The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Centricity:
Aside from the part where the receptionist gave him his own evaluation form, it might well have been a test. Yeah, "Leave him in a room for an hour and see how he acts" is something from a bad movie, but it can be useful to see if a candidate reacts when unsupervised. Does he/she take the initiative and go find someone, fall asleep, start texting friends on a cell phone? If they'll do it during an interview, they'll do it during work.
They blew it when they gave him the eval form, though.

Actually, given your theory, giving him an evaluation form was an excellent test. Integrity is essential for a bank (well... an honest bank, that is, if such a thing still exists). It might have been a test of morality to see what he would do with a sensitive document that he was not supposed to have.

VRAndy · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Five minutes to quitting time and there's no indication that the person you're there to meet even knows you're there?

I'd start asking questions too. I'd rather ask after the interviewer five minutes before she goes home than five minutes after she goes home.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

My wife's boss is priceless. You have a new product on the market - they can download a trial, register on their website and then pay for the premium version. Now, which is more important: the fact that 0 people are paying for the premium version or the fact that 50% of users who download the trial don't register. That's right, it's the users that don't register.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

ObiWayneKenobi:
I would wager that the "CEO" in the Infantile Expectancies story was probably some college kid who thought he had a brilliant (or brillant, as it were) idea and figured that he could hoodwink someone into working for free, and then take all the profits.
Notice the language he uses in his correspondence: a lot of big, impressive sounding words, and often using two or three words where one would suffice. Real businesspeople don't talk like that, it's the crooks and idiots who do as a cover for the fact they don't know shit.

I don't know about you, but ALL the businesspeople I know speak like this. Most of the ones I know like to use made up words too.

There's a reason for this though: I know someone going for their MBA and they actually teach them to speak this way in classes.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Seriously, you think that leaving someone waiting in a room and judging them by what they do while waiting is a fair test of anything? Never mind the creepiness of your instincts and the illegality of your hidden cameras, that's just stupid. What are they going to do, be productive and solve some of your company's problems while sitting in a closed room with their resume in hand? Have you just read about the working world online, or have you ever been in it?

WhiskeyJack · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Adriano:
Otherwise, 10 minutes are still barely in my margin of politeness.

Uh, did you guys all forget that the guy showed up at 4:30 for a 4:45 interview? By 4:55pm, he'd been waiting far longer than 10 minutes.

rlauriston · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

"What is it about CEO's that makes them so stupid?" Programmers tend to be grounded in reality; surprisingly enough, that's not a universally desired position. How attitude trumps reality is described in the book "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America". Not just in the US, I'd bet. There is a grain of truth in every lie: in marketing, perception can be reality.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

As a supergenius ability level of programmer, I would have produced a software vehicle that redirects to Google Translate.

Not in 3 minutes, of course. First you ask how soon he needs it. Then you promise to deliver it in half that time, but he must pay you 50% cash and 50% equity.

Double your hourly rate so you break even. Spend 5 weeks generating large piles of paper, typing incessantly, basically anything that looks busy. Collect your pay and go home. Make sure your name's not on the code for when Google comes after him for scraping their service.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

CiH:
Coding Java is difficult, WHEN YOU'RE LIVING IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!

You, sir, win today's internet for that one.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Ok, you have text on your screen. You want to get that text from your screen onto a piece of paper.

You hit the print-screen key of course! Why would anyone ever bother coding to a print API?

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

HR decides to replace Bob by placing an ad listing all of the things that Bob did.

Which, no doubt, is the first time anyone at the company bothered to understand even half of what I was doing for them!

Sure, I'll come back. My terms are: time-and-a-half, 20 hours a week, office with windows. But no Windows(TM).

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Adriano:
sd:
st0815:
So you were supposed to be interviewed at 4:45 and at 4:55 you decided the job wasn't worth waiting for any more? The job market must be brilliant in the UK ...

Gotta agree with this. It probably took you longer to get ready and get there than you waited.

It does sound like that. Unless the receptionist (who was leaving, remember) meant that the interviewer had already left too. Perhaps that's what the interviewee meant by the words 'oh dear, she forgot about you'.

Otherwise, 10 minutes are still barely in my margin of politeness.

