the test
| also makes sure that the supposed work task/puzzle doesn't
| actually matter?
|
| Perhaps an ironically appropriate test for hiring for a job at
| many offices/IBM (and exemplifying some of the problems with
| these bad faith test techniques).
| wmf wrote:
| Nothing in job interviews matters.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| This is true. This past week, I coached a friend who is a new
| grad on a how to ace an interview. Going in, she was super
| worried, almost on the verge of tears.
|
| The strategy was simple: right from the beginning, ask
| questions about the company and the interviewer's daily work,
| e.g. "Can you tell me about what you do?" Act as if every
| response is super interesting/inspiring, and follow-up with
| more questions, saying you are really eager to learn, etc.
| until the time runs out, so that they don't get a chance to
| ask her anything.
|
| She got the job.
| mrmattyboy wrote:
| Next stage of interview: Sign this NDA and fix a couple of
| issues on our backlog and review a couple of PRs :D
| wmf wrote:
| Then people complain about working for free.
| snissn wrote:
| "i suggest we have everyone read their own packet, then slide it
| to the person to the left. Then we can discuss everything once we
| circle around"
| chrisseaton wrote:
| That takes exactly the same amount of time as everyone reading
| out their packet, which the story says didn't scale to the time
| allowed.
| solveit wrote:
| Reading silently is faster than reading out, and also easier
| and less error-prone than listening.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yeah but not by much.
|
| Also I doubt there was any info in those packets that would
| have mattered. The whole point of the test was to stump the
| group.
| davesque wrote:
| I hear this and can't help but think IBM ended up with a bunch of
| "yes" men and women that wouldn't react appropriately to a bad
| situation. Given the performance of the company, I would guess
| I'm right.
| tantalor wrote:
| > You see who turns into an asshole under pressure
|
| Does this work? How? Isn't that the interesting part here?
|
| The fact this test exists is uninteresting.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Being built mostly from oxygen and carbon, people should turn
| into a diamond under pressure.
| Victerius wrote:
| The post doesn't go into enough detail to be sure, but I think
| the "asshole" participants fighting for control of the
| whiteboard assumed that whoever would successfully lead the
| group to solve the puzzle would receive good marks and have the
| highest probability of receiving an offer. Furthermore, some
| companies, or departments/teams within companies, foster a
| corporate culture where "assholes" are more likely to be
| promoted. So a group participant who isn't naturally an
| "asshole" may have taken a risk by behaving like one, gambling
| on the idea that such traits would be looked upon favorably.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't get it - in the recollection, the person leading at
| the front wasn't getting anywhere, so someone else stepped in
| to give it a go. Is that supposed to be an asshole thing to
| do?
| ghaff wrote:
| I didn't really get from reading that who the asshole was
| supposed to be.
|
| Nothing's happening and someone steps up. Doesn't
| inherently seem like an asshole thing to do. Things still
| not working and someone else steps up and says "Mind if I
| give this a shot?" Not inherently asshole either.
|
| You can get an everyone tries to take charge situation in
| these scenarios. But just sitting back and waiting for
| someone to tell you what to do doesn't seem great either.
| noselasd wrote:
| Well the story doesn't tell us who was the 'assholes'. It
| could be someone up at the whiteboard, or it could be
| someone yelling at the people that was at the whiteboard.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| The one time I've experienced assessing this type of thing
| it's very much something you have a natural feel for as you
| watch the events unfold. You can't really assess it in the
| abstract sense, it's all about the concrete interactions
| and how the individuals handle them.
| itronitron wrote:
| This is also what many internships are for.
| crate_barre wrote:
| That's one way to look at it. The other way is to determine
| confidence. Either way, these are character traits and filtering
| for one or the other is unfortunate. Teams should mimic villages,
| everyone is there. Everyone. The shy, the arrogant, the nice,
| etc. There will be flawed people in a village, but that is a
| village. Not utopia.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| soheil wrote:
| This is a problem of active vs passive communication.
|
| I can think of 100's of other personal behaviors that would be
| worse or just as bad as being an asshole. Passive aggressive
| behavior, secretly taking credit for someone's work, backstabbing
| and rallying others against someone in review cycles, ... The
| fact that being an asshole gets so much attention may be a
| symptom of the problems people are trying to root cause and are
| converging on an incorrect cause.
|
| ie. chances are that you're not having the issues you're having
| in your org because people are being assholes, but because
| they're incompetent, smile in your face and sabotage you later,
| cozy up to the boss to get promoted or a multitude of other
| shitty attitudes that often go under the radar.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| In Robert Heinlein's early juvenile novel Space Cadet, the
| applicants are given a device and a set of instructions. The
| instructions make no sense for the device in question.
|
| Assuming this is based on something real life, I suppose it was
| the same underlying idea. Nobody could complete the instructions.
| They wanted to see what people did.
|
| How do people react to frustration and bad orders?
|
| There is plenty of frustration in software work, and a good %age
| of incomprehensible or incorrect specifications.
| Karupan wrote:
| If only companies had this test for all levels, including middle
| and upper management, given the larger impact a lead/manager has
| across the org.
| alliao wrote:
| I suspect the requirement for assholery is different for each
| role though?
| tyingq wrote:
| If it's during an interview, people tend to not fully be
| themselves. Even if they don't specifically know it's an
| "asshole test".
|
| So maybe this catches the intersection of "asshole" and "poor
| situational awareness".
| itronitron wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I like matrixed organizations as it
| allows people, over several years, to choose who they work with
| and encourages leaders/managers to develop effective people and
| leadership skills. Siloed organizations unfortunately
| facilitate assholes.
| Wohlf wrote:
| At least at my company this is baked in to the manager review
| surveys.
| eej71 wrote:
| Decades ago, in the days before uber, my employer would fly in
| candidates from college campuses as part of an onsite interview.
| The candidate would fly in the night before and we relied on a
| taxi service to bring the candidate to the hotel. Then in the
| morning the same service would bring them to the onsite and of
| course bring them back to the airport at the end. It was a whole
| curated process.
