For all but the most sociable of us, mandatory workplace “fun” is one of the most nightmarish features of the working world. Ask any introverted friend of yours and they’ll probably tell you they’d rather drink acid than go on an office outing.

That’s probably why a viral LinkedIn post by a tech CEO about using mandatory fun in place of job interviews is getting more people online despite it being satire. Not only does it feel completely plausible in today’s job market, but it’s actually a long-standing trend.

The CEO posted about using escape cameras for job interviews and refusing to hire anyone who fails.

Did you just jump out of your skin like me? Job hunting is already so anxiety-inducing that to add not just socializing, but the kind of socializing that may involve face-planting in front of a group of strangers sounds like a waking nightmare.

So when a post on LinkedIn about using escape cameras as an alternative to job interviews went viral recently, quite a few people online were immediately upset. Like, really? Is that what we’re doing now?

Apparently so, if tech entrepreneur Alex Cohen’s LinkedIn post that appeared later in the subReddits like r/LinkedInLunaticsis any indication.

“At our new company, we stopped doing traditional interviews for new candidates,” he wrote. “Instead, we put eight candidates in an escape room at a time and watch them solve problems among strangers to escape.”

That’s not bad enough you have to apply to hundreds of jobs to even get an interview first of all, but now you have to go and socialize with strangers in an escape room?! That’s sadistic!

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The post is (thankfully!) satire. But in today’s job market, it seems unsettlingly realistic.

Never underestimate the internet’s inability to detect satire, although Cohen’s is so subtly written that you can perhaps forgive people for taking it seriously. But even more compelling is how utterly unrealistic his post sounds.

After explaining how his company, a health tech start-up, ditched interviews in favor of torturing candidates in escape rooms, Cohen went on to say he watches proceedings from a hidden “control room” like a nefarious overlord in a den. . There, he rates them “using a matrix of criteria that we paid McKinsey to develop that assesses their ability to solve problems, lead, make decisions, avoid errors and communicate” .

The reference to McKinsey is the first real indication that this is satire—the management consulting firm is often mocked online for being the kind of place that corporations pay billions of dollars to make Powerpoints full of eminently stupid ideas like … well, using escape rooms for work. interviews.

From there, Cohen took an even more ominous turn, writing that “the useless half (of the candidates) are immediately eliminated from the interview process.” It’s like Dr. Evil is a business guru.

“So far it’s worked really well and we’ve only been able to hire 10 times the engineers,” Cohen continued, referencing a decades-old joke in tech about magical unicorn engineers who are supposedly 10 times more productive than mediate. “Follow me for more hiring tips.”

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The use of escape cameras for job interviews is a real thing though – and it’s a perfect example of how wrong the business world is.

It may have been satire, but Cohen’s post feels real because it essentially is, both in spirit and in the literal sense.

In 2017, a real estate agent wrote in the Huffington Post about how he was “tired of traditional job interviews” and planned to start using escape cameras as an antidote to “practiced statements and small talk… (which) doesn’t tell me anything about the candidate.”

Many escape rooms now include such services on their websites as a business offer. HR guru and online job search they recommended holding interviews in escape rooms as a means for employers to test “real-time problem solving” and “stress management,” among other skills. (Perhaps they were the ones who inspired Cohen’s terse post.)

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It’s an idea that’s not only patently absurd, but outpaced by both the realities of the labor market and human nature. Sure, someone might be able to navigate an escape room cool as a cucumber, but what does that have to do with their ability to handle the stress of deadlines and client demands? From apples to oranges.

It is in the same vein as using SAT scores as a measure of intelligence. A lot of geniuses are just bad test takers. And many idiots are good at puzzles like escape rooms!

Unless your business IS an escape room, this seems like a colossal waste of time for everyone – and a great way to weed out potentially great candidates who aren’t good at an arbitrary process that has nothing to do with it. do with sitting in a cubicle to do spreadsheets.

It’s the kind of crazy idea ONLY an out-of-touch business executive could ever come up with. Hopefully they’ll follow Cohen’s satire instead of getting more ridiculous ideas.

Finding a job is already hard enough without playing such games.

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer covering pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.