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Comment by brobdingnagians | Hacker News Reader

Totally agree; starting any relationship with a lie is a terrible idea. I think the "Reverse Orange Juice Test" is that anyone who uses the orange juice test on you is being dishonest, and therefore disqualifies themselves from being a client.

Same with the "difficult but do-able" side of things. It might be difficult but do-able for most people, but the person you are talking to has already done it and is going to package something up for you based on their expertise. Like every situation, honest, realistic discussion of the process is the real winner. Tricks don't work; communication does.

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What lie?

Stating that you need all that orange juice (which you don't actually need).

I'd focus less on the name of the test. It's a story that's being passed down from someone else to someone else.

None of these people are booking banquet halls and asking about orange juice.

The setup is kind of ridiculous and I suspect just a little bit made up just to give it a pithy name that makes people say "What's the orange juice test?" so you can go into this whole spiel about banquet halls.

The core idea is sound: Don't work with people who either don't know what they're doing or try to make your decisions for you. But I wouldn't work with anybody calling it the orange juice test either, because it seems like something someone made up to feel smart by knowing arbitrary jargon.

Yes, the core idea of looking for someone who neither says they can do something difficult really simply nor says they can't do it is sound.

It's the idea of requesting the contractor to give feedback on a task that you have no intention of having them complete that people (including me) are taking issue with.

The title of the test is irrelevant - the test could easily be asking a contractor if they could develop an application that does abc in such-and-such a time-frame then turning round and telling them "I don't actually want an application that does that, I just wanted to see what you'd say".

Here's where I think you and others are missing something. Orange juice is in the hypothetical that they are discussing. There's nothing that says you have to make up a request. It can be a legitimate request, it just wasn't in the hypothetical.

The key thing is whether the response is "that's impossible" or "you can have that for this price." In the anecdote, the businessman told Gerald that he'd already passed the test.

I don't think so.. it's definitely implied that you ask for something more than you need and then walk back from it. Like he says "“Oh you don’t really intend to have the breakfast. It’s just part of the test."

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