• eric bloedow (unregistered) in reply to Avium

    reminds me of an older story on this site: the language the "genius" had written was so fragile that ADDING COMMENTS MADE IT QUIT WORKING ALTOGETHER! and of course they blamed the new guy for the breakdown...

  • Axel (unregistered)

    When do I start?

  • Friendly_Reminder (unregistered)

    Somehow I imagined a big, loud, orange guy taking this test. I mean, everything fits. The state of delusion those characters find themselves in, the absolute denial that they maybe not be the bright geniuses they imagine themselves to be... and "the 5% candidate" may very well be fitting, too, if his approval ratings continue to fall.

    Oh, also I just got a call from the staff at TheDailyWTF, telling me that this was the best post ever posted here.

  • ray10k (unregistered) in reply to Bitter Like Quinine

    A job interview is a two-way street in cases like this. You probably dodged a bullet there.

  • Sitaram Chamarty (unregistered) in reply to Zenith

    don't be too sure. As I read the first para, the first person I thought this description fit, was (drumroll please)... Donald Trump.

    If Trump can become president, why can't there be someone like this interviewee?

  • (nodebb)

    Out of morbid curiosity, I'd really like to see the entirety of this test.

  • Friendly_Reminder (unregistered) in reply to Sitaram Chamarty

    Wait, you mean the guy who won by the biggest margin of any republican president since Ronald Reagan? The one with the biggest inauguration crowd ever? The one who's burnt through 7 of his staffers or former "loyals" (Flynn, Yates, Bharara, Comey, Spicer, Preibus, Scaramucci) in only 110 days in office.

    Funny how he's the one I had to think about, too, as I've stated in my other comment.

  • Quite (unregistered)

    "return addresses in prison":

    "I need to be allowed to work from home. The bad news is that I may be unable to attend meetings in person. The good news is that I will be working for 1 dollar an hour and I have a lot of time on my hands to address to your business needs."

  • null null (unregistered)

    ATTN: Please do not feed the political trolls attempting to derail the comments section. This is a tech website.

  • Say what (unregistered) in reply to t0pC0der

    Or the commenter so sure of their own greatness that they can't see why nobody else seems to be up in arms?

    By the way, if you go to a tech-focused website to nitpick the English, maybe the problem is you. D'you also stop by McDonalds to harass the kitchen staff?

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    "Still others—disturbingly many others—lacked a basic understanding of hygiene." reminds me of a Doonesbury cartoon where a young woman was wearing a gas mask and handing out bars of soap and instruction manuals on "how to take a shower"...to COLLEGE students!

  • operagost (unregistered) in reply to Bitter Like Quinine

    "I'd generously assumed he has mistaken the paper winning an IgNobel for the paper being "a joke".

    Or perhaps he was just being ironic?"

    He's not competent enough to tell the difference.

  • Bruce Webster (google)

    Me, writing 20+ years ago in BYTE Magazine:

    "Perhaps you’ve noticed that it’s getting more and more difficult to locate and then hire the best people. This isn’t an illusion; it’s real, it’s significant, and it’s only going to get worse. It is, in fact, the heart of the real software crisis: There is more software to be developed than there are capable developers to do it. Demand will continue to outstrip supply for the foreseeable future. Hence, more and more software will be behind schedule, over budget, underpowered, and of poor quality — and there’s nothing we can do about it." ("The Real Software Crisis", BYTE, January 1996)

    Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. ..bruce..

  • Barf4Eva (unregistered)

    Unlike stories you've seen on this site before, this government shop was <insert little white lie here>

  • bobcat (unregistered)

    Oh good lord, the smugness coming off the response to the number pattern question... "Hah hah I am so clever, and you are so stoooopid!"... Oy.

    And I just want to echo the desire to see the rest of the questions and responses. I would pay good money to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

    And the spammers can go do anatomically improbable things to themselves and/or a goat. Jeeze.

  • Ulysses (unregistered)

    Who read the article and thought of Appalled? :D

  • MiserableOldGit (unregistered) in reply to Ulysses

    I just read Appalled and thought of this article, does that count?

  • EpicEraser (unregistered)

    Why does it bother me so much that the first sequence started with 2 to the power of one and the second one with 3 to the power of zero?

  • Darren A (unregistered) in reply to EpicEraser

    It doesn't matter. Any sequence can be justified with the right rules so there isn't actually a single right answer. We were often surprised to get answers that we hadn't thought of but still named these as correct; the explanations were so clear and there was evidence of logical reasoning.

  • Darren A (unregistered) in reply to EpicEraser

    It doesn't matter. Any sequence can be justified with the right rules so there isn't actually a single right answer. We were often surprised to get answers that we hadn't thought of but still named these as correct; the explanations were so clear and there was evidence of logical reasoning.

  • MiserableOldGit (unregistered) in reply to Darren A

    Yes, I recall trying to explain this to some snotty little shit who had set me a multi-guess test of this type and proudly proclaimed I had "not done as well as he'd expected". I was confident I'd got 100%, and asked him to challenge me on answers .. of course I could give a rational method for each answer (and probably every option, given time),

    to which he said "our answer is obviously the easier one".

    "That, my friend, is a matter of opinion"

    I got the gig anyway, and yes, they were fucking clueless.

    But then this reminds me of a funnier tale from a couple of years back, a colleague who loved challenging everyone with puzzles and riddles, he was a clever guy and great fun, it was just a bit of entertainment around the office. Unfortunately, we were an equal mix of clever problem-solvers and wise-ass wind-up merchants (probably all of us were both to a degree). One of the guys set him a puzzle on the Thursday before the easter break ... " OK, this set of numbers, what is it that connects them? 11, 13, 14, 21, 25, 26, 31, 33, 34, 40. "

    Our friend hammered away at this with answers all Thursday and got "No ... No ... Nope ... Not quite, try again". He went home and when we saw him Tuesday he was in early, with a second laptop and a triumphant look on his face, he'd been busy scripting up analysis tools and had an answer he was ready to explain, along with the caveat that his wife wanted to murder him because she wanted to enjoy the break and he kept running off to fire code at this little problem he'd been given.

    I actually don't remember his answer, but it did involve logarithms and calculus. What I do remember was the "quizmaster" saying, "No, look, here .. " and handing him the menu to the local shitty chinese takeway and saying "Those ones come with noodles, everything else is rice!".

  • The One Guy (unregistered)

    I'd be interested in seeing the entire test; the two answers we did see were hilarious.

  • markm (unregistered)

    "there's nothing you can do in Prolog you can't do in Basic"

    For a real challenge, do it in COBOL.

    If I correctly remember some theorems from Computer Science classes 40 years ago, Prolog, Basic, and even COBOL are all Turing-complete languages, so in a sense, what you can do in one language you can do in any of them. And what I mean by "in a sense" is with unlimited programming effort, memory, and run-time.

  • manager (unregistered)

    I had a guy like this interviewing for a position in IT Security... Our interview process consists of a multiple choice test, some logical questions and a scenario or two, usually done in teams. This guy was very vocal, bossy and clearly thought what he was saying is the only correct option (and ofc he was wrong). So we didn't hire him, but offered the job to someone else from that group. Now he wrote an opinion about our interviewing process on one of the well known web sites, how the process was sh1te, and how he "aced" and "owned" our tests and how easy they were (well. As for the competency test, he barely made it over the cut-off. As for logical questions, he failed every single one) and then complained about how his "friend", who was "clearly much worse and didn't have a clue" got the offer. Sorry mate, but your "friend" excelled in every area. Plus he was actually acting like an adult, not like a child in a sandbox where someone has taken away his toy. Oh well....

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