5 ms·

Excellent question. He doesn't. But, of course, he doesn't control his ranking -- others do. So, deleting his account doesn't do anything to remove his ranki

Excellent question. He doesn't. But, of course, he doesn't control his ranking -- others do. So, deleting his account doesn't do anything to remove his ranking. Perhaps people who are below average will then drop off and the cultural relevance of a rating of 5 out of 10 will adjust itself. I'm betting that enough will stay to make the site worth while -- certainly anyone for whom the system works. Also... not all companies want a 10-point programmer. Those cost money. Some tasks only require a 5-point developer.

maxdemarzi 16y ago
I have been looking at the HR problem too and FamousActress has a valid point. The chicken and egg problem here is HUGE... and anything that can be a "downer" or "demotivational" will not make it.
- famousactress 16y ago
  Again, even the idea of a '10 point programmer' or a '5 point programmer' is depressing, and I struggle to believe that it could accurately convey the complexity of the value that different people have in different contexts. Where I DO see some interesting numbers having values in this area are where the numbers aren't rankings, but rather indications of participation, passion, and relevance. For instance, I think Stack Overflow scores.. or maybe even HN karma points, might both be really valuable indicators. If I got a resume from someone with a Stack Overflow score attached to it, I'd know that this is a person who participates, is a good communicator, and knows the answers to lots of tough questions! Not only that, but I can go look at his or her posts. I think this is where your project needs attention... What's in it for the employee? If only '10 point' employees really like your service, then I think you're wasting your time.. '10 point' employees don't have problems finding work.
  - jmcentire 16y ago
    Interestingly enough, 10 point "employees" can and do have trouble differentiating themselves. MIT Ph.D. admission, for instance, is rather selective. There is much research available demonstrating that there is a huge qualitative difference between consummate achievers and great minds. Unfortunately, most businesses and schools have far too many applications for employment and need some easy metric to reduce the set to something approachable. I'm not suggesting a blind hire of the top guy. I'm trying to provide a more relevant metric than current exists. Any other system I've seen in play is easy to game -- or hard to game, but in gaming it, you're becoming the opposite of what the company/school is seeking. Further, "what's in it for the employee" doesn't enter into it. I could easily say: famousactress is rated as 8.34 for her dramatic performances but only at 5.21 in comedic roles. That has nothing to do with your willing participation. I agree that it's depressing to be considered sub-par. But, there are so many people trying desperately to stand out that they're losing their way. Google can't hire the right sort of people because every metric they have attempted to date has resulted in honest, dependable, clean-cut, recently-shaven, knowledgeable CS graduates from top universities. Sadly, they're trying to expand a business built (like so many other startups) by the ideas of college drop-outs (or similar), who were too busy doing something interesting to go to class and get good grades. Those interesting things aren't bragging rights (level 80 character in each class and each faction on WoW appears on very few resumes). If I attach my HN information, you might disagree with my positions and opinions. I'd miss out on the job based upon personal bias -- maybe I should. But, you'll notice my karma here is _very_ low. I suppose that seems justified since you're not on board with this concept. But, is it? Reddit is commonly gamed. If I had an outrageous karma score, would you think highly of me or consider me a karma whore? Well, you might say, you'd simply read my posts. Great! Now, consider you have a highly coveted position and 10,000 applicants. You can only read the posts of about 20 applicants. Do you take the top 20 highest scores? What if the 21st highest was actually the best fit? Well, then you blame your metric. The reason you blame your metric is because people will game their karma scores to reduce their competition to only 20 other people who were busily whoring karma and not building necessary job skills. At the same time, you can't deal with 10,000 resumes. You need a metric that's not easily gamed and that's as representative as possible of an individual's skills. Just like I can tag you in a photo on Facebook without your consent, this site would allow me to rate your skills as an actress and as a programmer. My opinion of your acting skill is pretty much worthless (whether it's good or bad); my opinion of your programming skill is more significant -- but I'm not going to single-handedly make you or break you.
