28 Aug 2000

Tilman Hausherr <tilman@berlin.snafu.de>

I received this from someone. This is the "extended version".

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[Tilman, Here's an earlier letter I wrote about my experience
with Executive Software. This one has more details.]

I recently applied to Executive Software for a systems programmer and administrator job they had an opening for. They liked my resume and asked me in for a job interview. While waiting in the lobby I noticed this large futuristic sci-fi like scene hanging on the wall in the lobby. The picture looked like it came out of the movie "Blade Runner". At the bottom of the frame was a copper plaque with the name "L. Ron Hubbard". I wondered, "That name sounds familiar. Where have I heard that name before?"

The HR (Human Resources) lady took me back and administered two written tests to me. The first one was the Oxford Personality Type Indicator. All 100 questions asked here had nothing to do with the job I was applying for nor my ability to do the job. Instead they were questions relating to my personality. I doubt these questions were even legal to ask in a job interview.

(The list of questions on the Personality Type Indicator isn't a test in the sense that it is graded ABCDF, Pass-Fail, good-bad. It merely gives one an idea of what personality one has. For further information see the books: "Gifts Differing" by Isabel Briggs Myers with Peter B. Myers; "Please Understand Me: Character & Temperament Types" by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates; "Portraits of Temperament" by David Keirsey. Also search the web for "Personality Type Indicator")

The second test administered by the HR lady was a timed test of basic mathematical skills and logical thinking. 30 minutes were given to complete the test. I'll accept this as a legal test, however the questions were of a high school level, whereas I have a master's degree in Engineering.

Then in a meeting room I was interviewed by two senior software engineers. They were very impressed with my technical knowledge and experience. At the end of this interview they mentioned they rigidly follow L. Ron Hubbard's multi-volume manual on how to run a business. The entire multi-volume set took up an entire bookshelf. I could see they were a bit uncomfortable bringing up this subject, trying to quickly separate it from the book "Dianetics" and Scientology. They said L. Ron Hubbard was a prolific writer who wrote many other things besides "Dianetics". The interviewer also insisted that he was not a Scientologist, and that being a Scientologist was in no way required to be employed.

One of the interviewers then explained this daily self evaluation method they had of one's productivity, apparently something required by L. Ron Hubbard's bookshelf on how to run a business.

They have this point system. Everything you do is worth points. I'm not sure who determined how many points one gets for each accomplishment. Either the company has a list or the list is buried somewhere in that bookshelf of L. Ron Hubbard's immense tomb of writing.

The interviewer said you keep track of the points yourself. It's on the honor system. From the points you collect you make a graph of your productivity. The interviewer explained the simple method the company uses to evaluate your graph. "It's really quite simple," he said, "it follows common sense. If the graph is going upwards, then everything is good and you don't change anything. But if the graph is going down, something is wrong and you need to change something."

I questioned the idea observing that one's productivity couldn't keep increasing forever, so if the graph happened to be up it eventually had to go back down again. You couldn't conclude that something was wrong.

Then the other interviewer chatted to his coworker, "Oh yes, I really took a big hit last week when I took 3 days to track down that bug." (A bug is a defect in a computer program causing it to not work correctly under certain circumstances.) "And I also took a hit that week I went on vacation to visit my sick grandma."

I thought, "So you're penalized for tracking down a difficult to find bug that takes all your knowledge and skill and experience?"

The interview ended with me not fully understanding this self evaluation point system and how the results would be analyzed by the company.

After that interview they had me step outside for a moment while they had a private talk. They apparently said good things about me because the HR lady came and told me I would have an interview with the Director of Software Engineering. I knew the Director of Software Engineering was a very important person. If the Director of Software Engineering was going to interview me then they must be serious about hiring me.

The Director of Software Engineering took me to lunch at a nearby deli, where I brought up the question of marketing strategy.

"How do you convince customers to purchase your products?"

"We give away 'Diskeeper' on Windows 2000 single user machines." ('Diskeeper' is one of the products they sell.) "However the free version we give away is one you have to run manually. The version we sell can be scheduled to run automatically. It's a 'set it and forget it' version."

"So," I said, "your target isn't the individual consumer but companies who have many PC computers to support. And by giving away the manual version of 'Diskeeper' on consumer PCs the system administrators become aware of the software and think it's neat."

"Yes but they can't manage running the free version of 'Diskeeper' manually on every PC in their company, it's just not feasible if they have a lot of computers to support. So they ask the managers to give them money to buy the real thing."

"But how do the system administrators convince their managers who know little about computers that they should give money to purchase this software package?"

"You're a lot brighter than you give yourself credit for" he said. "Executive Software advertises in the big business magazines like Forbes which managers are likely to read. The hope is managers will see the adds and come to their system administrators and say, 'Why don't we have this software on our system!'"

We returned from lunch with the Director of Software Engineering being quite impressed with me and my knowledge not only of Software Engineering but also of marketing and it's importance. He talked privately with the HR lady for a moment, and came back saying there was one more written test that she forgot to administer.

And here is where the story becomes interesting. This third test she gave me asked many questions that were quite irrelevant to the job I was applying for, and appeared to be intruding on my private life and personal beliefs. Some of the questions I can remember were:

Do you believe in Destiny?

Who invented Buddhism?

When you vote, do you:
a. Vote your party.
b. Study the issues and then vote.

Would you have no more than two children, even if you were physically and financially able to?

I believe this test was meant to determine my compatibility with Scientology. In hindsight I wish I had tried to sneak a copy of that test out with me.

After completing that questionaire the HR lady said that was all and she would get back to me either way.

A week later I called the HR lady having not heard anything. She said, "Oh, I was just about to call you. You know there were many others applying for the job and we picked someone else."

I doubt she was "just about to call me". And I doubt they had any other candidates applying for the same job at that time. The job required extensive technical knowledge and expertise in a very specific field which I possessed. I can not say why I was not given a job offer, but I'm quite certain it had something to do with Scientology.

Perhaps someone would like to follow up on this story and track down that third questionaire. I'm sure Executive Software didn't come up with it themselves. That third questionaire probably can be found somewhere in the Scientology literature. Perhaps somewhere in that multi-volume set on how to run a business the L. Ron Hubbard way is a section on how to select employees who are compatible with the dogma of Scientology.