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Comment by danielvaughn | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed a trend where the lower the position, the more invasive the questions become. I think it's a power dynamic - they can ask the questions because they know the applicants are more desperate.

For example, before I was an engineer, I was scraping by on odd jobs after the 2008 crash. Around that time I applied for a job at Red Robin (basically a fast food restaurant for those who don't know).

One of the questions was a huge list of various types of people - a priest, a school teacher, a police officer, etc. There were like 50 of them. I had to rank them by how "moral" I considered them to be. Aside from that, there were a bunch of other pseudo-psychological questions that tried to gauge my personality.

All for a job paying $8/hr at a fucking fast food restaurant.

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Those are definitely interview questions "sold" to companies as being able to weed out undesirables (read: find the answers to questions they cannot ask because of anti-discrimination laws).

I hope that stuff has stopped somewhat but it was definitely all the rage during the mid-late 2000s. I applied for Best Buy GeekSquad when I was starting my career and “failed” their stupid hour long online psych eval that was probably (or should be) illegal. Considering my intelligence and the trajectory of my career they would have been lucky to have me, but I am glad I didn’t get the job, so I would say these are red flags you don’t want to work there anyway.

> I would say these are red flags you don’t want to work there anyway.

That's kind of ignoring OP's point: people that are desperate for income will put up with abuse to get work. Of course they don't want to work there and the working conditions are often stink.

I failed that as well back then! I still (mostly) remember the question that I knew was going to sink me. The scenario was that I caught a coworker stealing a pencil from the company, and the question was what I would do about it. I stubbornly chose whatever the ‘do nothing’ option was, and continued my time as a line cook for several more years. I probably dodged a bullet there.

You're correct. The pencil question is their signature gambit. When I interviewed at BB as a high schooler, I also answered this question incorrectly (but earnestly) and the hiring manager took pity on me, saying effectively "I like you, so I'll give you another chance. When the GM asks you this question you ALWAYS say 'stealing is wrong no matter what'".

You definitely dodged a bullet, btw! That job was my first lesson in corporate hell

Nope. Had to take one for BB, CVS, T-Mobile, as late as 2022.

>I think it's a power dynamic - they can ask the questions because they know the applicants are more desperate.

Or they are more stupid. Stupid people tend to psychoanalyze and stereotype other people more often.

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