Elephant in Cairo (Byte Magazine, 1989)

Summary

Stop Bit, Byte , p404, September 1989 Peter C. Olsen A bold new proposal for matching high-technology people and professions Over the years, the problem of finding the right person for the right job has consumed thousands of worker-years of research and millions of dollars in funding. This is particularly true for high-technology organizations where talent is scarce and expensive. Recently, however, years of detailed study by the finest minds in the field of psychoindustrial interpersonal optimization have resulted in the development of a simple and fool-proof test to determine the best match between personality and profession. Now, at last, people can be infallibly assigned to the jobs for which they are truly best suited. The procedure is simple: Each subject is sent to Africa to hunt elephants. The subsequent elephant-hunting behavior is then categorized by comparison to the classification rules outlined below. The subject should be assigned to the general job classification that best matches the observed behavior. Classification Guidelines Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left. Experienced mathematicians attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique elephant before proceeding to step 1 as a subordinate exercise. Professors of mathematics prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students. Computer scientists hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A : Go to Africa. Start at the Cape of Good Hope. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately east and west. During each traverse pass Catch each animal seen. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant. Stop when a match is detected. Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate. Assembly lan...