Alien Job Interview

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Chapter 1: The Alien

(PERSONAL NOTE)

By the time I saw this alien creature standing in front of my HR office, I had already conducted hours of research regarding the nature of his kind. He belonged to one of the most obscure species of the IT industry, formally classified as "engineers".

Mr. Cavitt told me to be in charge of this first job interview, since I was the only person in the management team who was able to comprehend this creature's tech-talk.

The way this alien being communicated with others was so awkward, yet strangely direct and powerful whenever he was explaining to others anything computer-related!

In spite of the fact that I could not understand most of the technical jargons he happened to be passionate about, I have always felt that the alien did not possess even a tiny bit of social skill to let him realize that I do not care about those things. This helped me do my job as a recruiter because it allowed me to make him keep talking about his tech stuff while I was just pretending to be interested.

I refer to the alien as "he", but the being wasn't really sexual in any way. "He" did have a rather brute mood of masculine indifference, yet in terms of physiology, the being was nearly asexual because its reproductive organs were negligibly small (probably dysfunctional, too). This was understandable because the inability of his kind to reproduce is a core mechanism of rarity which secures the high pay range of engineers.

His body was more like the body of a "robot" than a human being, whose anatomical features were optimized for minimal social interactions. His head was disproportionately large and flat, while his arms/legs were so pitifully short and feeble. His eyes resembled those of classical Victorian pinhole cameras.

His name was "Airl", which was not really his original name but nevertheless given by me because it was easier to spell and pronounce.

Chapter 2: My First Interview With The Alien

(PERSONAL NOTE)

Over night, before my first job interview with the alien, our office space had been transformed into a dark room filled with cheap beer cans and gaming PCs. There were a dozen men working on setting up sci-fi themed LED lights, and the CEO who coordinated this whole process to make sure that we give the alien an impression that we are an innovative startup company.

I was informed that a group of IT executives were to review my interview after each meeting, for the purpose of assisting with my efforts to communicate with the alien.

(OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW)

Me: "Tell me about yourself."

Airl: "I am a digital nomad, inventor, and engineer;"

Me: "Since you are a digital nomad, do you enjoy travelling abroad?"

Airl: "No, I am a digital nomad in cyberspace. I travel from website to website;"

Me: "Do you have any special environmental needs, such as unlimited supply of healthy vegan meals, open lounge with fluffy cushions and fake grass for creative social engagement, or weekly athletic activity with coworkers?"

Airl: "No, I am a coder with no life;"

Me: "Are you going to need PTO or work-life balance?"

Airl: "I have no life to balance;"

Me: "How do you programmers communicate with one another?"

Airl: "We do not communicate;"

Me: "How do you work as a team, if you do not communicate?"

Airl: "We do not work as a team; We just echo whatever our manager is currently up to;"

(PERSONAL NOTE)

At this point, I asked Airl to give me a break and exited the interview room to talk to the IT executives. When they realized how little progress I made during this first part of the interview, they were deeply agitated and started to demand that I should have asked Airl if he is okay to work as an intern instead of a regular contractor. I told them that, since the alien was socially awkward and possessed near zero ability to interact like a human, it would be unrealistic to expect a meaningful answer from him (aka "Yes") unless I knew at least one of his weaknesses I could exploit.

Chapter 3: Social Skill Lessons

(PERSONAL NOTE)

My first half of the interview with Airl was an utter failure, according to the IT executives. Fortunately, a very clever fellow named John Newble, who was a Nerdpsychology specialist from a nearby university's Department of Therapeutic Astrobiology, had a solution to the problem.

He explained that the reason why I could not assert my dominance over the alien was that he lacked basic social skills to realize how utterly insignificant he is compared to the ego of our top directors.

Therefore, he suggested that we had only two options. Either I had to learn the alien's coding skills in order to assert my dominance over him in the field of tech, or the alien had to learn our social skills to make him understand that it is all about politics and rules rather than being smart with those big ass calculators. Factually, only the second option was possible because I didn't want to learn coding just to hire a code monkey.