|
| Little did the candidate know - we knew the driver quite well and
| he knew many people in the firm. More than once there would be a
| candidate who thought they could be rude and disrespectful to the
| taxi driver because ... you know... its just an immigrant taxi
| driver with a distinctive accent. Oops! Cost them an offer. But
| just as well. Avoided some arrogant jerks in the process.
| treeman79 wrote:
| My dad worked for Boeing. He got to take a ride in the company
| limo once. Driver started telling him all the dirty gossip.
| Which executives were having affairs. Which ones were scheming,
| etc.
| Bahamut wrote:
| I've heard of airline companies doing similar when interviewing
| flight attendants - United will fly you to Newark to interview,
| but often there will be people shadowing candidates to see how
| they behave during their travels and that feedback is taken
| into account when evaluating candidates.
| sargun wrote:
| A strong part of me believes that United indexes on how much
| of an asshole the person can be. /s.
|
| But, seriously, I feel like if you're using a potential
| employer's services, you should assume they're taking that
| into account when they're hiring you.
| metadat wrote:
| It's impressive if they have the resources and sophistication
| to really execute on this.
| facet1ous wrote:
| They could just note to flight attendants that there are
| passengers interviewing w/ the airline and have them raise
| any red flags pretty easily.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Was told if you interview with the FBI, the interview starts
| the moment you go through the door.
|
| And be careful what you say at the bar.
| Melatonic wrote:
| The FBI has a bar inside their offices?
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Which door? In this case OP seems to have outwitted the FBI,
| since the candidate is being surveiled the moment they left
| their own home.
| [deleted]
| cmckn wrote:
| Hm, I don't dig this. I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a
| candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were
| being evaluated. People are stressed heading into an interview,
| and may be upset afterwards. Unless they're interviewing for a
| public-facing role, I don't see how this behavior is relevant
| to the job; and discussing it with a hiring committee invites
| all sorts of "cultural fit" biases that make the hiring process
| inconsistent and discriminatory. If a person's behavior would
| hinder their ability to do the job, then that's worth a
| rejection; but "rudeness" is a very subjective thing.
|
| edit: to clarify, I'm talking about behavior that could be
| interpreted in different ways by different people. If you tell
| a driver to fuck off, yeah; I don't want to hire you or work
| with you. The parent gave no example of the behavior they'd
| reject a candidate for, and I assume it'd be reasonable; my
| point is just that this kind of thing is hard to do right and
| I'd avoid it.
| jameshart wrote:
| Asking for character references from someone who has
| interacted with a candidate is perfectly fine.
|
| I think where this might get dodgy is with the possibility
| that some of the candidates might have _tipped_ this driver,
| which puts us in the position of asking for an opinion about
| several candidates from someone who might have been
| compensated by some of them.
| genewitch wrote:
| if i were to institute something like this, the driver
| would be fairly (and well) compensated to do this task. Any
| tips would be handed over at the end, so there's no
| consideration of compensation involved. Obviously tipping
| is a data point, but it wouldn't influence the drivers
| report beyond that checkbox.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I don't want to work with anyone who treats service workers
| like garbage, no matter what mood they are in. I have never
| in my life, no matter how bad or good of a day I am having,
| taken my frustrations out on a service worker for whatever
| internal/external stressors are happening to me.
| genewitch wrote:
| I find this extremely hard to believe. I, too, try very
| hard to not get upset at "service workers", but at a
| certain point, if someone has a bad attitude with me i'll
| eventually give it right back. This has only happened a few
| times, off the top of my head: support at ISPs a couple of
| times, creditors who were harassing me without reason, and
| one time extremely rude and racist people at a California
| School transportation office.
|
| Sure, i probably could hang up, turn the other cheek,
| whatever. And i'm sure my responses/actions made them no
| nevermind.
|
| You might be as stoic and nonplussed as you claim, but
| we're all the heroes of our own stories, or something.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| It's understandable that people might be stressed or upset,
| but if they take it out on people they consider beneath them
| that's not a good sign.
| [deleted]
| cmckn wrote:
| > they consider beneath them
|
| It's this kind of inference that doesn't belong on a hiring
| committee; you likely don't have enough data to support
| this kind of conclusion about a person. The parent comment
| made a similar assumption about racial animus. I just don't
| think spying or eavesdropping is an effective way to
| evaluate a candidate.
| brewdad wrote:
| Let's remove some of the inflammatory language and look
| at more as this person doesn't "matter" to me. If I think
| the taxi driver is just a taxi driver, I am going to
| treat them as I would any person I'm not likely to meet
| again. Ideally, with respect but when one's guard is down
| an asshole is more likely to act like one.
|
| In the interview room, any candidate will be on their
| best behavior since impressing those people "matters"
| greatly. Same for the behavioral lunch sessions that many
| companies also use. If I have any sense, I'm going to
| recognize that this is still part of the "interview" even
| though we may be at a restaurant offsite discussing
| anything from the job to the Yankees pitchers.
|
| The argument, that I tend to agree with, is that
| gathering info from the taxi driver is a better indicator
| of true character. I don't expect the taxi driver to
| deliver a full psychological report but I would like to
| know if they felt mistreated in some way.
| Disruptive_Dave wrote:
| Had the same thought. Lots of really big assumptions here
| with zero fact or evidence to back them up. And poor lack
| of awareness. Be careful judging, my friends.
| ekanes wrote:
| Finding out that someone is toxic only after they've got
| the job is problematic. The idea here is to evaluate them
| when they aren't aware and on their best behavior.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| > I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate on
| interactions that they weren't informed were being evaluated.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
|
| >I don't see how this behavior is relevant to the job; and
| evaluating it on a hiring committee invites all sorts of
| "cultural fit" biases that generally making the hiring
| process inconsistent and discriminatory.
|
| I don't see how not doing this, really changes anything. The
| process is already inconsistent and discriminatory. The only
| thing this really tests is integrity.
| rrook wrote:
| Do you see this as being substantially different to
| evaluating a candidate's behavior while in a waiting room
| between interview sessions?
| [deleted]
| sliken wrote:
| If you want a healthy organization you need to be able to
| trust people, even when you can't watch them. This requires
| things like lack of deception, treating people decently, not
| lying, not stealing (physical or credit for ideas/work
| accomplished), etc.
