I hate those puzzle type interview questions. I am sure that they show some level of aptitude about something, but I’m not typically a puzzle person. I’m a let’s solve this person, and I rarely figure out the answers.
Someone send me this interview text, which supposes that someone tried one of those questions on Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman. It’s rather humorous.
Note that I wouldn’t recommend this. Likely your application would be scrapped by the second or third answer you gave to this.
I’ve heard a few times over the last month that the technology business ought to be a meritocracy, where people are hired, promoted, and fired based on their skills and talents. It’s usually accompanied by a mandate that everyone should “hire the best person for the job.”
Information Technology may be the closest we get to a meritocracy, but it certainly isn’t one. Your skills matter, your talent matters, but it’s still a who you know and who-you-get-along-with that overrides everything else. More often than not, skills alone will not carry you far. You need to have a bond with the people that hire you.
If we were a meritocracy, we could just give everyone a test that applied for a job and hire the person with the highest score. Or just use a lottery to pick everyone that achieved a certain score. That doesn’t sound like the kind of place that I’d like to work since I place a lot of value on the interpersonal relationships with other people.
It seems that most people really want their employees, or co-workers, to meet some minimum level of competency, continue to improve their skills, and do their share of the work. That’s reasonable and I can appreciate those qualities in people, but the thing that’s most important to me is that we get along.
I can work with you to improve your technical skills, but I can’t usually do anything about your personality.
Steve Jones
Well, not really. However when I was recently up in Seattle, Jen and Sean McCown contacted me about being on their show and doing an interview. I agreed, and we met late, as in starting around 9:30pm one night, to do a sit down and interview.
It was totally off the cuff, and I had fun with it. You can check out out here: Steve Jones in the House
Voice of the DBA 