34 ms·

IBM's Asshole Test

683 points by johnpublic 4y ago

goodcjw2 4y ago
This is definitely an interesting test and the motivation is totally valid. But I'm wondering whether I can pass if I don't speak up at all? Or just passively play along?
goatcode 4y ago
What a great way of vetting people who won't complain while working for a shitty company.
bartchamdo 4y ago
All companies should have a test like this
- belval 4y ago
  In the age of "cracking the coding interview", glassdoor, levels.fyi, etc... it would only work a handful of times before everyone is in on the test and true assholes won't expose themselves.
  - stevemadere 4y ago
    Assholes who actually can learn to hide the fact that they are assholes are probably a lot less annoying.
    - monktastic1 4y ago
      Except that they'll only hide it when it helps them. In general this is far more dangerous.
      - isk517 4y ago
        Agreed, the most successful assholes have always been the ones that understood that you can't be a asshole all the time, you need to deploy it at a opportune moment.
        TameAntelope 4y ago
        If you've got an asshole being strategic about when to be an asshole, you actually have a sociopath, because most folks at the point where they know they're being an asshole would just stop.
    - usefulcat 4y ago
      Except that such people typically only hide it during the interview phase. You’ll still find out soon enough after they’ve been hired.
  - antmldr 4y ago
    Having been on the receiving end of this as a candidate (not at IBM), everyone was in on the test in the first 15 seconds, and it changed people's behavior instantly. It's fairly obvious if you're on the receiving end what the purpose of the test is when you're being observed (as with most interview questions, it helps to ask yourself why the interviewer asking me / having me do this?)
    - brimble 4y ago
      Like with those "personality tests" where anyone with decent perception and reading comprehension can easily tell which outcomes each answer's going to push them toward, and so obtain any result they like.
a_shovel 4y ago
I presume this means that the puzzle doesn't actually have a solution. I wonder what kind of information was in the packs.
- johnpublic 4y ago
  It did have a solution. However, the packs all contained different information. Once this information was shared, an individual could solve the puzzle fairly easily. Group dynamics tended to block this though.
ACow_Adonis 4y ago
Am I the only one that finds it slightly amusing that the test also makes sure that the supposed work task/puzzle doesn't actually matter? Perhaps an ironically appropriate test for hiring for a job at many offices/IBM (and exemplifying some of the problems with these bad faith test techniques).
- wmf 4y ago
  Nothing in job interviews matters.
  - mrmattyboy 4y ago
    Next stage of interview: Sign this NDA and fix a couple of issues on our backlog and review a couple of PRs :D
    - wmf 4y ago
      Then people complain about working for free.
  - dudeinjapan 4y ago
    This is true. This past week, I coached a friend who is a new grad on a how to ace an interview. Going in, she was super worried, almost on the verge of tears. The strategy was simple: right from the beginning, ask questions about the company and the interviewer's daily work, e.g. "Can you tell me about what you do?" Act as if every response is super interesting/inspiring, and follow-up with more questions, saying you are really eager to learn, etc. until the time runs out, so that they don't get a chance to ask her anything. She got the job.
tantalor 4y ago
> You see who turns into an asshole under pressure Does this work? How? Isn't that the interesting part here? The fact this test exists is uninteresting.
- Victerius 4y ago
  The post doesn't go into enough detail to be sure, but I think the "asshole" participants fighting for control of the whiteboard assumed that whoever would successfully lead the group to solve the puzzle would receive good marks and have the highest probability of receiving an offer. Furthermore, some companies, or departments/teams within companies, foster a corporate culture where "assholes" are more likely to be promoted. So a group participant who isn't naturally an "asshole" may have taken a risk by behaving like one, gambling on the idea that such traits would be looked upon favorably.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    I don't get it - in the recollection, the person leading at the front wasn't getting anywhere, so someone else stepped in to give it a go. Is that supposed to be an asshole thing to do?
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I didn't really get from reading that who the asshole was supposed to be. Nothing's happening and someone steps up. Doesn't inherently seem like an asshole thing to do. Things still not working and someone else steps up and says "Mind if I give this a shot?" Not inherently asshole either. You can get an everyone tries to take charge situation in these scenarios. But just sitting back and waiting for someone to tell you what to do doesn't seem great either.
    - noselasd 4y ago
      Well the story doesn't tell us who was the 'assholes'. It could be someone up at the whiteboard, or it could be someone yelling at the people that was at the whiteboard.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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Karupan 4y ago
If only companies had this test for all levels, including middle and upper management, given the larger impact a lead/manager has across the org.
- tyingq 4y ago
  If it's during an interview, people tend to not fully be themselves. Even if they don't specifically know it's an "asshole test". So maybe this catches the intersection of "asshole" and "poor situational awareness".
- itronitron 4y ago
  This is one of the reasons I like matrixed organizations as it allows people, over several years, to choose who they work with and encourages leaders/managers to develop effective people and leadership skills. Siloed organizations unfortunately facilitate assholes.
  - jlokier 4y ago
    Don't matrix organisations put you in the stressful position of having two or more bosses, who may disagree about what they are looking to see from you, especially when it comes to evaluating your performance and promotion/fire recommendations? It sounds pretty good to be able to move around in an organisation, but knowing who determines your fate in the short term, and who doesn't, is really important too.
    - itronitron 4y ago
      In my experience, when done well, the manager on the org-chart is primarily a people manager and does the annual performance reviews of staff based on input from the employees' project managers, peers, and/or team leads. If they have additional goals (technical/product/etc.) beyond improving the capability and impact of their group then that can definitely muddy things up for everyone.
- Wohlf 4y ago
  At least at my company this is baked in to the manager review surveys.
mulmen 4y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20220504204525/https://johnpublic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-asshole-test/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220504204525/https://johnpubli...
- johnpublic 4y ago
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  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
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    - evolve2k 4y ago
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  - throwanem 4y ago
    Sticking Cloudflare's free-tier CDN in front of your existing blog will probably help a lot. If nothing else, it'll make a stopgap while you're investigating alternatives.
    - 4y ago
neo_g 4y ago
This sounds so weird, people without any expertise in human psychology are in-charge of a behavior detection exercise. The worst part, those who got in were the new experts in 6-months.
- deleted 4y ago
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- 0x0000000 4y ago
  > those who got in were the new experts in 6-months. Author says they were shadowing, not an expert.
- metadat 4y ago
  It's better than no filtration of assholes at all, which is the industry standard. Do you know if a better plan which scales to companies with hundos of thousands of employees?
- mrmattyboy 4y ago
  I'm not sure it's quite the same as a psychological evaluation ;) I mean, if you had to work in a team with someone.. this sounds like a good way to see how they'd fit in actually working in team under a pressured situation. You're not labelling them as this or that, or necessarily checking for 'hidden indications' that they could have some condition you know nothing about, it's just finding people that fit into the culture that you're looking to fill. I (probably awful) analogy could be, if I go to car boot (garage) sale and find things that are good value (and/or haggle).. I'm not telling the person how much the item's worth, but what price it's worth to me/what I can afford.. I'm not claiming to be a antique evaluator. (Update: Well, I guess I don't _actually_ know they're doing/not doing, but it's my interpretation)
  - veltas 4y ago
    Yeah, just this. It's not a psychology experiment, it's "do I want to work with this person?"
- Victerius 4y ago
WisNorCan 4y ago
I am fairly sure Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk would have failed this test. Are you better off having them at your company or not?
- _moof 4y ago
  Having worked for one of the people in that list, I can say that yes, I am definitely better off not having that person at my company.
  - DaveExeter 4y ago
    Steve? I assume you are talking about Steve. Yeah, that guy had problems.
- philjohn 4y ago
  Depends what you're optimising for - reliable, collaborative workers, or a visionary CEO.
- zenexer 4y ago
  This appears to be for an engineering position. I doubt any of those people would do well in such a position--they're loners, not team players.
- johnpublic 4y ago
  I can't see any of them going for the IBM grad scheme though
- paxys 4y ago
  I can't imagine any of them picking up and implementing boring jira tickets all day, so no they would probably be terrible hires for such a position.
- jackblemming 4y ago
  Shockingly, there's plenty of competent CEOs who aren't assholes, but we don't idolize them because Americans love the idea of the genius asshole.
syngrog66 4y ago
I have a "no jerks" rule too. challenge is to try to spot them early, even before you say yes to an employer/client. its hard to do reliably. but there are less complications early than down the road when they've become one's coworkers or boss because of this I really like to get into casual friendly convos early, with potential bosses or coworkers
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cperciva 4y ago
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 down into his interview notes I wasn't going to pass the interview. (Why interviewers were all transcribing the whiteboard rather than taking photos I have no clue.) Eventually I ran out of time, having written no code on the whiteboard. I asked my interviewer "ok so what is the algorithm for solving this" and he admitted that he had no idea. At the time, I thought he just meant that he had no idea what the solution was; but in hindsight I wonder if the real test was to see if I would crumble under pressure and write code I knew didn't work. (I got a job offer, but turned it down to start Tarsnap instead.)
- cobaltoxide 4y ago
  2006 is ancient history. But also, it's a basic interview technique to explain your thinking out loud.
  - throwaway6532 4y ago
    Yeah, in my experience this is really what it's all about. Thinking out loud helps them assess how you reason through trade-offs, potential ideas you run through, edge cases you catch, at what stage you catch them and how you go about addressing them etc.
    - jkubicek 4y ago
      Thinking out-loud also prevents candidates from going completely off the rails. Maybe they missed an important detail or are solving a different problem than what the interviewer intended. These things happen, better to catch them early in the interview.
  - kragen 4y ago
    Wouldn't that fail unless your thinking is as slow as speech?
matthewmacleod 4y ago
