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What do you think about Marissa Mayer? For every outlier winner person you point out, the industry is littered with losers. Perhaps stop correlating wrong thing

by NTDF9 10y ago

What do you think about Marissa Mayer? For every outlier winner person you point out, the industry is littered with losers. Perhaps stop correlating wrong things together?

dsacco 10y ago
There are several problems with your and the parent commenter's approach here: 1) You've not defined intelligence in an agreeable way, such that all parties are discussing the same thing (you seem to have interpreted his point about Sundar Pachai as successful due to being CEO of Google, but that may not be the case). 2) You've not defined intelligence in a rigorous way, such that all parties know it's meaningful even if they agree on it (is being CEO of a publicly traded company a robust proxy for intelligence? Can we positively correlate corporate success with intellectual formidability?) 3) You have not established any empirical way to assess intelligence in these people aside from what you'd consider tautological (CEOs are intelligent, Pachai is a CEO, Pachai is intelligent) and therefore self-evident. But you can't discriminate between the relative intelligences of members in this group, especially remotely on a forum, which makes this an issue even if 1) and 2) are solved. I know, taking dialectics this seriously on an internet messageboard is a major pain in the ass. But this brings us full circle to software engineering interviews. One person mentioned a potential proxy for intelligence they consider self-evident, someone else argued against it without full and transparent clarification, and the cycle continues. This is how whiteboard interviews were born, this is how they became controversial, and this cycle continues even on discussions of whiteboard interviews. People who want to filter for "intelligent" in their interviewing process can't define the term. People who come up with methodologies for assessing it, or identify proxies to it, can't prove they work. People who argue against these assessments or proxies can't prove they don't work because no one can even agree on what should be assessed. It's a Wittgensteinian clusterfuck all the way down, but the same human habits that gave rise to whiteboard interviews are perfectly manifested in the counterculture reaction to them and the resulting controversy. I propose instead that you resist the temptation to use the word "smart", even in situations you'd consider the quality self-evident. "Intelligence" is like AI - once it's rigorously defined, no one agrees it's AI and it's so narrow in scope that no one cares about it because it's not weaselly and magical anymore (example - the IQ test). When you appease everyone's inclinations and talk about it without defining it, madness ensues. Rigorously define a problem space, correctly map a set of empirically measurable capabilities to it, and hire people who demonstrate those capabilities. But don't use descriptions like "smart" which mean everything to everyone.
- NTDF9 10y ago
  >> 1) You've not defined intelligence in an agreeable way, such that all parties are discussing the same thing (you seem to have interpreted his point about Sundar Pachai as successful due to being CEO of Google, but that may not be the case). My last line was, "Perhaps stop correlating wrong things together?". My intention was to indicate that the person who wrote about Sundar Pichai is trying correlate something about the Google CEO to my original comment about aqui-hires. It was not an exercise to define intelligence. I simply had to point out naivety of any correlations the parent commenter was trying to make. >> 2) You've not defined intelligence in a rigorous way, such that all parties know it's meaningful even if they agree on it (is being CEO of a publicly traded company a robust proxy for intelligence? Can we positively correlate corporate success with intellectual formidability?) Again, there was no exercise to define intelligence. You are misreading the context >> 3) You have not established any empirical way to assess intelligence in these people aside from what you'd consider tautological (CEOs are intelligent, Pachai is a CEO, Pachai is intelligent) and therefore self-evident. But you can't discriminate between the relative intelligences of members in this group, especially remotely on a forum, which makes this an issue even if 1) and 2) are solved. Same response as above. >> People who want to filter for "intelligent" in their interviewing process can't define the term. People who come up with methodologies for assessing it, or identify proxies to it, can't prove they work. People who argue against these assessments or proxies can't prove they don't work because no one can even agree on what should be assessed. It's a Wittgensteinian clusterfuck all the way down, but the same human habits that gave rise to whiteboard interviews are perfectly manifested in the counterculture reaction to them and the resulting controversy. Interesting you bring this up. Let us play a thought experiment. Who would you rather work with? 1. A person who wrote a VM for handling their cross-platform message queue but couldn't solve N-Queens problem 2. A person who can solve N-Queens problem on the whiteboard but doesn't have the engineering appetite/desire to learn something like VMs in detail Now that you know who you want to work with (hoping you chose 1), let me ask you this. Why is data king? Have test scores ever been a representative of smartness? Is a person with 3.5 GPA worse than 3.75 GPA? If your answer to above question is no. Then why is Google hiring committee rating people with their own notion of GPA and hiring people with a certain Google GPA? Because, in that GPA competition, candidate 2 will win. But you didn't want to work with candidate 2 did you?
qaq 10y ago
Well if you theory holds how did Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum, Dan Bornstein and on and on ended up at Google?
- NTDF9 10y ago
  >> Well if you theory holds how did Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum, Dan Bornstein and on and on ended up at Google? You realize they got hired because of their fame and expertise? They didn't have to go through intense whiteboarding. And even if they did, they would be hired even if they didn't solve a stupid N-Queens problem?
  - qaq 10y ago
    I realise they have 0 problems with CS fundamentals while being at the same time top experts in respective fields.
    - NTDF9 10y ago
      >> I realise they have 0 problems with CS fundamentals while being at the same time top experts in respective fields. I suspect your definition of CS fundamentals is only Algos and Datastruct problems. Said experts are very good at what they do. That does not mean they will whip out an algorithmic puzzle solution on a whiteboard under pressure. I also suspect that those experts have better things to do than get a job at Google. They'd rather not go through this process. Google wants them to be there not the other way around.

