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I'm glad you're conflicted! Because it is a trap, an intentional one meant to simulate the unintentional randomization that happens in real life at work. I'm su

by alabut 14y ago

I'm glad you're conflicted! Because it is a trap, an intentional one meant to simulate the unintentional randomization that happens in real life at work. I'm sure we've all had that thing happen when someone threatens to accidentally scramble your work queue because they don't understand the problem domain as well as you do, so you need to be able to steer and guide the work requests that are coming your way and push back when it doesn't make sense. My dad's a teacher too and boy does he love to lecture. About anything - digital signal processing, the price of gas, whatever - and that mode of communication is useful in its own context, but not so much when a team of people are trying to get something done together. If it makes you feel better, I fell for the trap too. I asked Kevin for a demo of the question in action so I could see what it was like to be on the receiving end before I used it on candidates myself. I was the guy he referenced in the blog post that compared poker to backgammon and I was in the middle of explaining how Texas Hold Em taught me essential skills of entrepreneurship when he asked me how many board pieces were in a typical backgammon setup. I lost a good 20-30 seconds there trying to remember, until I laughed out loud and called him out on trying to randomize me :)

xanados 14y ago
I think this would be ok if they said upfront that this is a simulation of a meeting and so to pretend that you are someone attending the meeting, and so explicitly take it out of the context of an interview. When I've been interviewed, we are often friendly toward each other and it's not uncommon for them to just want to chat and go on tangents, especially for throwaway questions that assess fit and culture. And you wouldn't know as the interviewee if this was such a throwaway question. Basically, no matter what reasons you have for thinking people should do the right thing, you have to keep in mind that their reference set for YOU is all the people who have interviewed them in the past, many of whom were likely dumber and less competent than you. They are going to be acting accordingly.

by alabut 14y ago

xanados 14y ago

I think this would be ok if they said upfront that this is a simulation of a meeting and so to pretend that you are someone attending the meeting, and so explicitly take it out of the context of an interview. When I've been interviewed, we are often friendly toward each other and it's not uncommon for them to just want to chat and go on tangents, especially for throwaway questions that assess fit and culture. And you wouldn't know as the interviewee if this was such a throwaway question. Basically, no matter what reasons you have for thinking people should do the right thing, you have to keep in mind that their reference set for YOU is all the people who have interviewed them in the past, many of whom were likely dumber and less competent than you. They are going to be acting accordingly.