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Sometimes a strangely "smudged scenario" (dream-residue ?) presents itself as I awaken after trying to do my afternoon non-air-con siesta in tropical heat (above 104 F every day this week); this time a kind of diffuse picture of a room with a computer and a US $100 bill on the floor. Interviews taking place. As I regained full consciousness by pouring ice-cold water over my induced-feverish head, this whatever turned into a thought about what would happen if different people being interviewed were presented with such a room with the US $100 bill on the floor, and what their behavior ... or lack of behavior ... towards that bill might "mean" in terms of getting hired, or not hired.
So, based on the principle that "suffering shared is suffering diluted," I dare to invite you, gentle-yet-savage readers, to project yourself into that scenario. I can offer you no reward for your willingness to play, but, (I swear I) will try to reciprocate should you present such inducements for imagination's playground 
The interview room had a white-board, and a bunch of marker-pens in different colors. A desk, a comfortable (modern expensive, multi-adjustable) office-chair. It had no windows. A hidden (quiet) system kept the room at a very comfortable temperature, and the air was filtered, fresh. The room smelled ... pleasant, clean, but not "sanitized."
A computer (powerful, lots of memory) was on that desk, with a large monitor; it was running Windows 8.1. Visual Studio 2013 was running on this computer, and was open without a current project open. This computer was not connected to the internet, but it had the typical help files for different types of projects installed on the local hard-drive.
If any job candidate had bothered to look, they would have seen there were no other applications on this computer.
The room had two hidden video cameras.
On the floor, to the right side of the office-chair, was one-hundred-dollar US bill, crumpled. This would be clearly visible once the candidate had sat down in the office-chair, but, otherwise, quite difficult to see.
There were four job candidates on this day: each was given two hours to complete a task of creating some kind of hierarchic data structure, and creating some kind of user-interface for representing it, editing its state, adding, removing, elements, etc. The candidate had their choice of any .NET stack (WinForms, WPF, etc.). Each candidate was told that writing a serializer/de-serializer ... while not expected ... would be quite impressive.
But, each candidate was also cautioned that what the company was looking for was quality, and attention to detail, and that it would be better to write something that showed use of SOLID principles, and that showed attention to validation and crash-proofing, and overall data-architecture, rather than something that ... while perhaps wider in functional-scope ... was "looser."
All four candidates that day produced code that more than met the expectations of what the company was looking for ... for the position they were hiring for. Each had an appropriate resume, had passed an initial face-to-face screening by HR, and the project manager.
Here's how the four candidates differed in their behavior in the test room:
1. candidate one noticed the US $100 bill on the floor the moment they sat down; picked it up, went outside the room and turned it in to the company receptionist; they then went to their contact in the company, asked the time for their start on the task be reset; the company contact agreed to that. They went back in the testing room, and completed the task.
2. candidate two at one point (on the videotape) is seen noticing the bill: they picked it up; they appeared to be amused. They then placed the bill back on the floor where they saw it, and went to work on the task. They completed the task; on the way out the candidate mentioned to the company contact that there was a US $100 bill on the floor next to the office chair.
3. candidate three appeared to never notice the US $100 bill.
4. candidate four picked up the US $100 bill, put it in their pocket, and never mentioned it on the way out, after completing the task.
Who did you hire ? Who did you not hire ? If you had to rank the candidates in order of preference for hiring (assuming you'd hire more than one of them), how would you rank them.
If you had a follow-up interview with each candidate, what questions would you ask each candidate individually (from among the candidates who did notice the US $100 bill) ?
How strongly would you agree, or dis-agree, with the statement: "the candidates behavior with the US $100 bill ... or lack of noticing it ... is a factor in making a hire decision."
cheers, Bill ... why bother with reality, when you can project it ?
«The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.» Soren Kierkegaard
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I would hire candidate 4, as we need someone who has knowledge of financial services and the act of taking money that doesn't belong to you would demonstrate that.
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Candidate 3.
People see money, even if they don't react to it.
A guy who doesn't give a crap about money, but just gets the job done, is a guy who'll work miracles.
Second choice: the one who just picked it up -- no mess, no politics; just "Hey, what the Hell. free pizza!"
Last choice would be the one who took it to reception. Those who make a fuss about money are the ones to be careful of.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: Last choice would be the one who took it to reception. Those who make a fuss about money are the ones to be careful of.
Or maybe he's an honest guy wouldn't ever consider cheating.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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The honest guy would just leave it there for the owner to realise he'd dropped it.
The guy who takes it to reception is a player, who would stab his colleagues in the back any time he thought it would be to his advantage to do so.
Seen 'em all, hired 'em all, fired 'em all.
Actually, I should STFU, because all I'm doing here is giving the @rseholes a chance to learn a new way to bullsh1t.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Yah. Sure.
If you choose to trust someone who makes such a show of being honest, feel free. I'm sure you'll only ever buy the very best used cars.
