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I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

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Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#141

Post by lex-lightning »

frfl wrote: post #28
georgel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience as well. The more hoops a company made me jump through the less they were offering to begin with, and the culture was not great. My last gig was great in that aspect. My client found my LinkedIn, we had a quick 15 minute call to discuss the project and I was working for them the next day.

Imagine the tens of thousands of dollars saved if you had a 15 minute (okay 15 is a bit short unless someone vouches for you or you're a well known open source contributor etc, maybe 1 hour or 1.5 hour, hell even 2 hour) technical conversation and the other engineer is like, yeah this person's worth bringing onboard. Might not work in all cases, but really, if you're trying to sniff out a pretender vs someone who can…

I had a great manager who was a coding genius, always available to pair even if it took hours to explain something, and has been a friend for years after we both left that company.

But before that company I had a manager at a very small company who absolutely had no ability to do the work — and would have failed a personality test on top of that.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#142

Post by JohnFen »

Since I think personality tests are just dangerous snake oil, my personal policy is that I don't take them. Companies that use them are companies that I would not likely fit into, so the policy serves me well and it serves those companies well because I'm not wasting their time.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#143

Post by acheron »

Maro wrote: post #10
mvdtnz wrote: post #5

I have never seen "software" abbreviated to SW before. Let's not do that.

SWE is a common abbreviation for Software Engineer. Others: PM, DE, PE, DS, UX, QA, etc.

> SWE is a common abbreviation for Software Engineer

This only started in the past 10 years or so, and I don't think I've ever actually seen it in real life. I don't live in SF though -- I assumed it was something Google did and all the SF types slavishly copied.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#144

Post by intelVISA »

zooq_ai wrote: post #124
intelVISA wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every job/client I've acquired has been a 10-15min informal chat with a stakeholder and a technical peer, and then an offer. I don't really see the value in going through hiring gauntlets and opt out of any process that looks like it might waste time like that.

Employement is not the same as contracting job

Some were FTE roles

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#145

Post by throw310822 »

medion wrote: post #121

I had a 1.5hr personality test for a tech job back in 1998 - the only question I remember was “if you were walking on the beach and saw a dead whale, would you cry?”

Clearly to check whether you're a replicant. It's the Voight-Kampff test.

"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#147

Post by vundercind »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #116
Vegenoid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Realizing the desired outcome a company may desire isn't dishonest. Being agreeable enough to play the game by the rules isn't dishonest. Answering in a way that is not consistent with what you truly feel or believe is dishonest. I don't think it's an amoral dishonesty, as you say, you've been forced to play this dumb game. There are many cases where being untruthful is not morally wrong. > Being honest is realizin…

> Answering in a way that is not consistent with what you truly feel or believe is dishonest. I don't think it's an amoral dishonesty, as you say, you've been forced to play this dumb game. There are many cases where being untruthful is not morally wrong Thank you for this reply, I couldn't have said it better. It's important that people realize 1) Representing yourself falsely is dishonest 2) Dishonesty isn't an esp…

It took me a while to get that interviewers aren’t really looking for honesty when they ask stuff like “why do you want to work here?”

I mean maybe they are, but they’re gonna be very unhappy with the most-honest answer from 95+% of candidates for the vast majority of employers and jobs.

So of course, you’re supposed to be… quite a bit less honest. And I guess maybe there’s some value in filtering out people who don’t get that? Or who refuse to “play ball” on principle? IDK the reasons, I didn’t make the rules.

I was raised with and internalized honesty as very important, and adjusting to an adult world (mostly—almost entirely, actually—the business world) in which that needed to be judiciously tempered and certain kinds of dishonesty were expected and failure to play along punished, was quite a damn shock. I adjusted eventually but I’ve never really been happy about it.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#148

Post by bonestamp2 »

billy99k wrote: post #2

I once had a SW interview with a job that had a 2-hour long personality test. No tech questions. Just random questions to test my personality. It started out simple, like 'what was the last book you read' to more in-depth situations that had nothing to do with the job. The manager interviewing me (who admit he basically just started managing a month prior) told me he just read a 'great book on management' and wanted…

> the second was going to be a 5-hour remote codeshare/whiteboard interview with the team

I had a similar experience with Cisco. The recruiter, who seemed pretty inexperienced, said she wouldn't reveal the compensation range until after the 5-hour interview. I declined the 5-hour interview day and that was the last time I even considered a job that didn't post the compensation range up front.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#149

Post by doubled112 »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #71

I had one company spring this health screener on my with zero warning, which included such questions as whether I had ever been pregnant or made anyone pregnant, and whether I had ever been depressed and how so. Very weird stuff, so I challenged it and HR responded that it was a required test for health and safety at work. It wasn't, it was some corporate type doing massive overreach into areas where they had no righ…

That seems insane to me. Making somebody else pregnant doesn't affect my health, so it doesn't make sense that way either.

I would be tempted to look for a wedding ring, and answer with "your mother/wife one time, you should ask her about it" accordingly.

I probably wouldn't take the job anyway.

Re: I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test

#150

Post by corobo »

neilv wrote: post #72
niceice wrote: post #36

You can take it here: https://fedexdataworksprod.traitify.com/assessment/31449c4a-... Each one has a title like "Starter Not a Finisher", "Frequently Change My Mind", "Always Wonder Why", "Easily Offended", "Art Isn't My Thing", "Unstoppable", "Make Friends Everywhere", "Good Enough", "Not My Job", "Tend to Feel Sad", "Volunteering", "Believe the Best of People", "Hard to Start a New Task", "Loves the Social Scene",…

Those titles help a lot. I wonder whether the Reddit poster saw titles. With titles, some people will be dim or troubled enough to give the wrong answer on obvious ones, like "Starter Not a Finisher". The right answer on other questions are trickier. Like maybe the company wants a handler of packages to be willing to toss the packages around "Good Enough", and some manager thought some people are a natural at that, a…

I swear Firefox (iOS, so could be a WebKit thing?) starts tabs scrolled down below the page header recently. Definitely happens on HN now and then (although typically I can't recreate it right now..) pretty sure I've seen it elsewhere too.

I wonder if that is a) actually true browser behaviour and not something the site itself is doing (or something I've managed to make up)

b) if a is true, the reason it hid the kinda-header-looking text representation of the images from OP

Unfortunately I'm at a loss for the keywords to search to confirm this behaviour, I'm only able to find unrelated scroll/header results

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