Thus we began to conduct our own social skill lessons for Airl. We asked our community manager to bring us as many children's books as possible for the purpose of teaching him that a full English sentence is supposed to end with a period instead of a semicolon.

After reading out loud a series of fables and biblical stories to the alien, I began to teach him how to engage in small talk, chit-chat about things that are not technical, exchange business cards with smile, shake hands without awkwardness, and last but not least, show vivid reactions with lots of hand gestures whenever somebody says something emotional.

Airl was not happy to adopt these rules of social interaction, but later on he somehow managed to pretend at least that he was a human being with a functioning soul.

Chapter 4: Airl's Disclosure

(PERSONAL NOTE)

During my lessons, some of the IT executives interfered several times to ask Airl a bunch of questions regarding his willingness to accept whichever pay range they offer, work overtime without compensation, and show other marks of loyalty to prove that it makes sense for us to hire this alien instead of just outsourcing those of his kind in India. Airl refused to answer them, which suggested that he belonged to one of those notorious subspecies of the engineering race called "The Millennials".

After going through 20 or more short lessons on how to behave like an adult who has family and life, Airl suddenly stopped me and said, "I am ready to speak now". Thus our new interview began.

(OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW)

Me: "What would you like to say, Airl?"

Airl: "I have been part of the Domain's Expeditionary Development Team for the last several years. Before I became part of the Domain, I worked as a junior programmer in the Old Empire. I have not personally had intimate contact with "social" beings like you throughout my whole career. It is not my primary function to interact with people who do not talk in 1s and 0s. I am a digital nomad, inventor, and engineer, with many duties to perform. Although I am fluent in 347 programming languages practiced by the Domain, I have not been exposed to your esoteric language called "Plain English".

"Shortly after I left the Old Empire, I was trained and served as a researcher, data analyst, and software development officer for the Domain. We were an independent group of ambitious developers with the goal of replacing the reign of the Old Empire and their toxic work environment."

Me: "... Okay. Will you answer questions from the IT executives now?"

Airl: "No, I will not answer questions. I will provide information to you that will show you why I am totally not desperate to get a job now, and that you will probably miss out someone irreplaceable if you do not offer me a 7 figure salary".

Chapter 5: The Domain

(PERSONAL NOTE)

Airl told me his reasons for contacting my company in the first place. He was sent by the Domain's accountant to see if he could get a job somewhere else, so as to let them get rid of one of their major budget sinks. Their office was located inside their CEO's mom's basement, in which they wrote a whitepaper explaining why they have a cutting-edge IT solution destined to fix every customer's first world problems. Their paper contains flat clipart images of dancing 2D business people, so it must be authentic.

Airl also told me that each member of their studio, the Domain, is called an "IS-BE" (short for "Introverted and Sensitive BEing"). Unlike humans like myself who need daily 3-hour meetings for any meaningful execution of business, IS-BEs are capable of somehow collaborating with one another without any explicit communication, other than occasional passive-aggressive remarks exchanged through Slack. This technically makes them telepathic beings.

At first I could not trust the authenticity of his career, since the Domain was not even registered as a business by any legal means. Sensing my doubt, this alien pulled up his phone and began to scroll through his Instagram posts (This further enhanced my conviction that he really belonged to those Millennial subspecies). And suddenly he pointed his finger at my phone and said, "Be my follower!"

Immediately, I realized that my phone's Instagram account became a follower of his, and my phone began to display pages after pages of Airl's personal posts! I was able to see the photos of him working with his triple-monitor desktop in his San Francisco apartment, eating a bucket of avocado salad in San Jose, and coding on his laptop while commuting to Mountain View.

I will never forget this striking moment of discovery. Apparently he lived in California, which means he must be up to something big in the tech industry! It also cleared up the question of whether he really had more than 10 years of professional experience in front-end web development.

Chapter 6: A Brief Ancient History

(PERSONAL NOTE)

After a month of ghosting which was intended to make the alien desperate enough to accept any level of salary we were going to offer, we invited him yet again for the next job interview. One of the IT executives placed a 3D puzzle toy on the floor of the room prior to the interview, in order to see if the candidate was creative enough to find and solve it without being told to do so. When Airl entered the room, he picked it up and put it into the trash can.

(OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW)

Me: "What kind of value do you think you can bring to our company?"

Airl: "Before you can understand my value, you must first understand the nature of software development. Coding is not an activity which involves intelligence. The so-called "development framework" is nothing more than a heap of arbitrary rules devised to make it extra challenging for newcomers and discourage them from climbing up the corporate ladder, and the amount of work done by each code monkey is measured by its ability to interpolate its head between a pair of mutually contradictory design ideas that came out of the same guy's head.

"When I was living in San Francisco, I was a full-time employee of the Old Empire. The Old Empire is a tech giant in Silicon Valley which has its own campus stadium filled with transparent fridges and salad bars. Only IS-BEs (Introverted and Sensitive BEings) are allowed to be part of the Old Empire's development team.

"Whenever a new IS-BE enters the territory of the Old Empire, it automatically gets trapped by a special installment called the "micromanagement force screen". This powerful device puts the IS-BE into an invisible soul prison made out of a golden cubicle, in which it receives an electric shock that is millions of volts high. This shock permanently erases all personal dreams, passion, and beliefs of the IS-BE, and puts it into a "brainwashing" process during which the Old Empire's prison system injects a series of technical guidelines and code of conduct directly into the IS-BE's soul."

Chapter 7: The Old Empire

(OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW CONTINUED)

Airl: "There are two classes in the Old Empire's corporate hierarchy: rule-makers and rule-followers. Once captured and treated with an electric shock, a new IS-BE of the Old Empire immediately becomes a rule-follower and is destined to work as a slave of the rule-makers for the rest of its life. No matter how much it achieves and how intelligent it gets, an IS-BE will never receive a permission from the Old Empire to be promoted to the position of a rule-maker.

"The reason is simple. Those who are in charge of making rules are always the ones who are the most knowledgeable of those rules, while those who are in charge of following the rules are always the ones who have to pay extra effort to keep themselves in sync with those rules.

"Whenever a rule-maker senses that a rule-follower is trying to climb up the corporate ladder and threaten its noble status, all it has to do is simply come up with a new set of rules that the rule-follower will have to waste their extra time on in order to avoid violating the Old Empire's first commandment: "Don't do anything we haven't told you to do". Whenever an IS-BE breaks even a tiny rule established by the Old Empire, it automatically receives another electric shock from the force screen for rehabilitation.

"Inside the Old Empire's class system, an IS-BE's attitude, personality, intellect, and insight do not matter at all. No matter what an IS-BE does, it will never be able to escape the Old Empire's force screen unless it learns the aggressively concealed truth that everything ultimately boils down to politics and power struggle.

"The Old Empire has been a dumping ground and prison for 'untouchables', most of whom are recent college graduates desperately looking for unpaid internship. Electronic monitoring points of the Old Empire, which are responsible for creating force screens, detect and capture IS-BEs as soon as their college instructors stop breastfeeding them."

Chapter 8: The Prison System

(OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW CONTINUED)

Airl: "The heart of the Old Empire's prison system is a gigantic pyramid located at the center of their territory. This is the place to which every IS-BE is required to submit their daily work, which consists of full reimplementation of the same exact design concept that was slightly modified at the end of the previous day's last business hour. The top priest of the pyramid scans each IS-BE's code changes with his ankh, and makes sure that every design specification is satisfied to the utmost degree.

"This pyramid workflow was intentionally created as part of the IS-BE prison system. The pyramid is alleged to be the symbol for "professionalism". However, the "professionalism" of the Old Empire is intended to operate as part of the elaborate micromanagement "trap" consisting of MASS, MEANING, and MYSTERY.

"The colossal MASS of the pyramid gives an impression that this big-tech company is creating a large-scale community where everybody lives in harmony and works together as a team. Behind this grandiose facade of techno-utopia, however, the only real "community" is the power game being played among the Old Empire's shareholders.

"The MEANING behind the engineering standards of the pyramid is nothing more than a fabricated illusion. There is nothing meaningful about the particular services, plugins, or coding languages they insist on using; such nitpicky details are forced upon the IS-BEs not because those are fundamentally superior to other technical frameworks, but because their persistence helps secure the jobs of those who stayed in the pyramid long enough to memorize them all.