If it was somewhere like, say, a factory or busy office, then I might be willing to wait longer, but this was at a bank, of all places. Banks are known as places for maticulous efficiency (at least with non-tech related matters) and for being competitive with government institutions as sticklers of time and rules (usually for better, sometimes for worse). Not to mention that an interview is a somewhat important first impression on BOTH sides of the table. Being 10 minutes late to start an interview does not usually bolster confidence in the perspective job on offer.

YourNameHere · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

silent d:
The "someone like Kevin" story makes me think of what I call the Good Ole Bob syndrome in help wanted ads. I think everyone will recognize the kind of ads I'm talking about. Good Ole Bob worked for the company for 10, 15, 20 years or more. Good Ole Bob had extensive knowledge of the company's systems, business processes, and data. Now Good Ole Bob has retired or otherwise left the company. HR decides to replace Bob by placing an ad listing all of the things that Bob did. The problem is, its not likely they will find one person that can fill that role. At least, not the way that Good Ole Bob did it.

Yes, a company which makes huge printing presses advertised for a year or more for an expert with both VB5/VB6 AND Windows C++ device driver experience. This is in a relatively small New England town. I don't think they have filled that position yet.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Philipp:
I love the Infantile Expectancies story. I think the correct behavior in such a case would be to poll the guy at least once a week until either of you die if he has already become rich with his brilliant company.

Just forward him any Nigerian scamspam you get. Bet he'll fall for every one of them!

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Centricity:
...it might well have been a test. Yeah, "Leave him in a room for an hour and see how he acts" is something from a bad movie, but it can be useful to see if a candidate reacts when unsupervised. Does he/she take the initiative and go find someone, fall asleep, start texting friends on a cell phone? If they'll do it during an interview, they'll do it during work...

So, I shouldn't start making sketches of the vault area, and checking the ceiling tiles to see if they're loose?

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Stephen:
What is it about CEO's that makes them so stupid?
The last start up I worked for, the CEO had this mentality that he shouldn't have to pay me. So, he in fact stopped paying me... I stayed around and didn't get paid for 6 months.

If you stayed more than two hours after the first paycheck went missing, I'm thinking it wasn't the CEO who was "so stupid"...

Rick · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

darkmage0707077:
... Banks are known as places for maticulous efficiency. ...

Huh!!! Really? Was this a troll? You could NOT POSSIBLY believe this. Have you read a paper in the last 2 years?

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

True story: a guy wanted me to build a website to make him rich. The specs: "Just like ebay, but for cars." He figured I'd do it in a couple evenings of my spare time as a favor (in other words, free) because he was a friend of my cousin.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Rick:
darkmage0707077:
... Banks are known as places for maticulous efficiency. ...

Huh!!! Really? Was this a troll? You could NOT POSSIBLY believe this. Have you read a paper in the last 2 years?

maticulous: Skilled in ripping off the taxpayers by becoming "too big to fail".

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Fred:
True story: a guy wanted me to build a website to make him rich. The specs: "Just like ebay, but for cars." He figured I'd do it in a couple evenings of my spare time as a favor (in other words, free) because he was a friend of my cousin.

Those are by far my favorite requests from people. At this point in my life I just stare at them like they're from another planet. Then I ask them if they'd be willing to return the favor with something that they're experts at (whatever their day job is). Usually they think I'm retarded for asking them to work for free. At that point my faith in humanity seems to go further in the red than before.

Have some fun with these people. C'mon. We're all intelligent techs. Take a direct quote of the person's total requirements EX: "Make me a game like Halo, but cooler", then blog it. Ping them every few months and ask how that get rich quick scheme is coming along. Then remember over the course of their lifetime what a$$holes they are, and let everyone who knows them know it. Makes for great dinner party fodder.

frits · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Matt:
Fred:
True story: a guy wanted me to build a website to make him rich. The specs: "Just like ebay, but for cars." He figured I'd do it in a couple evenings of my spare time as a favor (in other words, free) because he was a friend of my cousin.

Those are by far my favorite requests from people. At this point in my life I just stare at them like they're from another planet. Then I ask them if they'd be willing to return the favor with something that they're experts at (whatever their day job is). Usually they think I'm retarded for asking them to work for free. At that point my faith in humanity seems to go further in the red than before.

Have some fun with these people. C'mon. We're all intelligent techs. Take a direct quote of the person's total requirements EX: "Make me a game like Halo, but cooler", then blog it. Ping them every few months and ask how that get rich quick scheme is coming along. Then remember over the course of their lifetime what a$$holes they are, and let everyone who knows them know it. Makes for great dinner party fodder.