|
| If you end up with people who ass kiss those above them,
| abuse those below them, backstab and/or sabotage the
| competition, focus on empire building, and misrepresent
| things for their benefit then your best staff will find
| elsewhere to work. Those that stay will fight among
| themselves and will only help the company or it's customers
| when it happens to overlap with their other goals.
|
| Sounds kind of like the Dilbert comic now that I think about
| it.
| rmah wrote:
| I disagree, the best time to evaluate how a candidate behaves
| towards other people is when they don't know they are being
| evaluated. Were they stressed before/after the interview?
| Well, how one behaves when stressed matters too. Finally,
| yes, rudeness is subjective, but so are most things in life.
| hnarn wrote:
| > I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's
| interactions when they weren't informed they were being
| evaluated.
|
| That makes about as much sense as saying that you shouldn't
| be held responsible for stealing office supplies because no
| one informed you that there were cameras installed.
|
| If you treat cab drivers and other service personnel badly,
| that's because you're a shit person. It's really that simple.
| I've been in extremely stressful situations in my life
| involving lots of travel and I've yet to "take it out" on a
| third party.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I generally apply a similar test when dating - if the
| person is a huge asshole to the service staff then it
| generally is not going anywhere
| jokab wrote:
| #realtalk
| wruza wrote:
| Ethics aside, in my experience this type of character tends
| to contaminate their surroundings with this undirected
| negativity. It's like a black hole that has no sides, only
| the mass of their ego. I have a friend like this, and while
| we are still friends and can manage that, I would never work
| together with him. It's okay to be sad, stressed, angry. Not
| okay to spill it all over the world.
|
| Otoh, not clear what gp means by "rude". Someone could
| perceive sad/neutral silence and "thank you, goodbye" as
| rude-ish too.
| yodon wrote:
| Your character is defined by who you are and how you behave
| when you think no one is watching you.
| davidhyde wrote:
| IBM probably had too many assholes working for them during world
| war II, hence the test. Their role in helping the nazis should
| not be forgotten.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
| ebrewste wrote:
| We used to have a very basic C whiteboard test for junior devs.
| Super simple "find the bugs" test. The best technical performance
| I ever saw was a guy that walked up to the board, swiped with the
| marker to mark the bugs like he was swatting flies (found every
| bug correctly). He finished the test in maybe 10 seconds, where
| typical was five minutes or more. He sat down in a huff. I didn't
| know we had an asshole test until that moment. I thanked him for
| coming in and showed him out. I'm so glad I never had to work
| with him.
| mulmen wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220504204525/https://johnpubli...
| johnpublic wrote:
| Pity my blog died so quickly! Can anyone recommend a more
| robust host? Ideally one with low set up effort.
| mdavidn wrote:
| You can host a static site out of an S3 bucket.
|
| https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/Websit.
| ..
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| wordpress.com? i mean, that's their core business, right?
| jchw wrote:
| Fly.io can host instances of whatever (any kind of Docker
| container, so Ghost and Wordpress aren't hard) and has a good
| free tier. You can also use Netlify or GitHub Pages or
| Cloudflare Pages for free static hosting, if you don't need
| anything special. Wordpress.com is pretty low effort. I think
| all of these can do custom domains in their free tier.
| evolve2k wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Netlify and Gifhub pages, finding 11ty was
| a huge win: https://www.11ty.dev/
|
| Netlify offer a version of 11ty that includes a hosted CMS
| editing tool and it's all hosted for free for basic access.
|
| Use this as the Netlify CMS optimised version of 11ty as
| your starter: https://www.netlifycms.org/
| throwanem wrote:
| Sticking Cloudflare's free-tier CDN in front of your existing
| blog will probably help a lot. If nothing else, it'll make a
| stopgap while you're investigating alternatives.
| mrmattyboy wrote:
| Agreed!
|
| Though, just a note that if you use them, you need to use
| them as your nameservers for your domain (the whole domain)
| (at least for the free tier)
|
| ... maybe doesn't matter for most people, but something
| that's put me off massively :D
| gog wrote:
| Pretty sure that is not true.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| it's pretty much step one of signing up with cloudlare -
| how else are they going to control visitors?
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I am certain this is not true, as I only use them for a
| subdomain CDN for hosting my static site, and don't use
| them for any of my other dynamic sites that are on the
| same parent domain.
|
| Maybe what you say was true at one point. I only set up a
| static site and used Cloudflare to front it within the
| last couple of months.
| zcw100 wrote:
| It sounds nice and makes a great story until you see all the
| exceptions being made. "He was a jerk but he did go to MIT", "he
| was a jerk but his father is good friends with the CEO", "he was
| a jerk but I'm a jerk and he reminds me of myself" but it won't
| be that honest it will be more like " he wasn't a jerk he is just
| a natural leader and it was everyone else's fault for not
| recognizing that and falling in line"
| neo_g wrote:
| This sounds so weird, people without any expertise in human
| psychology are in-charge of a behavior detection exercise. The
| worst part, those who got in were the new experts in 6-months.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| > those who got in were the new experts in 6-months.
|
| Author says they were shadowing, not an expert.
| [deleted]
| metadat wrote:
| It's better than no filtration of assholes at all, which is the
| industry standard.
|
| Do you know if a better plan which scales to companies with
| hundos of thousands of employees?
| mrmattyboy wrote:
| I'm not sure it's quite the same as a psychological evaluation
| ;)
|
| I mean, if you had to work in a team with someone.. this sounds
| like a good way to see how they'd fit in actually working in
| team under a pressured situation.
|
| You're not labelling them as this or that, or necessarily
| checking for 'hidden indications' that they could have some
| condition you know nothing about, it's just finding people that
| fit into the culture that you're looking to fill.
|
| I (probably awful) analogy could be, if I go to car boot
| (garage) sale and find things that are good value (and/or
| haggle).. I'm not telling the person how much the item's worth,
| but what price it's worth to me/what I can afford.. I'm not
| claiming to be a antique evaluator.
|
| (Update: Well, I guess I don't _actually_ know they're
| doing/not doing, but it's my interpretation)
| veltas wrote:
| Yeah, just this. It's not a psychology experiment, it's "do I
| want to work with this person?"