Our team has done something similar to this for quite a while and I think it's been valuable. About ten minutes to read a page of high-level specifications regarding a general proposed system design, then the rest of the hour at a whiteboard (or remote equivalent) with a couple of other team members to sketch out and discuss what the implementation might look like. It's not quite an "asshole test" or a Kobayashi Maru or anything like that – but a general "can you communicate and collaborate effectively with others on a technical topic" test. I guess it does highlight "asshole" personalities sometimes, but I'd say rather than offering a negative signal it tends to more effectively highlight good candidates.
amelius 4y ago
They probably have a similar test at NASA.
- Aachen 4y ago
  Because everyone there is nice or what's the thinking?
- adastra22 4y ago
  They do not. (Source: have worked for NASA.)
snissn 4y ago
"i suggest we have everyone read their own packet, then slide it to the person to the left. Then we can discuss everything once we circle around"
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  That takes exactly the same amount of time as everyone reading out their packet, which the story says didn't scale to the time allowed.
  - solveit 4y ago
    Reading silently is faster than reading out, and also easier and less error-prone than listening.
    - TameAntelope 4y ago
      Yeah but not by much. Also I doubt there was any info in those packets that would have mattered. The whole point of the test was to stump the group.
JJMcJ 4y ago
In Robert Heinlein's early juvenile novel Space Cadet, the applicants are given a device and a set of instructions. The instructions make no sense for the device in question. Assuming this is based on something real life, I suppose it was the same underlying idea. Nobody could complete the instructions. They wanted to see what people did. How do people react to frustration and bad orders? There is plenty of frustration in software work, and a good %age of incomprehensible or incorrect specifications.
- inopinatus 4y ago
  'Sma, believe me; it has not all been "fun".' He leant against a cabinet full of ancient projectile weapons. 'And, worse than all that,' he insisted, 'is when you turn the goddamn maps upside-down.' 'What?' Sma said, puzzled. 'Turning the maps upside down,' he repeated. 'Have you any idea how annoying and inconvenient it is when you get to a place and find that they map the place the other way up compared to the maps you've got? Because of something stupid like some people think a magnetic needle is pointing up to heaven, when other people think it's just heavier and pointing down? Or because it's done according to the galactic plane or something? I mean, this might sound trivial, but it's very upsetting.' 'Zakalwe, I had no idea. Let me offer you my apologies and those of the entire Special Circumstances Section; no, all of Contact; no: the entire Culture; no: all intelligent species.' 'Sma, you remorseless bitch, I'm trying to be serious.' 'No, I don't think you are. Maps...' 'But it's true! They turn them the wrong way up!' 'Then there must,' Diziet Sma said, 'be a reason for it.' 'What?' he demanded. 'Psychology,' Sma and the drone said at the same time. —— Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks, London: Orbit, 1990
- tkgally 4y ago
  I was reminded of Space Cadet, too. Reading that passage again (for the first time in fifty years), I see that there were at least two tests with hidden purposes. One is a simple task where the test-taker could easily cheat if he wanted to. (Our hero doesn’t.) In the next, the test-taker is asked to solve a puzzle with complex rules, and the purpose is to measure how long it takes him to figure out that there is no possible solution. Our hero doesn’t notice the hidden purpose of either test, while most readers probably do. It’s a clever narrative device for a novel aimed at clever young people. The text of that passage is below. Search for “beans”. https://raheinlein.wordpress.com/novels/space-cadet/ https://raheinlein.wordpress.com/novels/space-cadet/
eej71 4y ago
Decades ago, in the days before uber, my employer would fly in candidates from college campuses as part of an onsite interview. The candidate would fly in the night before and we relied on a taxi service to bring the candidate to the hotel. Then in the morning the same service would bring them to the onsite and of course bring them back to the airport at the end. It was a whole curated process. Little did the candidate know - we knew the driver quite well and he knew many people in the firm. More than once there would be a candidate who thought they could be rude and disrespectful to the taxi driver because ... you know... its just an immigrant taxi driver with a distinctive accent. Oops! Cost them an offer. But just as well. Avoided some arrogant jerks in the process.
- deleted 4y ago
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- cmckn 4y ago
  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 the hiring process inconsistent and discriminatory. If a person's behavior would hinder their ability to do the job, then that's worth a rejection; but "rudeness" is a very subjective thing. edit: to clarify, I'm talking about behavior that could be interpreted in different ways by different people. If you tell a driver to fuck off, yeah; I don't want to hire you or work with you. The parent gave no example of the behavior they'd reject a candidate for, and I assume it'd be reasonable; my point is just that this kind of thing is hard to do right and I'd avoid it.
  - yodon 4y ago
    Your character is defined by who you are and how you behave when you think no one is watching you.
    - 4y ago
unsignednoop 4y ago
Just want to point out that exam (2009) is a great movie and everybody should watch it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1258197/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1258197/
maxtollenaar 4y ago
Wharton MBA has this Team-based Discussion (TBD) as a part of their application process. From what I hear, it is to weed out Asshole type of personality. In regard to how effective the method is, I'm not 100% convinced.
- throwaway6532 4y ago
  Kind of makes you wonder where all the assholes work?
  - dinom 4y ago
    Hmm... that's an interesting question. Could it be that groupthink turns the whole idea on it's head and such a process would just end up hiring nice but mediocre people? They say Steve Jobs could be a giant a$$hole at times. I've also heard that George Patton wasn't always a particularly lovable guy. Ultimately all people have shortcomings and so mining their gifts comes with a cost. I'm not strictly trying to make excuses for anti-social behavior here but being able to understand, empathize and forgive must go hand in hand.
    - npteljes 4y ago
      >just end up hiring nice but mediocre people I think a company can scale better with nice mediocre employees, rather than hardworking assholes. Hugely dependent on domain of course, some are more technical than others, and there are other factors too. But if no specialist talent is needed, I think a company is better off with okay but nice talent. The individual niceness will translate into productive communication, which sets a healthy atmosphere, which leads to less stress, lower employee turnover, and in general a less problematic team and workplace in general.
dfee 4y ago
How about the inverse, though? I'd love to identify which management teams set unrealistic deadlines to play mind games.
brianmcc 4y ago
Enjoyed the story but I am dreading "the group test" becoming the new why-are-manhole-covers-round cargo cult nonsense :-)
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  Just wait until people figure out that group composition can also affect whether people appear to be assholes, apathetic, etc. The wrong grouping will give even the most otherwise-perfect wallpower the permission and impetus to speak up and completely torch their opportunity. On top of that, one evaluator in the right/wrong evaluation group can change the very definition of asshole on the spot and get group buy-in, given specific group composition. To me a big part of the issue is that it's one test for one property, in one group configuration, by one evaluation group configuration...one might say it's _singularly_ disappointing to hear about that aspect. One would hope a technology company could see the value in more scientific testing principles at least at a basic level? Hope my straw goggles are on, showing me straw-structures in straw-corporations.
dvtrn 4y ago
I would probably fail this test as someone who has been accused before in professional settings of being an 'asshole' due to my speaking method. When the reality is far far less interesting: the combination of a pathological speech condition (which I covered up early as a child by mumbling a lot and thus picked up some bad enunciation habits), and inheriting a deep voice historically made me come off as bored and disinterested when really...I just have one of those voices that doesn't come across as exactly.... 'animated' when it hits your ears for the first time. In fact...think Shaquille O'Neil and you're pretty close to how it sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROPsn3O6JAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROPsn3O6JAw
- johnnyanmac 4y ago
  >I just have one of those voices that doesn't come across as exactly.... 'animated' when it hits your ears for the first time. ahh yes, the vocal analog of "resting bitch face". A true shame. Those quirks are unfortunate. I have a tendency to laugh when nervous and I've had some situations where I was interpreted as being inappropriate to some solemn situations.
draw_down 4y ago
conorh 4y ago
Many years ago when applying for a somewhat similar program at another big company I went through something similar. Bunch of us in a room with a difficult to solve problem, not enough time, and at the end we had to do a group presentation on our solution. I don't know if it was exactly an asshole test, it was also to see how people worked in a group generally. Even if it is somewhat artificial people's personalities quickly became apparent. I really enjoyed it :)
- throwaway6532 4y ago
  I've evaluated one of these group exercises for a grad program before. One thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was out of the four individuals there was one guy that continually derailed the group, and there was another guy who even though the other guy was always derailing things still showed courtesy towards him and listened to his opinions. The other two guys were both reasonable and I liked them too, but the guy whom I both liked and who showed courtesy to an individual I would describe as "difficult" was one of the ones we wound up hiring. He got glowing reviews from pretty much every assessor and went on to become a great colleague to work with. I think any of those three out of the four people would have been fine hires, and the other guy was a strong no-hire.
crate_barre 4y ago
That’s one way to look at it. The other way is to determine confidence. Either way, these are character traits and filtering for one or the other is unfortunate. Teams should mimic villages, everyone is there. Everyone. The shy, the arrogant, the nice, etc. There will be flawed people in a village, but that is a village. Not utopia.
steve76 4y ago
kuroguro 4y ago
Couldn't it backfire if there were people who were not that keen on getting the job and thus wouldn't be under much pressure?
david-gpu 4y ago
Oh, so _that_ is what the test was about? In 2006 I went to a "new grads hiring day" at a large company, and one of the steps looked just like this, except I think we were divided in groups of eight. My team solved the problem at the last second and we all passed to the next round.
bradlys 4y ago
Really wonder if this actually worked. I don’t think we even care in this day and age with hiring if someone is an asshole. Most of the companies I’ve worked at have had many of them in various forms. (Or just simply - not pleasant people) It’s trivial to fake in any interview format.
todd8 4y ago
My interview for IBM back in the 1980s went well, and I got the job as a software architect. I don’t remember much about the interview; it must not have been stressful. The strange thing for me was a weird day of interaction with a group of around 30 other new hires. We were divided into teams and had to work together to solve problems, etc. I always suspected that we were not being trained but instead graded on some sort of scale by those leading the exercises. I worked at IBM for 5 years and never discovered what that was about.
jonas21 4y ago
This is generally called a "stress interview" and, as I understand it, they used to be more common decades ago. These days, I think it would be considered wrong to deceive candidates or to purposefully increase their level of stress (at least when interviewing for a normal desk job). If someone were to try this today, the only thing it would prove is that the interviewer is an asshole.
