Does this describe any of YOUR recent job interviews?
An extremely hysterical entry from Ed Johnson's Hacknot blog, on how (not) to conduct professional job interviews for technology positions.
Ed Johnson's blog Hacknot is a treasure trove of great articles and stories from the trenches of software development. Some fictional, but all truthful. Some hysterical, but all serious. A colleague (thanks, Shawn) sent a link to the most recent blog entry in an email earlier today, but digging deeper into the site I found this: the aptly titled "Interview with the Sociopath".
If you've worked in this business long enough, you have witnessed all the phenomena he describes here, from the disorganized gang of geeks who don't consider it important to meet with you on schedule (cluing you in to what your life would be like working with them), to the smartass whose arcane questions are geared not to find out how much you know but to demonstrate how much he knows (with the end goal of hiring no one because nobody could possibly do his job). This article is must reading before you go on your next job hunt.
- Interview With The Sociopath (from Ed Johnson's Hacknot blog)
I've had a bit of the super obscure trivia type of question, even at the interview for my current job. I find that if you stroke the sociopath's ego at that point by letting them know that you just learned something from them, it can put you in just the right position to get the job and forestall further such questions.
Comment by Misanthropic Scott — September 19, 2007 @ 11:32 am
Or, alternatively, they can react by considering you a smelly ignorant loser for failing to know the deep irrelevant information they only came across because their own bad programming practices resulted in the arcane fact evincing itself, or because they spend all waking (and sleeping) hours that they're not playing World of Warcraft reading tech books and articles on obscure subjects in Dr. J.R. "Bob" Dobbs' Journal of the Subgenius...
Comment by Rich Rosen — September 19, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
Also, you may want to consider asking questions like these on an interview.
Lastly, one of my favorites that my wife got asked on an interview, "You're going to be marooned on a desert isle. You can have three books with you. What three books would you choose?"
Comment by Misanthropic Scott — January 11, 2008 @ 1:03 am
Realize that "Which three books would you have taken?" is the money line at the end of the original movie version of "The Time Machine".
(SPOILER ALERT, if you care: Rod Taylor as the time traveler returns from the future to tell his tale to his friends, but they don't believe him. As his one true friend (played by Alan Young) is leaving his house, he hears the time traveler's machine start up as he goes back to the future. The friend asks the housekeeper if he took anything with him to help him in his quest to fix the future, and she says "nothing... except three books." [She noticed an empty space about three books wide on the bookshelf.] The friend asked her which three books were gone, and she didn't know, asking the friend if it mattered. The friend responded "No, only... which three books would you have taken?" Pretty poignant line from a guy who used to talk to a horse...)
Comment by Rich Rosen — January 16, 2008 @ 2:29 pm