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IBM's Asshole Test

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Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#101

Post by fatbird »

bjourne wrote: post #89
Closi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 t…

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.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#102

Post by veltas »

mrmattyboy wrote: post #23
neo_g wrote: post #13

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.

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…

Yeah, just this. It's not a psychology experiment, it's "do I want to work with this person?"

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#103

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

cmckn wrote: post #93
eej71 wrote: post #67

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 candida…

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…

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.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#104

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

cmckn wrote: post #93
eej71 wrote: post #67

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 candida…

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…

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.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#105

Post by conorh »

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 it is somewhat artificial people's personalities quickly became apparent. I really enjoyed it :)

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#106

Post by aerostable_slug »

f0e4c2f7 wrote: post #66
cperciva wrote: post #31

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 dow…

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!"

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.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#107

Post by bobkazamakis »

cmckn wrote: post #93
eej71 wrote: post #67

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 candida…

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…

> 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.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#108

Post by nullc »

Victerius wrote: post #25
neo_g wrote: post #13

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.

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 th…

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.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#109

Post by treeman79 »

eej71 wrote: post #67

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 candida…

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.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#110

Post by rrook »

cmckn wrote: post #93
eej71 wrote: post #67

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 candida…

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…

Do you see this as being substantially different to evaluating a candidate's behavior while in a waiting room between interview sessions?
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