The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
If someone asked me such a stupidly meaningless question during an interview, I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. I know that your interviews are even more ritualized than ours, but seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?

What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no? Apparently you think you're too good to answer silly interview questions and think everybody else is stupid for asking them in an interview of all places! In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done. You may be the most motivated person in the world, but how is anybody else supposed to know that?

You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SomeCoder:
Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
If someone asked me such a stupidly meaningless question during an interview, I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. I know that your interviews are even more ritualized than ours, but seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?

What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no? Apparently you think you're too good to answer silly interview questions and think everybody else is stupid for asking them in an interview of all places! In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done. You may be the most motivated person in the world, but how is anybody else supposed to know that?

You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

I find it helps to weed out the morons...

shadowman · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

fred:
WTF! Once you have made up your mind, be courteous enough not to waste the candidate’s time. I would have hired the second guy right on the spot. Why recreate the wheel. It is all about reuse. Object oriented principles of rues, Patterns, SOA, BPM. Obviously this guy will not waste my time or money. There is a story, true or not, we could learn from. Thomas Edison was interviewing people for an electrical engineering positions. The candidates where given a light bulb and asked to calculated the volume inside the bulb. One candidate walked onto the shop floor, asked around, got the answer and then got hired on the spot.

OK, except that's obviously a bullshit story. The "salted food test" interview story also often gets attributed to Edison. Smart people make informed decisions about job candidates; they don't hire people based on their reactions to some crazy hidden test.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/salted.asp

halcyon1234 · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

I always bring extra copies of my resume, just in case the interviewer lost it, or there's extra interviewers. Or, as others posters mentioned, as a sign of preparedness.

It's always appreciated, except for one interview. The interviewer's first question was about my resume. I brought out my folder so I could refer to the resume. I noticed the interviewer didn't have a copy, so I offered a copy to him.

I got a nasty look, and was told in quite the tone that "/we're/ a Green company". Yes, you could hear the capital G.

I never heard back from them. Good thing, because if they'd checked the parking lot and seen my 1989 Buick student-mobile parked out there... =)

cconroy · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Chris Hayes:
Perhaps the interview ended because of how he broached the topic. "Are these offices temporary?" is a much more diplomatic way to broach a topic like this than "When are you moving?"

Isn't that a bit like asking a woman with a large stomach "Are you pregnant?" instead of "When are you due?"

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

@Deprecated:
SomeCoder:
Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
If someone asked me such a stupidly meaningless question during an interview, I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. I know that your interviews are even more ritualized than ours, but seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?

What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no? Apparently you think you're too good to answer silly interview questions and think everybody else is stupid for asking them in an interview of all places! In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done. You may be the most motivated person in the world, but how is anybody else supposed to know that?

You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

I find it helps to weed out the morons...

If by "morons" you meant "brain damaged people who shouldn't have gotten past the phone screening in the first place" then yes, I would agree with you :)

halcyon1234 · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

shadowman:
OK, except that's obviously a bullshit story. The "salted food test" interview story also often gets attributed to Edison. Smart people make informed decisions about job candidates; they don't hire people based on their reactions to some crazy hidden test.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/salted.asp

Not to mention that employing bizarre hiring practices can doom you!

http://cowbirdsinlove.com/205

rfsmit · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Forumtroll:
During one of my interviews, I was asked if I had brought my resumé with me. After replying to the interviewer that he had it right in front of him, he just said "Uh, how silly of me!" and just said that they had all they needed.
Needless to say, my instructions per email announcing the interview stated I needed not to bring any documents since they had all to begin with. It was written by the very same interviewer.

Said company went tits up two years later.

My goodness. With an attitude like that, it'd be a wonder that you've ever worked.

Of course you bring your ray-soo-may with you. You bring a list of questions and requirements. You bring a list of references. You do everything possible to make it easier to hire you.

And that said, you do not bring a different version of your resume from the one you provided: be consistent. You also don't embarrass your interviewer in front of others in a formal situation.

Never forget that an interview is a two-way appraisal of whether it would be mutually beneficial for you to be employed at a company.