    - maxdemarzi 16y ago
      What happens to the popularity of the software when the hiring managers or HR people are rated poorly or even "just average"? Think about the newest social games. They metric is progression. There are no downers. If you have a low score, it's because you're new to the game or haven't played enough. You always "gain" experience points, gold, whatever. In order to get past the chicken and egg problem in the social space you need to turn the scale from 1 to 10 into 1 to infinity and give the perception of not punishing low scores.
      - jmcentire 16y ago
        I don't think so. Viewing one's site in terms of game mechanics is a fun idea and has some basis in game theory. However, all I really have to do is offer a winning value proposition. If you are a hiring manager and are rated fairly low on the managerial aspects, you might disagree with that evaluation of your skills. Any prudent person would not base their decision on one data point. Rather, the intelligent hiring manager would evaluate applicants based upon the site's relative ranking of that person compared to other members of his or her team. While the perception of a 1 to infinity scale reduces the immediate negativity of being obviously below average... that illusion only works for a short period of time. When you start playing WoW 10 gold coins is a lot of money, you can delude yourself and harbor odd ideas about your worth. However, once you compare yourself to _anyone_ else, it becomes immediately apparent that 10 gold coins is practically worthless. As far as the "misdirection" is concerned, perhaps I ought to note some aspects of the UI. Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, the site doesn't revolve around the user. As such, when you visit the site or login, you are not presented with your profile. Rather, the site is devoted to finding and comparing applicants. As such, the main page is a search page and most users will likely spend much of their time sorting through candidates. In fact, the only way a user could see their own data is to search for themselves. My guess is that that'll be a fairly common practice. My hope is that people will identify their weaknesses and either improve them or re-evaluate their career goals. I know it seems harsh. But, the hiring practice is harsh. I sit people in a little, unfamiliar, echo chamber and send in a string of people to scrutinize and judge them. I'm not trying to get everyone hired on at obscene salaries and stroke everyone's ego. My goal is not to paint the world with a rainbow facade of unicorns and fairies. I want to enable Harvard, Yale, MIT, IBM, Microsoft, Google, et cetera to have a tool which quickly and accurately separates the wheat from the chaff. If an individual's skills are average or worse, they're not likely to be working at a company which receives so many applications that so sort of automated elimination is requisite. Rather, they're probably looking for average people for average work at an average company. And there's nothing wrong with that. Here on HN, there are a lot of startups with a different sort of problem. No applications, but strong desires/needs for well-qualified employees. In that case, this tool would also be useful. If a startup wants to rely on friends from college and guys met at HN meetups, that's fine. Again, I appreciate any and all feedback and am aware of the cold start and related problems. I have a few solutions that I'm not interested in discussing here and now; but, I understand that this is a major concern and certainly appreciate people pointing it out.
- jmcentire 16y ago
  Would love to have more insight from you on this. "Downer" and "demotivational" seem to indicate that you're approaching this from the perspective of an employee. The site does not operate according to the willingness of employees to be evaluated. I am happy to rate my coworkers who are good or bad (in my opinion). I'm happy to be rated by them, my employers, and my peers. Not everyone feels the same way. That's fine. And, yes, there _is_ a cold start problem. While I'm well aware of the issues with building a useful site (and have many ideas to circumvent them) -- I'm more interested in the perception of the utility of the site were it to exist and have a reasonably large data set.

