Post by Bill Thompson on Jun 24, 2007 14:13:34 GMT -4
I drove from Bakersfield, California to a morning job interview at DiskKeeper in Burbank, California.
The company had called me and requested that I have an in-person job interview with them. The on-site recruiter told me he wanted me to come in for an interview and take an IQ test.
I had no idea what I was in for. I got there on time in the morning after driving about 2 hours. I gave the receptionist the job application that theri on-site recruiter had emailed me. Then I took a seat in their lobby. The lobby consisted of two black leather couches. Seated across from me was another job candidate named Brian who was checking his text messages on his cell phone. To my left was the receptionist desk and to my right was a glass shelf display on the wall.
This is where things got weird. The top two shelves had awards that DiskKeeper had won. But what caught my eye was what was on the bottom shelf and closer to me. There was a display peddling Dyanetics. There was one book by itself and a stack in a display with the note, “Ask the Receptionist to purchase a copy” There were also little pamphlets there about how to be happy. Next to all this and occupying the whole bottom shelf where what looked like a set of encyclopedias about how to conduct a business. Each volume in this set was authored by L. Ron Hubbard.
The recruiter told me that they were running behind schedule and asked me to take a personal potential analysis prior to me taking my IQ test. Eventhough I was there for a software engineering job interview, they had told me that I would be taking interview for a computer programming job, they had told me I would be taking some "HR tests" as well.
The "Personality Potential Analysis" had 200 questions which I was to either agree or disagree or choose neutral on. The company that produced this thing called themselves "Mastertech Computer" as the copyright said on the inside of the test, but on the outside of the pamphlet, it was copyrighted by Scientology as well. And, yes, sure enough, one of the questions was "Do you sometimes whistle, for the fun of it".
Next, I went to the wait again and finally was called back into the room I had been in and I took my IQ test.
After another wait, I took another IQ test. This second IQ test lasted just a minute and it was part of my real interview with the recruiter. During this interview I was not asked any real work related questions. I found that to be very strange. He did ask me to define what I though the word "product" meant. He told me that my definition was pretty close to what the official definition that he had was. He showed me what he had as the official definition of a "product" and it seemed too wordy and -- oddly enough -- emotional and unstable to be any sort of dictionary definition. I asked who provided this definition and he said that it came from the organization that HR referrs to. I looked at the reference and I found it came from a speech given by L. Ron Hubbard.
During this interview I was asked often if what I had produced was replicated and distributed easily. It was as if I was a mechanical engineer rather than a software engineer and this was in reference to an assembly line or something. "You know I am a software engineer and what I make can be downloaded from the internet" was what I finally said after being asked this a few times.
But so far I was thinking that the interview was going well. I later found out that I scored very high on the IQ tests. I was never told about the "Personal Potential Analysis".
But I was still not done.
There was one more evaluation. I took an "ethics evaluation" by their HR director, Kathy.
This is when things got laughably wierd.
The company was a front to the Scientology cult. The recruiter told me that they base their business model on the teaching of the cult founder, L. Ron Hubbard. They had me talk an IQ test and one of their "personality evaluation" tests. and then I had an interview with the their HR person on ethics. How strange since Hubbard was perhaps the most unethical person ever.
what follows is partially from www.skeptictank.org/ritdisk.htm
What follows is partially from www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/03/35054
I am thinking now it might be a good time to start some sort of open source disk defragmenter to compete with Diskeeper.
The company had called me and requested that I have an in-person job interview with them. The on-site recruiter told me he wanted me to come in for an interview and take an IQ test.
I had no idea what I was in for. I got there on time in the morning after driving about 2 hours. I gave the receptionist the job application that theri on-site recruiter had emailed me. Then I took a seat in their lobby. The lobby consisted of two black leather couches. Seated across from me was another job candidate named Brian who was checking his text messages on his cell phone. To my left was the receptionist desk and to my right was a glass shelf display on the wall.
This is where things got weird. The top two shelves had awards that DiskKeeper had won. But what caught my eye was what was on the bottom shelf and closer to me. There was a display peddling Dyanetics. There was one book by itself and a stack in a display with the note, “Ask the Receptionist to purchase a copy” There were also little pamphlets there about how to be happy. Next to all this and occupying the whole bottom shelf where what looked like a set of encyclopedias about how to conduct a business. Each volume in this set was authored by L. Ron Hubbard.
The recruiter told me that they were running behind schedule and asked me to take a personal potential analysis prior to me taking my IQ test. Eventhough I was there for a software engineering job interview, they had told me that I would be taking interview for a computer programming job, they had told me I would be taking some "HR tests" as well.