AKA: How to win friends and influence people.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

I don't think I'd want to work for anyone who thinks the problem with automated translation is lack of programming skill.

Translation is an AI-complete problem. You can't throw code at it and make it work.

Now, you might be able to throw more time at it and make it better, but that time would have to be the time of professional linguists and semantictician. (Or whatever that word is.) Explaining every double meaning, every colloquialism, how to naturally phrase everything, etc. You'd need programmers to turn that into code, but not 'genius programmers'.

Likewise, it's possible that some 'logical' breakthrough could help there, in how sentences get treated internally, but, again, that's not really a 'programming' issue, that's a 'computer science breakthrough in the field of language processing' issue.

It's amazing how many 'business men' seem to have done exactly no research at all for the product they wish to supply, especially WRT to computers. It's like their business plan is: 'I will build a machine that turns lead into gold, and lease the use of that to others.'

I once had a boss ask how hard it would be to write our own antivirus, and I had to point out that antiviruses are actually fairly easy...the hard part is keeping the damn thing up to date, which apparently hadn't occurred to him.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

DavidTC:
It's like their business plan is: 'I will build a machine that turns lead into gold, and lease the use of that to others.'

Not quite. It's more like: I will hire a guy smart enough to make a machine that turns air into gold, but who hasn't made one for himself yet, then I'll pay him nothing, collect those lease payments, and trust that no one else will copy me.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

ben:
Seriously, you think that leaving someone waiting in a room and judging them by what they do while waiting is a fair test of anything? Never mind the creepiness of your instincts and the illegality of your hidden cameras, that's just stupid. What are they going to do, be productive and solve some of your company's problems while sitting in a closed room with their resume in hand? Have you just read about the working world online, or have you ever been in it?

I'm sorry, IANAL, but since when has it been illegal to put cameras in your own place of business, hidden or otherwise. I'm pretty sure there is no law against it, otherwise businesses would have all their cameras painted bright orange to ensure they don't get accused of hiding it.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Paul O'Ticks:
Not quite. It's more like: I will hire a guy smart enough to make a machine that turns air into gold, but who hasn't made one for himself yet, then I'll pay him nothing, collect those lease payments, and trust that no one else will copy me.

And, I won't bother learning anything about how the machine works, or paying the upkeep, which is why I'll be so surprised when it goes into reverse and turns me into air!

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Anon:
ben:
Seriously, you think that leaving someone waiting in a room and judging them by what they do while waiting is a fair test of anything? Never mind the creepiness of your instincts and the illegality of your hidden cameras, that's just stupid. What are they going to do, be productive and solve some of your company's problems while sitting in a closed room with their resume in hand? Have you just read about the working world online, or have you ever been in it?

I'm sorry, IANAL, but since when has it been illegal to put cameras in your own place of business, hidden or otherwise. I'm pretty sure there is no law against it, otherwise businesses would have all their cameras painted bright orange to ensure they don't get accused of hiding it.

Oh, and another thing, nobody mentioned cameras hidden or otherwise. You brought that idea up.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Ugh, that 'Infantile' story was painful, because people like that megalomaniac business owner are far too common. In fact, I have some friends who work for someone just like that.

These jerks are all alike. They have grandiose ideas and thinks no one else has thought of them first; they can't take criticism and insult anyone who tries; they can talk big to woo investors and keep their sorry little empires afloat; they promise the impossible to their clients and expect their employees to deliver (and berate them when they fail).

Roger is probably glad that this fool so obviously fit the pattern.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

silent d:
The "someone like Kevin" story makes me think of what I call the Good Ole Bob syndrome in help wanted ads. I think everyone will recognize the kind of ads I'm talking about. Good Ole Bob worked for the company for 10, 15, 20 years or more. Good Ole Bob had extensive knowledge of the company's systems, business processes, and data. Now Good Ole Bob has retired or otherwise left the company. HR decides to replace Bob by placing an ad listing all of the things that Bob did. The problem is, its not likely they will find one person that can fill that role. At least, not the way that Good Ole Bob did it.

Yeah, I'm Good Old Mike, and my very last assignment at my last employer was to replace myself on the way out the door. I finally settled on 3 new employees and let my old understudy weed them out.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

DavidTC:
I don't think I'd want to work for anyone who thinks the problem with automated translation is lack of _programming skill_.
Translation is an AI-complete problem. You can't throw code at it and make it work.