So from the other side: don't pretend you don't have the candidate's resume. Don't expect them to know site-specific things or company culture. When following the maxim "first impressions count", don't forget that the whole interview counts for the "first impressions".

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SomeCoder:
@Deprecated:
SomeCoder:
Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
If someone asked me such a stupidly meaningless question during an interview, I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. I know that your interviews are even more ritualized than ours, but seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?

What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no? Apparently you think you're too good to answer silly interview questions and think everybody else is stupid for asking them in an interview of all places! In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done. You may be the most motivated person in the world, but how is anybody else supposed to know that?

You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

I find it helps to weed out the morons...

If by "morons" you meant "brain damaged people who shouldn't have gotten past the phone screening in the first place" then yes, I would agree with you :)

I have interviewed a number of people, for various things... but it's always, "There's a guy coming in 30 minutes from now. Here's his resume". I don't even know if any of them were phone screened!

Seriously though, that question "Are you motivated" is just fluff. It's really saying, "Tell me something about yourself. Whatever you like!" Successful politicians answer this stuff very well: "I know you asked about that, but I am going to tell you about this other thing instead, which has nothing to do with your question."

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Anon:
Every question in an interview is a opportunity to sell yourself. That you think the question about motivation has a canonical answer suggests that you are not very good at it.

So you end up with a staff of salesmen? How is that going to help the company?

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Marvin the Martian:
Anon:
Every question in an interview is a opportunity to sell yourself. That you think the question about motivation has a canonical answer suggests that you are not very good at it.
So you end up with a staff of salesmen? How is that going to help the company?

Show me a successful company without salesmen.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

@Deprecated:
Seriously though, that question "Are you motivated" is just fluff. It's really saying, "Tell me something about yourself. Whatever you like!"

Exactly! It's about getting to know somebody who you might end up spending 8 hours/day 5 days/week locked in a room with. Which going back to my first comment, if you demonstrate that you're an asshole in answering that question, then I don't want to be locked in a room with you for any length of time.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SomeCoder:
You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

Not just morons, also assholes. Nobody is claiming this is the single most important question of the whole interview and nobody will be hired purely on the strength of how they handle this questions, but every question might be a reason for not hiring somebody. Rolling your eyes and acting like any question is beneath you is a sure-fire way not to get called back.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

#1, I'd almost bet that the last answer was quoted verbatim in that discussion in the car...

#2, I wouldn't try it, but if the guy had cited sources (and done better on the quoted answer), I wonder how he would have feared. Consider that the ability to find and recognize good answers is almost as (or even more) valuable than just knowing them off hand.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

"Would you describe yourself as a motivated person?"

Oh, yes sir. Absolutely. I mean I learned my lesson. No longer a danger to productivity here. 100% motivated.

"How would you create a social networking site?"

Easy--gosh I just did that last weekend for fun, when I decided to duplicate Facebook and MySpace with their ARMY of software developers, managers, marketing department, accountants, HR, IT, etc.

What do you mean I didn't get the job?

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

After they ask you to clarify why you said no, tell them :

"Well, often during interviews I have to be prompted, even asked questions before I volunteer an answer. I'm trying to work on that"

And then interrupt the next thing they say

"The Battle of Hastings!"

"Was that what you wanted? Yeah, I'm trying to work on that"

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

chadsexington:
After they ask you to clarify why you said no, tell them :
"Well, often during interviews I have to be prompted, even asked questions before I volunteer an answer. I'm trying to work on that"

And then interrupt the next thing they say

"The Battle of Hastings!"

"Was that what you wanted? Yeah, I'm trying to work on that"

I don't know why but I laughed my arse off at this one. I had visions of Graham Chapman sitting at the conference table during the interview.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Unless the office are actually nice but you really don't understand design.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SomeCoder:
You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

If you assume that people will just make up stories during the interview, then, yes, you don't gain anything from this question (and a lot of other questions too, such as "what projects did you work on at your last company"). Fortunately, many people will avoid blatantly lying, and if someone does lie, in many cases it's easy to see they are lying.