The "Personality Potential Analysis" had 200 questions which I was to either agree or disagree or choose neutral on. The company that produced this thing called themselves "Mastertech Computer" as the copyright said on the inside of the test, but on the outside of the pamphlet, it was copyrighted by Scientology as well. And, yes, sure enough, one of the questions was "Do you sometimes whistle, for the fun of it".
Next, I went to the wait again and finally was called back into the room I had been in and I took my IQ test.
After another wait, I took another IQ test. This second IQ test lasted just a minute and it was part of my real interview with the recruiter. During this interview I was not asked any real work related questions. I found that to be very strange. He did ask me to define what I though the word "product" meant. He told me that my definition was pretty close to what the official definition that he had was. He showed me what he had as the official definition of a "product" and it seemed too wordy and -- oddly enough -- emotional and unstable to be any sort of dictionary definition. I asked who provided this definition and he said that it came from the organization that HR referrs to. I looked at the reference and I found it came from a speech given by L. Ron Hubbard.
During this interview I was asked often if what I had produced was replicated and distributed easily. It was as if I was a mechanical engineer rather than a software engineer and this was in reference to an assembly line or something. "You know I am a software engineer and what I make can be downloaded from the internet" was what I finally said after being asked this a few times.
But so far I was thinking that the interview was going well. I later found out that I scored very high on the IQ tests. I was never told about the "Personal Potential Analysis".
But I was still not done.
There was one more evaluation. I took an "ethics evaluation" by their HR director, Kathy.
This is when things got laughably wierd.
The company was a front to the Scientology cult. The recruiter told me that they base their business model on the teaching of the cult founder, L. Ron Hubbard. They had me talk an IQ test and one of their "personality evaluation" tests. and then I had an interview with the their HR person on ethics. How strange since Hubbard was perhaps the most unethical person ever.
what follows is partially from www.skeptictank.org/ritdisk.htm
DISKEEPER USER STUNNED BY DENIAL OF TECH SUPPORT
Nancy Kelly, Digital News. Feb 4, 1991
Ciba-Geigy was refused technical support for its disk defragmenter after the supplier, Executive Software Inc., learned that the Swiss chemical company made Ritalin, a drug sometimes prescribed for hyperactive children.
Executive Software, maker of the dominant disk defragmenter for the VAX, Diskepper, objects to the production of Ritalin as a drug that is prescribed by psychiatrists. The drug has provoked controversy based upon some studies that document several cases of suicides among young adolescents who had been given the drug as children. The Physicians' Desk Reference indicates that the side effects of Ritalin withdrawal include paranoia with thoughts of suicide.
The Glendale, Calif. software firm has a longstanding policy against selling its products to psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions. On Jan. 9 the firm's board of directors voted to expand that policy to include psychiatric drug manufacturers, after a company employee brought it to President Craig Jensen's attention that the makers of Ritalin had purchased a copy of Diskeeper.
"Ciba-Geigy ranks with the scum of the earth in my opinion," said Jensen. "The primary effect of Ritalin is suicide. When some of our employees heard we sold our software to them, I agreed to cancel that license, if necessary, and refuse to do business with drug manufacturers in the future."
The U.S.-based Ciba-Geigy MIS manager who bought Diskeeper late last year is not part of the pharmaceutical division of the company, which has eight seperate divisions that produce products ranging from pigments to plastics. He asked that he and his division not be identified. He said that he sought technical support when his employees ran into difficulty installing Diskeeper and that he was referred by the support staff to Dave Kluge [no relation- s.d.] Executive Software's corporate affairs manager.
He said Kluge told him Executive Software would not provide Ciba-Geigy with any technical support. "He told me 'You people make psychiatric drugs and implements of torture.'
"I said, 'You're kidding.' I thought he was putting me on.
What follows is partially from www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/03/35054
The Federal Office of Security in Information Technology (BSI) is also looking into whether the tool in question -- DisKeeper, a disk fragmentation technology created by Glendale, California-based Executive Software -- poses a security threat to users.
Executive Software CEO Craig Jensen is a member of the Church of Scientology and has claimed his employees are schooled in the principles of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.
"Our staff is trained on these procedures," Jensen said in 1992.
Officials in Germany are concerned that since DisKeeper has access to vast amounts of data stored on a computer, it could theoretically dispatch the information of millions of users over the Internet to Scientology headquarters.
I am thinking now it might be a good time to start some sort of open source disk defragmenter to compete with Diskeeper.