slg 4y ago
Honestly I see two asshole tests here. Some of the candidates failed the first one. IBM failed the other. This type of dishonest and unnecessarily stressful approach tells me that I probably don't want to be working there. Even just professing that a candidate needs to work well under stress is somewhat of a red flag. Why are your employees under so much stress? I am software developer not a trauma surgeon. If I am under regular stress, that is a failure in management of my employer.
- conorcleary 4y ago
  Well how does one become part of management?
  - deleted 4y ago
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- TameAntelope 4y ago
  Meh, I definitely want to filter out people who can't handle situations like this, because honestly they come up all the time. Uncertainty in ownership, data not matching up, clarity lacking; how people behave in these scenarios is basically how they'll behave at their job. I don't think it's an "asshole" behavior to induce stress during an interview and observe results. What else are you supposed to do?
  - slg 4y ago
    It isn't just inducing stress that tells me they are an asshole. Interviews are inherently stressful, there is little need to intentionally add extra stress on top. The dishonesty is also a problem. Interviews are a two-way street. The first impression this gives candidates is that their employer will think nothing of lying to their face and employees will so regularly be under stress that handling stress well is one of the traits they find most important. No thanks.
    - TameAntelope 4y ago
      Agreed! I would only want to work with people for whom this test isn't a big deal. No thanks indeed.
dkarl 4y ago
It's funny, the way we used to do coding interviews was to systematically ramp up the difficulty of the problem until the candidate struggled. The reasoning was that with easy problems, a lot of candidates could just write the solution on the whiteboard. You don't learn much about a candidate that way. But if you give them a problem they have to think about, and ask them to think out loud, you learn what problem-solving techniques they have at their disposal. Do they break down the input set into different cases, do they solve an easier version of the problem first, etc. If their code has a bug, can they pick an input that triggers the bug and walk through it step by step. We did hear "in real life I would probably need to get help with this" sometimes, and we counted that as a positive: the candidates shows self-awareness and resourcefulness. And most importantly, do they turn into an asshole when they don't know the answer? We saw this surprisingly often. Some people got angry and directed it towards us. Some people tried to bluff us into thinking that their solution was correct. Nobody ever walked out on us, but I've heard of that happening. All we wanted was to screen out people who turn into assholes when they don't have all the answers, and to give bonus points to people who had strategies for attacking a problem that was too hard to solve in their head in two minutes. Sheer cleverness was not high up on our requirements list (we needed a certain number of people who were clever at algorithms and such, but we didn't need everybody to be like that) so candidates that got stuck on a weaker version of the problem but attacked it with grace and resourcefulness often came out as more desirable than candidates that got to a harder version but responded badly when they struggled. I wish we could still interview people like that.
- m463 4y ago
  I had a set of problems increasing in difficulty. Most candidates only solved (or had seen) one or two, but some sailed past those to increasing difficulty problems.
- IggleSniggle 4y ago
  Why can’t you?
  - dzdt 4y ago
    Not the OP, but lots of places have HR-mandated uniformity of interview questions to try to avoid some sorts of bias.
victor106 4y ago
Simon Sinek explains this well here https://youtu.be/kJdXjtSnZTI https://youtu.be/kJdXjtSnZTI
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inopinatus 4y ago
When I interviewed with AWS, half the loop interviews were with remote staff. I was shown to a videoconferencing room and asked to wait. There was a pile of VC equipment but it wasn't connected. With five minutes before we were due to start, I decided this was part of the interview and plugged stuff in myself, powered it on, and clicked through some boot-time screens, guessing at the right inputs. A few minutes later a call came in and the interviews themselves proceeded normally. To this day I still don't know if it was a test.
- angarg12 4y ago
  No it wasn't. Source: I conducted +400 interviews for Amazon. We don't do weird or obscure tests. Your recruiter will explicitly tell you what to expect. It sounds like a mistake.
  - inopinatus 4y ago
    The second part of the story is I got hired, but not for the job I was going for. Instead, they asked me to manage the whole team. Note that this was in 2014 and outside of the US, so our experiences may vary. As a hiring manager at AWS I conducted similarly many interviews, and can speak to a few things. Firstly, there was plenty of latitude for me to include additional factors in the process, as long as the core elements were present (screening + loop + bar raiser). Recruiters weren't always wonderful at candidate communication, especially when going beyond that baseline. Other HMs certainly included variations and additional steps, so this would not have been without precedent. Finally, this particular team were largely former CTOs and tech CEOs/founders, so there was a relatively high degree of eccentricity and wilfulness present; several of my loop interviews were with these particularly unruly ICs†. So I could not so confidently rule it a mistake. —— † Rather memorably, after a solid meeting of minds over the topic of establishing robust SRE practices within public-sector institutions, one such interviewer ran out of the meeting room to fetch me a copy of his favourite book on the topic. This is the only time I received a book for free from Amazon.
    - angarg12 4y ago
tonnydourado 4y ago
Something about this doesn't sit right with me, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on it. When I go to a job interview I expect to be asked honest questions and intend to give honest answers. You want me to do a team activity? Ok, fair. You're giving me and a bunch of people a problem you *know* we can't solve, just to watch us panic? That. That just feels wrong. I am a strong opponent of the "in this company we're like a family" discourse, but I also like to work for people that I don't dislike. If this is an asshole detection test, I'm afraid I just detected the company.
UUID_KING 4y ago
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I like working with a broad range of personality types. Certain kinds of behavior are not useful in the workplace. I like the idea of this test, but I think it is just one test of many that should be evaluated along with others. Some engineers and leaders thrive on flipping situations that they find initially frustrating into opportunities. They might appear grumpy for a moment and then elated the next after flipping their frustration into an opportunity. If we made a filter, that filtered out all grumpy interview candidates, what would be gained and what would be lost? Is this inclusive?
davesque 4y ago
I hear this and can't help but think IBM ended up with a bunch of "yes" men and women that wouldn't react appropriately to a bad situation. Given the performance of the company, I would guess I'm right.
soheil 4y ago
This is a problem of active vs passive communication. I can think of 100's of other personal behaviors that would be worse or just as bad as being an asshole. Passive aggressive behavior, secretly taking credit for someone's work, backstabbing and rallying others against someone in review cycles, ... The fact that being an asshole gets so much attention may be a symptom of the problems people are trying to root cause and are converging on an incorrect cause. ie. chances are that you're not having the issues you're having in your org because people are being assholes, but because they're incompetent, smile in your face and sabotage you later, cozy up to the boss to get promoted or a multitude of other shitty attitudes that often go under the radar.
- IggleSniggle 4y ago
  THANK YOU. I happen to be a bit of a conniving Machiavellian dickhead but I married a brilliant principled asshole. It really fundamentally grinds my gears that her principled devotion to doing what is right and what is best for all parties, even if unpopular (ie, an asshole), frequently results in her “losing” in a plethora of ways to the manipulative cunts like myself. Not that she would see it that way. Because she’s a principled asshole.
davidhyde 4y ago
IBM probably had too many assholes working for them during world war II, hence the test. Their role in helping the nazis should not be forgotten. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
ebrewste 4y ago
We used to have a very basic C whiteboard test for junior devs. Super simple "find the bugs" test. The best technical performance I ever saw was a guy that walked up to the board, swiped with the marker to mark the bugs like he was swatting flies (found every bug correctly). He finished the test in maybe 10 seconds, where typical was five minutes or more. He sat down in a huff. I didn't know we had an asshole test until that moment. I thanked him for coming in and showed him out. I'm so glad I never had to work with him.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- user_7832 4y ago
  This vaguely reminds me of somebody I know who's also pretty smart, but socially extremely odd to the point of being rude/insensitive. Though I'm pretty sure the person I know is on the spectrum and likely doesn't realize/mean it.
- abigail95 4y ago
  how can you possibly know how effective someone is to work with after 10 seconds and watching them sit down? what kind of confidence interval can you assign to this test?
  - chmod775 4y ago
    It's not how about effective it is, but how pleasant. Money quote is "He sat down in a huff."
- maccolgan 4y ago
  Are you looking for a coworker or a date?
zcw100 4y ago
It sounds nice and makes a great story until you see all the exceptions being made. “He was a jerk but he did go to MIT”, “he was a jerk but his father is good friends with the CEO”, “he was a jerk but I’m a jerk and he reminds me of myself” but it won’t be that honest it will be more like “ he wasn’t a jerk he is just a natural leader and it was everyone else’s fault for not recognizing that and falling in line”
rib3ye 4y ago
Well here's the asshole response: this explains why they can't make anything cool.
bnallp 4y ago
So IBM wants redpilled Machiavellians who "keep frame" under pressure, but once hired will politely grab power, backstab and intrigue against colleagues. Open face, closed thoughts.
spanktheuser 4y ago
I don't have an asshole test, but I do have a collaboration test I use when hiring for design or product roles. I match the candidate with the hiring manager and two peers. And essentially mimic the rapid sketching exercise from a design sprint for a very simple and broadly understood feature. For example: editing tweets. I'm less interested in the quality of the candidates work than how they work. Are the comfortable working out in the open? How do they accept feedback? Are they generous with their own criticism and praise? Will they iterate on ideas they didn't originate? Will they react well to someone else incorporating their best idea into their own designs? I'll also produce a few concepts that are flat out terrible and see how their feedback changes when coming from a supervisor. Of all the interview techniques I've used over the years, this had been the most predictive and the best recruiting tool. When the right candidate is in there with us we all end up having a great time.
- D-Coder 4y ago
  Somehow this doesn't match your username.
neilv 4y ago
Like seeing whether a first date is rude to the waiter, or the Bronx Tale car door test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJdqzRM6Dw?t=55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJdqzRM6Dw?t=55s
sys_64738 4y ago
The person with the marker controls the conversation. That’s why Steve always had the market.
tastysandwich 4y ago
