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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

#431

Post by starttoaster »

justinclift wrote: post #339
starttoaster wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Dylan, in this case, Justin probably wasn't worth the time spent to correct here. Everyone else in the world knows the phrase "bedside manner" and knows you weren't talking about what they thought you were talking about. After an attempt or two, it was probably more worth it to move on, whereas here you made probably half a dozen attempts to reconcile with Justin to no avail, leading you to feel frustrated, which…

> Justin probably wasn't worth the time spent You're making personal attacks as well?

To be clear, I'm referring to your pattern displayed in this thread of aggressively taking words outside of context, and not doing a bare minimum effort to try to find reasonable context for them. In this case, it was probably not worth anybody's effort to explain the words to you; this is true. The fact that you're taking it personally as an attack is on you though, not me. Because I don't intend for it to be an attack, I'm simply stating that a lot of unnecessary time was wasted, and unkind words were slung for no good reason. None of it was worth it, because the value you've gotten from now understanding the phrase was not worth the amount of time it took to teach it to you. It's not even just because you weren't very receptive to the information, truth be told, we were maybe also poor teachers here. But I'll give you more information for your time:

A common theme among many English idioms is that a phrase is found in one discipline (ie. the medical discipline), in this case "bedside manner." Some deeper meaning is extrapolated, in this case it is "showing kind, friendly, and understanding behavior for people in your care." And then the phrase is re-used in other disciplines and contexts where the deeper meaning is what is intended to get across to the recipient hearing that phrase, rather than the literal interpretation (ie. the bed isn't necessarily involved at all.)

As another example: "curiosity killed the cat." There's no cat, and it's not necessary that people will die when this phrase is used. It just means "sometimes following your curiosity leads to bad consequences." Hopefully this lesson has helped you the next time you come across an idiom and wonder why they used that choice of words.

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

nsxwolf wrote: post #429
js2 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. 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?

What do you mean I'm not helping?!

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by yvan-eht-nioj »

aaron695 wrote: post #383
yvan-eht-nioj wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, someone might also have a sense of karmic justice, whereby $0.02 is the same as $200 in the ethical context of returning a lost object to its owner. The manager sounds like they'd be happy to steal your wages, as long as it was "only a small amount". You dodged a bullet there.

If that's your take you are not smart enough for the job. The workplace dodged a bullet. No one cares about a persons 'sense of karmic justice' or things people make up in their heads to be clever, they are answering questions on a test. If their IQ can't adapt to a simple question, how could they flip a burger? Their 'sense of karmic justice' or being clever might get in the way, and since they have no idea of reali…

The manager was using the question in an attempt to determine whether someone was a liar, not a quiz on workplace protocol.

A well-developed code of personal ethics might not matter in the context of burger-flipping, but jobs requiring a high IQ usually also require someone to have principles.

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

#434

Post by johnnyanmac »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #172
0x457 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selecting people with low self-worth that can be easily broken. You don't want a free thinker with vocal opinions and entitlement (warranted or not) working at your McDonalds - you want a drone that is just good enough to do the job. Hiring process often is a reflection of work culture. Shitty process will remove candidates that won't fit the culture.

I think most of the jobs that use this kind of filtering are also low wage / low prestige where churn and training represent a significant fraction of the labor cost. So they are probably simply selecting for a certain degree of precarity & economic desperation, trying to exclude people who are looking for a little extra money to meet personal goals or fill periods between better paid work. I'm trying to phrase this…

I too miss when a job could just be agreed upon labor for income and not this attempt to shackle a worker to some quasi indentured servitude.

There's that meme of "no one wants to work anymore" and meanwhile these entry level labor jobs act like they want to test for government clearance just to flip a burger or deliver mail.

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

#437

Post by namlem »

dylan604 wrote: post #373
namlem wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just read literature. Academic literary analysis has always been a grift imo. Just completely useless nonsense. Doesn't mean that literature isn't enjoyable. I recently read a book that would count as literary fiction (as opposed to genre fiction) for the first time in over a decade and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

> Just completely useless nonsense. Explain that to all of those suffering through the reading just to make a grade because it is part of the required list. If I read Scarlet Letter today, I would not enjoy it any more than I did then. I'm just not entertained by some love triangle in a religious uptight society. I get enough of that in my every day life, minus the love triangle. It's the same reason I don't want to…

The book I read was Revelations by Erik Hoel. It was a mystery novel about consciousness researchers. But Hoel is a literature nerd as well and so wrote it in that style. Would perhaps come off as pretentious if not for the good execution.

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

#438

Post by yvan-eht-nioj »

aaron695 wrote: post #383
yvan-eht-nioj wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, someone might also have a sense of karmic justice, whereby $0.02 is the same as $200 in the ethical context of returning a lost object to its owner. The manager sounds like they'd be happy to steal your wages, as long as it was "only a small amount". You dodged a bullet there.

If that's your take you are not smart enough for the job. The workplace dodged a bullet. No one cares about a persons 'sense of karmic justice' or things people make up in their heads to be clever, they are answering questions on a test. If their IQ can't adapt to a simple question, how could they flip a burger? Their 'sense of karmic justice' or being clever might get in the way, and since they have no idea of reali…

“Is dishonesty OK if it financially benefits the company?”

How would a high IQ candidate answer this question?

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

#439

Post by glitchc »

tsegratis wrote: post #388
glitchc wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. How does one become dishonest?

I like how that is already impossible, and that in only two sentences > So true.... Become dishonest Win the second, will loose the first

I think that's it really. You give up a great deal. Dishonest people don't realize how much they've given up. They surround themselves with equally dishonest people, and then wonder why they can't trust anyone.

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

#440

Post by asmr »

i don't get why a lot of people in tech want to be more computer than person. it seems people tend to forget that our role as PEOPLE in an organization of PEOPLE is to do deliver solutions for PEOPLE. a little bit of psychological screening to determine someone's' personality to see if they're a good fit for the department/corporate culture is not necessarily "weird" or off-putting or a net negative in many ways. i received a very similar test interviewing for my first "real" job nearly 10 years ago.
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