I read every article that mentions the word “statistician”, and here is one that I found today:
When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password. Bassett, a New York City statistician, had just finished answering a few character questions when the interviewer turned to her computer to search for his Facebook page. But she couldn’t see his private profile. She turned back and asked him to hand over his login information.
My interest in statisticians has to do with my husband being one. When he was on the job market, I had a chance to discover how much bullying there is in his industry*. I have written before about the practice of forcing people with PhDs in Financial Statistics to solve some completely idiotic puzzles during interviews. N. initially tried to prepare for such questions by poring over collections of puzzles but then realized that his self-respect was of more value to him than any job and decided to terminate any interview where he would be asked to engage in such a stupid exercise.
Justin Bassett also terminated the interview when he was asked to offer the interviewer access to his profile. I congratulate him on this decision because working for a company that hires unhinged, psychologically unstable idiots like this interviewer is a place with no future. There cannot be any practical, job-related value in seeing anybody’s Facebook profile, which means that anyone who insists on access is a pervert desperate to rummage in other people’s lives for lack of their own.
* I’m not talking about other industries in this context because I have no information. In academia, nothing like this is remotely possible. The search committee that hired me, for example, was legally barred even from simply Googling my name.
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