One of my first grad interviews was at a large bank. They had one big interview day, where dozens of people were invited and herded into a big room together. They had several smaller rooms where different stages of the interview process were conducted. Your name would be called along with the room number and you'd nervously walk on in. Then you'd come out, waiting for the next interview. One was technical, and I think others were more around culture fit? I was so so so nervous. The final part was a big group task. About 10 of you sat around a table in a big room. Then in the room sitting & watching were a bunch of people in suits (psychologists maybe? HR people?) watching you and taking notes. You were then given one sheet of paper to share with the group outlining some "problem". I can't quite remember what it was, but it wasn't technical, and it wasn't a logic puzzle. Maybe solving some global problem? Anyway, I was soooooooo nervous, I thought "I know, I'll try to show my leadership skills!" I quickly grabbed the piece of paper and blurted "Ok guys, what do we think!" I must have sounded like a maniac. One of the other candidates shot me down immediately with some sarcastic comment, and it was all over for me haha! I tried my best to be calm and productive but I was done like a dinner. Lesson learnt! In retrospect I'm really glad I didn't get that job. Smaller companies have worked way better for me and my personality.
zeruch 4y ago
Having worked with several people from IBM over the last 20 years...some faked their way through that test.
CountHackulus 4y ago
As someone who worked at IBM for 6 years, I'm fairly sure no one in management above me had to go through that asshole test.
- voakbasda 4y ago
  I’d guess that they did… and they were the assholes.
HNHatesUsers 4y ago
zw123456 4y ago
OMG, PTSD is kicking in for me here. I was in a similar program way way back in the 1970's early 1980's with Ma Bell. I was working at Bell Labs after getting my Masters in EE and they put me in what they called the JET program (Junior Executive Training). First off, I never wanted to be an Executive, whatever that is. I wanted to do research, but when you are young and right out of school and they hit you with that you don't say no. So I went with the flow. They flew us around the country and we would be put in all these similar goofy psychologist designed situations. They even told us that they had hired PhD's in psychology and they where trying to figure out what makes a good Executive. I recall them giving us the Rorschach test and for fun I would say crazy stuff like, that looks like the nucleus of an atom when you are supposed to, obviously say, that looks like a butterfly, but fuck them, ya, it looks like a butterfly but for all we know that is what the nucleus of an atom looks like, or a super nova nebula, whatever. These psychologists followed us around for 25 years and eventually wrote a book about us "guinea pigs". I have a copy of this book and I can clearly see me in it, I am that asshole, no question about that. Their brilliant conclusion was that people with very high IQ's (I guess they said I had scored "off the charts" on IQ, whatever the fuck that actually means). So, OK, I am too smart to be an executive is what they concluded. But they never asked me if I gave a shit about being an Executive and maybe I was just fucking with them. Anyhow, it was funny, and I got to travel all over the country on their dime and half the people in this thing just slept with each other and crap. Maybe that is the real test of Exec material ? hahahaha.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  What were the qualities need for an executive then?
  - zw123456 4y ago
    Beats the heck out of me. You tell me, Like I said, I am not sure I know what that even is TBH.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      I wasn't alive when the telecom dinosaurs roamed the planet. So I'm about as clueless. Was the study you were a part of ever printed somewhere, like the HBR or WSJ?
beefman 4y ago
I have a term for people who administer tests designed to classify people as either assholes or non-assholes: assholes.
synicalx 4y ago
That title was my risky click of the day. But I feel like there's a bit of a flaw in their logic here; the kind of stress you feel when interviewing, competitively I might add, for what I can only assume is a prestigious position is going to be 100% different to the stress you'd face in that role day to day. So the reactions you observe in a weird test like this are probably only vaguely representative of how the candidates ACTUALLY behave day to day. I'll happily change my mind if there's some research to back this up, but I have the strongest feeling this is just something a manager has dreamt up based on a hunch.
more_corn 4y ago
We had a candidate once who was super smart, it was a role we really needed filled. His level of knowledge exceeded mine on every area I asked (not a high bar, but it meant he got full marks on every one of my questions). But he was insufferable. (Blamey, exaggerating, interrupting, bitter). In the hiring committee everyone rated his knowledge tops. Everyone also said “but I’d never want to work with him” He had interviewed with our parent company before. He asked why he hadn’t been selected the previous time “was it because I asked about the secret locations of data centers?” I said “I assure you it wasn’t that” we ended up not hiring him and leaving the role unfilled. Some employees are not better than nothing. Think about that for a second. We chose to have nothing than hire an asshole.
ahmetyas01 4y ago
I came here to read the comments and figure out who the asshole is.
HackOfAllTrades 4y ago
I think of these as a "Star Trek" test. You know: Wesley is confronted with "his deepest fear" during entrance exams for Star Fleet, Counselor Troi can't pass a holodeck test for "command responsibilities" until she's willing to order Jordi to do a suicide repair. I'm sure there were others. The common theme is supposed to be that the obvious test is a fake and they're really testing for something else. They're all bullshit. Every single one of them falls apart as soon as people start talking about them with each other, not to mention they're just begging to be abused by the testing authority, or entice corruption.
LanceH 4y ago
Testing for misrepresented goals. Right in line with some companies.
thomasjudge 4y ago
I'm surprised no one's referenced this yet: http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html
erikerikson 4y ago
I've read a lot of these comments and it honestly seems like many people here have failed the HN version of this test while helping me understand why I've failed so many interviews... People have written about: * lying to, tricking, and misleading candidates * making problems harder and harder or exerting pressure to observe behavior under duress * forcing people to socialize in a mentally open state with someone that is actively manipulating them and deciding their fate What kind of work places were they finding candidates for? Why not simulate the actual position that needs filled? Why not just get to know the candidate and treat them like a pairing partner? In the job you do the job. In the interview you ask if the candidate can do the job. You shouldn't set up an adversarial environment unless you want to create one, it's far healthier to see where they shine and discover their passions and interests. Figure out what lights them up about the role because that's what they're going to do best and that's going to be what engages them in the role and helps them contribute to an awesome workplace. Remember that you may be evaluating candidates but they are evaluating you too.
- Tepix 4y ago
  The work environment may be stressful at times, it's very valuable for the employer to know how a candidate will behave in these situations, don't you agree?
  - rendall 4y ago
    > The work environment may be stressful at times... If you're talking about SWE or adjacent, why?
    - isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
      You need to talk with people and come up to an agreement, in situations like that conflict is inevitable.
- dkarl 4y ago
  I think stress is a normal part of life. Too much stress is harmful, but too little stress is like living in zero gravity: we aren't built for it, and we start to deteriorate. But suppose you disagree. Let's think about it differently: maybe stress isn't inevitable at work, but being faced with a problem that you can't easily solve is. A candidate needs to be able to deal with that situation, so it's fair to expose them to it in an interview. If they feel a certain amount of stress in that situation, then they need to cope with that amount of stress without being paralyzed by it, and without taking it out on the people around them. If a candidate experiences an unhealthy amount of stress when faced with a situation that is a normal part of the job duties, maybe it's not the right job for them.
ngcc_hk 4y ago
No trick it out like some Star Trek captain facing death story I guessed. No one hacked the system. How to handle failure and group behaviour is one of key … you can see sone very strange bevahiour reported. Like a professor turned into communist mode and asked why not arrested her senior, when she tried to fake her age. People went crazy under pressure.
chris_wot 4y ago
So it looks like that all the assholes actually were immediately promoted to management positions, everyone else became a worker.
freetanga 4y ago
The other group goes to the Sales team. I have no proof, but after dealing with them for 25 years, I have no doubt.
noduerme 4y ago
Sounds more like a way to make sure to hire meek submissives who won't question the way things are normally done. There was a reason Apple's entire marketing strategy in the 80s took aim directly at IBM.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Questioning, and by extension confronting is not being an asshole. Assertive communication is the topic that deals with this.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If confronting isn't being an asshole, then what is this test supposed to measure? The original post doesn't explain who's considered an asshole at the end of the test. In fact, the whole point is that the test is opaque - the assholes are whoever someone at IBM subjectively doesn't want to hire. So who passes or fails the whiteboard test, and why? If it was as simple as "whoever takes over the dry-erase marker from the first person is an asshole", then they'd be ridding themselves of anyone who questioned authority. Therefore, what's the difference between this and any other test which tried to bar entry to anyone who'd introduce new ideas to a stagnant corporate culture?
PostThisTooFast 4y ago
twirlock 4y ago
tlholaday 4y ago
Request: a tables-turned test, usable for candidates to filter asshole employers.
greyhair 4y ago
I had an interview at a startup years ago (got the job) that was grueling, about six hours total, you met with six different teams of three people, from different disciplines across the company. It was sort of a good cop/bad cop thing. Not to aggressive, but just seeing if you were willing to admit you didn't know when you were asked a questions you didn't know (and there were lots I didn't know) and how you reacted in the situation. Some people don't handle 'not knowing', and try to BS their way through. Then, some are apologetic when they get called out, and some dig in. If you fell into that last group, you were not getting a job. If you fell into the second group, it was more of a sliding scale. Did you attempt to BS your way through multiple times across the multiple teams? Or did you realize, the first time you got called out, that it wouldn't work.
Leherenn 4y ago
To get into the national airline pilot training program in France, there is something similar. You're then debriefed by a psychologist. In that case it's not just about not being an asshole, but also about being able to speak up when required, and so on.
euroderf 4y ago
Always go to lunch, whichever side of the interview you're on. Preferably a place with table service - could even be a diner. How does your counterpart treat service staff ?
dakial1 4y ago
Here in Brazil HR has a similar setup of group tests that they call "Group Dynamics". They would give a task and let the group figure by itself how to solve it. After some experience with it I figured out that it wasn't the task or who had more "mic time", but who would show leadership skills that mattered. As usually everyone wanted to talk, what I did was just to orchestrate who said what, making no point on the matter, just controlling the turns and asking "what do you think about Anne's point Dave?". Worked like a charm.