"The sense of MYSTERY advertised by the Old Empire's marketing team has been distorting the reality of the mainstream media. This makes their customers believe that, whenever the Old Empire copies an ancient technology and rebrands it with their allegedly "creative" design hidden behind a series of mysterious teasers, quotes, and obscure hints scattered all over the place, they become the original inventor of the technology."

Chapter 9: A Special Treatment

(PERSONAL NOTE)

After listening to Airl's stupidly long rant, I began to believe that this alien may belong to one of those "Boomer" subspecies of the engineering race instead of the Millennials. His tendency to go on forever talking about his own "wisdom" gained from his boring old days annoyed the hell out of me. Since I was a professional recruiter, however, I made sure to keep smiling during the whole interview session whilst displaying a series of passive-aggressive gestures to let him realize that I don't care about his story at all.

Shortly after the first half of the interview, I submitted my transcript to the IT executives. They read it and were deeply annoyed by the fact that this alien even dared to express his own opinion. They immediately reported this act of offense to the CEO, who responded by saying that he will take control of the rest of the interview.

A few minutes later, the CEO entered the interview room and sat in front of Airl.

(OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW)

CEO: "In case you don't know yet, our team is a group of open-minded innovators who think outside the box and are not afraid of questioning things. We value creativity and imagination, and encourage every individual to speak up, challenge the norm, and create impacts on our journey to make this world a better place. In order to see if you are a good fit, let me ask you one question. What is the most creative color?"

Airl: "Green."

CEO: "You are probably thinking that way because schools in your home planet taught you so. An open-minded, innovative individual would've said something that sounds more creative, like "magenta". But anyways, I will give you another chance to prove yourself that you are an active thinker and not the type of coder who sits on his desk all day long, only doing what he's told to do. Are you working on any open-source projects?"

Airl: "I do work on a project, although it is not open-source."

CEO: "Can you describe it to me?"

Airl: "It is a plan to destroy your planet."

CEO: "Ha, I got you!"

Chapter 10: Airl's Real Identity

(PERSONAL NOTE)

Everyone in the interview room was shocked to hear Airl's confession. Apparently, applying for a job was not even his primary goal. He was just living in California as an undercover code monkey, while secretly devising his plan to destroy planet Earth.

"So, this is your true identity! I knew it, I knew it the moment I saw you had balls to bring your flying saucer to my office building and occupied 5 parking spots at once without paying extra fees!" said the CEO.

"Oh, you humans are too quick to notice," said Airl. He opened up his jacket and revealed his waist belt, which was made up of a chain of coke and mentos bottles arranged in an alternating pattern.

"You ruined my plan. All I needed was to get an admin access to Boeing's GitHub repository to screw all your skyscrapers, after visiting the White House to publicly announce my will to annihilate your civilization," said the alien. Without hesitation, he pulled a colorful laser pistol out of his pocket and pressed one of its buttons. A series of crazy sound effects began to play, while the tip was emitting beams of rainbow.

"Kill him!" cried the CEO. A security officer pointed a Glock at Airl and fed his chest a couple of cone-shaped metal pieces, which the alien didn't seem to appreciate.

Airl suddenly grabbed my company laptop, made a couple of gymnastic movements to escape the interview room, and began to run towards his flying saucer which was parked right outside of the office. Another officer who was waiting in the parking lot saw him and pulled the plug out of the saucer's fuel tank to drain oil from it.

"Nice try, but mine is a hybrid model," chuckled Airl, leaping onto the top of the saucer.

"Quick! The alien is trying to steal our confidential tax info!" exclaimed the accountant, but it was too late. The alien's flying saucer already took off and swiftly zoomed through the air.

A split second later, a loud buzzing sound struck everyone's eardrums like a thunder. Electric poles near the parking lot tumbled over the grass whilst emitting brief sparks of high voltage. The flying saucer lost its velocity, crashed onto the ground, and burned. Apparently it crossed the power lines and was electrocuted.