The fuck, man! This is a god damn interview for an enterprise-class J2EE job. I know the guy's christian, so obviously I had to give some bullshit about how I'm now agnostic, but previously christian.
I thought getting a job was supposed to be trivial if my GPA was high and my work experience was solid. God damn. Now I know how it feels to be black.
If you live in the US, you have every right to refuse to answer that question on grounds that it's entirely irrelevant to the interview, and you also have the right to sue for discrimination if they don't hire you. (And you'll win unless your lawyer is a dumbass)
>>2
Good point. I tend to shy away from legal trolling, but in this case it probably is justified.
On a second thought, maybe I have instead trapped him. Once he squeezed the agnostic line out of me, he did sort of switch subjects. Maybe he'll be paranoid about not hiring me...we'll see.
I wouldn't hire a non-Christian. And if he's the company owner, he has every goddamn right to select his employees in whatever way he decides to. Hell, you're lucky he isn't just outsourcing your job to India or China.
He asked the marriage/girlfriend question, asked about my apartment (I technically "live with my parents", but I pay for that shit), and a shit-ton of personal questions.
I am going to at least anonymously forward this link to HR and tell them to get their senior hiring managers to review it. In retrospect, I am pretty pissed that I was so uncomfortable during this part of the interview. I didn't really think about denying answers at the time, especially considering the job market, etc.
>>5
Oh and I almost forgot; most non-minimum wage jobs are passed along through social connections anyway... which means that your so-called interview will just be a nice relaxed meeting with your employer. Are you going to sue him for asking you an uncomfortable question between two cups of coffee? I don't think so.
This is an S&P 500 listed corporation that should be aware of poor questions issued by their managers that give more than ample room for undue bias/discrimination. I don't care if a little company does this, because I don't want to work there anyway if they want to maintain a particular culture (e.g. having only with Christians). In this case, it's different -- interned at this company for quite a while and never had this sort of personally-invasive issue.
>>8
If it's such a big company it is close to impossible to maintain a single culture among the employees, for statistical reasons if not other. This theory can be easily confirmed by finding a non-Christian employee (just look for weird names, duh). I very much doubt that that question was meant to do anything else than test how you react upon touching a subject which he knows as likely sensitive, i.e. perceiving your nervous tics. That way, he can easily see whether he touches other 'sensitive points' anywhere else in his line of questioning. In this particular case, it sounds more like psychological test than religious filtering if you ask me.
>>14
Shout "OBJECTION!" while pointing a menacing finger at your interviewer, then explain why his question is invalid. Expect negative results unless you're applying for a lawyer job, in which case you would automatically get the job.
>>14
Easy. "I don't believe that question is relevant to this position." Then start talking about Sepples or Java.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 11:31
You need to get your ears checked. I was asking you whether you consider GOTO harmful, and if you could summarize your feelings on Church's formulation of lambda calculus in a sentence.
I abandoned my efforts at an having an intelligent discourse when you replied with some ramblings about being agnostic, and decided to just screen you for the low-level code monkey position.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 12:02
>I thought getting a job was supposed to be trivial if my GPA was high and my work experience was solid.
Oh my! Totally wrong. You don't understand this competitive world at all. Humans and competition intersect @ (cheat , back stab).
When it comes to working in the industry you will face injustice all the time and you will be in competition with various co-workers simultaneously.
At least this guy just asked for some background. There is a lot worst, believe me.
I think it was supposed to be one of those "why is a manhole cover round" questions.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 13:25
>>30
Coming from a civil engineering background I always LOL at that question. The PHBs and neckbeards all babble round hole, round cover blah blah blah. Reality: there are places with square man hole covers too, a colleague told me he pointed them out to the interviewer at Microsoft that asked that same question.
The real truth is that "it's in the spec that way", Why beacuse it's in the building code that why. Why? Because some bright lad with the city planning commish in 1850 took a kickback from the local iron foundry and they delivered big round expensive to cast covers to the general contractor putting in the sewer lines.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 13:52
>>31
Actually, manhole covers (and manholes, for that matter) are round because it's not possible for the cover to accidentally fall into the manhole if it's round -- in no possible orientation will the width of the cover be less than the width of the hole. With a square manhole, it's quite easy to fit the cover into the hole itself by aligning it along the hypotenuse.
For the same reason railroad tracks are gauged at 4'- 8, because that was the spec for cart track in the UK, which was before that
the spec for the Roman roads; 2000 years ago.
>>34
You're right. If there wasn't some backroom dealings going on, they'd be nothing more than filaments.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 14:06
>>34
4'8'' is nature's spec for the width of two horses stood side by side.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 14:08
Sure thing bub, the width cross bar draw for the mules has nothing to do with it right? PROTIP: two draw animals side by side aren't that wide. Ergo you're wrong, bitch.
>>38 You are a failure of a troll. Working animals also have a sense of personal space so the Romans were all like yeah okay we'll give you(r) asses room to breathe. ergo your wrong bitch
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Anonymous2010-03-10 14:20
>>40
You're feet are wet and you can see Cheop's Pyramid. Most likely you are in DeNile.
Suggest you open your mind to the possibility that you can be wrong or you will never attain enlightenment, weedhopper.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 14:27
>>41 Most likely you are in DeNile.
I get it, because it's a joke!
Specifications are for a reason. At what point did some roman guy say `okay we should make all the roads this wide, that would be so rad'
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Anonymous2010-03-10 14:35
You may have a civil eng. background but you've never worked in construction (a.k.a. Field Engineering) have you? You'd know that if it isn't in the spec or plans you make it up some shit on the spot, because it's 2:30 on a Friday afternoon, we're already fucked on the early completion bonus, the accountants are gonna bitch about the overtime hours and it's only an hour til BEER thirty. Fuck it, make a decision, if the shit falls down we'll worry about it on the clock come Monday morning.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 14:57
>>43
To carry this back to the discussion at hand.
You seem to be of the opinion that rationality guides the decisions that go into making a spec (be it hardware or software): i.e. "It's round because it makes sense that way."
Having looked at enough specs to achieve a flash of enlightenment I realize that it is in fact human stupidity and greed that are much more powerful forces than rationality; every single time.
That is to say the manhole covers are round because someone thought it was a way to make more money off those juicy government contracts, not because they gave two shits about safety.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 15:08
>>44
Wouldn't it be more expensive to make square manholes, since a round shape uses less material than square? I have a background in civil engineering, by the way.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 15:14
>>45
That other guy (>>44 and others) said something about something else to do with that not being the case. I have absolutely no background or interest in civil engineering and yet have played a significant part in this thread.
>>47
I'll make your anus hurt, if you catch my meaning.
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Anonymous2010-03-10 16:08
>>19
There's a very real chance that, if the OP was hired, he would strap a bunch of parentheses to his chest, exclamation something about the Suss, and dive into the codebase.
>>43
Of course. But the reason why it is in the spec is important to know as well, especially if you're the one reviewing the plans and signing off on the construction.
To all you self-titled engineers, here's a shibboleth: what is the significant difference between the words "shall" and "will" in a contract specification?