683 points by johnpublic 4y ago

This is definitely an interesting test and the motivation is totally valid. But I'm wondering whether I can pass if I don't speak up at all? Or just passively play along?

goatcode 4y ago

What a great way of vetting people who won't complain while working for a shitty company.

bartchamdo 4y ago

All companies should have a test like this

belval 4y ago
In the age of "cracking the coding interview", glassdoor, levels.fyi, etc... it would only work a handful of times before everyone is in on the test and true assholes won't expose themselves.
- stevemadere 4y ago
  Assholes who actually can learn to hide the fact that they are assholes are probably a lot less annoying.
  - monktastic1 4y ago
    Except that they'll only hide it when it helps them. In general this is far more dangerous.
    - isk517 4y ago
      Agreed, the most successful assholes have always been the ones that understood that you can't be a asshole all the time, you need to deploy it at a opportune moment.
      - TameAntelope 4y ago
        If you've got an asshole being strategic about when to be an asshole, you actually have a sociopath, because most folks at the point where they know they're being an asshole would just stop.
  - usefulcat 4y ago
    Except that such people typically only hide it during the interview phase. You’ll still find out soon enough after they’ve been hired.
- antmldr 4y ago
  Having been on the receiving end of this as a candidate (not at IBM), everyone was in on the test in the first 15 seconds, and it changed people's behavior instantly. It's fairly obvious if you're on the receiving end what the purpose of the test is when you're being observed (as with most interview questions, it helps to ask yourself why the interviewer asking me / having me do this?)
  - brimble 4y ago
    Like with those "personality tests" where anyone with decent perception and reading comprehension can easily tell which outcomes each answer's going to push them toward, and so obtain any result they like.

a_shovel 4y ago

I presume this means that the puzzle doesn't actually have a solution. I wonder what kind of information was in the packs.

johnpublic 4y ago
It did have a solution. However, the packs all contained different information. Once this information was shared, an individual could solve the puzzle fairly easily. Group dynamics tended to block this though.

ACow_Adonis 4y ago

Am I the only one that finds it slightly amusing that the test also makes sure that the supposed work task/puzzle doesn't actually matter? Perhaps an ironically appropriate test for hiring for a job at many offices/IBM (and exemplifying some of the problems with these bad faith test techniques).

wmf 4y ago
Nothing in job interviews matters.
- mrmattyboy 4y ago
  Next stage of interview: Sign this NDA and fix a couple of issues on our backlog and review a couple of PRs :D
  - wmf 4y ago
    Then people complain about working for free.
- dudeinjapan 4y ago
  This is true. This past week, I coached a friend who is a new grad on a how to ace an interview. Going in, she was super worried, almost on the verge of tears. The strategy was simple: right from the beginning, ask questions about the company and the interviewer's daily work, e.g. "Can you tell me about what you do?" Act as if every response is super interesting/inspiring, and follow-up with more questions, saying you are really eager to learn, etc. until the time runs out, so that they don't get a chance to ask her anything. She got the job.

tantalor 4y ago

> You see who turns into an asshole under pressure Does this work? How? Isn't that the interesting part here? The fact this test exists is uninteresting.

Victerius 4y ago
The post doesn't go into enough detail to be sure, but I think the "asshole" participants fighting for control of the whiteboard assumed that whoever would successfully lead the group to solve the puzzle would receive good marks and have the highest probability of receiving an offer. Furthermore, some companies, or departments/teams within companies, foster a corporate culture where "assholes" are more likely to be promoted. So a group participant who isn't naturally an "asshole" may have taken a risk by behaving like one, gambling on the idea that such traits would be looked upon favorably.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  I don't get it - in the recollection, the person leading at the front wasn't getting anywhere, so someone else stepped in to give it a go. Is that supposed to be an asshole thing to do?
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I didn't really get from reading that who the asshole was supposed to be. Nothing's happening and someone steps up. Doesn't inherently seem like an asshole thing to do. Things still not working and someone else steps up and says "Mind if I give this a shot?" Not inherently asshole either. You can get an everyone tries to take charge situation in these scenarios. But just sitting back and waiting for someone to tell you what to do doesn't seem great either.
  - noselasd 4y ago
    Well the story doesn't tell us who was the 'assholes'. It could be someone up at the whiteboard, or it could be someone yelling at the people that was at the whiteboard.
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Karupan 4y ago

If only companies had this test for all levels, including middle and upper management, given the larger impact a lead/manager has across the org.

tyingq 4y ago
If it's during an interview, people tend to not fully be themselves. Even if they don't specifically know it's an "asshole test". So maybe this catches the intersection of "asshole" and "poor situational awareness".
itronitron 4y ago
This is one of the reasons I like matrixed organizations as it allows people, over several years, to choose who they work with and encourages leaders/managers to develop effective people and leadership skills. Siloed organizations unfortunately facilitate assholes.
- jlokier 4y ago
  Don't matrix organisations put you in the stressful position of having two or more bosses, who may disagree about what they are looking to see from you, especially when it comes to evaluating your performance and promotion/fire recommendations? It sounds pretty good to be able to move around in an organisation, but knowing who determines your fate in the short term, and who doesn't, is really important too.
  - itronitron 4y ago
    In my experience, when done well, the manager on the org-chart is primarily a people manager and does the annual performance reviews of staff based on input from the employees' project managers, peers, and/or team leads. If they have additional goals (technical/product/etc.) beyond improving the capability and impact of their group then that can definitely muddy things up for everyone.
Wohlf 4y ago
At least at my company this is baked in to the manager review surveys.

mulmen 4y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220504204525/https://johnpublic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-asshole-test/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220504204525/https://johnpubli...

johnpublic 4y ago
Pity my blog died so quickly! Can anyone recommend a more robust host? Ideally one with low set up effort.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  wordpress.com? i mean, that's their core business, right?
- jchw 4y ago
  Fly.io can host instances of whatever (any kind of Docker container, so Ghost and Wordpress aren’t hard) and has a good free tier. You can also use Netlify or GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages for free static hosting, if you don’t need anything special. Wordpress.com is pretty low effort. I think all of these can do custom domains in their free tier.
  - evolve2k 4y ago
    I’m a big fan of Netlify and Gifhub pages, finding 11ty was a huge win: https://www.11ty.dev/ https://www.11ty.dev/ Netlify offer a version of 11ty that includes a hosted CMS editing tool and it’s all hosted for free for basic access. Use this as the Netlify CMS optimised version of 11ty as your starter: https://www.netlifycms.org/ https://www.netlifycms.org/
- throwanem 4y ago
  Sticking Cloudflare's free-tier CDN in front of your existing blog will probably help a lot. If nothing else, it'll make a stopgap while you're investigating alternatives.
  - 4y ago

neo_g 4y ago

This sounds so weird, people without any expertise in human psychology are in-charge of a behavior detection exercise. The worst part, those who got in were the new experts in 6-months.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
0x0000000 4y ago
> those who got in were the new experts in 6-months. Author says they were shadowing, not an expert.
metadat 4y ago
It's better than no filtration of assholes at all, which is the industry standard. Do you know if a better plan which scales to companies with hundos of thousands of employees?
mrmattyboy 4y ago
I'm not sure it's quite the same as a psychological evaluation ;) I mean, if you had to work in a team with someone.. this sounds like a good way to see how they'd fit in actually working in team under a pressured situation. You're not labelling them as this or that, or necessarily checking for 'hidden indications' that they could have some condition you know nothing about, it's just finding people that fit into the culture that you're looking to fill. I (probably awful) analogy could be, if I go to car boot (garage) sale and find things that are good value (and/or haggle).. I'm not telling the person how much the item's worth, but what price it's worth to me/what I can afford.. I'm not claiming to be a antique evaluator. (Update: Well, I guess I don't _actually_ know they're doing/not doing, but it's my interpretation)
- veltas 4y ago
  Yeah, just this. It's not a psychology experiment, it's "do I want to work with this person?"
Victerius 4y ago

WisNorCan 4y ago

I am fairly sure Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos & Elon Musk would have failed this test. Are you better off having them at your company or not?

_moof 4y ago
Having worked for one of the people in that list, I can say that yes, I am definitely better off not having that person at my company.
- DaveExeter 4y ago
  Steve? I assume you are talking about Steve. Yeah, that guy had problems.
philjohn 4y ago
Depends what you're optimising for - reliable, collaborative workers, or a visionary CEO.
zenexer 4y ago
This appears to be for an engineering position. I doubt any of those people would do well in such a position--they're loners, not team players.
johnpublic 4y ago
I can't see any of them going for the IBM grad scheme though
paxys 4y ago
I can't imagine any of them picking up and implementing boring jira tickets all day, so no they would probably be terrible hires for such a position.
jackblemming 4y ago
Shockingly, there's plenty of competent CEOs who aren't assholes, but we don't idolize them because Americans love the idea of the genius asshole.

syngrog66 4y ago

I have a "no jerks" rule too. challenge is to try to spot them early, even before you say yes to an employer/client. its hard to do reliably. but there are less complications early than down the road when they've become one's coworkers or boss because of this I really like to get into casual friendly convos early, with potential bosses or coworkers

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cperciva 4y ago

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 down into his interview notes I wasn't going to pass the interview. (Why interviewers were all transcribing the whiteboard rather than taking photos I have no clue.) Eventually I ran out of time, having written no code on the whiteboard. I asked my interviewer "ok so what is the algorithm for solving this" and he admitted that he had no idea. At the time, I thought he just meant that he had no idea what the solution was; but in hindsight I wonder if the real test was to see if I would crumble under pressure and write code I knew didn't work. (I got a job offer, but turned it down to start Tarsnap instead.)

cobaltoxide 4y ago
2006 is ancient history. But also, it's a basic interview technique to explain your thinking out loud.
- throwaway6532 4y ago
  Yeah, in my experience this is really what it's all about. Thinking out loud helps them assess how you reason through trade-offs, potential ideas you run through, edge cases you catch, at what stage you catch them and how you go about addressing them etc.
  - jkubicek 4y ago
    Thinking out-loud also prevents candidates from going completely off the rails. Maybe they missed an important detail or are solving a different problem than what the interviewer intended. These things happen, better to catch them early in the interview.
- kragen 4y ago
  Wouldn't that fail unless your thinking is as slow as speech?

matthewmacleod 4y ago

Our team has done something similar to this for quite a while and I think it's been valuable. About ten minutes to read a page of high-level specifications regarding a general proposed system design, then the rest of the hour at a whiteboard (or remote equivalent) with a couple of other team members to sketch out and discuss what the implementation might look like. It's not quite an "asshole test" or a Kobayashi Maru or anything like that – but a general "can you communicate and collaborate effectively with others on a technical topic" test. I guess it does highlight "asshole" personalities sometimes, but I'd say rather than offering a negative signal it tends to more effectively highlight good candidates.

amelius 4y ago

They probably have a similar test at NASA.

