Well here's the asshole response: this explains why they can't make anything cool.
IBM's Asshole Test
211–220 of 604 posts
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#212It's funny, the way we used to do coding interviews was to systematically ramp up the difficulty of the problem until the candidate struggled. The reasoning was that with easy problems, a lot of candidates could just write the solution on the whiteboard. You don't learn much about a candidate that way. But if you give them a problem they have to think about, and ask them to think out loud, you learn what problem-solv…
Yes this was our strategy when I interviewed folks at Microsoft and some companies later. Key point being what happens when they hit the unknown.
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated. That makes about as much sense as saying that you shouldn’t be held responsible for stealing office supplies because no one informed you that there were cameras installed. If you treat cab drivers and other service personnel badly, that’s because you’re a shit person. It’s really that simple. I’ve…
I generally apply a similar test when dating - if the person is a huge asshole to the service staff then it generally is not going anywhere
Giant red flag, indeed.
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I find this extremely hard to believe. I, too, try very hard to not get upset at "service workers", but at a certain point, if someone has a bad attitude with me i'll eventually give it right back. This has only happened a few times, off the top of my head: support at ISPs a couple of times, creditors who were harassing me without reason, and one time extremely rude and racist people at a California School transporta…
This would make sense as an objection if the taxi driver had specifically been asked to be a dick, to test the candidates. I'd assume they have some idea that the taxi driver is a fairly reasonable person (and apparently they know him well enough to trust his judgement).
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#215Decades 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…
Responses here are really surprising to me. Should a Google hiring committee consider your search history, too?
What's lacking from this conversation is any definition of what behavior we're actually talking about, and the conclusions (understandably) vary wildly. This is a similar dilemma to what a hiring committee would face when reviewing a second-hand narrative from a contractor about a candidate.
I don't think a company interested in having a healthy culture should spy or eavesdrop on people.
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once interviewed a guy who was going to work on a different team than mine who, 20 minutes in, I knew he was going to pass everyone's interview. I then proceeded to give him a "take home test" which was actually my project for the sprint, but framed in a generic manner. He was a much better and faster programmer than I, and he completed it beyond my expectations. I made the modifications to make it work with my pro…
I'm surprised you'd admit that kind of dishonesty on a public forum.
I wish more people would admit stuff. A lot of accounts are anonymous, and a lot of people have done mildly unethical things at companies.
Nothing's more interesting than finding out what people are really up to.
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#217When 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…
I interviewed with Google once around the same time frame. The position I interviewed for was something along the lines of datacenter operations. I did my interview from a local Google sales office and interviewed with three other employees via video call. This was around the time that Skype was fairly new, but whatever software they were using was clearly internal to Google. Anyway, I ended up talking with 3 enginee…
so, what was the answer, from the lecture? what had you missed?
Realistically if i was in datacenter ops and a server wouldn't boot i'd unrack it and rack a new one and let the dev/ops whatever team reprovision. Heck, i did this when i was just a cloud engineer, unracked from a local (non-cloud) facility and brought back machines to the office, to be RMA'd, just to help out.
I get the idea that the interviewer had a very specific problem in memory and wanted that answer. After all, if there's some issue with the motherboard, it doesn't matter how many parts you swap out, and an issue with the motherboard could be in the infinite range from "tin whiskers" to "bad capacitor" to "cold solder joint".
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think it's ethical to evaluate a candidate's interactions when they weren't informed they were being evaluated. That makes about as much sense as saying that you shouldn’t be held responsible for stealing office supplies because no one informed you that there were cameras installed. If you treat cab drivers and other service personnel badly, that’s because you’re a shit person. It’s really that simple. I’ve…
I generally apply a similar test when dating - if the person is a huge asshole to the service staff then it generally is not going anywhere
Sorry, unless you tell them you are testing their dateablilty you have to ignore any behavior on their part.
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#219When 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…
That's really unprofessional. I've never talked to anybody at Google who administered a "I don't know the algorithm" interview like that. They would have been spanked badly by the interview committee, if repeating this behavior.
If I may ask, why in that interview did you just sit there and not ask any questions? I've passed code interviews where I learned an entire new algorithm on the fly (funny how knowing there is an nlogn solution to an n**2 problem can produce workable solutions).
Re: IBM's Asshole Test
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 once interviewed a guy who was going to work on a different team than mine who, 20 minutes in, I knew he was going to pass everyone's interview. I then proceeded to give him a "take home test" which was actually my project for the sprint, but framed in a generic manner. He was a much better and faster programmer than I, and he completed it beyond my expectations. I made the modifications to make it work with my pro…
This is funny. What was the tst about?