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Comment by salimmadjd | Hacker News Reader

I worked with Victor Vescovo( sign name V^2 as he was also a Navy reserve intelligence officer)for about a year in the early dot.com days.

Those days he was into climbing. A nice guy, however he would use “I” too much even when others contributed to something and only “we” when he jumped on someone else’s idea. I assumed (rightly or wrongly) being a mountain climber it had to do with not playing team sports.

That experience made me add an interview question later asking the candidate if they played any team sports in high school or college.

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Since you will never have any way to seriously lern if that question works you can just as well ask in an interview if the candidate ever wanted to be a panda. I think people who wanted to be pandas are lazy and shouldn‘t be trusted.

I'd never actively considered whether or not I wanted to be a panda before reading this, but my initial reaction was "of course, who wouldn't?" and I thought you were going to express a distrust of anyone without that reaction. Obviously, that's not the case, and I'm a little shocked.

Just a clear case of different approachs, but I'm guess I'm glad nobody's asked me this in an interview yet.

I would certainly employ somebody who could answer "have you ever wanted to be a panda" cogently. A single word answer invites questions. This is not the same question as "what is your spirit animal" which may be a reason to terminate the interview as a candidate.

> being a mountain climber it had to do with not playing team sports.

Mountaineering is most certainly a team sport. It would probably be fair to say that it requires a greater degree of trust and communication than almost any other sport, given the high stakes and the complexity of the skills involved.

I also worked with Victor at that startup (Hi, Salim). I can't say I share this observation about him, and in fact I know he credited me with some trivia I was able to help him with in briefings he gave (in the Navy context).

I'd further opine I consider team sport participation right up there with panda-philia and whether one prefers vanilla or chocolate ice cream in their milkshakes as hiring criteria, but YMMV.

> asking the candidate if they played any team sports

I would fail this question, and not because I don't like teams, but because I don't like sport games (and prefer athletics, cycling e. t. c.). E. g. ping-pong is not a team sport and I don't like it for the same reasons as football or basketball.

Rock climbing and mountain climbing is the only team sport I know where you have trust your life to your team members.

> That experience made me add an interview question later asking the candidate if they played any team sports in high school or college.

Surely this isn’t a requirement...!

Did Victor play team sports in high school or college?

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