I find a version of this question ("what motivates you most") useful to understand the applicant's goals and seeing whether he'd be a good fit here or would he instead leave after a few months because he doesn't really care about what the company does.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Ben:
[…] And instead of a "meeting" it's a "meet and greet."
And this isn't from those darn kids, but the corporate and government types. Maybe they think tacking on more words will make something sound more impressive?

“Meet and greet” – clearly not a Scottish thing. At least, not in the same context…

rfsmit · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

shadowman:
fred:
WTF! Once you have made up your mind, be courteous enough not to waste the candidate’s time. I would have hired the second guy right on the spot. Why recreate the wheel. It is all about reuse. Object oriented principles of rues, Patterns, SOA, BPM. Obviously this guy will not waste my time or money. There is a story, true or not, we could learn from. Thomas Edison was interviewing people for an electrical engineering positions. The candidates where given a light bulb and asked to calculated the volume inside the bulb. One candidate walked onto the shop floor, asked around, got the answer and then got hired on the spot.

OK, except that's obviously a bullshit story. The "salted food test" interview story also often gets attributed to Edison. Smart people make informed decisions about job candidates; they don't hire people based on their reactions to some crazy hidden test.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/salted.asp

Claim: Snopes is a reliable source of data. Status: False It's amazing how Snopes fails -- and it's spectacular because it's so well known -- to mention the fact of autocondimenting (google it) or any other reasonable scenarios where someone might season food before tasting it. To get you started: the seasoner might have been a regular at the restaurant in question.

I can't think of a single person back in England who would buy fish and chips and taste them before adding salt and vinegar, and often ketchup as well. I've also not met a white person who doesn't drown their sushi in soy sauce and wasabi.

The story is just a wind-up based on the fact that people often don't think about how they season their food.

Why Snopes is so wrong on this? Because the writer details a host of fanciful attributions, and then denies the credibility of the story without sufficiently exploring the history of it. Just because something is falsely attributed to lots of notable people doesn't mean another notable person didn't say it once over in earnest. They haven't done their homework here.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

I am also environmentally conscious. I use only 100% recycled electrons to write my posts!

rfsmit · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Quirkafleeg:
Ben:
[…] And instead of a "meeting" it's a "meet and greet."
And this isn't from those darn kids, but the corporate and government types. Maybe they think tacking on more words will make something sound more impressive?
“Meet and greet” – clearly not a Scottish thing. At least, not in the same context…

Oy. We have words of Norse origin in Yorkshire dialect too. (Can I call it "The Yorkshire Language"? No, for the same reason "Scots" isn't a distinct language.)

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Most even decide to wash their coffee pots only once a year.

Well, duh, that's to be expected. Washing them ruins the patina, and the coffee just doesn't taste right from a clean pot.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Most even decide to wash their coffee pots only once a year.

Well, duh, that's to be expected. Washing them ruins the patina, and the coffee just doesn't taste right from a clean pot.

rfsmit · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Ramses So let it be written so let it be done:
chadsexington:
After they ask you to clarify why you said no, tell them :
"Well, often during interviews I have to be prompted, even asked questions before I volunteer an answer. I'm trying to work on that"

And then interrupt the next thing they say

"The Battle of Hastings!"

"Was that what you wanted? Yeah, I'm trying to work on that"

I don't know why but I laughed my arse off at this one. I had visions of Graham Chapman sitting at the conference table during the interview.

I've just been reading about a Lotus patent, so I thought you were talking about Colin Chapman, and wondered why.

Hm. Did you have a point, or were you just dredging up "British humor" from almost half a century ago? I'm all for recycling, but ... well, hey, this is just like that episode of Steptoe and Son. Y'know? Where they had the argument and all that?

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
[…] I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. […] seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?
What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no?

Or that it's been understood (and quite reasonably so) as a yes/no(/maybe) question and, as such, is responded to accordingly.

[…] In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done.

Then the question's wrong: it's asking whether you would do something, rather than whether you would (or not) and why.

rfsmit · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Quirkafleeg:
Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
[…] I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. […] seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?
What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no?
Or that it's been understood (and quite reasonably so) as a yes/no(/maybe) question and, as such, is responded to accordingly.
[…] In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done.
Then the question's wrong: it's asking whether you would do something, rather than whether you would (or not) and why.