by NTDF9 10y ago

What do you think about Marissa Mayer? For every outlier winner person you point out, the industry is littered with losers. Perhaps stop correlating wrong things together?

dsacco 10y ago

There are several problems with your and the parent commenter's approach here: 1) You've not defined intelligence in an agreeable way, such that all parties are discussing the same thing (you seem to have interpreted his point about Sundar Pachai as successful due to being CEO of Google, but that may not be the case). 2) You've not defined intelligence in a rigorous way, such that all parties know it's meaningful even if they agree on it (is being CEO of a publicly traded company a robust proxy for intelligence? Can we positively correlate corporate success with intellectual formidability?) 3) You have not established any empirical way to assess intelligence in these people aside from what you'd consider tautological (CEOs are intelligent, Pachai is a CEO, Pachai is intelligent) and therefore self-evident. But you can't discriminate between the relative intelligences of members in this group, especially remotely on a forum, which makes this an issue even if 1) and 2) are solved. I know, taking dialectics this seriously on an internet messageboard is a major pain in the ass. But this brings us full circle to software engineering interviews. One person mentioned a potential proxy for intelligence they consider self-evident, someone else argued against it without full and transparent clarification, and the cycle continues. This is how whiteboard interviews were born, this is how they became controversial, and this cycle continues even on discussions of whiteboard interviews. People who want to filter for "intelligent" in their interviewing process can't define the term. People who come up with methodologies for assessing it, or identify proxies to it, can't prove they work. People who argue against these assessments or proxies can't prove they don't work because no one can even agree on what should be assessed. It's a Wittgensteinian clusterfuck all the way down, but the same human habits that gave rise to whiteboard interviews are perfectly manifested in the counterculture reaction to them and the resulting controversy. I propose instead that you resist the temptation to use the word "smart", even in situations you'd consider the quality self-evident. "Intelligence" is like AI - once it's rigorously defined, no one agrees it's AI and it's so narrow in scope that no one cares about it because it's not weaselly and magical anymore (example - the IQ test). When you appease everyone's inclinations and talk about it without defining it, madness ensues. Rigorously define a problem space, correctly map a set of empirically measurable capabilities to it, and hire people who demonstrate those capabilities. But don't use descriptions like "smart" which mean everything to everyone.

NTDF9 10y ago
>> 1) You've not defined intelligence in an agreeable way, such that all parties are discussing the same thing (you seem to have interpreted his point about Sundar Pachai as successful due to being CEO of Google, but that may not be the case). My last line was, "Perhaps stop correlating wrong things together?". My intention was to indicate that the person who wrote about Sundar Pichai is trying correlate something about the Google CEO to my original comment about aqui-hires. It was not an exercise to define intelligence. I simply had to point out naivety of any correlations the parent commenter was trying to make. >> 2) You've not defined intelligence in a rigorous way, such that all parties know it's meaningful even if they agree on it (is being CEO of a publicly traded company a robust proxy for intelligence? Can we positively correlate corporate success with intellectual formidability?) Again, there was no exercise to define intelligence. You are misreading the context >> 3) You have not established any empirical way to assess intelligence in these people aside from what you'd consider tautological (CEOs are intelligent, Pachai is a CEO, Pachai is intelligent) and therefore self-evident. But you can't discriminate between the relative intelligences of members in this group, especially remotely on a forum, which makes this an issue even if 1) and 2) are solved. Same response as above. >> People who want to filter for "intelligent" in their interviewing process can't define the term. People who come up with methodologies for assessing it, or identify proxies to it, can't prove they work. People who argue against these assessments or proxies can't prove they don't work because no one can even agree on what should be assessed. It's a Wittgensteinian clusterfuck all the way down, but the same human habits that gave rise to whiteboard interviews are perfectly manifested in the counterculture reaction to them and the resulting controversy. Interesting you bring this up. Let us play a thought experiment. Who would you rather work with? 1. A person who wrote a VM for handling their cross-platform message queue but couldn't solve N-Queens problem 2. A person who can solve N-Queens problem on the whiteboard but doesn't have the engineering appetite/desire to learn something like VMs in detail Now that you know who you want to work with (hoping you chose 1), let me ask you this. Why is data king? Have test scores ever been a representative of smartness? Is a person with 3.5 GPA worse than 3.75 GPA? If your answer to above question is no. Then why is Google hiring committee rating people with their own notion of GPA and hiring people with a certain Google GPA? Because, in that GPA competition, candidate 2 will win. But you didn't want to work with candidate 2 did you?

qaq 10y ago

Well if you theory holds how did Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum, Dan Bornstein and on and on ended up at Google?

NTDF9 10y ago
>> Well if you theory holds how did Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum, Dan Bornstein and on and on ended up at Google? You realize they got hired because of their fame and expertise? They didn't have to go through intense whiteboarding. And even if they did, they would be hired even if they didn't solve a stupid N-Queens problem?
- qaq 10y ago
  I realise they have 0 problems with CS fundamentals while being at the same time top experts in respective fields.
  - NTDF9 10y ago
    >> I realise they have 0 problems with CS fundamentals while being at the same time top experts in respective fields. I suspect your definition of CS fundamentals is only Algos and Datastruct problems. Said experts are very good at what they do. That does not mean they will whip out an algorithmic puzzle solution on a whiteboard under pressure. I also suspect that those experts have better things to do than get a job at Google. They'd rather not go through this process. Google wants them to be there not the other way around.