Leandro T. Silva
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2008–2014
4:07 · 7.7M views · Jul 15, 2006
A Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch in which a job interview descends into absurdity, with Portuguese subtitles. It is a short comedy bit about nonsensical interviews.
HN references it as a joke about silly or absurd hiring practices.
3 comments from Hacker News
> "That depends on whether they're constrained by supply (couriers) or demand (customers)." Treating someone decently and with respect is not a supply/demand equation. Your sentence is why everyone hates us. Are you rude to your waiter because he's on the short end of the supply/demand stick? > "and choosing which couriers to accept based on how early they arrive for their job interview seems like an excellent metric" No, not it doesn't. This is cargo cult hiring, no different than hiring programmers based on how well they can reason why manhole covers are round, or why one lightbulb is warmer than the next. You can determine who is an effective courier and who isn't by having them deliver things. Just like you can determine who is an effective programmer and who isn't by having them write code. This sort of "hiring by proxy signal even though the primary signal is perfectly testable" is endemic in our industry, and apparently isn't limited to hiring devs. Tell people what you expect of them, and expect that of them. To do otherwise is shitty mind games no better than the classic Monty Python sketch: this video > "an excellent metric to use to attempt to differentiate between applicants you otherwise know very little about." ... and we arrive at the core of tech industry idiocy. "We don't have enough information to make a good decision" is answered by "Let's concoct logical-sounding but completely unverified proxy signals to make the decision instead of collecting more informati
Ah yes, another person describing their Google interview experience. They do leave a lot of solid candidates out but in their defense, when I was there, being able to survive the non-intuitive interview process was a good indicator you could survive the non-intuitive business dynamics. If didn't really crush people when they didn't get called back it would make it funny. Sort of like the Monty Python sketch this video
I think it would end up like this Monty Python Silly Job Interview Sketch: this video Not something I want to see when it's me/my life on the line, really. Take it seriously and talk sense, please.