The Thoughtworks Interview

The Death Star as a metaphor.
Today in TWU we were talking about the Thoughtworks interview process, and the trainer was soliciting ideas for good interview questions. During class I didn't come up with anything, but someone else came up with this, "In what way is the DEATH STAR a metaphor for software development?" The question was a recycled joke from earlier in the week, but it got a few laughs, and someone actually came up with a good answer,

Q: "In what way is the DEATH STAR a metaphor for software development?"
A: "They Deployed it before it was complete, and on the first production run it blew up."

At Thoughtworks everyone gets the chance to interview new hires. The idea is that nobody is more qualified to recognize a potential Thoughtworker than a Thoughtworker. Even people who are relatively new to the company are encouraged to get involved with the recruitment/interview process. In fact I might be pairing with another Thoguhtworker on an interview as early as this weekend! In preparation for that I am trying to come up with questions for a prospective hire. We got loads of standards today: "What are you reading right now?", "Tell me about a time when you encountered X while doing Y and how you overcame it." Where X is a challenge and Y is some job related thing like working on a team. Those questions are important to ask, but the ones that are interesting are the ones that nobody suspects, like "How would you fit an elephant in a fridge?" (someone else's, not mine) Here's one I just thought of, "If you could have one super power what would it be?"

Super heroes have superhuman traits. Superman = super strength + sight + hearing. Spiderman = super strength + quickness + a 6th sense, etc. Like any nonsense interview question there is no right answer, but some answers are definitely better than others. A candidate who says "x-ray vision so I can see you in your underwear," would lose some points in my book. The best super power I can think of is self awareness. I guess that would make me SUPER SELF AWARENESS MAN! Sheesh, not a name that would strike fear into my arch nemisis, but since I don't have an arch nemisis I don't have to face that. Super self awareness is good because it is a super power that would bring me happiness. Superheroes are never happy. They are loners, people with personal problems, people with image problems, which is a shame because they have abilities that so many people would love to have. Super Self Awareness Man, on the other hand, is always one step ahead of himself. He could transcend personal conflict, like Buddha in a cape.

Woah, my laptop has suddenly veered towards the cliffs of sentimentality. I'd better start talking about the Cruise Control plugin for KDE or Ruby on Rails before I start typing things like "How tragic it is that flowers have no eyes to see their own beauty nor noses to smell their fragrance." Not that I typed that. I put it in quotes. The quotes are there because I am saying that IF I WERE to type it here, and I'm not, I would be crashing over the cliffs of sentimentality, which I didn't, but I guess I did type it. Which means... Ahhhhh! *Crash*