Re: OT: Tsunami

Apart from being OT, your example is not pertinent, IMO.

Moving Mount Fuji is, from an engineering point of view, a much easier task than the one you are referring to. After all, all you need to do is some calculation and, provided you have the money, you may come up with the amount of the needed people, escavators, trucks, and explosives, and eventually be able to flatten Mount Fuji in a finite amount of time.

"Helping the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami," instead, is not an engineering project. It involves diplomatic, economical and political issues, and it is not clearly definible in terms of money, materials, human resources. To help the victims, you need to get cooperation from a dozen governments and a few dozens NGOs, to direct your efforts in a direction that makes sense. If such cooperation is not given, you won't even know what kind of help is needed and what you should in which areas.

Besides, what is "help"? Is it giving first aid to the injured? Bringing fresh water to the survivors? Cleaning the existing water? Bringing food supplies? Rebuilding the shattered economy?

I have to tell you this: if I were having a job interview with you, and you dropped that question, I would not want to work for such a confused employer.

Comment on Re: OT: Tsunami

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: OT: Tsunami by theorbtwo (Prior) on Dec 29, 2004 at 17:37 UTC
I think it may be a valid question, but certianly gives you very different information about a potential employee. "Move Mt. Fuji" is only slightly vauge -- the only problem is that it is huge. It's a good question when you want to see if someone is easily troubled by the enormity of an otherwise do-able task. "Help the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami" is much more vauge. It would be a decent test of the ability to start narrowing down an assignment, which is an important skill. I suspect almost all projects start out as a poorly defined idea, like "improve what people about to make a purchase think of our product". There are a lot of ways to approach that -- changing marketing vs changing the product, for example. Asking the suggested question provides information about a canidate that can help judge if they'd provide a viewpoint missing from your present team, and is thus useful. However, it provides very different information then the moving the mountian question. Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).	[reply]
Re^2: OT: Tsunami by Anonymous Monk on Dec 30, 2004 at 12:29 UTC
"It involves diplomatic, economical and political issues, and it is not clearly definible in terms of money, materials, human resources." This is true of any project executed within the context of a large organization. My experience in working in and with various organizations is that there is no such thing as a pure engineering project.	[reply]