Aachen 4y ago
Because everyone there is nice or what's the thinking?
adastra22 4y ago
They do not. (Source: have worked for NASA.)

snissn 4y ago

"i suggest we have everyone read their own packet, then slide it to the person to the left. Then we can discuss everything once we circle around"

chrisseaton 4y ago
That takes exactly the same amount of time as everyone reading out their packet, which the story says didn't scale to the time allowed.
- solveit 4y ago
  Reading silently is faster than reading out, and also easier and less error-prone than listening.
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
    Yeah but not by much. Also I doubt there was any info in those packets that would have mattered. The whole point of the test was to stump the group.

JJMcJ 4y ago

In Robert Heinlein's early juvenile novel Space Cadet, the applicants are given a device and a set of instructions. The instructions make no sense for the device in question. Assuming this is based on something real life, I suppose it was the same underlying idea. Nobody could complete the instructions. They wanted to see what people did. How do people react to frustration and bad orders? There is plenty of frustration in software work, and a good %age of incomprehensible or incorrect specifications.

inopinatus 4y ago
'Sma, believe me; it has not all been "fun".' He leant against a cabinet full of ancient projectile weapons. 'And, worse than all that,' he insisted, 'is when you turn the goddamn maps upside-down.' 'What?' Sma said, puzzled. 'Turning the maps upside down,' he repeated. 'Have you any idea how annoying and inconvenient it is when you get to a place and find that they map the place the other way up compared to the maps you've got? Because of something stupid like some people think a magnetic needle is pointing up to heaven, when other people think it's just heavier and pointing down? Or because it's done according to the galactic plane or something? I mean, this might sound trivial, but it's very upsetting.' 'Zakalwe, I had no idea. Let me offer you my apologies and those of the entire Special Circumstances Section; no, all of Contact; no: the entire Culture; no: all intelligent species.' 'Sma, you remorseless bitch, I'm trying to be serious.' 'No, I don't think you are. Maps...' 'But it's true! They turn them the wrong way up!' 'Then there must,' Diziet Sma said, 'be a reason for it.' 'What?' he demanded. 'Psychology,' Sma and the drone said at the same time. —— Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks, London: Orbit, 1990
tkgally 4y ago
I was reminded of Space Cadet, too. Reading that passage again (for the first time in fifty years), I see that there were at least two tests with hidden purposes. One is a simple task where the test-taker could easily cheat if he wanted to. (Our hero doesn’t.) In the next, the test-taker is asked to solve a puzzle with complex rules, and the purpose is to measure how long it takes him to figure out that there is no possible solution. Our hero doesn’t notice the hidden purpose of either test, while most readers probably do. It’s a clever narrative device for a novel aimed at clever young people. The text of that passage is below. Search for “beans”. https://raheinlein.wordpress.com/novels/space-cadet/ https://raheinlein.wordpress.com/novels/space-cadet/

eej71 4y ago

Decades ago, in the days before uber, my employer would fly in candidates from college campuses as part of an onsite interview. The candidate would fly in the night before and we relied on a taxi service to bring the candidate to the hotel. Then in the morning the same service would bring them to the onsite and of course bring them back to the airport at the end. It was a whole curated process. Little did the candidate know - we knew the driver quite well and he knew many people in the firm. More than once there would be a candidate who thought they could be rude and disrespectful to the taxi driver because ... you know... its just an immigrant taxi driver with a distinctive accent. Oops! Cost them an offer. But just as well. Avoided some arrogant jerks in the process.

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cmckn 4y ago
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 the hiring process inconsistent and discriminatory. If a person's behavior would hinder their ability to do the job, then that's worth a rejection; but "rudeness" is a very subjective thing. edit: to clarify, I'm talking about behavior that could be interpreted in different ways by different people. If you tell a driver to fuck off, yeah; I don't want to hire you or work with you. The parent gave no example of the behavior they'd reject a candidate for, and I assume it'd be reasonable; my point is just that this kind of thing is hard to do right and I'd avoid it.
- yodon 4y ago
  Your character is defined by who you are and how you behave when you think no one is watching you.
  - 4y ago

unsignednoop 4y ago

Just want to point out that exam (2009) is a great movie and everybody should watch it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1258197/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1258197/

maxtollenaar 4y ago

Wharton MBA has this Team-based Discussion (TBD) as a part of their application process. From what I hear, it is to weed out Asshole type of personality. In regard to how effective the method is, I'm not 100% convinced.

throwaway6532 4y ago
Kind of makes you wonder where all the assholes work?
- dinom 4y ago
  Hmm... that's an interesting question. Could it be that groupthink turns the whole idea on it's head and such a process would just end up hiring nice but mediocre people? They say Steve Jobs could be a giant a$$hole at times. I've also heard that George Patton wasn't always a particularly lovable guy. Ultimately all people have shortcomings and so mining their gifts comes with a cost. I'm not strictly trying to make excuses for anti-social behavior here but being able to understand, empathize and forgive must go hand in hand.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    >just end up hiring nice but mediocre people I think a company can scale better with nice mediocre employees, rather than hardworking assholes. Hugely dependent on domain of course, some are more technical than others, and there are other factors too. But if no specialist talent is needed, I think a company is better off with okay but nice talent. The individual niceness will translate into productive communication, which sets a healthy atmosphere, which leads to less stress, lower employee turnover, and in general a less problematic team and workplace in general.

dfee 4y ago

How about the inverse, though? I'd love to identify which management teams set unrealistic deadlines to play mind games.

brianmcc 4y ago

Enjoyed the story but I am dreading "the group test" becoming the new why-are-manhole-covers-round cargo cult nonsense :-)

themodelplumber 4y ago
Just wait until people figure out that group composition can also affect whether people appear to be assholes, apathetic, etc. The wrong grouping will give even the most otherwise-perfect wallpower the permission and impetus to speak up and completely torch their opportunity. On top of that, one evaluator in the right/wrong evaluation group can change the very definition of asshole on the spot and get group buy-in, given specific group composition. To me a big part of the issue is that it's one test for one property, in one group configuration, by one evaluation group configuration...one might say it's _singularly_ disappointing to hear about that aspect. One would hope a technology company could see the value in more scientific testing principles at least at a basic level? Hope my straw goggles are on, showing me straw-structures in straw-corporations.

dvtrn 4y ago

I would probably fail this test as someone who has been accused before in professional settings of being an 'asshole' due to my speaking method. When the reality is far far less interesting: the combination of a pathological speech condition (which I covered up early as a child by mumbling a lot and thus picked up some bad enunciation habits), and inheriting a deep voice historically made me come off as bored and disinterested when really...I just have one of those voices that doesn't come across as exactly.... 'animated' when it hits your ears for the first time. In fact...think Shaquille O'Neil and you're pretty close to how it sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROPsn3O6JAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROPsn3O6JAw

johnnyanmac 4y ago
>I just have one of those voices that doesn't come across as exactly.... 'animated' when it hits your ears for the first time. ahh yes, the vocal analog of "resting bitch face". A true shame. Those quirks are unfortunate. I have a tendency to laugh when nervous and I've had some situations where I was interpreted as being inappropriate to some solemn situations.

draw_down 4y ago

conorh 4y ago

Many years ago when applying for a somewhat similar program at another big company I went through something similar. Bunch of us in a room with a difficult to solve problem, not enough time, and at the end we had to do a group presentation on our solution. I don't know if it was exactly an asshole test, it was also to see how people worked in a group generally. Even if it is somewhat artificial people's personalities quickly became apparent. I really enjoyed it :)

throwaway6532 4y ago
I've evaluated one of these group exercises for a grad program before. One thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was out of the four individuals there was one guy that continually derailed the group, and there was another guy who even though the other guy was always derailing things still showed courtesy towards him and listened to his opinions. The other two guys were both reasonable and I liked them too, but the guy whom I both liked and who showed courtesy to an individual I would describe as "difficult" was one of the ones we wound up hiring. He got glowing reviews from pretty much every assessor and went on to become a great colleague to work with. I think any of those three out of the four people would have been fine hires, and the other guy was a strong no-hire.

crate_barre 4y ago

That’s one way to look at it. The other way is to determine confidence. Either way, these are character traits and filtering for one or the other is unfortunate. Teams should mimic villages, everyone is there. Everyone. The shy, the arrogant, the nice, etc. There will be flawed people in a village, but that is a village. Not utopia.

steve76 4y ago

kuroguro 4y ago

Couldn't it backfire if there were people who were not that keen on getting the job and thus wouldn't be under much pressure?

david-gpu 4y ago

Oh, so _that_ is what the test was about? In 2006 I went to a "new grads hiring day" at a large company, and one of the steps looked just like this, except I think we were divided in groups of eight. My team solved the problem at the last second and we all passed to the next round.

bradlys 4y ago

Really wonder if this actually worked. I don’t think we even care in this day and age with hiring if someone is an asshole. Most of the companies I’ve worked at have had many of them in various forms. (Or just simply - not pleasant people) It’s trivial to fake in any interview format.

todd8 4y ago

My interview for IBM back in the 1980s went well, and I got the job as a software architect. I don’t remember much about the interview; it must not have been stressful. The strange thing for me was a weird day of interaction with a group of around 30 other new hires. We were divided into teams and had to work together to solve problems, etc. I always suspected that we were not being trained but instead graded on some sort of scale by those leading the exercises. I worked at IBM for 5 years and never discovered what that was about.