| Victerius wrote:
| Take this with a pinch of salt, but I read an anecdote on
| Reddit a long time ago about a corporation in New York (I think
| it was a bank) where an executive was looking for a new
| VP/Director/something. He found a potential candidate and
| invited him to a one-on-one lunch. When the candidate placed
| his order, the executive discreetly told the waiter to bring
| the wrong order for the candidate. The point was to see how the
| candidate would react to unexpected situations. Would the
| candidate assert himself and demand that his order be
| corrected? Or would he roll along and adapt to the new
| situation? Either choice could reveal potential qualities or
| defaults about the candidate.
| nullc wrote:
| Seems like a bad experiment. If the water brings something
| that I'd like equally or maybe more (having seen it in front
| of me)-- why argue?
|
| Depending on what was brought I might not even be confident
| that they messed up the order-- e.g. if what they brought was
| also something that I credibly could have ordered.
| rzzzt wrote:
| OK, what qualities did the choices reveal? I can attribute
| both desireable and undesireable traits to either branch
| taken.
| brimble wrote:
| Is the correct response to slip a Benjamin to another waiter
| to "accidentally" trip the one who screwed up, so you can
| judge from their response what your demeanor should be like
| when requesting a correction?
| vmception wrote:
| What was the desired outcome?
|
| I hate dark patterns in dates, that was a date. Learn to
| communicate and choose that.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I mean, if I were in that situation, I'd probably accept it
| just because the accuracy of my order doesn't really matter
| compared to the meeting as long as it's edible, it doesn't
| really say anything about my decision making when it does
| matter.
|
| It's knowing P(A|B) and trying to obtain a P(A|C) where B and
| C are mostly disjoint, making the info not too useful.
| drchiu wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| Honestly, I'm the guy who would just "roll with it" and eat
| whatever was brought to me because I honestly can't bring the
| energy to arguing with the waiter.
|
| But having hired people and other professionals, I almost
| always hire the person who would assert themselves and demand
| the right thing be done.
|
| Why?
|
| Well, I recognize that I don't like to be "that guy". So I
| hire people who can do it for me. It has always worked out
| quite well in the past, where I've been able to form a team
| of people who work well together, but can be assertive to
| external groups. (And I, of course, only need to get out of
| their way.)
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| As "that guy" it's somewhat refreshing to hear this. I
| think the key is really self-awareness and understanding of
| group dynamics enough to help you get the balance of
| individuals right.
| sodality2 wrote:
| > Would the candidate assert himself and demand that his
| order be corrected? Or would he roll along and adapt to the
| new situation?
|
| This is a false dichotomy, not to mention plenty of people
| who _are_ abrasive and rude to service workers would probably
| have the smarts to not do so in that situation... Kindly
| mentioning that the order was wrong (especially in the case
| of an allergy/health issue) shouldn't be seen as assertive or
| demanding and I hope that's not what they were implying!
| nosianu wrote:
| No it really does not, or at best barely, if you don't think
| too much. Brains are highly context dependent in how they
| work.
|
| I doubt a similar baking mistake would get a similar response
| than a wrong-order mistake in a restaurant. Maybe it does, or
| maybe it doesn't, but making a prediction from one to the
| other based on such little evidence... well, the person who
| gets tested really is the one doing such a test, and it does
| not look good. Okay, there's an A for effort, at least he
| tried it at all.
|
| I'm sure the very-negative case works, if he freaks out or
| becomes too obsessed over such a mistake that speaks against
| the person. But the cases you described sound pretty tame, if
| he merely asks for the mistake to be corrected that in itself
| isn't noteworthy. I certainly don't see it as being useful
| for determining what he would do if there was a similar
| mistake in the bank business. The context is totally
| different.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Do you need especial expertise in human psychology to see who
| is behaving like an asshole in a group?
| Closi wrote:
| You don't require a degree in human psychology to evaluate if
| someone is a team player in a group assessment.
|
| I've been assessed during a similar group assessment (we had to
| work together to produce a layout for a shopping centre), and
| also been an assesser for one of these excercises. All you are
| really trying to identify are:
|
| 1) The people that won't help others, and will intentionally
| try to throw other candidates under the bus (so you make sure
| you never hire them).
|
| and
|
| 2) The people that _do_ genuinely try to help the other
| candidates who are struggling (so you can hire them).
|
| It's not exactly some sort of highly-complex psychological
| evaluation, you are just seeing how people work in a group
| task.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Who's not the team player in this story? The person who
| stands up and tries to provide some leadership in a situation
| that has stalled?
| function_seven wrote:
| How did they do that? A couple possibilities:
|
| 1. "You're all being mired in nonsense. Give me the board,
| hand me the packets, and I'll show you how it's done."
|
| 2. "Okay, let's organize this somehow. I'll make a list of
| related widgets and gadgets. Becky, can you see if we all
| have the same dooh-dad structure?"
|
| I'd say 1 is an asshole, and 2 is a Team Player(tm)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| ...but the recollection doesn't differentiate between
| these two so it doesn't seem to be the important factor?
| bjourne wrote:
| Yes, you do need a degree. However you react in this
| artificial situation in which you are grouped up with seven
| stranger has no bearing on your performance as an engineer.
| Furthermore, if you had a degree in psychology and wanted to
| perform an experiment like this you would need to seek
| approval from an ethics committee and they would turn down
| your request because the experiment is fucking stupid.
| Whoever devised this "IBM Asshole Test" is the real asshole
| here.
| Closi wrote:
| You need a degree and an ethics committee in order to do a
| simple group task interview?!
|
| We are seeing how people can work in a team to complete a
| simple task to help a hiring decision, not replicating the
| Stanford Prison Experiment.
|
| Do we need professional actors and casting directors to
| judge the role-play excercises? We should probably get
| journalists to do the interviews too.
| fatbird wrote:
| The test wasn't to determine your performance as an
| engineer, it was to see if you demonstrated bad behaviour
| working in a group under pressure. You could be a great
| engineer and I'd still pass you up if, in this test, you
| were rude and abusive, or impatient and condescending to
| the rest of the group.
| causality0 wrote:
| Considering the abysmal state of psychology vis-a-vis the
| reproducibility crisis, I would trust a random person's
| instinctive asshole detector more than someone who's been
| trained not to use it.
