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Comment by geraldwhen | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who spends time fixing a coffee machine is not earning their extremely high staff engineer salary.

My time is not suited to fixing coffee machines. People paid literally 1/6th what I am are tasked for that.

From TFA : “if the office coffee machine broke down, how would the candidate react? Would they try to fix it, or would they wait for the office manager or the founder to do it instead?”

I guess we know what kind of candidate you would be :)

The engineer in me would at least try to characterize the problem. It might be something simple! And to flip your argument around, if it’s something you can fix in a minute, it’s going to be more expensive to call someone else to do it.

Typically when you buy an expensive percolator it comes with a service and supplies contract that gives you callout times and weekly deliveries. Why would you risk breaking something that cost thousands of dollars and risk voiding that contract?

Even something as “simple” as a commercial percolator has a lot behind it that we might not know about. Unless it’s a water line issue I wouldn’t touch it.

> The engineer in me would at least try to characterize the problem. It might be something simple! And to flip your argument around, if it’s something you can fix in a minute, it’s going to be more expensive to call someone else to do it.

The engineer in me would report it to the office manager so they can deal with getting the right people to do it.

We have fancy/expensive/complicated superautomatic coffee machines at work. I know nothing about how those things work. I also don't know if that machine is even owned by the company or if it's leased. Do we have a service contract? Are we even allowed to touch it when it breaks?

Now, if it was my personal machine and it was out of warranty, sure I'll have a look. But knowing nothing about this machine my instinct would not be to tinker with it, but at the very least first get the answers to the questions above. I'm sure we all have experience with well-meaning laypeople trying to 'fix' a problem and making it worse. I don't want to be that person.

> I'm sure we all have experience with well-meaning laypeople trying to 'fix' a problem and making it worse. I don't want to be that person.

So much this. I feel like the article is selecting for the d-k peak of mt stupid; unearned confidence without a deep understanding of the situation.

> I know nothing about how those things work. I also don't know if that machine is even owned by the company or if it's leased.

Engineering is also about knowing stuff. If you don’t know these things about the appliances you use every day as part of your work routine, and it seems you can’t be bothered to even find out, that also speaks to what kind of candidate you’d be.

> If you don’t know these things about the appliances you use every day as part of your work routine

TIL the coffee machine is an essential part of my 'work routine'.

I don't trust most software engineers around physical machines.

As a software developer, I don’t even trust my own code. That’s why I rely on unit tests, integration tests, specifications, and 20 people who have never programmed in their whole life.

I still don’t see how it’s related to coffee.

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?

Same shit.

It’s true in that there is comparative advantage in not doing it.

That’s what makes it a cultural scissor, and therefore a useful discriminator: there is no right answer, but there is definitely one kind of person these guys are selecting for.

I also like working with the kind of person who sometimes eschews comparative advantage. More than a decade ago, a startup I was at had our conference.

We ran barebones: front desk, ushers, lighting, everything. Run by members of the team. I was on engineering, at the front desk. It was great fun. Our customers loved it.

It would be good to message the person in charge of fixing or replacing it. All too often, others assume someone else already contacted them. Then, prepare a cup of tea and return to work.

Is this the same reason you wouldn’t pick up trash on the floor?

Trash on the flor has a known quick solution, a broken coffee machine doesn't and the fix often needs to be coordinated or you easily call in multiple people to repair it etc.

In general if a task needs to be coordinated you shouldn't try to do it yourself, at best you should notify a coordinator but usually they are already aware of it and you are just spamming them.

Picking up trash from the floor does not require special tools, and does not void the warranty of the floor.

What kind of weird fantasy is this?

It is a "cultural fit" test, a cousin of "how many golf balls can you put in a manhole cover" or whatever. The question aims to figure out if you're going to take on certain tasks, and how you would take them on; especially in the frame of something outside your vocation, and if you're a "doer" or not. He states this frame explicitly in the post. Do you tackle the problem, and how, or do you throw your hands up, stating that it's someone else's problem?

You definitely will not get hired by that guy: you misunderstood the question.

I wouldn’t want to work for a company who has coffee problems every time they hire someone, and can’t handle their own problems.

Or was it a stupid trap like the INTP psychological scam? How is it related to my future job?

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