Now, you might be able to throw more time at it and make it better, but that time would have to be the time of professional linguists and semantictician. (Or whatever that word is.) Explaining every double meaning, every colloquialism, how to naturally phrase everything, etc. You'd need programmers to turn that into code, but not 'genius programmers'.

Likewise, it's possible that some 'logical' breakthrough could help there, in how sentences get treated internally, but, again, that's not really a 'programming' issue, that's a 'computer science breakthrough in the field of language processing' issue.

It's amazing how many 'business men' seem to have done exactly no research at all for the product they wish to supply, especially WRT to computers. It's like their business plan is: 'I will build a machine that turns lead into gold, and lease the use of that to others.'

I once had a boss ask how hard it would be to write our own antivirus, and I had to point out that antiviruses are actually fairly easy...the hard part is keeping the damn thing up to date, which apparently hadn't occurred to him.

I agree, the problem really in the second story is that Marketing is again assuming that Software Production works like any other kind of production and feels the need to tell us what to do because "That's what will sell.". Like the dark and the light Marketing vs. IT will forever be at a constant struggle, and if a company ever finds a way to let the two balance out that company will make millions.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Isn't the "someone like Kevin" a Douglas Adams reference ?

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

FeepingCreature:
Admins; kindly remove the double comment - for some reason, submitting a comment seems to take me back to the comments form, so I'd assumed I'd hit the wrong button. (Konqueror/3.5.9)
What is up with that anyway?

If i had to guess...

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Procedural:
Isn't the "someone like Kevin" a Douglas Adams reference ?

"Anyway, this neutrino hit something. Nothing terribly important in the scale of things, you might say. But the problem with saying something like that is that you would be talking cross-eyed badger spit. Once something actually happens somewhere in something as wildly complicated as the Universe, Kevin knows where it will all end up — where "Kevin" is any random entity that doesn't know nothin' about nothin'."

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Stephen:
What is it about CEO's that makes them so stupid?

What is it about CEO's what? Semantic Differentials?

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

darkmage0707077:
Adriano:
sd:
st0815:
So you were supposed to be interviewed at 4:45 and at 4:55 you decided the job wasn't worth waiting for any more? The job market must be brilliant in the UK ...

Gotta agree with this. It probably took you longer to get ready and get there than you waited.

It does sound like that. Unless the receptionist (who was leaving, remember) meant that the interviewer had already left too. Perhaps that's what the interviewee meant by the words 'oh dear, she forgot about you'.

Otherwise, 10 minutes are still barely in my margin of politeness.

If it was somewhere like, say, a factory or busy office, then I might be willing to wait longer, but this was at a bank, of all places. Banks are known as places for maticulous efficiency (at least with non-tech related matters) and for being competitive with government institutions as sticklers of time and rules (usually for better, sometimes for worse). Not to mention that an interview is a somewhat important first impression on BOTH sides of the table. Being 10 minutes late to start an interview does not usually bolster confidence in the perspective job on offer.

Meticulous. For (or about, or on, but definitely not of) time and rules. Confidence in a person, or person-based conglomerate, not a thing.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Fred:
True story: a guy wanted me to build a website to make him rich. The specs: "Just like ebay, but for cars." He figured I'd do it in a couple evenings of my spare time as a favor (in other words, free) because he was a friend of my cousin.

My first though: "Why would I do all that and just give it to you?"

Rootbeer · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

DavidTC:
Translation is an AI-complete problem. You can't throw code at it and make it work.

Based on my experiences with a professional translations & software localization firm, you can't solve the problem just by throwing human beings at it, either.

When a client with two semesters of collegiate German a decade ago is finding grammatical errors in your delivered translation work, you might need to reconsider your process.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Rootbeer:
DavidTC:
Translation is an AI-complete problem. You can't throw code at it and make it work.

Based on my experiences with a professional translations & software localization firm, you can't solve the problem just by throwing human beings at it, either.

When a client with two semesters of collegiate German a decade ago is finding grammatical errors in your delivered translation work, you might need to reconsider your process.

At least you didn't translate '7 days' into an idiom for judgement day or anything...

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

It's probably not really worth waiting around for the interview at 16:55 if the company closes at 17:00, is it?