| steve76 wrote:
| unsignednoop wrote:
| Just want to point out that exam (2009) is a great movie and
| everybody should watch it.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1258197/
| kuroguro wrote:
| Couldn't it backfire if there were people who were not that keen
| on getting the job and thus wouldn't be under much pressure?
| maxtollenaar wrote:
| Wharton MBA has this Team-based Discussion (TBD) as a part of
| their application process. From what I hear, it is to weed out
| Asshole type of personality. In regard to how effective the
| method is, I'm not 100% convinced.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| Kind of makes you wonder where all the assholes work?
| david-gpu wrote:
| Oh, so _that_ is what the test was about?
|
| In 2006 I went to a "new grads hiring day" at a large company,
| and one of the steps looked just like this, except I think we
| were divided in groups of eight.
|
| My team solved the problem at the last second and we all passed
| to the next round.
| dfee wrote:
| How about the inverse, though? I'd love to identify which
| management teams set unrealistic deadlines to play mind games.
| bradlys wrote:
| Really wonder if this actually worked.
|
| I don't think we even care in this day and age with hiring if
| someone is an asshole. Most of the companies I've worked at have
| had many of them in various forms. (Or just simply - not pleasant
| people) It's trivial to fake in any interview format.
| WisNorCan wrote:
| I am fairly sure Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk would have
| failed this test. Are you better off having them at your company
| or not?
| paxys wrote:
| I can't imagine any of them picking up and implementing boring
| jira tickets all day, so no they would probably be terrible
| hires for such a position.
| jackblemming wrote:
| Shockingly, there's plenty of competent CEOs who aren't
| assholes, but we don't idolize them because Americans love the
| idea of the genius asshole.
| otterley wrote:
| Warren Buffett being a model example of a non-asshole CEO.
| Same with Kenneth Chenault at American Express, Indra Nooyi
| at Pepsi, and countless others.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I don't think any of those 3 could have been a good team
| player. They are entrepreneurs.
|
| So yes I am pretty sure you don't want them at your company.
| philjohn wrote:
| Depends what you're optimising for - reliable, collaborative
| workers, or a visionary CEO.
| zenexer wrote:
| This appears to be for an engineering position. I doubt any of
| those people would do well in such a position--they're loners,
| not team players.
| johnpublic wrote:
| I can't see any of them going for the IBM grad scheme though
| krono wrote:
| Similarly I wonder how many of those "top-of-the-foodchain"
| software devs and system architects were dropped during earlier
| job applications elsewhere, only because some brainfart caused
| them to fail the stupid code challenge.
| _moof wrote:
| Having worked for one of the people in that list, I can say
| that yes, I am definitely better off not having that person at
| my company.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Jobs was always an asshole, but early in their careers people
| seem to say that Musk and Bezos were reasonable team players.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| I have a "no jerks" rule too. challenge is to try to spot them
| early, even before you say yes to an employer/client. its hard to
| do reliably. but there are less complications early than down the
| road when they've become one's coworkers or boss
|
| because of this I really like to get into casual friendly convos
| early, with potential bosses or coworkers
| [deleted]
| todd8 wrote:
| My interview for IBM back in the 1980s went well, and I got the
| job as a software architect. I don't remember much about the
| interview; it must not have been stressful.
|
| The strange thing for me was a weird day of interaction with a
| group of around 30 other new hires. We were divided into teams
| and had to work together to solve problems, etc. I always
| suspected that we were not being trained but instead graded on
| some sort of scale by those leading the exercises.
|
| I worked at IBM for 5 years and never discovered what that was
| about.
| brianmcc wrote:
| Enjoyed the story but I am dreading "the group test" becoming the
| new why-are-manhole-covers-round cargo cult nonsense :-)
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Just wait until people figure out that group composition can
| also affect whether people appear to be assholes, apathetic,
| etc.
|
| On top of that, one evaluator in the right evaluation group can
| change the very definition of asshole on the spot and get group
| buy-in, given specific group composition.
|
| To me a big part of the issue is that it's one test for one
| property, for one property, in one group configuration, by one
| evaluation group configuration...one might say it's
| _singularly_ disappointing to hear about that aspect.
|
| One would hope a technology company could see the value in more
| scientific testing principles at least at a basic level? Hope
| my straw goggles are on, showing me straw-structures in straw-
| corporations.
| a_shovel wrote:
| I presume this means that the puzzle doesn't actually have a
| solution. I wonder what kind of information was in the packs.
| johnpublic wrote:
| It did have a solution. However, the packs all contained
| different information. Once this information was shared, an
| individual could solve the puzzle fairly easily. Group dynamics
| tended to block this though.
| jonas21 wrote:
| This is generally called a "stress interview" and, as I
| understand it, they used to be more common decades ago.
|
| I think most people these days would consider it wrong to deceive
| candidates or purposefully increase their level of stress. If
| someone were to try this today, the only thing it would prove is
| that the interviewer is an asshole.
| slg wrote:
| Honestly I see two asshole tests here. Some of the candidates
| failed the first one. IBM failed the other. This type of
| dishonest and unnecessarily stressful approach tells me that I
| probably don't want to be working there. Even just professing
| that a candidate needs to work well under stress is somewhat of a
| red flag. Why are your employees under so much stress? I am
| software developer not a trauma surgeon. If I am under regular
| stress, that is a failure in management of my employer.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Meh, I definitely want to filter out people who can't handle
| situations like this, because honestly they come up all the
| time. Uncertainty in ownership, data not matching up, clarity
| lacking; how people behave in these scenarios is basically how
| they'll behave at their job.
|
| I don't think it's an "asshole" behavior to induce stress
| during an interview and observe results. What else are you
| supposed to do?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Somehow I found this very clever, and more appropriate than
| asking people to napkin-guess how many piano tuners are in NY.
| I'd expect most candidates kind of panicked, a few reacted
| superbly, and a few became assholes. This would be a very way
| to both separate the most problematic people, and find
| potential team leaders.
|
| Of course they could have accepted the assholes and invested
| ample time and resources to nurture their emotional
| intelligence, but they would have resorted to that only if they
| couldn't find enough candidates.
| conorcleary wrote:
| Well how does one become part of management?
