IBM's Asshole Test • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#231

Post by AceJohnny2 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

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 mean, when you know you're interviewing a Putnam winner, you could try and sneak in some "unsolved problems" ;)

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#232

Post by ars » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

dfabulich wrote: post #185

dudeinjapan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had something like this too for a quant trading interview. It was one of those problems about flipping a coin, heads doubles your money and tails you lose everything, "how much would you pay to play the game?" If forget the nuance of the question but when I did the math on the whiteboard, the expected value was 1 i.e. the same amount one wagers. At that point I said, "Well, I guess I could pay for the entertainment…

That sounds almost like the St. Petersburg Paradox. (But in the paradoxical version, you keep whatever's in the pot; you don't lose everything at the end.) The St. Petersburg game has an infinite expected payout! But most people would only be willing to wager $20 or so, and it's hard to articulate exactly why. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-stpetersburg/

The math and discussion of infinity in the problem unnecessarily complicate it.

You could ask: You have a 10^-30 chance of winning $10^40, otherwise you'll win $1.

Based on expected utility you should pay a huge sum to play, based on the real world you should pay $1. (Adjust the large numbers as needed if you have an issue that that much money doesn't exist.)

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#233

Post by ALittleLight » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

JoBrad wrote: post #221

ALittleLight wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen several stories like this - the janitor, or secretary, or whoever is actually a trusted individual who is the true judge of character. To me, it seems implausible, more of a "feel good" story, but it also seems ill advised. Does the driver know he's part of the loop? Does the driver attend the debrief? Does the driver distinguish between great, normal, sub-normal, and bad social skills? What portion of je…

I didn’t read it as a deliberate test, but that if the driver let them know the candidate was rude, it would be a negative mark.

"The taxi driver would sometimes complain to the people in the hiring loop when a candidate was rude to him." That also seems pretty implausible to me. The taxi driver is going to text or email HR or the hiring manager or someone? How frequently are people so rude to the taxi driver that they are disqualified from consideration? Does the taxi driver get compensated? Why is the taxi driver doing this? Does anybody vet the taxi driver's personality testing ability?

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#234

Post by dekhn » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #79

tomatowurst wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two aren't mutually exclusive, you could've easily started out with salary + stock options that would've put you in a better position to start a side gig. Then you might actually be driving a lambo now too ;)

By '06 Google was already public so you weren't going to make life changing, never work again in your life money from stock awards/options. At best you'd be sitting on a decent nest egg that maybe bought you some property or better investments if you were smart (and a $250k supercar is not a smart investment).

That's definitely not true. Even post-IPO, the stock has had tremendous growth and RSUs are evergreen.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#235

Post by angarg12 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

inopinatus wrote: post #166

When I interviewed with AWS, half the loop interviews were with remote staff. I was shown to a videoconferencing room and asked to wait. There was a pile of VC equipment but it wasn't connected. With five minutes before we were due to start, I decided this was part of the interview and plugged stuff in myself, powered it on, and clicked through some boot-time screens, guessing at the right inputs. A few minutes later…

No it wasn't.

Source: I conducted +400 interviews for Amazon. We don't do weird or obscure tests. Your recruiter will explicitly tell you what to expect.

It sounds like a mistake.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#236

Post by vlunkr » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

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'm inclined to agree. When a company watches you without your knowledge it's a clever hack, but when the government does it it's a creepy social credit system? If the hiring company secretly owned the taxi company, wouldn't that be creepy too?

Also, when you're making hiring decisions, why are you trusting the opinion of a taxi driver who isn't even on your payroll? They certainly have their own prejudice, and if they know they have weight in hiring decisions, they could very well just be feeding you lies.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#237

Post by bnallp » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

So IBM wants redpilled Machiavellians who "keep frame" under pressure, but once hired will politely grab power, backstab and intrigue against colleagues.

Open face, closed thoughts.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#238

Post by influx » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:16 PM UTC

sargun wrote: post #183

Bahamut wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard of airline companies doing similar when interviewing flight attendants - United will fly you to Newark to interview, but often there will be people shadowing candidates to see how they behave during their travels and that feedback is taken into account when evaluating candidates.

A strong part of me believes that United indexes on how much of an asshole the person can be. /s. But, seriously, I feel like if you're using a potential employer's services, you should assume they're taking that into account when they're hiring you.

Seriously, compare the employees of United vs Southwest and there's a huge difference in attitude. Southwest employees seem happy, friendly, helpful, while United... Not.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#239

Post by c1ccccc1 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:16 PM UTC

metadat wrote: post #168

eropple wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but for my money, a company that does that isn't a company to work for. I don't work for free and you shouldn't either.

Honest question: What difference does it make whether you work on a l33tcode question or a real problem in the interview? At least the real problem has a chance of being interesting. Sometimes I do give candidates examples of real challenges we're facing. The purpose is not to get anything for free, but rather to see if they're good at coming up with new ideas. It also gets boring asking the same questions that may o…

Giving actual problems during an interview is fine, and I'd actually prefer getting an interview problem that the company is really working on. I think people are just pattern-matching this to the kind of scam where the company farms out their work as multi-hour take-home problems with no intention of actually hiring the candidate afterwards.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#240

Post by dinom » Wed, May 04, 2022, 11:17 PM UTC

throwaway6532 wrote: post #144

maxtollenaar wrote: post #71

Wharton MBA has this Team-based Discussion (TBD) as a part of their application process. From what I hear, it is to weed out Asshole type of personality. In regard to how effective the method is, I'm not 100% convinced.

Kind of makes you wonder where all the assholes work?

Hmm... that's an interesting question. Could it be that groupthink turns the whole idea on it's head and such a process would just end up hiring nice but mediocre people?

They say Steve Jobs could be a giant a$$hole at times. I've also heard that George Patton wasn't always a particularly lovable guy.

Ultimately all people have shortcomings and so mining their gifts comes with a cost. I'm not strictly trying to make excuses for anti-social behavior here but being able to understand, empathize and forgive must go hand in hand.