Q: Would you describe yourself as a curmudgeon and why?

A: That's not fair! I wanted to say "no"!

Q: Ah! So you were lying!

A: No!

Q: There you go again!

(for the fans of forty-year-old British houmour.)

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Quirkafleeg:
Then the question's wrong: it's asking whether you would do something, rather than whether you would (or not) and why.

It might be just a first question in a series, e.g. "are you motivated" -- "yes" -- "could you please elaborate"/"could you please give an example".

Zylon · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

rfsmit:
Hm. Did you have a point, or were you just dredging up "British humor" from almost half a century ago?

For any REAL geek, Monty Python is and shall always be timeless.

So... y'know... get out, poseur.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Anon:
Every question in an interview is a opportunity to sell yourself. That you think the question about motivation has a canonical answer suggests that you are not very good at it.

Yeah, maybe. That said, I like the other suggestion "what motivates you most?" much better.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

rfsmit:
I've also not met a white person who doesn't drown their sushi in soy sauce and wasabi.

Pleased to meet you. Wasabi is disgusting, and soy sauce isn't much better.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SomeCoder:
You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

Exactly. And it annoys me having to make up some bullshit answer to a question like that simply because if I don't, I look like a moron that's too stupid to make up a bullshit answer.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Chris:
SomeCoder:
You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).
Exactly. And it annoys me having to make up some bullshit answer to a question like that simply because if I don't, I look like a moron that's too stupid to make up a bullshit answer.

A lot of interview questions are just about making sure that the candidate has communication skills. Pretty much every job requires the ability to communicate effective, and sadly, a lot of people can't do that. If you can't talk about yourself for 3 min in an interview, you're probably hopeless on a team or in front of a client/customer.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

gil:
SomeCoder:
You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).
If you assume that people will just make up stories during the interview, then, yes, you don't gain anything from this question (and a lot of other questions too, such as "what projects did you work on at your last company"). Fortunately, many people will avoid blatantly lying, and if someone does lie, in many cases it's easy to see they are lying.
I find a version of this question ("what motivates you most") useful to understand the applicant's goals and seeing whether he'd be a good fit here or would he instead leave after a few months because he doesn't really care about what the company does.

I assume that because it's generally a valid assumption to make.

I can't tell you the number of times I've had someone come in with a resume that says that they know Perl/C#/C++/Language X and when I ask them a simple question about said technology, they can't answer it and usually it comes out that they really don't know anything about it but since they've heard of it, they put it on their resume.

In these cases, because they are so blatantly lying about knowing some technology, I have no reason to believe they wouldn't lie about any other question I put to them as well.

dkf · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Ramses So let it be written so let it be done:
You took pleasure in failing the student? Aren't you supposed to be teaching the student?

We'd tried that for the length of the course. This guy somehow managed to be impervious to actual learning. Wasn't too good a bullshitting his way through either.

Ramses So let it be written so let it be done:
By the student failing doesn't that mean you failed as a teacher?

A valid criticism, except the other students on the course all passed. There was even a normal distribution of scores. This guy was just a low outlier. And a cheating idiot who wasted his money.

Ramses So let it be written so let it be done:
Just being sarcast here. Just amazing how lazy kids today can be as they want to take every shortcut possible instead of using their own minds to come up with the answers.
My interviewing experiences have taught me to run when the place/people are unorganized and a dump.

True, but this particular individual was the limit. He plagiarized my own work. He plagiarized the key papers in the field. He didn't credit any of them. He didn't understand any of them. He didn't even change the formatting to be consistent from paragraph to paragraph. That would be a big fat fail in itself, but he also included his own code in the paper, which confirmed that he didn't know what he was writing about in the slightest and couldn't even write pseudocode without syntax errors! (Or maybe it was C++. Who knows? It was clearly not coherent enough to be compiled by any computer ever. It was also not a solution to any question asked by me.)