| [deleted]
| bartchamdo wrote:
| All companies should have a test like this
| belval wrote:
| In the age of "cracking the coding interview", glassdoor,
| levels.fyi, etc... it would only work a handful of times before
| everyone is in on the test and true assholes won't expose
| themselves.
| stevemadere wrote:
| Assholes who actually can learn to hide the fact that they
| are assholes are probably a lot less annoying.
| monktastic1 wrote:
| Except that they'll only hide it when it helps them. In
| general this is far more dangerous.
| isk517 wrote:
| Agreed, the most successful assholes have always been the
| ones that understood that you can't be a asshole all the
| time, you need to deploy it at a opportune moment.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| If you've got an asshole being strategic about when to be
| an asshole, you actually have a sociopath, because most
| folks at the point where they know they're being an
| asshole would just stop.
| antmldr wrote:
| Having been on the receiving end of this as a candidate (not
| at IBM), everyone was in on the test in the first 15 seconds,
| and it changed people's behavior instantly.
|
| It's fairly obvious if you're on the receiving end what the
| purpose of the test is when you're being observed (as with
| most interview questions, it helps to ask yourself why the
| interviewer asking me / having me do this?)
| brimble wrote:
| Like with those "personality tests" where anyone with
| decent perception and reading comprehension can easily tell
| which outcomes each answer's going to push them toward, and
| so obtain any result they like.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I would probably fail this test as someone who has been accused
| before in professional settings of being an 'asshole' due to my
| speaking method.
|
| When the reality is far far less interesting: the combination of
| a pathological speech condition (which I covered up early as a
| child by mumbling a lot and thus picked up some bad enunciation
| habits), and inheriting a deep voice historically made me come
| off as bored and disinterested when really...I just have one of
| those voices that doesn't come across as exactly.... 'animated'
| when it hits your ears for the first time.
|
| In fact...think Shaquille O'Neil and you're pretty close to how
| it sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROPsn3O6JAw
| cperciva wrote:
| When I interviewed at Google in 2006, one of the interviewers
| asked me to write code for solving a particular problem. I
| replied along the lines of "ok I need to think about this, it's
| not obvious how to solve it" and started thinking. Time ticked
| away. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. The interviewer
| started reminding me that he needed me to write some code and if
| there wasn't anything for him to copy down into his interview
| notes I wasn't going to pass the interview. (Why interviewers
| were all _transcribing the whiteboard_ rather than taking photos
| I have no clue.)
|
| Eventually I ran out of time, having written no code on the
| whiteboard. I asked my interviewer "ok so what _is_ the algorithm
| for solving this " and he admitted that he had no idea.
|
| At the time, I thought he just meant that _he_ had no idea what
| the solution was; but in hindsight I wonder if the real test was
| to see if I would crumble under pressure and write code I knew
| didn 't work.
|
| (I got a job offer, but turned it down to start Tarsnap instead.)
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| I had something like this too for a quant trading interview. It
| was one of those problems about flipping a coin, heads doubles
| your money and tails you lose everything, "how much would you
| pay to play the game?" If forget the nuance of the question but
| when I did the math on the whiteboard, the expected value was 1
| i.e. the same amount one wagers. At that point I said, "Well, I
| guess I could pay for the entertainment value... how much do I
| owe you for this interview?"
| dfabulich wrote:
| That sounds almost like the St. Petersburg Paradox. (But in
| the paradoxical version, you keep whatever's in the pot; you
| don't lose everything at the end.)
|
| The St. Petersburg game has an infinite expected payout! But
| most people would only be willing to wager $20 or so, and
| it's hard to articulate exactly why.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-stpetersburg/
| tomatowurst wrote:
| The two aren't mutually exclusive, you could've easily started
| out with salary + stock options that would've put you in a
| better position to start a side gig.
|
| Then you might actually be driving a lambo now too ;)
| Flankk wrote:
| Speaking from experience or from the ass? In my experience a
| startup is all consuming.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| tarsnap is a one man show and he's not building a startup.
| he could've easily worked at Google, take advantage of the
| rising stock prices AND continue work on his SaaS. Lot of
| us do exactly that because it doesn't make sense to leave a
| good paying job at a large company to take on tremendous
| risk at as you said, consuming endeavour with small
| probability of success (+90% failure rate).
|
| I don't get why people are so upset at my comment or why
| that should warrant ad hominem attacks.
|
| I merely mentioned that parent could've had a job at Google
| and benefited from it. He made it sound like it was a power
| move, it really wasn't. My argument is only that he took on
| even more risk by not taking advantage of Google's offer
| and growing stock prices to fund his passion. He doesn't
| seem like the type to get distracted by a day job either.
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > he could've easily worked at Google, take advantage of
| the rising stock prices AND continue work on his SaaS.
|
| Wouldn't Google then own all the code he wrote, even on
| his own SaaS sideproject?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Your comment was critical without being in any way
| helpful, and you tried to defuse it with a smiley.
|
| It doesn't warrant ad hominem attacks, but hardly
| anything does.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Did you start out with the Google salary + stock options,
| proceed to also start a side gig, and now drive a lambo?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| By '06 Google was already public so you weren't going to make
| life changing, never work again in your life money from stock
| awards/options. At best you'd be sitting on a decent nest egg
| that maybe bought you some property or better investments if
| you were smart (and a $250k supercar is not a smart
| investment).
| tomatowurst wrote:
| if you owned stock options and invested it in Google with
| portion of your salary going to it, you absolutely would be
| looking at extreme returns. The power of compounded returns
| is still not clear to some I see.
|
| With that money you could've funded any side project that
| generates recurring revenue.
|
| I don't get why you should quit your job, take on
| tremendous amount of risk for a highly improbable outcome
| with heavy survivorship bias.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| > I don't get why you should quit your job, take on
| tremendous amount of risk for a highly improbable outcome
| with heavy survivorship bias.
|
| For someone like you? I'd say you shouldn't. The correct
| option for the vast majority of people is to stay at a
| stable, low risk high paying corporate job and live a
| comfortable upper-middle class life.
|
| For other people...it's not that much risk if you're good
| at fundraising, hiring and executing. For those people,
| the sky is the limit.
