I would go out a acquire a duck.
because if I can’t get down from the elephant, I can get down from the duck!
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Something that has been touched on a bit above, but deserves to be stated explicitly:
Stunt or trick questions where you’re looking for a specific answer to a weird metaphorical scenario tend to be heavily gender and racially biased. People from different backgrounds will answer those dumb questions very differently than a privileged white tech bro for whom starting an elephant birthday party business is a plausible Tuesday activity. Just hit up pops for some seed money, rent a big trailer, and let’s do this! This is heavily culturally biased in the same way SATs are, and interviews like this are contributing to the racial and gender divide in the workplace.
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“I’ll leave it in a bad neighborhood (wink wink nudge nudge) and hope ‘those people’ steal it and sell it for parts”
“I know you interviewed for the file clerk position, but congratulations Mr New CEO!”
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Sure, but that really biases the question towards the sort of ‘oh you do software engineering? For free? On your time off?’ club that is a bit of a problem in modern software dev. Note that I’m not arguing against open source, but the idea that a competent developer has a great github presence is not necessarily always true.
That being said, before I sound too offbase: I do think that IS a good idea if they have it. Although I haven’t hired any devs so maybe it doesn’t work well, but I might ask some friends what they think. I know that internally to my company, they want to see some code commits so I think you’re probably on the right track, previous objections aside.
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Yes,a large elephant is not always a practical acquisition.
You could swap it for 2 smaller elephants.
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This is especially likely for hose who’ve read certain popular books on management.
I work as a research analyst, and one of the most important skills in my role (which is hard to teach new hires) is noticing when you’re being asked the wrong question and getting the person or company you’re talking to to ask the right questions instead, because the actual problem they need to solve to succeed is one they aren’t looking at, or aren’t looking at the right way.
My answer, then, depends on what position I’m interviewing for.
Default, personal answer: combination of “get it to a park/preserve/sanctuary (or at worst a good zoo)” and “make sure whoever gave it to me gets investigated.”
If I’m applying for a consulting position: investigate how the elephant got here, where all the elephants other than this one mostly are, and come up with a metric that maximizes my own and the elephant’s welfare to decide on a course of action.
If I’m applying for a position at Neuralink: build a device to let me communicate with elephants and ask it what it wants. Then, lobby for citizenship for all sufficiently sapient animals, especially whales, dolphins, elephants, and great apes. Possibly pigs, too.
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I wouldn’t say it’s a lack of empathy for interviewers, the interview process though? yeah, there’s a bit of that.
I mean, sure, I know what you’re trying to achieve but from the point of view of the prospective employee the process is a bit adversarial, you go in and have to convince someone you’re a good prospect by acting like you care about something other than the paycheck better than other people can, while also trying to show that you have it together in a world where nobody has it together, (not really anyway) sometimes without even knowing how much you can expect to earn.
The interviewer and interviewee both know it’s a dance, but we’ve all got to pretend it isn’t, otherwise it doesn’t work.
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“I did a course on how they want you to answer these interview questions” is, in itself, a HUGE red flag that these trick questions are bullshit.
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Awesome. There should be a list of “How this question is answered by different professions”
- “University Faculty”: Organize a conference on the theme of “Toward a Marxist hermeneutics of E. Elephantini Primalephas Gomphotheroides subspeciazation in the context of race, class, and gender.”
Others?
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