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I once was gassing up at a station, and for whatever reason the card reader on the pump wasn't charging, but would let me pump gas anyways. So me, and everyone else who'd used that pump that day, received a phone call from the police telling me to go pay for the gas. I figured it was just an honest mistake and didn't think anything of it. Fast forward a bit, to where I am undergoing a polygraph examination for the NS…
How did the police get your number?
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If the candidate was verifiably a NASA engineer the person half assed it probably just didn't care. I'm surprised that person just didnt respond with a very intricate set of functions that resulted in a middle finger. That's honestly insulting to use that as a test for a senior. Clearly there was no vetting process prior to a coding evaluation and the hiring process needs a lot of work.
They worked for one of NASA's contractors, not NASA itself. Have you been involved in the hiring process? Most of the people actively looking for work don't have a job for a reason. It's not 'insulting' to see if you can even vaguely do the job in an interview. There's only so much vetting you can do before the 'can you vaguely code your way out of a wet paper bag' step. Also: you didnt used to work in Boulder recent…
No I have never worked in Boulder.
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You sometimes have to be careful and look if people are overthinking the problem. I have been in interviews where I was desperately looking for an efficient solution for a problem and couldn't find one while the interviewer only wanted to get a simple for loop.
Having sat in that interview he wasn't overthinking it. Despite writing firmware for decades he had never heard of the modulus operator, and when we explained it to him, he didn't see the point of it. Remember those people in college who contributed nothing to the group project, but still somehow squeked by with a C? Those people now have jobs, and some have impressive resumes, particularly from .gov contractors wher…
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Polygraphs should nevern be used. An administrator can interpret the results any way they see fit. It's a perfect avenue for bigotry and other unfair hiring practices. It has no place in society.
Again, it's not about the results. But I agree it shouldn't be used for hiring, except for extremely sensitive positions.
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Having sat in that interview he wasn't overthinking it. Despite writing firmware for decades he had never heard of the modulus operator, and when we explained it to him, he didn't see the point of it. Remember those people in college who contributed nothing to the group project, but still somehow squeked by with a C? Those people now have jobs, and some have impressive resumes, particularly from .gov contractors wher…
I know the modulus operator but I don't recall ever using it in more than 20 years :)
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All of that would likely be true of a regular employer. Probably even would be good enough for the military. But the people you were dealing with, as a rule, don't believe in happenstance, or coincidence. And they absolutely live by attention to detail. I don't know much about your situation, but based on what you've shared, you tripped a lot of alarms.
/shrugs Well then congrats to the NSA; they successfully weeded out a spazzy dork
Okay, sure, there was no reason not to go inside and pay cash, and ask what's up with the pump, and maybe tell them to put a sign up, when it's all of maybe $20, maybe $40 at stake for a single tank. But I really want to know the background story from the perspective of the gas station. Like, how bad was the hit on that malfunction for them?
I really have to wonder, like was it a Mom & Pop station, or was it some huge multinational chain? And how long did the incident last? Did they lose an entire underground tank's worth of gas in less than a week, or even one day, with no transactions posted? I see "out of order" signs all the time. How did station employees not notice, and disable the pump in time? How many people got scooped up in the drag net?
They must have lost at least six figures worth of gas, and if it wasn't an independent station, I can only imagine that multiple station attendants lost their job for not disabling the pump. For a gas station to open a criminal investigation, to the tune of police reviewing possibly more than 24 hours of footage, running plates for every car that skipped out on a pump's error message, and making phone calls to track down individuals to dispense a warning under penalty of criminal charges, it must have been a real mess, and a total fiasco for the station owner.
Considering the insurance required for handling hazardous materials in a motor vehicle context, where a sleepy trucker could send an entire 18 wheeler plowing into the pumps, destroying an entire station, or a rusty leaking tank having the same effect, it's surprising that they wanted heads to roll over a malfunctioning credit terminal.
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Yeah, I read it several times, and it still came out to me as addressing only the final application. But now that you point it out, it seems more likely to address all applications. Regardless, that's about as far as I got because my two personal experiences with polygraphs tells me they're about on the same level as dowsing rods. "Have you ever used marijuana?" "No", he said, higher than a kite having smoked a bowl…
what kind of job hooks you up to a polygraph to ask if you've used marijuana and doesn't bother to give you a gc/ms screen?
Across lie detectors, forensic testing, and every similar discipline there should be frequent blind auditing by a neutral third party, and the results should be made available to the public.