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What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

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Re: What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

#51

Post by fidotron »

corobo wrote: post #46
dylanrw wrote: post #39

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?

.. why would I flip it in the first place? Did I just disqualify myself as a CEO

Unironically, to a large demographic here, yes.

Re: What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

#52

Post by pxue »

corobo wrote: post #46
dylanrw wrote: post #39

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?

.. why would I flip it in the first place? Did I just disqualify myself as a CEO

Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.

Re: What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

#54

Post by ryandrake »

privacythrow23 wrote: post #18

If trustworthiness were able to be gauged by a single question world political history would be much more boring. That being said, asking a CEO to take responsibility for a mistake is a pretty good indicator. If they own the mistake. That's good. If they own the mistake and try to fix it. That's better. If they own the mistake and ask the people wronged how to make amends. They're probably not a CEO.

What does "take responsibility for a mistake" even mean when it comes to a CEO? Most recent examples of a CEO "taking responsibility" for mistakes that I can think of all involve them looking visibly sad on camera, sending an all-hands E-mail telling people how seriously they are taking things, and of course, laying off a bunch of lower-level employees. Occasionally, they also quit with a $XX million golden parachute, off to be CEO at another company.

You can't just say the magic incantation "I take full responsibility" and leave it at that.

Re: What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

#55

Post by BackBlast »

smallerfish wrote: post #37
BackBlast wrote: post #35

Fly them in. Give them a driver to assist them in arriving and getting to the interview. Have the driver make an obvious mistake. Circle the block or arrive a couple of minutes late. Auto-fail anyone who treats the driver poorly. Find the guy that wants and/or tries to help the driver succeed. Various ways to see the inner person and not the "show person" on display for the interview.

Pretty sure that's from a movie.

Is it? I don't really watch movies.

But that's pretty funny to learn :) Nice.

Re: What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

#56

Post by marcosdumay »

e40 wrote: post #38
codeptualize wrote: post #15

With these kind of things I don't think asking questions is really going to tell you much. People can present themselves differently than they are, and especially people with lower morales will have no problem presenting themselves differently if that is in their interest. Look at pretty much any big company CEO. If you do need to gauge someone, look at their history, look at their actions, and look at their incentiv…

I came here to say look at what they do not what they say. This applies not only to CEOs but to every single human on the planet. One thing I have learned is that many people seem to be easily tricked by certain types of humans saying one thing and doing another (which is contradictory to the "said" thing). It is certainly frustrating to watch happen, when it involves people you care about.

> One thing I have learned is that many people seem to be easily tricked by certain types of humans saying one thing and doing another

Seems to me that almost everybody. And the ones not tricked just happened to be looking at a different place by chance, and won't replicate the same result a different time.

We definitively need some kind of tooling to deal with this.

Re: What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

#59

Post by schmookeeg »

Some of these questions and their purported correct answers are really explaining a few of the odd interviews I've had in the last few years.

I guess in addition to leetcode, one should grind on trolleycar dilemmas as well to get hired as a coder. :)

Re: What questions can tech CEOs be asked, to guage their moral trustworthiness?

#60

Post by jacquesm »

suoduandao3 wrote: post #8

I found a good question to spring is 'name a time you had to make a moral decision'. If someone thinks about decisions in terms of morality it's a good open-ended question that'll lead into how they approach moral dilemmas. If you suspect you're getting a rehearsed answer, follow up by asking about a moral decision they made where they would have acted differently today. Anyone who rehearses an answer to that questio…

That is an excellent answer.
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