Indeed.
Not only when the higher-ups ask you to pull unethical stuff, even when your close friends do.
Last week a close friend of mine who is out of a job right now, told me he was interviewing at a consulting firm and they had given him an Architectural Case study.
He called me up and explained the problem statement - having worked together he knew that it was complex system with multiple scalability & performance traps- and that I had spent a long time building exactly such systems. He nicely asked me to design a pseudo system for him....
I had to refuse as it was clearly an interview question he was meant to work on alone (the wording implied this).
Felt bad as I know he really wanted the job...and it is going to put a big strain on our friendship.
I am still wondering if throwing him a few pointers might have been the better move...
I am still wondering if throwing him a few pointers might have been the better move...
I will agree up front that if the wording explicitly said it was a solo deal, then at minimum you made a safe choice/morally defensible choice, and you can at sleep well at night.
But I think you should have been allowed to give him pointers. And by "allowed" I mean to say that the general standards and expectations of our society should be that people's capabilities include their ability to locate, comprehend and apply new information. An important sub-case of "locate" should (and in practice often does) include maintaining a social graph of people with varied skill sets, and from whom you can get initial pointers in the right direction.
As of late people are more accepting of the general premise of "find and use new information" as a skill unto itself, especially with regards to the internet. Much of you find via Google is written by a human, but when you describe where you got initial direction from, and replace "Google" with "a friend", suddenly it's a different package entirely.
My suspicion is that it is because it does not conform to the "school exam" model that is ingrained into us all. What we are capable of is too often reduced to what we have memorized at any particular moment, and that can be a little misguided.
I obviously don't have full understanding of the prompt your friend was given, nor do I discount the utility of having a huge mental repository of information in many spheres of life (e.g. time sensitive or emergency scenarios). I just think that the "only what you know this very second" examination model is often extended in situations where it isn't a good measure of or doesn't reflect the actual circumstances you can expect to face.
I agree. If I were faced with a high-profile architecture problem of my own at work I'd definitely solicit opinions from my friends before making my formal proposal.
That said I'd probably put together a rough sketch of my own design and then send it to my friends for a sanity check rather than asking them to build it for me from scratch.
When trying to point out the inappropriateness of a touchy situation to someone, I try to lighten the mood with a joke. If you can target the joke to engage their "but that's ridiculous!" response, it will help them to realize that's how their question made you feel.
Something like "I tell you what, I'll give you half the answer to that question if you give me half of your salary after you get hired...". Of course, its entirely possible for someone to take that the wrong way, and just assume you are being a jerk.
I don't know you or your friend, but business dealings with friends often end poorly, even with small transactions like the one you've described here. More importantly, good friends _generally_ will avoid putting you on the spot like that, though I can understand if he's been out of work for a while.
To be honest...I think this is one of the douchiest things you did. This is a friend trying to survive in this awful economy who asks for your help just to land the job and you couldnt help him? After that...he/whe was on their own. I hope this person never speaks to you again.
I'm confident I would have helped out my friend. If he can't hack it once he gets the job, nothing I can do to help. I'll help anyone get a job (in an indirect way such as this) and what they do there is up to them.
Comments
Indeed. Not only when the higher-ups ask you to pull unethical stuff, even when your close friends do.
Last week a close friend of mine who is out of a job right now, told me he was interviewing at a consulting firm and they had given him an Architectural Case study.
He called me up and explained the problem statement - having worked together he knew that it was complex system with multiple scalability & performance traps- and that I had spent a long time building exactly such systems. He nicely asked me to design a pseudo system for him....
I had to refuse as it was clearly an interview question he was meant to work on alone (the wording implied this). Felt bad as I know he really wanted the job...and it is going to put a big strain on our friendship.
I am still wondering if throwing him a few pointers might have been the better move...
I am still wondering if throwing him a few pointers might have been the better move...
I will agree up front that if the wording explicitly said it was a solo deal, then at minimum you made a safe choice/morally defensible choice, and you can at sleep well at night.
But I think you should have been allowed to give him pointers. And by "allowed" I mean to say that the general standards and expectations of our society should be that people's capabilities include their ability to locate, comprehend and apply new information. An important sub-case of "locate" should (and in practice often does) include maintaining a social graph of people with varied skill sets, and from whom you can get initial pointers in the right direction.
As of late people are more accepting of the general premise of "find and use new information" as a skill unto itself, especially with regards to the internet. Much of you find via Google is written by a human, but when you describe where you got initial direction from, and replace "Google" with "a friend", suddenly it's a different package entirely.
My suspicion is that it is because it does not conform to the "school exam" model that is ingrained into us all. What we are capable of is too often reduced to what we have memorized at any particular moment, and that can be a little misguided.
I obviously don't have full understanding of the prompt your friend was given, nor do I discount the utility of having a huge mental repository of information in many spheres of life (e.g. time sensitive or emergency scenarios). I just think that the "only what you know this very second" examination model is often extended in situations where it isn't a good measure of or doesn't reflect the actual circumstances you can expect to face.
I agree. If I were faced with a high-profile architecture problem of my own at work I'd definitely solicit opinions from my friends before making my formal proposal.
That said I'd probably put together a rough sketch of my own design and then send it to my friends for a sanity check rather than asking them to build it for me from scratch.
When trying to point out the inappropriateness of a touchy situation to someone, I try to lighten the mood with a joke. If you can target the joke to engage their "but that's ridiculous!" response, it will help them to realize that's how their question made you feel.
Something like "I tell you what, I'll give you half the answer to that question if you give me half of your salary after you get hired...". Of course, its entirely possible for someone to take that the wrong way, and just assume you are being a jerk.
I don't know you or your friend, but business dealings with friends often end poorly, even with small transactions like the one you've described here. More importantly, good friends _generally_ will avoid putting you on the spot like that, though I can understand if he's been out of work for a while.
To be honest...I think this is one of the douchiest things you did. This is a friend trying to survive in this awful economy who asks for your help just to land the job and you couldnt help him? After that...he/whe was on their own. I hope this person never speaks to you again.
I'm confident I would have helped out my friend. If he can't hack it once he gets the job, nothing I can do to help. I'll help anyone get a job (in an indirect way such as this) and what they do there is up to them.