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IBM's Asshole Test

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Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#281

Post by wolverine876 »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #277
wolverine876 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you treat cab drivers and other service personnel badly, that’s because you’re a shit person. That attitude seems the same one that judges service workers. IME, and based on what I know of humanity, people act badly because they feel vulnerable; they are scared or anxious. It's still bad behavior, but they aren't 'shit people'. If bad behavior damns us, then we all qualify. The mistake is judging others, and lac…

These are reasonable points in the context of normal everyday life. However, when making a hiring decision, there are likely to be several competent candidates who could all do the job just as well as any other. If you've got an easy way to filter out potentially problematic candidates based on their soft skills, might as well do so to avoid a bad hire. There's no room for giving the benefit of the doubt in this cont…

Perhaps, but that doesn't make the candidate a 'shit person'.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#282

Post by noduerme »

skissane wrote: post #245
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #103

Earlier 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 worry that this might unintentionally discriminate against culturally diverse candidates. Standards of politeness can vary between cultures (and even subcultures), and a person might behave in a way which is perceived as polite in their (sub)culture but as impolite in the culture of the service worker; an "asshole" could turn out to just be a cultural misunderstanding. Particularly if the candidate is from a minori…

I think this is an important point. If this is part of an interview strategy, it would be important to delineate what's "asshole" behavior and what's merely brusque or blunt (which would be an interesting document to read).

I come from a culture where directness and argumentation are valued over deference to seniority or authority. In some contexts, or by some people, this can be mistaken for rudeness, when really it's just a mode of solving problems.

It's important to know what culture you're dealing with and act appropriately. I might bite my tongue or code-switch if I know I'm dealing with a very conservative/authoritarian culture where it's less important for me to be myself or solve a problem than it is to have people like me. But having other candidates like you rather than solve problems is not usually the main point of a job interview, so creating unwritten tests like this with parameters involves some deceit.

It also goes to the WASP distaste or disdain for the Jewish style of discourse. Historically, someone at IBM saying a candidate was brusque could quite easy be code for saying they were Jewish.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#283

Post by throwawaylinux »

skissane wrote: post #245
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #103

Earlier 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 worry that this might unintentionally discriminate against culturally diverse candidates. Standards of politeness can vary between cultures (and even subcultures), and a person might behave in a way which is perceived as polite in their (sub)culture but as impolite in the culture of the service worker; an "asshole" could turn out to just be a cultural misunderstanding. Particularly if the candidate is from a minori…

The one real strength of diversity isn't that you have to like them all equally, it is that you can discriminate against the behavior you dislike and prefer people you do like.

It's wonderful if you can weed out a person who treats others badly, I really can't see why it would matter if it's because some real or imagined condition causes them to be an asshole, or because being an asshole is allegedly okay in their culture.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#284

Post by johnnyanmac »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #277
wolverine876 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you treat cab drivers and other service personnel badly, that’s because you’re a shit person. That attitude seems the same one that judges service workers. IME, and based on what I know of humanity, people act badly because they feel vulnerable; they are scared or anxious. It's still bad behavior, but they aren't 'shit people'. If bad behavior damns us, then we all qualify. The mistake is judging others, and lac…

These are reasonable points in the context of normal everyday life. However, when making a hiring decision, there are likely to be several competent candidates who could all do the job just as well as any other. If you've got an easy way to filter out potentially problematic candidates based on their soft skills, might as well do so to avoid a bad hire. There's no room for giving the benefit of the doubt in this cont…

>There's no room for giving the benefit of the doubt in this context.

really depends on the candidate and the situation. We dont have the context for neither here. If a truly senior candidate who has deep domain knowledge interviews, they may not be dinged as much if they gave a service worker a low tip or complained about the smell of the car.

But sure, for some college candidate in a yearly hiring spree that are all from top schools, maybe that is the little bit of a filter needed to make a difference.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#286

Post by CountHackulus »

chrchang523 wrote: post #45
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…

To be fair, engineers didn't all have smartphones that could take great photos in 2006.

Cameras existed before 2006.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#287

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

Something similar happened in my first job out of college.

During an interview, the person goes over a problem related to graphs. Then asks me if I could come up with a solution. I told him I had trouble following the details and the interview wasn't long enough for me to both figure that out and solve the problem.

I still got the job. I still don't know why he asked it of me. Eventually I found out that it was an actual problem he was trying to solve for work, and it relied upon a lot of domain specific knowledge that I didn't have at the time.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#288

Post by johnnyanmac »

bobkazamakis wrote: post #107
cmckn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chan…

I'm not sure if the Hawthorne effect applies that strongly here. It has to do with worker productivity, not behavior. In fact, this IBM test may weed out a few employees who are otherwise perfectly kind people in general public outings.

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#289

Post by qumpis »

cperciva wrote: post #253
dekhn wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I should have been clearer. After thinking for a bit I did start asking questions, but the interviewer didn't give me any useful information. IIRC I asked if I could assume the problem was small enough that I could just do a brute force search of possible solutions and the answer came back that no, they needed a solution which would work for any size; I know I asked other questions but I can't remember what they were…

What structure should there be for nlogn solution to be applicable?

Re: IBM's Asshole Test

#290

Post by moistly »

gopher_space wrote: post #264
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…

One difference you might see is that the stories all have increased rewards for good behavior. Good behavior isn't something that's rewarded outside of childhood, it's just expected to be your default as an adult. The comments above talk about punishment for bad behavior, which happens all day every day. Nobody cares about giving the candidate a 'fair shake' because if you know and trust someone enough to listen to t…

> Good behavior isn't something that's rewarded outside of childhood

Not true! Yesterday I walked out of a Home Depot with an unpaid drill bit in my shirt pocket (my hands were full). I discovered my error when I reached the car. I went back to pay, and got a 20% discount for being honest!

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