Reading around, I found an engaging article about an interesting view on deception that I somewhat agree with. It also had a very fetching name: Radical Honesty.

Mind you, my idea of honesty isn’t as “radical” as described in the article, especially with respect to the more vulgar levels of expressiveness. I do think I tend to be more frank than most, though.

The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without fibs — but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.

And yet…maybe there’s something to it. Especially for me. I have a lying problem. Mine aren’t big lies. They aren’t lies like “I cannot recall that crucial meeting from two months ago, Senator.” Mine are little lies. White lies. Half-truths. The kind we all tell. But I tell dozens of them every day. “Yes, let’s definitely get together soon.” “I’d love to, but I have a touch of the stomach flu.” “No, we can’t buy a toy today — the toy store is closed.” It’s bad. Maybe a couple of weeks of truth-immersion therapy would do me good.

…

[Blanton says] “I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie….I lie to any government official.” (Blanton’s politics are just this side of Noam Chomsky’s.) “I lie to the IRS. I always take more deductions than are justified. I lie in golf. And in poker.”

My computer stays on all day, all the time. Deprived of rest for years, my computer started seeing … colours. I noticed some aberrant behaviour over several weeks, but I attributed it to the effects of the strange contortions I regularly ask of the computers I use.

Today, however, it finally threw up all over the monitors and stopped working. Repeated resuscitations attempts were met with increasingly shorter periods of liveliness, until finally even those efforts started to fail.

Sigh. At least I have the laptop to back me up.

I don’t usually write about work life, trying to avoid any inappropriate remarks, but sanitized interview stories are probably OK.

I’m searching for a good .NET developer, and going through a lot of resumes, phone calls, and people. My tact for interviews these days is to have a few starting points ready, and follow the conversation naturally from there. I find it’s more instructive, and certainly more interesting for both parties.

However, being me, sometimes I end up doing unorthodox things on the spur of the moment. Here are a couple:

STORY #1

This candidate was very earnest, but very junior. “Wet around the ears” wouldn’t be much of a mischaracterization. The enthusiasm and earnestness during the phone interview won an in-person interview, though.

During the in-person interview, however, several basic mistakes were made. Considering the candidate’s apparent enthusiasm for software, though, I decided that perhaps checking for learning aptitude alone would be sufficient. So I fetched a laptop with Internet connectivity, and reiterated the questions, indicating that earlier answers were wrong. The earlier questions were of the kind easily found with a search engine, and the candidate acted quickly and made corrections.

Since I had given an aid, I felt compelled to ask a harder question, deriving from those topics. It was a harsh question, requiring mostly judgment and experience than textbook knowledge, but I wanted to see how the candidate fared. I ended up having to give a LOT of nudges for several minutes, but we eventually got there.

STORY #2

During the phone interview, this candidate came across as a confident, easy-going talker, with the technique of covering up ignorance by taking words from the questions and using them in the answer, with a little bit of filler. Why people do this, I’m not sure; do they think I would ask questions on topics I don’t know well?

At the end of the conversation, however, the candidate took the initiative to express that “Even though I didn’t kno- express, the answers in the way you wanted to hear, I learn fast. If I don’t know it now, give me a couple hours and I will.” Now, there’s a mix of high confidence and spin here, as the candidate deliberately changed the phrasing of the first part to suggest that it wasn’t that the answer was unknown, it was that it wasn’t communicated properly. Smiling with amusement and mischief as I processed this, I replied, “OK. A couple hours you said. Email me back with the answers to the questions I asked earlier?” I rattled off the 3 main question I had received unsatisfactory answers for and bid a good day.

Naturally, I did receive an email with the well researched answers, although it was five hours later. A ready explanation was also attached: it wasn’t that it took that long to research the answers, it was that confidential communication had to wait until the end of the work day. Assuredly, if there’s a followup in-person interview, some doozy questions on those topics will be asked!