jonas21 4y ago

This is generally called a "stress interview" and, as I understand it, they used to be more common decades ago. These days, I think it would be considered wrong to deceive candidates or to purposefully increase their level of stress (at least when interviewing for a normal desk job). If someone were to try this today, the only thing it would prove is that the interviewer is an asshole.

slg 4y ago

Honestly I see two asshole tests here. Some of the candidates failed the first one. IBM failed the other. This type of dishonest and unnecessarily stressful approach tells me that I probably don't want to be working there. Even just professing that a candidate needs to work well under stress is somewhat of a red flag. Why are your employees under so much stress? I am software developer not a trauma surgeon. If I am under regular stress, that is a failure in management of my employer.

conorcleary 4y ago
Well how does one become part of management?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
TameAntelope 4y ago
Meh, I definitely want to filter out people who can't handle situations like this, because honestly they come up all the time. Uncertainty in ownership, data not matching up, clarity lacking; how people behave in these scenarios is basically how they'll behave at their job. I don't think it's an "asshole" behavior to induce stress during an interview and observe results. What else are you supposed to do?
- slg 4y ago
  It isn't just inducing stress that tells me they are an asshole. Interviews are inherently stressful, there is little need to intentionally add extra stress on top. The dishonesty is also a problem. Interviews are a two-way street. The first impression this gives candidates is that their employer will think nothing of lying to their face and employees will so regularly be under stress that handling stress well is one of the traits they find most important. No thanks.
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
    Agreed! I would only want to work with people for whom this test isn't a big deal. No thanks indeed.

dkarl 4y ago

It's funny, the way we used to do coding interviews was to systematically ramp up the difficulty of the problem until the candidate struggled. The reasoning was that with easy problems, a lot of candidates could just write the solution on the whiteboard. You don't learn much about a candidate that way. But if you give them a problem they have to think about, and ask them to think out loud, you learn what problem-solving techniques they have at their disposal. Do they break down the input set into different cases, do they solve an easier version of the problem first, etc. If their code has a bug, can they pick an input that triggers the bug and walk through it step by step. We did hear "in real life I would probably need to get help with this" sometimes, and we counted that as a positive: the candidates shows self-awareness and resourcefulness. And most importantly, do they turn into an asshole when they don't know the answer? We saw this surprisingly often. Some people got angry and directed it towards us. Some people tried to bluff us into thinking that their solution was correct. Nobody ever walked out on us, but I've heard of that happening. All we wanted was to screen out people who turn into assholes when they don't have all the answers, and to give bonus points to people who had strategies for attacking a problem that was too hard to solve in their head in two minutes. Sheer cleverness was not high up on our requirements list (we needed a certain number of people who were clever at algorithms and such, but we didn't need everybody to be like that) so candidates that got stuck on a weaker version of the problem but attacked it with grace and resourcefulness often came out as more desirable than candidates that got to a harder version but responded badly when they struggled. I wish we could still interview people like that.

m463 4y ago
I had a set of problems increasing in difficulty. Most candidates only solved (or had seen) one or two, but some sailed past those to increasing difficulty problems.
IggleSniggle 4y ago
Why can’t you?
- dzdt 4y ago
  Not the OP, but lots of places have HR-mandated uniformity of interview questions to try to avoid some sorts of bias.

victor106 4y ago

Simon Sinek explains this well here https://youtu.be/kJdXjtSnZTI https://youtu.be/kJdXjtSnZTI

deleted 4y ago

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inopinatus 4y ago

When I interviewed with AWS, half the loop interviews were with remote staff. I was shown to a videoconferencing room and asked to wait. There was a pile of VC equipment but it wasn't connected. With five minutes before we were due to start, I decided this was part of the interview and plugged stuff in myself, powered it on, and clicked through some boot-time screens, guessing at the right inputs. A few minutes later a call came in and the interviews themselves proceeded normally. To this day I still don't know if it was a test.

angarg12 4y ago
No it wasn't. Source: I conducted +400 interviews for Amazon. We don't do weird or obscure tests. Your recruiter will explicitly tell you what to expect. It sounds like a mistake.
- inopinatus 4y ago
  The second part of the story is I got hired, but not for the job I was going for. Instead, they asked me to manage the whole team. Note that this was in 2014 and outside of the US, so our experiences may vary. As a hiring manager at AWS I conducted similarly many interviews, and can speak to a few things. Firstly, there was plenty of latitude for me to include additional factors in the process, as long as the core elements were present (screening + loop + bar raiser). Recruiters weren't always wonderful at candidate communication, especially when going beyond that baseline. Other HMs certainly included variations and additional steps, so this would not have been without precedent. Finally, this particular team were largely former CTOs and tech CEOs/founders, so there was a relatively high degree of eccentricity and wilfulness present; several of my loop interviews were with these particularly unruly ICs†. So I could not so confidently rule it a mistake. —— † Rather memorably, after a solid meeting of minds over the topic of establishing robust SRE practices within public-sector institutions, one such interviewer ran out of the meeting room to fetch me a copy of his favourite book on the topic. This is the only time I received a book for free from Amazon.
  - angarg12 4y ago

tonnydourado 4y ago

Something about this doesn't sit right with me, but I'm not sure I can put my finger on it. When I go to a job interview I expect to be asked honest questions and intend to give honest answers. You want me to do a team activity? Ok, fair. You're giving me and a bunch of people a problem you *know* we can't solve, just to watch us panic? That. That just feels wrong. I am a strong opponent of the "in this company we're like a family" discourse, but I also like to work for people that I don't dislike. If this is an asshole detection test, I'm afraid I just detected the company.

UUID_KING 4y ago

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I like working with a broad range of personality types. Certain kinds of behavior are not useful in the workplace. I like the idea of this test, but I think it is just one test of many that should be evaluated along with others. Some engineers and leaders thrive on flipping situations that they find initially frustrating into opportunities. They might appear grumpy for a moment and then elated the next after flipping their frustration into an opportunity. If we made a filter, that filtered out all grumpy interview candidates, what would be gained and what would be lost? Is this inclusive?

davesque 4y ago

I hear this and can't help but think IBM ended up with a bunch of "yes" men and women that wouldn't react appropriately to a bad situation. Given the performance of the company, I would guess I'm right.

soheil 4y ago

This is a problem of active vs passive communication. I can think of 100's of other personal behaviors that would be worse or just as bad as being an asshole. Passive aggressive behavior, secretly taking credit for someone's work, backstabbing and rallying others against someone in review cycles, ... The fact that being an asshole gets so much attention may be a symptom of the problems people are trying to root cause and are converging on an incorrect cause. ie. chances are that you're not having the issues you're having in your org because people are being assholes, but because they're incompetent, smile in your face and sabotage you later, cozy up to the boss to get promoted or a multitude of other shitty attitudes that often go under the radar.

IggleSniggle 4y ago
THANK YOU. I happen to be a bit of a conniving Machiavellian dickhead but I married a brilliant principled asshole. It really fundamentally grinds my gears that her principled devotion to doing what is right and what is best for all parties, even if unpopular (ie, an asshole), frequently results in her “losing” in a plethora of ways to the manipulative cunts like myself. Not that she would see it that way. Because she’s a principled asshole.

davidhyde 4y ago

IBM probably had too many assholes working for them during world war II, hence the test. Their role in helping the nazis should not be forgotten. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

ebrewste 4y ago

We used to have a very basic C whiteboard test for junior devs. Super simple "find the bugs" test. The best technical performance I ever saw was a guy that walked up to the board, swiped with the marker to mark the bugs like he was swatting flies (found every bug correctly). He finished the test in maybe 10 seconds, where typical was five minutes or more. He sat down in a huff. I didn't know we had an asshole test until that moment. I thanked him for coming in and showed him out. I'm so glad I never had to work with him.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
user_7832 4y ago
This vaguely reminds me of somebody I know who's also pretty smart, but socially extremely odd to the point of being rude/insensitive. Though I'm pretty sure the person I know is on the spectrum and likely doesn't realize/mean it.
abigail95 4y ago
how can you possibly know how effective someone is to work with after 10 seconds and watching them sit down? what kind of confidence interval can you assign to this test?
- chmod775 4y ago
  It's not how about effective it is, but how pleasant. Money quote is "He sat down in a huff."
maccolgan 4y ago
Are you looking for a coworker or a date?

zcw100 4y ago

It sounds nice and makes a great story until you see all the exceptions being made. “He was a jerk but he did go to MIT”, “he was a jerk but his father is good friends with the CEO”, “he was a jerk but I’m a jerk and he reminds me of myself” but it won’t be that honest it will be more like “ he wasn’t a jerk he is just a natural leader and it was everyone else’s fault for not recognizing that and falling in line”

rib3ye 4y ago

Well here's the asshole response: this explains why they can't make anything cool.

bnallp 4y ago

So IBM wants redpilled Machiavellians who "keep frame" under pressure, but once hired will politely grab power, backstab and intrigue against colleagues. Open face, closed thoughts.

spanktheuser 4y ago

I don't have an asshole test, but I do have a collaboration test I use when hiring for design or product roles. I match the candidate with the hiring manager and two peers. And essentially mimic the rapid sketching exercise from a design sprint for a very simple and broadly understood feature. For example: editing tweets. I'm less interested in the quality of the candidates work than how they work. Are the comfortable working out in the open? How do they accept feedback? Are they generous with their own criticism and praise? Will they iterate on ideas they didn't originate? Will they react well to someone else incorporating their best idea into their own designs? I'll also produce a few concepts that are flat out terrible and see how their feedback changes when coming from a supervisor. Of all the interview techniques I've used over the years, this had been the most predictive and the best recruiting tool. When the right candidate is in there with us we all end up having a great time.

