Friday links

Russian employers are using stressovoye, stressful interviews, to find the best candidates: Throwing a glass of water in someone’s face is said to be especially revealing: the interviewee is considered to have strength of character and leadership qualities if they react aggressively. I think this mostly reveals something about the company and the interviewer…

Fred Gratzon explains how he lights his iner fire and sets goals: I come up with my goals in a most lazy and relaxed manner. In fact, relaxation is THE essential ingredient for this process to be successful. No sweat, no effort, no strain, no pain, no pressure, no aggravation, no commute, no bosses, no deadlines, no distractions, no work; just relaxing with a quiet desire to have a new goal. Then I play with my imagination throughout the day, every day.

Another post also wants IT people to be lazy: For example, you want an environment where sysadmins kick back and read IT magazines occasionally, because their run-of-the-mill administrative tasks (adding users, managing disk space, etc.) are all scripted and/or automated.

Bob Sutton writes about Lovaglia’s law and choosing CEOs: Rakesh found that when he asked corporate directors if CEOs are worth all that money, they reacted with anger and surprise, as if he had raised a taboo subject. He found that they had “virtually religious??? convictions on the subject, which led them to dismiss any evidence showing that CEO quality is not a primary and powerful cause of company performance.