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Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

I found it a bit of an odd article. I alternate between Mr Happy, Mr Grumpy, Mr Angry, Mr Sad. (Fortunately, I'm never Mr Tickle.)

While it was interesting, I'd hate for people reading this article to think it was genuinely a good idea as a hiring practice. People are complicated, and cannot and should not be pigeonholed into such simple categories.

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I think it's an extremely good idea. Work generally requires people to suppress most of their personality, often tot he point of treating people as completely interchangeable labor units, which is dehumanising. Acknowledging that there are different kinds of people with different personal drives is an excellent approach. Also, most people who grew up in the UK are familiar with the Mr Men & Little Miss books, most of which treat of the titular character encountering some problem in which their regular personality puts them at a disadvantage.

Frankly I'd rather deal with someone who displays extensive familiarity with the Mr Men than some buzzword-regurgitating follower of the latest management guru or MBA fad who has mistaken novelty for innovation.

> it was genuinely a good idea as a hiring practice

There's been enough discussion about how fundamentally broken the current recruitment process is (in tech) that this doesn't seem much worse.

It's not any worse than other hiring practices, such as the use of Myers-Briggs types, which are thought of approvingly in the business community.

I've been at a workplace where I was sorted by the Dept head into a 'colour' category according to my personality, based on some bullshit test. There were 4(!) colours. I stayed for three months.

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