Interview Abuse

I remember the act we used to have at college, a form of public parody or joke, when students, professors and college personnel take their jobs too seriously for a good scientific institution sort of judgment to, not hold, but to appear to be held.  The eccentric amount of strange behaviors, coming from supposedly educated and sane people, made me not only hate college and education, but loathe the way people like to think and act whenever they freaking feel like it.

Ever noticed kids playing the doctor? where the one with the tiny eye-glasses plays the doctor in their room in the house or on the sofa, and another kid lies down for examination? taking things very seriously for a game, sometimes resulting in inappropriate juvenile behaviors? Well, guess what, that actually happens on larger scales, because children are everywhere, it’s just not a matter of size anymore really.

I’m not speaking about education, though I am capable of, but this post comes in retrospect to some news I received today, and it may contain some forms of retaliation, because a friend of mine got rejected at a job interview in a software company here in Egypt. It made me think for a while actually, but soon it made me rather angry and mad, because sometimes, the things that really matter just do not exist or are ignored on purpose, because at the end of the day, the serious and grim high intellectual genius hard worker who knows about everything all the time and who managed to show all of it in a two hours interview, is not the one needed for the job, he’s just needed for the company’s reputation, or to be more specific, for the interviewers’ self-esteems and thin egos.

I work at a multi-national software corporation here in Cairo, IBM. And let me tell you something about IBM, they promote a certain notion of moderate innovation, it might appear as a something pejorative of what a good corporation is about, hiring geniuses only and the like, but to my surprise, within a team, production relies on .. like 10% innovation and 90% actual hard work! They call it ‘Innovation that matters’ (read this) And sometimes we miss those few percents, because deadlines creep and optimizing it to take 5 seconds instead of 10, is really not crucial now (dude, you have 5 mins to write me a recursive function). This philosophy strikes a perfect balance in employee morale, if all the team members are creative people, they’ll end up being paralyzed, and with a customer that itches the company’s .. back (that was censored btw), delivery’s significance just outweighs other things.

You will need extraterrestrial mental capabilities when you’re making extraordinary software, and you will need extraordinary software to deal with complex needs of people or entities who have organized and complete requirements, aka, when you are Google or Microsoft, Red Hat or Apache. Not when you are an Egyptian software house with Egyptian software engineers, writing Egyptian code for Egyptian customers. Too much Egyptian for things to go by the book .. really. But, people love to go by and off the book whenever the mood allows it! You see them suddenly going exactly by the book in interviews! This is not healthy! And here I remind you of the doctor’s game.

What is the difference between TCP & UDP? (in a senior position interview)

Write me a recursive function that counts from 1 to 10 (really? I see it in the movies now!)

How many hours do you spend daily on your PC (ahem, WTF?) (I will get to this question later).

Well, try that one, I was asked that one in my interview here in IBM, and it was one of the best interviews I ever had, and which I was actually able to show the way I think! I was able to show them, and wait for it .. wait for it some more … my WITS! Please mark that it’s like massively important. I was asked this: Tell us what would you think about writing an ORM framework. I mentioned Hibernate in the CV, but, and here’s what I liked about my interviewer, it’s just a name people toss in resumes, amidst other hundreds, you can actually find, IBM Websphere Process Server, Business Process Execution Language, and some other ugly names!

He made me stand by the freaking board, draw a class diagram with all the relationships you can possibly think of, and told me to give him techniques (justified ones), of how am I going to persist that in a relational database, how Hibernate does it, and how I do it, which is better, and frigging’ WHY? He asks me about polymorphism (and I was like, dude seriously? it’s bla bla bla) and then he again poses the excruciating English word, WHY? That’s the thinking word! not the how btw, the how is a knowing word, the WHY is a thinking word. Especially when they ask you, why DO YOU think? In the interview, I recall, he stopped me and told me: Do not tell me code segments or function names, or syntax notes, I don’t care.

Back to the wit thing, a three-letters word, actually that is the one and only thing that matters in software, if you have the wit, you know, some sort of acumen, some call it aptitude, it’s different among people, and it’s unique to you only, but is quite recognizable if you had the right sort of interview, the wit is something deeply related to yourself, your life and personality, it’s your charisma , that sometimes you forget you’re in an interview when you reach that state, the state I like to call, wit presentation .. folks this is how I think about things all the time.

For example when I’m presenting my wit, and btw I forgot to tell you, you’ll notice that you use your wit in every single work day, it’s just you and how you do things, when I was in the interview, I had the chance to show them that I can think about the same thing in different ways at the same time, and that’s actually my life story! And at work, my peculiar ways of tackling problems from completely strange dimensions, managed to actually grant me the word ‘bravo!’ numerous times! And it granted me the same word in the interview! And that was the punch line thanks to God and only God.

If the interviewer does anything that will drive you away from showing your wit, they’re downright losing it, because without it, sorry, I won’t be able to show you nothing, my answers will be evasive and the fact that I got rejected because you haven’t seen it in me, is because you’re a failure not because I’m a failure. So, bottom line in judging interviews, there are two types of questions, wit-provoking and wit-abolishing. For sorrow, most interviewers prepare questions that fall in the second category. Sad.

Now back to the funniest question of all time; how many hours do you spend on your PC a day? and what do you do in them? and, do you follow technology news? He stereo-typed it as casual questions, a get-to-know-you-better question.

Oh! you want to know me, okay, I watch porn man! I spend 8 hours writing code, and another 8 hours enjoying pornography, actually, I’m thinking of starting my own bi-curious blog, oh, did I mention that I’m gay? Sorry, I’m gay, and I like you! [Someone, please cheer for Sean Penn! gay guys rock man I have material to enhance my sarcastic abilities!][Anybody saw the movie btw?]

My friend got rejected because of that interview, after he passed a teasing bone-crushing technical one already! He was rejected because the get-to-know-you thing didn’t relate to the damn ape of a dickhead taste. Chances are my friend will isA get a way better job somewhere else and do the same tasks without the world trembling down, or someone else will reach the dumbass along the chain, and the fathead will forget to ask him that, will accept him, and he’ll do the same tasks too. Nobody is thinking about the task now .. the darn job! Completely stupid don’t you think.

Is it even legal to ask personal questions? What do I do with my time not writing code, who ** cares (God I hate censoring my own posts!), and what if I don’t follow the news, what the hell would that possibly affect? My ill-passion? hello!, if I had passion you already killed the crap out of it. Get-to-know-you-well my ass man .. since we’re gay and all! ** bastard!

God I really hope my friend finds a cool job very soon, he worked so hard really, and we were very glad he survived that technical capsize.

Sorry for the satirical tone I was full of it,