>> The "investigate options" one was one of the few situations that I could see a possible slight. I've seen managers who play this dumb game where they put people on a research problem, and the job isn't for the engineer to do unbiased research & prototyping, but it's instead to reinforce whatever argument they were originally pushing for

My manager asked me to interview a guy for our embedded software team. The guy was working for our internal customer and was already well liked by the team, but he wasn't creating software. I asked if my input would matter or he already had his mind made up, and he said that yes, this was a real interview. So I asked the guy a few questions and then decided to just give him "FizzBuzz" in the language of his choice. He spent the rest of our time and more trying to solve it but no full success. Then I was in the awkward position of taking him to lunch since everyone else had gone already. So I go back to the boss and say "the guy can't code, don't hire him". Boss hires him anyway. Kid figures out FizzBuzz later that afternoon - he's got determination, and people were ultimately happy with him being on the team. Lessons: 1)Boss's mind was already made up. 2)FizzBuzz is not necessarily a good test. 3) No matter what people think of you, if you fuck up that test your nickname around the office will be "Fizz" from then on.