This.
Also:
via @FGD135 in the misogyny thread.
There’s certainly value in “seeing how someone thinks” (scare quotes). But there are better ways of doing it.
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Teach the elephant to sing the Smashing Cars song:
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This seems to be about whiteboard questions instead of abstract ones, but I agree both are pretty dumb. If you want someone to code, you should invest in a platform where they can try and solve a problem on a shared screen or something with an IDE, because nobody codes on a whiteboard.
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Well, keep it, right?
It takes the thread this long to get to a Simpsons reference, and it’s not even Bart Gets an Elephant?
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Do the neighbors not have trees? I mean, who’s going to make an elephant stop eating their yard? Not me!
Riding atop a trained elephant you could become a neighborhood warlord.
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But then how will you count against people for not getting syntax absolutely perfect?
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Or just take the time to look through their github pushes.
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I would lock the elephant in a cage with Wayne LaPierre and play the video.
Oh, and afterwards I’d do something nice with the elephant.
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- I decline to accept the gift of the elephant under these terms. Its better to address broken requirements upfront than to hope you can work around them later by creative heroics.
This is by far the best answer in the piece.
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Can’t sell the Elephant.
Can’t give the Elephant away.
No reason I can’t loan the Elephant to the Zoo.
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It’s about the stress of thinking through a problem in front of someone literally there to judge you. I hold that for this, the scenarios are functionally identical. But asking them about a problem they’ve solved within certain parameters is guiding them into bragging about something they’re probably proud of. (And then you can spring the “what about a time you failed?” question on them!)
A few questions like this, and you have a really good idea about 1) how they think a problem through 2) what they’re actually proud of (what drives them) and 3) how well they can communicate a problem to you that you don’t know much about.
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Start a cut-price vehicle towing service. If the office is unattended just Toot for a Mahout.
Hire it out for standup comedians to test their jokes on.
Make paper from elephant shit. Sell it as a high end gardening additive.
Elephants love water so start a carwash - just you and the elephant. People would line up just to take selphies. Become an instagram sensation.
Start a debt collection service.
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Declining to take it in the first place, though setting it free on premises of whom ever unloaded it on me has some appeal.
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I have to wonder if simply trading the elephant for some other item of value somehow violates the rules against selling or giving it away. Just resorting to barter seems like an easy answer if outright donation or sale is restricted. That option exhausted, I could also consider arranging for someone to steal my elephant.
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It shows a certain lack of awareness and laziness on the part of the person who wrote or selected the question, though. The fact that they do use an endangered, majestic creature as the “set dressing” makes it more like a trick question and less like a lateral thinking puzzle or test of actual problem solving and creativity, IMO.
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The rules don’t seem to prohibit loaning or renting your elephant to a zoo somewhere near your home, so long as you retain ownership. That’s what I’d do.
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It’s basically the equivalent of handing the turd of a project that’s been foisted on you (what’s really being discussed) to an expert consultant who might have a chance of doing what you can’t.
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Are you testing whether I’m a replicant, or a circus freak, Mr. Deckard?
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