[dxbydt]

> trivia is popular here in the US too

When you interview at Blackrock in SF, they walk you thru a bunch of rooms. Each room has a door. On each door is the name of a famous economist. When the interview begins, you have to recollect all of these economists and then drop some tidbits about each of them. You know, to signal that you are part of the in-group. Like, you can say hey wasn’t Krugman at Princeton when he got the Nobel but doesn’t he teach at cuny now because that’s where your phd advisor saw him last week hint hint. Now, would you rather do such obsequious ass-kissing, or remember that ALU stands for arithmetic logic unit ? Compared to Blackrock, Railway Board is god, son and holy ghost rolled into one.

[ywvcbk]

That seems pretty weird but at least you are expected to demonstrate that you have a genuine interest in the field outside some narrow specialization (or would talking about their actual work not count as “tidbits”?

The listed Indian train service exam questions just seem beyond absurd in comparison. If the questions were about random niche train related trivia it would make a whole lot more sense (of course still stupid..)

[tdeck]

That's an interesting fact but a weird take away. Of course you can always find an arguably worse candidate selection process.