For some people, the only thing to do is fail them and recommend that they do not get the opportunity to resit. (Usually our university administration is better at filtering out the wholly unqualified before letting them anywhere near lecturers. This one slipped through.) With a clearly stupid cheat, well, it's both duty and pleasure to boot them out; anything else is unfair to the other students who are both honest and hard-working. It's a postgraduate course and university rules let us kick out cheats with no refunds.

As an aside, it's a fun course to teach is that one. We do pair programming to develop advanced network applications (multiple coupled servers) very quickly, and getting your hands dirty is the only way to really appreciate why things are done they way they are. It has a reputation as the toughest course in that whole syllabus... I believe in giving people a nice tough challenge and seeing what they can really do. Bright students love it, and we skim the top of the practical class as interns. It's a good way to find people who are able (and psychologically inclined) to cope with our real work. (And the crap student's pair partner managed to produce good work on their own, and gained a good grade.)

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SomeCoder:
I can't tell you the number of times I've had someone come in with a resume that says that they know Perl/C#/C++/Language X and when I ask them a simple question about said technology, they can't answer it and usually it comes out that they really don't know anything about it but since they've heard of it, they put it on their resume.
In these cases, because they are so blatantly lying about knowing some technology, I have no reason to believe they wouldn't lie about any other question I put to them as well.

In this case, sure. I guess I had in mind a candidate who is generally OK in other areas (answered technical questions, had good references) and now we are just trying to decide whether it's mutually beneficial to work together. So, I guess not the situation in the OP.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

[quote user="Fred"][quote user="mvi"]Are there any wrong questions Would you sign this paper promising never to sue your employer? [/quote]

Unless you're a federal government contractor, but I guess they don't really ask you to sign, you just sign it.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SomeCoder:
Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
If someone asked me such a stupidly meaningless question during an interview, I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. I know that your interviews are even more ritualized than ours, but seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?

What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no? Apparently you think you're too good to answer silly interview questions and think everybody else is stupid for asking them in an interview of all places! In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done. You may be the most motivated person in the world, but how is anybody else supposed to know that?

You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

Actually, there are plenty of people who are incapable of making up a decent lie (especially among techies). And there are interviewers who are good at spotting BS artists.

2010-01-07 Reply Admin

However, it really doesn't makes sense to ask a closed-ended question to a technical person, when you want the candidate to answer as if it were an open-ended question. Many good technical people would be thrown off by that. We could see that you didn't really just want us to say "yes", and it wouldn't be a good idea to say "no", but it's not obvious what question that wasn't asked you actually want us to answer, so we stumble around and feel stupid and inadequate, which throws off the rest of the interview for us. And the whole trouble is that we need precision in communication, which has a lot to do with why we're so good at programming or other technical stuff.

bob171123 · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

I have to agree with the interviewee on C++. As you know, WTF's are a non-renewable resource and while today it looks like they will never run out, we will come to a future where there will be no more WTF's for our enjoyment. If a programming language allows us to recycle other WTF's instead of wasting new ones, I'd promote that as a feature.

takatori · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

SR:
frits:
If you insult a potential employer's facilities during an interview, you will not get hired.

If their offices are a complete toilet you may not want to get hired.

Several years ago I joined a company after several meetings in their nice, new, clean gorgeous conference rooms in Roppongi Hills. No office tour for "security reasons". But, the work was interesting, in line with interests and experience, and pay was great.

For the first day I was to show up at the "development center" nearby. I went by on a weekend to verify the address , and it was an apartment building. No sign, but the "suite number" I was given matched up with the name of the company president.

Show up for work on Monday, and after getting buzzed in found that it was a hole. 25 people crammed into shared desks in the president's former apartment (he still had a room in back, rumour was, maybe still slept there), AC cables running across the floor held down by duct tape, carpet that was worn through to the padding in some places, dust everywhere, paltry ventilation, a refrigerator full of 20-year old bottles of liquor (not "the good stuff", just old) and mold-filled containers. Workstations were all about 5 years old (mixed Win95/98/XP/Mac), servers were repurposed workstations (mixed NT/XP/2000/BSD/Fedora/Yellowdog/Debian) stacked up haphazardly in a closet (fortunately with an A/C unit crammed in on top!). Two of the servers were laptops--one with a broken keyboard and another with a broken screen so RDP was the only way in.

