[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: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-04 23:00 UTC)