| Aachen wrote:
| > For someone like you?
|
| Do you know each other or is this a judgement of
| character based off the few words in the above comments?
|
| What they wrote sounds like good sense in general. A bit
| materialistic and generalizing perhaps, I wouldn't _want_
| a dino juice sapper and I have a lot of trouble doing
| pointless work let alone outright manipulative like
| adtech (but that 's just me, evidently there's plenty on
| the other side), but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be
| generally smart to accept a 4-day work week offer for
| presumably a high salary in addition to starting
| something with a high failure chance. But we don't know
| about savings or aspirations or industry knowledge or
| investors cperciva might have had, hence it's a bit
| generalizing, even if it's generally sensible.
| vkou wrote:
| > (Why interviewers were all transcribing the whiteboard rather
| than taking photos I have no clue.)
|
| Because they have to transcribe it anyways, and because it's
| hard to read blue on white, or green on white in a photo.
|
| Also, if some part of your handwriting is illegible, or you've
| made some ambiguous errors, or whatever, the interviewer can
| ask you what you meant, instead of having to make an after-the-
| fact assumption, long after you've left.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| This story strikes me as pretty funny. As if he might say
| "damn, I was hoping you knew. We've been working on this one
| for weeks!"
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I interviewed for a security position where they asked me an
| interesting question (I don't exactly remember what it was).
| After thinking a bit I told them "you don't" -- as in there
| isn't a solution to the problem they posed.
|
| They shook their heads and admitted that as best as they
| could tell there wasn't a solution but they wanted to see if
| they missed anything. I got the job.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I once walked into an interview where some code was already
| written on a whiteboard. It was presented to me as a "find
| the problem with the code" sort of puzzle, and I pointed out
| the one big logic problem with it's algorithm and wrote a
| quick fix.
|
| The interviewer responded with "hold on", and grabbed a
| colleague, pointed at the whiteboard, and the colleague said
| "yes! that'll fix it!" and ran off.
|
| I was offered the job that I was clearly qualified for, but I
| declined. I often wondered how many candidates it took them
| to fix their bug.
| Victerius wrote:
| > I was offered the job that I was clearly qualified for,
| but I declined.
|
| Out of curiosity, why?
| op00to wrote:
| They are so understaffed they need to use interviewees to
| do their work! Bad news!
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Nothing to do with this event, I just had another offer
| from a company I interviewed at during the same period
| that was more interesting to me.
| eropple wrote:
| Not the OP, but for my money, a company that does that
| isn't a company to work for. I don't work for free and
| you shouldn't either.
| metadat wrote:
| Honest question: What difference does it make whether you
| work on a l33tcode question or a real problem in the
| interview? At least the real problem has a chance of
| being interesting.
|
| Sometimes I do give candidates examples of real
| challenges we're facing. The purpose is not to get
| anything for free, but rather to see if they're good at
| coming up with new ideas.
|
| It also gets boring asking the same questions that may or
| may not have leaked to the Internet over and over.
|
| AITA?
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| Because you're literally working for them for free.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Leetcode is fine. Once a dude asked me to write out merge
| sort. Like, I'm not from a CS bg (I suppose that wouldn't
| matter). And I literally did look at merge and other
| sorts two days back. But that didn't matter, the only way
| you can write merge sort is if you memorize it (or spend
| an inordinate amount of time writing sorting algos). I
| didn't get that job, but I've been monitoring that
| company and they're not doing that well anyway. Perhaps a
| coincidence?
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| I once interviewed a guy who was going to work on a different
| team than mine who, 20 minutes in, I knew he was going to
| pass everyone's interview. I then proceeded to give him a
| "take home test" which was actually my project for the
| sprint, but framed in a generic manner. He was a much better
| and faster programmer than I, and he completed it beyond my
| expectations. I made the modifications to make it work with
| my project and I even received a commendation at the end of
| the sprint on how clean "my work" was.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| You, sir or madam, are an absolutely asshole. I admire your
| out-of-the-box thinking and your honesty, but I do not
| admire your natural proclivity towards exploitation.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I'm surprised you'd admit that kind of dishonesty on a
| public forum.
| krono wrote:
| Near the beginning of a class, Professor Neyman wrote two
| problems on the blackboard. Dantzig arrived late and assumed
| that they were a homework assignment. According to
| Dantzig, they "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but
| a few days later he handed in completed solutions for both
| problems, still believing that they were an assignment that
| was overdue. Six weeks later, an excited Neyman eagerly
| told him that the "homework" problems he had solved were two
| of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig
|
| Reminds me of that :)
|
| edit: Here's a slightly more colourful telling of the story:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-unsolvable-math-
| proble...
|
| Does anyone happen to know which two problems Dantzig solved?
| Don't seem to be having much luck on my searches
| caf wrote:
| There's a lesson there too about how solving problems is
| often easier once you know it can be solved.
| betamike wrote:
| Hah! This reminded me of a similar story:
|
| "In 1951, David A. Huffman and his MIT information theory
| classmates were given the choice of a term paper or a final
| exam. The professor, Robert M. Fano, assigned a term paper
| on the problem of finding the most efficient binary code.
| Huffman, unable to prove any codes were the most efficient,
| was about to give up and start studying for the final when
| he hit upon the idea of using a frequency-sorted binary
| tree and quickly proved this method the most efficient.[5]
|
| In doing so, Huffman outdid Fano, who had worked with
| Claude Shannon to develop a similar code. Building the tree
| from the bottom up guaranteed optimality, unlike the top-
| down approach of Shannon-Fano coding."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding#History
| Victerius wrote:
| When I started reading my brain went straight to Von
| Neumann. Now I really want to read a fanfic about a story
| where John Von Neumann is invited to a Google interview.
| imglorp wrote:
| Maybe not Von Neumann at google, but how about Feynman at
| Microsoft?
|
| https://sellsbrothers.com/12395
| lkschubert8 wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but the interviewer not knowing the
| solution is extremely off putting.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Did you talk to the interviewer at all during this? I could see
| them wanting to know your thought process to solving an
| unsolveable problem but otherwise this seems a little far
| fetched. Probably they just really liked you?
