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I'm going to tell a story that describes why I don't like "Sunday tests". Before I became a professional developer, I was a professional pilot who programmed a

I'm going to tell a story that describes why I don't like "Sunday tests". Before I became a professional developer, I was a professional pilot who programmed as a hobby. Right after graduating college in 2006, I got a job right out of school working for a flight school. The school specialized in training Chinese people to fly. Anyways, this was back before the economy exploded. There was a shortage of instructors at my school. I was assigned 4 students that I would be teaching mostly one-on-one. Three of the four students were really cool and very likable. The fourth I didn't like at all. Lets just say we didn't get along well. The guy was very difficult, and hard to communicate with. The other three were a joy to work with. If I had the luxury of dumping that fourth student onto another instructor, I would have. But this was back in 2007, and the economy hadn't tanked yet, so there was an instructor shortage, and I had to grit my teeth and deal with this guy. Fast forward to a month later. The tables have turned completely the other direction. The fourth guy who I hated at first was my favorite student. The three students I had liked at the beginning now were the ones giving me the most greif. The extroverted easy to work with likable guys were pleasant to deal with, but they weren't very smart, and I had a lot of trouble teaching them stuff. The fourth guy was hard to deal with, but he was extremely smart and I barely had to teach him anything, he learned everything on his own. Once the economy got bad, the student/instructor ratio fell. The flight school hired a bunch more instructors and got less students. Every instructor got 2 students instead of 4. I made it a habit to go around to all the new instructors and ask them if they have a student they they don't really like working with. 4 times out of 5 the instructor would tell me "yeah I have this one guy..." My last 6 months at that job I had 8 students that basically taught themselves. That was easy money. I've found the best way to deal with unlikable people is to just let them go off and do their own thing. The act like that (unconsciously) because they resent you getting in their way.

hkmurakami 14y ago
A friend of mine is like the 4th student you describe: very smart but comes off as standoffish and cold until he warms up to you. He was actually let go from a well known (everyone here would know the name) startup in SF/SV wiht a noted brogammer culture after a few months since he "wasn't a culture fit". He's now thriving at a place that suits his character much more. In the end I think both parties "won" by his dismissal, but companies hiring for culture fit should be aware that they're willingly constraining their talent pool by doing this. (I don't think it's necessarily wrong either -- I expect to have some form of latent character filter if I'm in a hiring position as well. However, I'm much more fond of the introverted, "difficult" types than the average person).

hkmurakami 14y ago

A friend of mine is like the 4th student you describe: very smart but comes off as standoffish and cold until he warms up to you. He was actually let go from a well known (everyone here would know the name) startup in SF/SV wiht a noted brogammer culture after a few months since he "wasn't a culture fit". He's now thriving at a place that suits his character much more. In the end I think both parties "won" by his dismissal, but companies hiring for culture fit should be aware that they're willingly constraining their talent pool by doing this. (I don't think it's necessarily wrong either -- I expect to have some form of latent character filter if I'm in a hiring position as well. However, I'm much more fond of the introverted, "difficult" types than the average person).