Steve Jobs had a “beer test” he used for job interviews (opens in new tab)

Is there a citation for this? This article appears on dozens of low-quality chumbucket news sites, but the only citation I can see after looking at a handful are other sites on which the same paraphrased article appears.

This seems sort of out-of-character for Jobs, who had a reputation of being sort of an intense, uptight weirdo.

I’m skeptical of this story as well, or at least skeptical of its applicability, but even if true, this feels like more of that “Steve Jobs did it, and he was successful, so you should do it if you want to be successful like him!” type pablum. Steve Jobs was successful because he had an aesthetic sense for technology that put his peers to shame and was enough of a monomaniacal asshole to be able to deliver the products he wanted. If you are reading this article, you are not Steve Jobs, and would be better served by learning people skills, because you probably don’t have the talent to compensate for being as much of an asshole as Jobs was.

As to the advice itself - “do I want to have a beer with this person” is why our industry looks like a dude rodeo and has led to some of the most incompetent, myopic, nepotistic teams I’ve ever had the misfortune of working with. “Does this person bring skills, talents, and perspectives we currently lack” is a better question. “Does this person look at things in a different way to the rest of the team, so as to help us spot things we otherwise wouldn’t” is a very good one as well. But “would I have a beer with this person” is going to give you people who don’t challenge you and is going to lead you to wonder why your org can’t seem to hire anyone except mid-20s white dudes.

If you search on Google "Steve Jobs" "beer test", and ask for only 2020 records, the only records that come up are pages that have this 2023 story in their 'also' links.

Pretty sure this is not a legitimate story.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Steve+Jobs%22+%22Beer+Tes...

It’s not a Steve Jobs interview, way back during my consulting days, partners used to say the same thing, we hire people based on whether I’d go hang out with this person over a beer or not.

Tbh, it kind of made sense in consulting when you had a lot of traveling to do, spend time in middle of nowhere towns with your colleagues and hours at an airport when your flight was delayed. And I say kind of, because it instantly became a bros club and because consulting doesn’t really require any skills beyond being that person who you’d have beers with.

Coming back to Steve Jobs and the corporate bs, this kind of test makes absolutely no sense. You need pilots who can fly a plane, not have beers with you. You need surgeons who can do the impossible surgeries, not the dude who can tell the best jokes over beer. You need the engineers who can build products, not frat boys you can do shots with.

- Former frat boy consultant who absolutely hated it

> This would help the prospective employee to open up and relax

It's always funny to see this kind of example come up in stories about Jobs.

Contrary to whatever the specific example is intended to convey about him, this was clearly a _torturing_ issue for Jobs himself, at some level. It was not generally easy for him to open up OR relax, not by a long shot.

His personality is (broadly) similar to Tucker Carlson's, notably bouncing around this perpetual public image dichotomy of "pr*ck vs gentle guy".

So, there are just piles, even veritable _mountains_ of disturbing experiences. Wow what a jerk! Etc.

Between which, in the details you get these funny but oddly-affecting moments where you may just realize that the _aspirational_ self for these people _themselves_ is, in fact...

...somebody you'd want to have a beer with [0].

I sympathize, but it's too bad this issue is so easily talked around in its complexity.

(There's also a fascinating counterpart you can get with Mister Rogers-types, who will occasionally reveal a rather brutal tendency toward being rudely controlling toward various people in their circle, etc. Those guys are like, "relaxing or having a beer is nice...but have you ever been really intensely... EFFECTIVE?")

0. https://youtu.be/tnnd51SPqc4

>Well, considering Apple’s place in the world and our lives today, it seems like his interviewing process and ‘beer test’ was pretty successful.

Or just that once someone has gotten through the level of screening needed to get 1:1 time with Jobs, the "beer test" is mostly a sanity check.

This works if you're already able to screen for ability and desire. Like if you know everyone you're talking to is good and you want to choose who you'd work with, going for beer is great. On the other hand, I've interviewed and even gone for beers with people that seemed great and I'd want to hang out with, but when it came to work were useless and almost hard to believe it was the same person.

For better or worse, that's why there are coding tests (for example), because likeability and competence are orthogonal traits and you can't assess the latter from the former.

While I appreciate the idea, and I generally don’t think it’s a bad one (personally I prefer maybe a coffee interview, some of the best jobs I have had had a more casual conversation like this).

I worry about the potential for figuring out someone’s age or just if someone doesn’t drink.

I will never forget being offered a beer in an interview before I was 21. I refused without stating my age (I still got the job) but it was a bit of an awkward situation. For the record this was a tech job.

I'd imagined Jobs more of a cider person.

interested to hear what other hners think about this. anybody did this for interviewing before? i myself had a beer with my phd supervisor as our first meeting, not sure this really help knowing whether we'd get along because turns out we didn't

Wondering if anyone knows did Steve Jobs consumed alcohol in any form?

We all know he did do acid.

I wonder where they would go for the beer. BJs, perhaps?