I was surprised to hear that they ask candidates to spend a couple of days working on a project, and then present that project to the company. That's a substantial time investment to ask someone to make on top of interviewing. If I was looking for work and every potential employer asked this of me, searching for a job could take weeks or months.
Re slide 20: I recall reading that it's a myth that people who use the word "I" a lot are particularly self-absorbed. I recall it being suggested that the opposite might even be the case, perhaps because people were acknowledging the subjectivity of their opinions rather than presuming to present an indisputable statement of truth. I would look for a link, but the word "I" is hard to google.<p>Edit: I might be thinking of this, or something like it: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-does-your-use-of-the-word-i-say-about-you-2011-8" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/what-does-your-use-of-the-wor...</a>
For some reason I took an immediate dislike towards the speaker, perhaps because I had previously read the article about programmers having a negative outlook (i.e. they're prone to being assholes) and his silly attempts to please the audience by making jabs at marketing and PR staff. How do you separate assholes from people you dislike for mostly unfair reasons?
His presentation on slideshare: <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/flaregames/keeping-your-company-aholefree" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/flaregames/keeping-your-company-ah...</a>
Great to see this post here on Hacker News!
I work at flaregames and wholeheartedly agree with Klaas, we're asshole-free and that's not an understatement. :)
I can't help but wonder why I had such a bad taste in my mouth after watching the whole vid. These cheap attempts at jabbing PR and Marketing people (not to mention naming names and Deutsche Telekom 'joke') came off to me as cheesy and badly thought.
I'm enormously glad that Apple board did absolutely not keep their company asshole-free.<p>Writing this on computer that asshole created.<p>And btw, I do not know a single Genius (with uppacase G) who is not an asshole, so go figure...
It's always hard when you think "I was being an arsehole at that time". Hard, but good to realise. I think I had that moment just now!<p>In case you think I believe I'm always an arsehole, this isn't the case. But there have been times I believe I was. I'll have to work on it in future :(