Me, I'd probably have just picked it up and put it on the desk -- and then I'd have told them to go and **** themselves for having filmed me without my explicit consent.
I don't want to work for sneaky, dishonest people like that.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: trust someone who makes such a show
You mean like you're doing here? making a show?
Seems to me like judgmental arrogant smuggy schmuckness.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Bitter experience, actually.
Learn the easy way, from those of us who didn't.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Sad for you, I guess, to be turned-off on all honest people by one bad experience. It's good to be careful and wise, though. Not everybody does it for show.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Who said "one"?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Isn't it "Whom" did you hire and not hire? 
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Well, Sir,
Pissibly, depending on ye olde longitude, and ye merrye latitude, and ye state of me mum and daddye's exchequer; I among those for whom the larval state occurred well west of ye Primo Meridiano, from livestock did'st work with their handies ... so quite pissibly deviate I from hoity-toity.
Seriously, that's a very interesting usage to discuss, and I would use "whom" (as subject) depending on social context (when "formal" whatever that means). I do not claim that's "kosher" in the grammar-system you subscribe to. Does that reflect a certain "latitude" of Americanos in regard to the usage compared to UK-England natives ? An interesting question to ask, and some think, "not," and claim to have research that backs that up: [^].
I also would use "whom" when it occurs at the end of an interrogatory phrase: "You hired whom ? Where it's clear, as in "from whom" it is the object of a verb, or preposition. "You hired who ?" "sounds" distinctly "wrong" to my ears in a way that "Who did you hire?" does not. Learned habit ?
cheers, Bill
«The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.» Soren Kierkegaard
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Interrogative pronouns are a tad looser on case -- after all, saying "whomever you hire..." would make you sound like a bit of a dick.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Since this is happening during an interview, I would expect the candidate to figure out the money was planted in order to judge them. The one who walked out with it is both dishonest and stupid.
I am inclined to prefer the second one.
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I would hire the one who said he don't have 2 hours of time to write free codez for an interview, and who laughed at the money as it is trick like a 5 year old would devise
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meh
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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The one that wrote the best code.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: the best code
Exactly!
I also tend to agree that a decent person should not accept a job in such a place.
Life is too shor
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All can go if they solved the task in a certain level - but not 4!
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Not 1: he was cheating as Mark Wallace said. He definetely knew how to play the ball in his favour while standing on the "Righteous Path™". If that wasn't a 100$ bill but your back, he would have turned it for his own profit.
Not 3: either he did not notice it and then he definetely lacks observation skills or he perfectly ignored it - he's one that wants not to be troubled at all. Meaning that if he incurs in problems or critical misbehaviours he'll never ever react to that. And you'll never know until it is too late and then you could not reasonable do anything against him because "he wasn't aware of the fact".
I'd hire either 2 or 4. 2 understood the game and told about the bill simply to mark that he knew. Either that or he is both clever and honest (I leave them there and tell someone, 100$ are good enough money to be trouble if lost).
4 is simply the best: he saw an occasion, he took it and shut up.
Me? I would have probably took them up, put them on the table and maybe alerted someone of the company on the way out - if I remembered and cared enough.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
If a coffee bean is between the Earth and the Sun, is it a Java Eclipse? -- Sascha Lefèvre
/xml>
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den2k88 wrote: 4 is simply the best: he saw an occasion, he took it and shut up.
Hmmm...but would you want to work with him?
Assuming you keep your wallet in your jacket pocket (when you wear a suit) would you feel safe leaving your jacket on the back of your chair for five minutes with him in the next cubicle?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I would: that was a bill on the ground: no owner, no importance given - after all who dropepd it already lost it, better take advantage since someone else will do anyway. Finders, keepers... theft is way different IMHO.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
If a coffee bean is between the Earth and the Sun, is it a Java Eclipse? -- Sascha Lefèvre
/xml>
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In the UK, that is a specific offence called "theft by finding".
If you do not take adequate steps to establish the ownership, it's theft - pure and simple.
If I find your car parked outside my house, does that mean it's mine?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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No, but a car has a registration certificate which attests ownership - in fact it is treated as an immobile propriety and requires registration. Also in Italy leaving the car open is a offence in itself and while it does not condone the theft (due to the registration certificate) it spells serious troubles for the one who left the car.
The same goes for wallets: they usually have many documents inside and so usually they're returned, but if you happen to loose a banknote it is very improbable that someone asks who's the owner. When it happens the people who do is both considered a High White Knight in these Dark Times and a ingenuous good person 
Seriously, don't loose anything in Italy. The most common case of wallet finding has the wallet conveniently devoided of any readily usable money. In some cases it was stolen the wallet itself and were returned only the documents in a paper bag.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
"When you have eliminated the JavaScript, whatever remains must be an empty page." -- Mike Hankey
If a coffee bean is between the Earth and the Sun, is it a Java Eclipse? -- Sascha Lefèvre
/xml>
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