D-Coder 4y ago
Somehow this doesn't match your username.

neilv 4y ago

Like seeing whether a first date is rude to the waiter, or the Bronx Tale car door test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJdqzRM6Dw?t=55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJdqzRM6Dw?t=55s

sys_64738 4y ago

The person with the marker controls the conversation. That’s why Steve always had the market.

tastysandwich 4y ago

One of my first grad interviews was at a large bank. They had one big interview day, where dozens of people were invited and herded into a big room together. They had several smaller rooms where different stages of the interview process were conducted. Your name would be called along with the room number and you'd nervously walk on in. Then you'd come out, waiting for the next interview. One was technical, and I think others were more around culture fit? I was so so so nervous. The final part was a big group task. About 10 of you sat around a table in a big room. Then in the room sitting & watching were a bunch of people in suits (psychologists maybe? HR people?) watching you and taking notes. You were then given one sheet of paper to share with the group outlining some "problem". I can't quite remember what it was, but it wasn't technical, and it wasn't a logic puzzle. Maybe solving some global problem? Anyway, I was soooooooo nervous, I thought "I know, I'll try to show my leadership skills!" I quickly grabbed the piece of paper and blurted "Ok guys, what do we think!" I must have sounded like a maniac. One of the other candidates shot me down immediately with some sarcastic comment, and it was all over for me haha! I tried my best to be calm and productive but I was done like a dinner. Lesson learnt! In retrospect I'm really glad I didn't get that job. Smaller companies have worked way better for me and my personality.

zeruch 4y ago

Having worked with several people from IBM over the last 20 years...some faked their way through that test.

CountHackulus 4y ago

As someone who worked at IBM for 6 years, I'm fairly sure no one in management above me had to go through that asshole test.

voakbasda 4y ago
I’d guess that they did… and they were the assholes.

HNHatesUsers 4y ago

zw123456 4y ago

OMG, PTSD is kicking in for me here. I was in a similar program way way back in the 1970's early 1980's with Ma Bell. I was working at Bell Labs after getting my Masters in EE and they put me in what they called the JET program (Junior Executive Training). First off, I never wanted to be an Executive, whatever that is. I wanted to do research, but when you are young and right out of school and they hit you with that you don't say no. So I went with the flow. They flew us around the country and we would be put in all these similar goofy psychologist designed situations. They even told us that they had hired PhD's in psychology and they where trying to figure out what makes a good Executive. I recall them giving us the Rorschach test and for fun I would say crazy stuff like, that looks like the nucleus of an atom when you are supposed to, obviously say, that looks like a butterfly, but fuck them, ya, it looks like a butterfly but for all we know that is what the nucleus of an atom looks like, or a super nova nebula, whatever. These psychologists followed us around for 25 years and eventually wrote a book about us "guinea pigs". I have a copy of this book and I can clearly see me in it, I am that asshole, no question about that. Their brilliant conclusion was that people with very high IQ's (I guess they said I had scored "off the charts" on IQ, whatever the fuck that actually means). So, OK, I am too smart to be an executive is what they concluded. But they never asked me if I gave a shit about being an Executive and maybe I was just fucking with them. Anyhow, it was funny, and I got to travel all over the country on their dime and half the people in this thing just slept with each other and crap. Maybe that is the real test of Exec material ? hahahaha.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
What were the qualities need for an executive then?
- zw123456 4y ago
  Beats the heck out of me. You tell me, Like I said, I am not sure I know what that even is TBH.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    I wasn't alive when the telecom dinosaurs roamed the planet. So I'm about as clueless. Was the study you were a part of ever printed somewhere, like the HBR or WSJ?

beefman 4y ago

I have a term for people who administer tests designed to classify people as either assholes or non-assholes: assholes.

synicalx 4y ago

That title was my risky click of the day. But I feel like there's a bit of a flaw in their logic here; the kind of stress you feel when interviewing, competitively I might add, for what I can only assume is a prestigious position is going to be 100% different to the stress you'd face in that role day to day. So the reactions you observe in a weird test like this are probably only vaguely representative of how the candidates ACTUALLY behave day to day. I'll happily change my mind if there's some research to back this up, but I have the strongest feeling this is just something a manager has dreamt up based on a hunch.

more_corn 4y ago

We had a candidate once who was super smart, it was a role we really needed filled. His level of knowledge exceeded mine on every area I asked (not a high bar, but it meant he got full marks on every one of my questions). But he was insufferable. (Blamey, exaggerating, interrupting, bitter). In the hiring committee everyone rated his knowledge tops. Everyone also said “but I’d never want to work with him” He had interviewed with our parent company before. He asked why he hadn’t been selected the previous time “was it because I asked about the secret locations of data centers?” I said “I assure you it wasn’t that” we ended up not hiring him and leaving the role unfilled. Some employees are not better than nothing. Think about that for a second. We chose to have nothing than hire an asshole.

ahmetyas01 4y ago

I came here to read the comments and figure out who the asshole is.

HackOfAllTrades 4y ago

I think of these as a "Star Trek" test. You know: Wesley is confronted with "his deepest fear" during entrance exams for Star Fleet, Counselor Troi can't pass a holodeck test for "command responsibilities" until she's willing to order Jordi to do a suicide repair. I'm sure there were others. The common theme is supposed to be that the obvious test is a fake and they're really testing for something else. They're all bullshit. Every single one of them falls apart as soon as people start talking about them with each other, not to mention they're just begging to be abused by the testing authority, or entice corruption.

LanceH 4y ago

Testing for misrepresented goals. Right in line with some companies.

thomasjudge 4y ago

I'm surprised no one's referenced this yet: http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html

erikerikson 4y ago

I've read a lot of these comments and it honestly seems like many people here have failed the HN version of this test while helping me understand why I've failed so many interviews... People have written about: * lying to, tricking, and misleading candidates * making problems harder and harder or exerting pressure to observe behavior under duress * forcing people to socialize in a mentally open state with someone that is actively manipulating them and deciding their fate What kind of work places were they finding candidates for? Why not simulate the actual position that needs filled? Why not just get to know the candidate and treat them like a pairing partner? In the job you do the job. In the interview you ask if the candidate can do the job. You shouldn't set up an adversarial environment unless you want to create one, it's far healthier to see where they shine and discover their passions and interests. Figure out what lights them up about the role because that's what they're going to do best and that's going to be what engages them in the role and helps them contribute to an awesome workplace. Remember that you may be evaluating candidates but they are evaluating you too.

Tepix 4y ago
The work environment may be stressful at times, it's very valuable for the employer to know how a candidate will behave in these situations, don't you agree?
- rendall 4y ago
  > The work environment may be stressful at times... If you're talking about SWE or adjacent, why?
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
    You need to talk with people and come up to an agreement, in situations like that conflict is inevitable.
dkarl 4y ago
I think stress is a normal part of life. Too much stress is harmful, but too little stress is like living in zero gravity: we aren't built for it, and we start to deteriorate. But suppose you disagree. Let's think about it differently: maybe stress isn't inevitable at work, but being faced with a problem that you can't easily solve is. A candidate needs to be able to deal with that situation, so it's fair to expose them to it in an interview. If they feel a certain amount of stress in that situation, then they need to cope with that amount of stress without being paralyzed by it, and without taking it out on the people around them. If a candidate experiences an unhealthy amount of stress when faced with a situation that is a normal part of the job duties, maybe it's not the right job for them.

ngcc_hk 4y ago

No trick it out like some Star Trek captain facing death story I guessed. No one hacked the system. How to handle failure and group behaviour is one of key … you can see sone very strange bevahiour reported. Like a professor turned into communist mode and asked why not arrested her senior, when she tried to fake her age. People went crazy under pressure.

chris_wot 4y ago

So it looks like that all the assholes actually were immediately promoted to management positions, everyone else became a worker.

freetanga 4y ago

The other group goes to the Sales team. I have no proof, but after dealing with them for 25 years, I have no doubt.

noduerme 4y ago

Sounds more like a way to make sure to hire meek submissives who won't question the way things are normally done. There was a reason Apple's entire marketing strategy in the 80s took aim directly at IBM.

npteljes 4y ago
Questioning, and by extension confronting is not being an asshole. Assertive communication is the topic that deals with this.
- noduerme 4y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If confronting isn't being an asshole, then what is this test supposed to measure? The original post doesn't explain who's considered an asshole at the end of the test. In fact, the whole point is that the test is opaque - the assholes are whoever someone at IBM subjectively doesn't want to hire. So who passes or fails the whiteboard test, and why? If it was as simple as "whoever takes over the dry-erase marker from the first person is an asshole", then they'd be ridding themselves of anyone who questioned authority. Therefore, what's the difference between this and any other test which tried to bar entry to anyone who'd introduce new ideas to a stagnant corporate culture?

PostThisTooFast 4y ago

twirlock 4y ago

tlholaday 4y ago

Request: a tables-turned test, usable for candidates to filter asshole employers.

greyhair 4y ago

I had an interview at a startup years ago (got the job) that was grueling, about six hours total, you met with six different teams of three people, from different disciplines across the company. It was sort of a good cop/bad cop thing. Not to aggressive, but just seeing if you were willing to admit you didn't know when you were asked a questions you didn't know (and there were lots I didn't know) and how you reacted in the situation. Some people don't handle 'not knowing', and try to BS their way through. Then, some are apologetic when they get called out, and some dig in. If you fell into that last group, you were not getting a job. If you fell into the second group, it was more of a sliding scale. Did you attempt to BS your way through multiple times across the multiple teams? Or did you realize, the first time you got called out, that it wouldn't work.

Leherenn 4y ago

To get into the national airline pilot training program in France, there is something similar. You're then debriefed by a psychologist. In that case it's not just about not being an asshole, but also about being able to speak up when required, and so on.

euroderf 4y ago

Always go to lunch, whichever side of the interview you're on. Preferably a place with table service - could even be a diner. How does your counterpart treat service staff ?

dakial1 4y ago

Here in Brazil HR has a similar setup of group tests that they call "Group Dynamics". They would give a task and let the group figure by itself how to solve it. After some experience with it I figured out that it wasn't the task or who had more "mic time", but who would show leadership skills that mattered. As usually everyone wanted to talk, what I did was just to orchestrate who said what, making no point on the matter, just controlling the turns and asking "what do you think about Anne's point Dave?". Worked like a charm.