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| 2006 is ancient history.
|
| But also, it's a basic interview technique to explain your
| thinking out loud.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| Yeah, in my experience this is really what it's all about.
| Thinking out loud helps them assess how you reason through
| trade-offs, potential ideas you run through, edge cases you
| catch, at what stage you catch them and how you go about
| addressing them etc.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Thinking out-loud also prevents candidates from going
| completely off the rails. Maybe they missed an important
| detail or are solving a different problem than what the
| interviewer intended. These things happen, better to catch
| them early in the interview.
| kragen wrote:
| Wouldn't that fail unless your thinking is as slow as speech?
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| Not if you can compress your thinking it into something
| short. Good code interviews test communication skills too.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| No, they don't, generally. When was the last time you
| were required to compose code in a real world situation,
| in front of someone, while talking through your thought
| process, all under time pressure and in a high-stakes
| environment?
| kragen wrote:
| Every time I pair program. Also sometimes I've given
| talks that way. I like it, I guess not everybody does.
| bityard wrote:
| I interviewed with Google once around the same time frame.
|
| The position I interviewed for was something along the lines of
| datacenter operations. I did my interview from a local Google
| sales office and interviewed with three other employees via
| video call. This was around the time that Skype was fairly new,
| but whatever software they were using was clearly internal to
| Google.
|
| Anyway, I ended up talking with 3 engineers. The first one
| asked me about stuff on my resume, my Linux experience, some
| hardware, software, and network questions, etc. He seemed
| pretty nice and I thought that session went well.
|
| The second guy was a different story. It started off well
| enough but then he asked me how I would go about repairing a
| server that wouldn't boot. I asked him a few preliminary
| questions (does it have power, did anyone touch it recently,
| does it POST, etc) and then talked about which components I
| would swap out and in what order and why. After every piece of
| hardware, he would say, "it still doesn't boot, what do you do
| next?" I ran out of hardware to think of swapping and he
| eventually got visibly annoyed and began to lecture me on the
| troubleshooting process. Now, I was young but I wasn't green
| and probably got flustered and defensive in response. I'm
| certain that cost me the job or at least my chances of
| advancing to the next round of interviews.
|
| The next guy I talked to noticed my military record and only
| wanted to talk about airplanes and helicopters. I humored him
| while attempting to steer the conversation back to the position
| but he wasn't having it. I'm sure he knew the previous guy gave
| me a strike against and was just killing time.
|
| A few days later I got an email from Google saying that they
| had passed on me. Which as it turns out was probably a good
| thing because A) Google turned into a much different company in
| the years following that, and B) they never actually built the
| datacenter that I would have worked in anyway.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| To be fair, engineers didn't all have smartphones that could
| take great photos in 2006.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I did a Google interview around then, and the interviewer
| photographed my code with an ordinary digital camera.
| irrational wrote:
| Did anyone have a smartphone that could take great photos in
| 2006?
| masklinn wrote:
| Depends what you mean by great, but there were a number of
| phones with 2-3mp cameras, more than sufficient for a
| whiteboard.
|
| And regardless it was an interview structured with a
| whiteboard, cameras (digital or not) had been things for a
| while, the company could gave provided one.
| bumper_crop wrote:
| > Why interviewers were all transcribing the whiteboard rather
| than taking photos I have no clue.
|
| It makes it easier to reason about the code. It's the
| difference between typing out the answer from Stack Overflow,
| v.s. copy pasting it. At least for me, writing the code down at
| the speed the candidate does triggers the error checking part
| of my brain.
| lekevicius wrote:
| > between typing out the answer from Stack Overflow, v.s.
| copy pasting it
|
| Thanks to co-pilot, these are approaching being one and the
| same (:
| readams wrote:
| It's just because the interviewing tool you have to put your
| notes into at Google takes text and not pictures :-). The
| hiring committee will actually look at this, and this is a
| different person from the interviewer.
| cperciva wrote:
| Ok, but they were transcribing from the whiteboard onto
| paper. So everything I wrote must have been transcribed
| _twice_ before it reached the hiring committee.
| joatmon-snoo wrote:
| 2006 was... early. I don't remember when HCs were formed,
| but there's no way the internal ATS had any level of
| sophistication, if it even existed then.
|
| (Admittedly this is all years before my time.)
| goodcjw2 wrote:
| This is definitely an interesting test and the motivation is
| totally valid.
|
| But I'm wondering whether I can pass if I don't speak up at all?
| Or just passively play along?
| dkarl wrote:
| It's funny, the way we used to do coding interviews was to
| systematically ramp up the difficulty of the problem until the
| candidate struggled.
|
| The reasoning was that with easy problems, a lot of candidates
| could just write the solution on the whiteboard. You don't learn
| much about a candidate that way. But if you give them a problem
| they have to think about, and ask them to think out loud, you
| learn what problem-solving techniques they have at their
| disposal. Do they break down the input set into different cases,
| do they solve an easier version of the problem first, etc. If
| their code has a bug, can they pick an input that triggers the
| bug and walk through it step by step. We did hear "in real life I
| would probably need to get help with this" sometimes, and we
| counted that as a positive: the candidates shows self-awareness
| and resourcefulness.
|
| And most importantly, do they turn into an asshole when they
| don't know the answer? We saw this surprisingly often. Some
| people got angry and directed it towards us. Some people tried to
| bluff us into thinking that their solution was correct. Nobody
| ever walked out on us, but I've heard of that happening.
|
| All we wanted was to screen out people who turn into assholes
| when they don't have all the answers, and to give bonus points to
| people who had strategies for attacking a problem that was too
| hard to solve in their head in two minutes. Sheer cleverness was
| not high up on our requirements list (we needed a certain number
| of people who were clever at algorithms and such, but we didn't
| need everybody to be like that) so candidates that got stuck on a
| weaker version of the problem but attacked it with grace and
| resourcefulness often came out as more desirable than candidates
| that got to a harder version but responded badly when they
| struggled.
|
| I wish we could still interview people like that.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Why can't you?
| goatcode wrote:
| What a great way of vetting people who won't complain while
| working for a shitty company.
| victor106 wrote:
| Simon Sinek explains this well here
|
| https://youtu.be/kJdXjtSnZTI
| draw_down wrote:
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