Comment by Scubabear68 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scubabear68 | Hacker News Reader

This is a really good list. Just yesterday I was chatting with a senior management person about character, and we were discussing a mutual colleague (Let's call him "Joe") who had failed quite spectacularly in the last year. We had three points of view on him - mine as one outside contractor who replaced the individual as an interim CTO, his as CEO of a vendor to the company, and the view of a PE investor who owned a big chunk of the company.

He said the first early warning sign he had that Joe was going to be a problem was when a group were out to dinner, and Joe spent quite a bit of time talking about the school his son was going to. The PE guy is meticulous and of course when he got home he looked it up. After some digging, PE guy found that Joe's son actually went to a less prestigious mid-level college. Why, everyone thought, would Joe go out of his way to lie about his son's school, when no one had even asked about it?

A lot of money and tears later Joe was finally let go for a host of reasons. But it really all came down to character.

The fact that PE guy spent time looking up the son means he already had a vibe something was off about "Joe".

So while I agree that if you lie about small things I'd think you'd also lie about large things - I'm not sure it'd be backed by data, like much of pop-psychology. So I think the lesson here is to listen to your gut for red flags rather than evaluate someone based on some list of features.

This is exactly right. There were clues he was “off”. I do still think the list from TFA was a good starting point, but I agree it is largely about your gut (and where experience can really help). I have had the same on interviews with some very senior people, emphasis seemed to be off and there were small inconsistencies in answers that lead to alarm bells in my head.

Had one guy interview who was supposedly a Google Cloud expert who rang every alarm in my head (I was a no), and he was let go in two weeks for his…shall we say fondness for elaborately untrue stories and total lack of knowledge about GCP in practice.

On the other hand, anecdotally, I had trouble getting companies to even invite me to an interview until I "amped up" my credentials on resume. It have landed me three jobs I was well suited for (in different industries). Otherwise my honest to god résumé left me not even with an opportunity.

While I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in today's world of self-(over)-promotion, how do you know you didn't rob more suitable candidates from the opportunity?

Why should I care?

So if I am actually qualified does that mean I robbed someone, too?

Fake it till you make it homie. If you can do the job then you can do the job; there is no over-promotion.

I do not care at all about the potential candidates I may or may not have robbed.

Looks like Joe lived and worked in an environment which valued things like "where do you send your kid to school", hence why the PE guy felt the need to "look it up" (if said PE guy had not felt the same about "good" schools as joe did then he wouldn't have felt the need to search). I don't blame this on Joe, I blame it on the system.

Fascinating how nowadays people are excusing clearly unethical (and sometimes criminal) behavior and instead decide to blame it on something nebulous such as the "system".

While it might be true that Joe felt pressure to lie due to the environment he was operating in, that doesn't absolve him from lying. Just like being really horny doesn't absolve someone from raping.

Without excusing Joe specifically, lying is not seen by nearly everyone as intrinsically wrong in the same way rape is. Lying in response to an unjust question can be seen as just, e.g. answering "What's the code to the door? Tell me or I'll shoot" with a duress code, or more controversially answering "Where did you go to school?" in such a way that you appear to be wealthier during a job interview where candidates from poorer backgrounds are discriminated against.

I don't think this absolves Joe because I don't think anyone would have discriminated against him on the basis of where his kids went to school, or that he could have reasonably expected them to.

I was with you until the last sentence

There needs to be a Godwin's law for sex crime metaphors

Is stealing bread to feed your sisters starving child unethical?

If Joe lied, that’s on him. Credentialism is a topic worth to explore and I would argue that it’s beside the point but… yikes, who the hell actually verifies if somebody’s son attended some school. I mean if we are talking about a test of character, I believe that Joe should be glad to be out of that environment.

Depends, lying is a "strange" move, but society doesn't reward honesty nor silence very much. Appearances on the other hand... I'm a naive truthist and almost ended up jobless. Meanwhile lazy but assertive people get hired on the spot and spend half their day on reddit. Society can distort you to that point.

> “Joe spent quite a bit of time talking about the school his son was going to.”

Maybe he was baiting y’all. For the sake of conversation or whatever.

I’ve come to the conclusion the opposite case rules the game. It’s what brings us together that matters and is worth thinking about.

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