I've been consulting for 20 years and most clients I come across that subscribe to this idea that they are the only one with anything at stake here are the WORST clients. They are the ones that make you pass all these tests and jump through all of these hoops only to realize that they're so unorganized and dysfunctional that they can't even manage their own projects.
I see the point, I just think it's horrible advice, especially in this new world where everyone thinks they're some startup CEO that's so brave for laying it all on the line they can act like this with complete disregard of the experience the other person brings to the table. If you are constantly running into issues with consultants/contractors/vendors not producing, there's a good chance that you're the problem.
> My point is more about how do you equate the level of difficulty of 700 glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice to software or anything else? At what point are you just a lying?
Who's equating the difficulty of the contrived example to anything else? Beyond equating them both as something that's difficult but not impossible?
I don't know your background but I'd imagine you might be able to understand, or know, that migrating a company, or even a small group or a single person, from one software system to another is often a difficult project. I can certainly appreciate the advice to immediately dismiss anyone from consideration for helping me with such a project if they tell me that the migration is either 'impossible' or 'easy'.
----------------------
Even though this rule of thumb is very simple, it is very important and as always, has two perspectives that need to be considered, one of the recipient and another of the provider.
Service recipient perspective: A service recipient looks for some one who is knowledgeable about the request and shows enough signs of comprehension of the subject area/ domain. A provider who says that a request is not possible doesn't get the business. So is some one who says he/she/their organization will get it done, without getting in to the details. The person who is most likely to be given the business is some one who gets into the details and can quote a price and give reasons for the price. Of course giving details for the price quoted is not a guarantee to get the business, as the price may be too high for the service recipient.
Service provider perspective:This is about two things
#1 Knowing one's subject/domain well: The story may be about preparing fresh orange juice. But in real life, it is applicable for any work that we do. You the reader may be a developer, team lead, software engineer or a project manager. When some one asks whether an activity or a task can be done, you must be proficient enough about the subject to provide a correct response.
#2 Knowing the real cost and willing to quote the same: This is also about knowing the price of the service to be provided, being honest enough to quote it and also deliver the service provided at the cost promised. This strictly means no cheating ( doing the equivalent of promising fresh orange juice and delivering bottled juice or promising a large glass and delivering a small one). While people may think that quoting the actual cost will drive away prospective customers, truth is that genuine customers who require the service appreciate honest and transparent response.
----------------------
I guess my frustration boils down to the fact that intercom's blog used to be fantastic and this feels like a weak article. All filler and then two measly sentences to explain it all:
The key idea here is to propose a task you know to be extremely difficult but possible, and then measure the candidate’s reaction. If they are defeatist (“That can’t be done!“) or deluded (“I’d code that in a weekend“) then that’s what you’d be hiring.
I guess my hostility (I call it passion ;) ) is that there's not a lot of actionable advice to take from this article. The other article I found was basically the same but with a lot more meat around the point.
Link to other article I found: http://mysticmundane.blogspot.com/2012/05/orange-juice-test-...