The systems were just as crufty: shared Excel spreadsheets for data entry (read: always locked incorrectly), VB macros to write the data in a CSV format, Bash script to break that up and write to a MySQL table, Perl to read that table and copy it, normalized, into a Postgres database, PHP to render the website, all nested tables and font tags, no css, titles and heading text as images created by hand by a graphic artist who had no other responsibilities, ALL links used javascript onclick events instead of href, and the home page took about 15 seconds to completely render.

Any guesses how long I lasted?

tgape · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

The last interview reminded me of the first IT job I had.

When I had my on-site interview, their office consisted of a small reception area, which also had a desk - the office of their HR person. The interview itself took place in the managers' office. This was a small conference room, with a power strip and an 8 port hub. There was also a desk in the corner, with a PC, and three drawers, each with a name plate on it.

A week later, I showed up for the 0th day of work (they wanted us to appear briefly the night before our official first day on the job, so that they could give us our pagers and a welcome briefing), and the reception area had a hallway out the back, where the HR lady's desk had been. There was a short twisty passageway, which had five doors with (paper) nameplates - the HR rep, and four managers. It also had the "computer room", which was more of a nook, as it didn't have a door, or even a door frame. The old managers' office apparently had the back wall knocked out as well, it was now twice the size it had been.

As this was a consulting gig, I didn't show up to the company office very often. The next time was a month later. All the paper nameplates were replaced with metal frame and plastic nameplates, and the office space across the hall was the company's new space - a large, unfinished space where we had our regional all-hands monthly meeting.

The next month, that unfinished area was half cubicles, half offices. There were three HR people, 10-15 managers, and the monthly meeting was downstairs, in an unfinished space about twice the size of upstairs.

For the first year and a half or so, it seemed that every time I stopped by the company office, they had either had some major renovations or they had changed offices. Then they got bought out, and things calmed down a bit.

The company had originally started out five years before I signed on, and, according to the old timers, it had been growing like that the whole time. (The office that I worked out of was a satellite office, not the HQ.) Quite a few people apparently had the experience of interviewing in an unfinished room; in some cases, an unfinished room with cloth curtains providing a feeble illusion of privacy.

Regarding someone's comment about salesmen: they figured that all of their employees should be salesmen, but they realized that most technical people sell best by doing a technically superior job, rather than by using words or presentations. Some of them recognized that it was more valuable to sell the continuation of an existing engagement than to sell a new one - especially if you can arrange for an expansion.

DaveK · 2010-01-07 Reply Admin

Rachel:
SomeCoder:
Anon:
Chris:
so Gary, would you describe yourself as a motivated person?
If someone asked me such a stupidly meaningless question during an interview, I'd answer "no", just to see what happens. I know that your interviews are even more ritualized than ours, but seriously, what insight do you expect to gain from that question? And would you want to work for someone that asks you questions just for the questions' sake?

What insight do we gain? Well, in your case, we've learned that you're an asshole. Pretty useful information, no? Apparently you think you're too good to answer silly interview questions and think everybody else is stupid for asking them in an interview of all places! In some cases, it's not the actual answer that is important, but how you answer it. FYI, "yes" is the wrong answer too. Anybody can claim to be motivated, prove it to me. Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done. You may be the most motivated person in the world, but how is anybody else supposed to know that?

You generally don't gain insight from a question like "Are you a motivated person?" unless the interviewee is a real moron. Anyone can claim to be motivated and anyone can make up a story that shows that they are motivated. It seems like a useless question (for the most part).

Actually, there are plenty of people who are incapable of making up a decent lie (especially among techies). And there are interviewers who are good at spotting BS artists.

Also, if you're not autistic, you learn a lot about someone just by spending time talking to and observing them. It barely matters what you're actually talking /about/, just that you're physically close to them and engaging in all that subconscious interaction and body language that goes on when you meet someone for the first time; and you can't necessarily put what you've learned into words afterwards, but it can certainly play a role in your decision-making.