Zylon · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

lolwtf:
Zylon:
If I'd been forced to wait ive minutes, I probably would have walked out too!
Math fail.

Spelling comprehension fail, smart guy.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

More to the point, Kevin is in a low level role and wants to move up in the world. His boss agrees, but HR has to create a position for Kevin to move into. Because it is a new position, HR has to advertise it, but they have no idea what the position entails. So they ask Kevin's boss to write the position description. Kevin's boss is usually too busy for HR stuff, so gives it to Kevin to write (after all, Kevin is the one who wants to move on up). You end up with a position tailored to Kevin (although not usually to this extent).

I know, I have been on both sides of the Kevin advert (as the Kevin writing the JD, and as the hapless interviewee responding to a ad for a position that you are never going to fill - because you aren't Kevin).

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Centricity:
If they'll do it during an interview, they'll do it during work.

I'd disagree - if I'm in the waiting room, I'm on my own time. That would be like saying that since you eat on your own time, you'll eat during work.

They blew it when they gave him the eval form, though.

Definitely agree on this one - although I'd have been far more... interesting in my replies. And kept a copy.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Actually, this may also work the other way round. Say, you have a job opening and you know someone who is a perfect fit for the job. This might, for example, be an intern you want to take over. Under certain circumstances, it is still required to publish a job offering. Now, what you do is you fit the job description to perfectly fit your candidate, allowing you to turn down all other potential candidates for "not being a perfect fit".

Still, I wouldn't have been so upfront as saying "someone like Kevin" in that situation :)

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

ben:
Seriously, you think that leaving someone waiting in a room and judging them by what they do while waiting is a fair test of anything? Never mind the creepiness of your instincts and the illegality of your hidden cameras, that's just stupid. What are they going to do, be productive and solve some of your company's problems while sitting in a closed room with their resume in hand? Have you just read about the working world online, or have you ever been in it?

That's the charm of Tales from the Interview - all these weird suggestions on how to interview with bizarre tests.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

moo:
"Sufficed to say" -- what? Those words (is that even a word?) don't make any sense. I think you meant "suffice it to say", which, believe it or not, isn't just a series of sounds you can make with your mouth, but an actual set of words with meaning! Specifically, it means "it should be enough to say...", implying that you're understating your point. Suffice it to say, you should know that.

Suffice to say, I should of recognized that.

(I wonder how many people will realize what the second mistake is in that sentence.)

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

The Real WTF (tm) is walking out of an interview based on an incompetent receptionist.

dpm · 2010-02-09 Reply Admin

DavidTC:
I once had a boss ask how hard it would be to write our own antivirus, and I had to point out that antiviruses are actually fairly easy...the hard part is keeping the damn thing up to date, which apparently hadn't occurred to him.

Your boss *asked* first? Score!

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Printing in Java is actually quite easy - you make something implement Printable, and then you draw to the Graphics object in the print() method you must make. Then you create a PrinterJob from withing java.awt.print.

In most cases, you're printing exactly or close to exactly what's on the screen, so your print() method will just call the paint() method.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Can i apply for that job? Oh wait... I have more than 5 years of experiance...

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

I'm kinda surprised by all the attempts to explain the "someone like Kevin" requirement. It's quite obvious to me that HR asked the hiring manager what the requirements were and they listed off some requirements and then said something like "you know, like Kevin". The HR drone being as thick as too short planks just went right ahead and added that verbatim to the job description. If anything the 3-5 years experience is TRWTF. So you don't want anybody with 5+ years experience? Although again, the motivation here is that they want somebody with some experience, but they won't/can't pay for a lot of experience.

2010-02-09 Reply Admin

Fred:
True story: a guy wanted me to build a website to make him rich. The specs: "Just like ebay, but for cars." He figured I'd do it in a couple evenings of my spare time as a favor (in other words, free) because he was a friend of my cousin.

Another, equally dumb, true story: a guy (boyfriend of a friend of my now ex-girlfriend) wanted me to build him a website where, get this, there would be "web banners" that people would "click on" and this would generate him "income". This guy didn't seem to understand the whole users-come-to-websites-for-the-sake-of-content concept.

No amount of explanation would get him to understand that search engines wouldn't magically bring users to his site full of ads. Finally the (blessedly brief) discussion ended with him accusing me of trying to steal his idea: "I'm going to patent this!" Good luck with that, man.

The Missing Interview, Infantile Expectancies, & More

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