2010-01-08 Reply Admin

Apparently you think you're too good to answer silly interview questions and think everybody else is stupid for asking them in an interview of all places!

Nossir! I don't mind at all the bullshit! This slime maggot can't wait being yelled at, sir!

Give an example of a time where you took the initative and got stuff done.

Of course, see I had this bridge I sold to some dork...

2010-01-08 Reply Admin

I just remembered a truly bizarre interview experience I had in college. Sometime during the second or third year I decided to work as a math tutor for some on-campus school-sponsored tutoring service. Since I had some experience tutoring math I thought it would be an easy job to get. So I submit my resume, wait a few weeks, and finally receive an invite to the "job interview". I show up and there's at least a dozen people all waiting outside a relatively small conference room. We wait and wait and finally a woman shows up to interview us. I'm thinking "this is going to take forever... I've been here for 30 min already... there's at least 12 other candidates... so at least an hour longer if the interviews are super short." This woman herds us into this conference room, sits us down around this table (by now more people have come in and are either standing or squeezing more chairs into the room), and says "ok you guys are going to have a group discussion about what makes someone an effective math tutor... I'll be observing... ready? go!" The talkative super-social people start going on-and-on while the introverts are looking around like "wtf?!" I didn't get the job.

2010-01-08 Reply Admin

Gary:
I was fresh out of college, taking my degree in environmental engineering. First thing I did, was contact a headhunter. That was my big mistake.
He sets me up for an interview with "Green-tech", and even drives me there! We were a bit late, because he had a flat tire, and he says he didn't know how to change it, so I did it for him. We show up late to the parking lot, all hot and bothered too. I see the name of the company: "Omni-tech", which is clearly not what the HH told me. Trying to cover, he starts going on with, "I hope this is the right place! Go inside and check, would you?"

So I go in the door, and confirm that it is indeed Omni-tech, and not Green-tech. After getting the yes, I go back out quickly to the headhunter, and tell him, making sure he's going to wait for me. He tells me "get in for a sec", and briefs me a bit on the company, and 'programming'." He finishes off with "They might ask you some questions about 'B plus', or something. Make something up! Good luck!" We sit down in the conference room, and as I was so steamed at the headhunter, I totally missed what the interviewer said, but he was sitting there with an expectant look on his face, so I just mumble "yeah I guess so".

Not my finest moment, that's for sure.

Sure enough, the questions about "C plus plus" came, and I had to bluff my way through with some crap about recycling.

Not surprisingly, I did not get a call back. On the plus side, I ditched the headhunter!

Awesome.

Zemm · 2010-01-08 Reply Admin

rfsmit:
shadowman:
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/salted.asp
Claim: Snopes is a reliable source of data. Status: False
Why Snopes is so wrong on this? Because the writer details a host of fanciful attributions, and then denies the credibility of the story without sufficiently exploring the history of it. Just because something is falsely attributed to lots of notable people doesn't mean another notable person didn't say it once over in earnest. They haven't done their homework here.

As far as I can tell, Snopes draws no conclusions on this topic. On the listing it has a grey bullet which is "unclassifiable veracity". They are just presenting the legend and obviously haven't "done their homework".

Watson · 2010-01-08 Reply Admin

dkf:
It's a postgraduate course and university rules let us kick out cheats with no refunds.

He'd already graduated?! What in?

But yeah, universities have better things to spend student fees on than prop characters like that up.

dkf · 2010-01-08 Reply Admin

Watson:
dkf:
It's a postgraduate course and university rules let us kick out cheats with no refunds.
He'd already graduated?! What in?
But yeah, universities have better things to spend student fees on than prop characters like that up.

No idea who he managed to fool as I've got nothing to do with student admissions. Maybe one of those places that focuses on rote learning and regurgitation. It's a few years ago now so I don't remember if he was on an Advanced-CS course or a CS-and-Business mix (the entry requirements are different).

I Guess So, Computer Skills, and The Temporary Offices

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