maxdemarzi 16y ago

I have been looking at the HR problem too and FamousActress has a valid point. The chicken and egg problem here is HUGE... and anything that can be a "downer" or "demotivational" will not make it.

famousactress 16y ago
Again, even the idea of a '10 point programmer' or a '5 point programmer' is depressing, and I struggle to believe that it could accurately convey the complexity of the value that different people have in different contexts. Where I DO see some interesting numbers having values in this area are where the numbers aren't rankings, but rather indications of participation, passion, and relevance. For instance, I think Stack Overflow scores.. or maybe even HN karma points, might both be really valuable indicators. If I got a resume from someone with a Stack Overflow score attached to it, I'd know that this is a person who participates, is a good communicator, and knows the answers to lots of tough questions! Not only that, but I can go look at his or her posts. I think this is where your project needs attention... What's in it for the employee? If only '10 point' employees really like your service, then I think you're wasting your time.. '10 point' employees don't have problems finding work.
- jmcentire 16y ago
  Interestingly enough, 10 point "employees" can and do have trouble differentiating themselves. MIT Ph.D. admission, for instance, is rather selective. There is much research available demonstrating that there is a huge qualitative difference between consummate achievers and great minds. Unfortunately, most businesses and schools have far too many applications for employment and need some easy metric to reduce the set to something approachable. I'm not suggesting a blind hire of the top guy. I'm trying to provide a more relevant metric than current exists. Any other system I've seen in play is easy to game -- or hard to game, but in gaming it, you're becoming the opposite of what the company/school is seeking. Further, "what's in it for the employee" doesn't enter into it. I could easily say: famousactress is rated as 8.34 for her dramatic performances but only at 5.21 in comedic roles. That has nothing to do with your willing participation. I agree that it's depressing to be considered sub-par. But, there are so many people trying desperately to stand out that they're losing their way. Google can't hire the right sort of people because every metric they have attempted to date has resulted in honest, dependable, clean-cut, recently-shaven, knowledgeable CS graduates from top universities. Sadly, they're trying to expand a business built (like so many other startups) by the ideas of college drop-outs (or similar), who were too busy doing something interesting to go to class and get good grades. Those interesting things aren't bragging rights (level 80 character in each class and each faction on WoW appears on very few resumes). If I attach my HN information, you might disagree with my positions and opinions. I'd miss out on the job based upon personal bias -- maybe I should. But, you'll notice my karma here is _very_ low. I suppose that seems justified since you're not on board with this concept. But, is it? Reddit is commonly gamed. If I had an outrageous karma score, would you think highly of me or consider me a karma whore? Well, you might say, you'd simply read my posts. Great! Now, consider you have a highly coveted position and 10,000 applicants. You can only read the posts of about 20 applicants. Do you take the top 20 highest scores? What if the 21st highest was actually the best fit? Well, then you blame your metric. The reason you blame your metric is because people will game their karma scores to reduce their competition to only 20 other people who were busily whoring karma and not building necessary job skills. At the same time, you can't deal with 10,000 resumes. You need a metric that's not easily gamed and that's as representative as possible of an individual's skills. Just like I can tag you in a photo on Facebook without your consent, this site would allow me to rate your skills as an actress and as a programmer. My opinion of your acting skill is pretty much worthless (whether it's good or bad); my opinion of your programming skill is more significant -- but I'm not going to single-handedly make you or break you.
  - maxdemarzi 16y ago
    What happens to the popularity of the software when the hiring managers or HR people are rated poorly or even "just average"? Think about the newest social games. They metric is progression. There are no downers. If you have a low score, it's because you're new to the game or haven't played enough. You always "gain" experience points, gold, whatever. In order to get past the chicken and egg problem in the social space you need to turn the scale from 1 to 10 into 1 to infinity and give the perception of not punishing low scores.
    - jmcentire 16y ago
      I don't think so. Viewing one's site in terms of game mechanics is a fun idea and has some basis in game theory. However, all I really have to do is offer a winning value proposition. If you are a hiring manager and are rated fairly low on the managerial aspects, you might disagree with that evaluation of your skills. Any prudent person would not base their decision on one data point. Rather, the intelligent hiring manager would evaluate applicants based upon the site's relative ranking of that person compared to other members of his or her team. While the perception of a 1 to infinity scale reduces the immediate negativity of being obviously below average... that illusion only works for a short period of time. When you start playing WoW 10 gold coins is a lot of money, you can delude yourself and harbor odd ideas about your worth. However, once you compare yourself to _anyone_ else, it becomes immediately apparent that 10 gold coins is practically worthless. As far as the "misdirection" is concerned, perhaps I ought to note some aspects of the UI. Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook, the site doesn't revolve around the user. As such, when you visit the site or login, you are not presented with your profile. Rather, the site is devoted to finding and comparing applicants. As such, the main page is a search page and most users will likely spend much of their time sorting through candidates. In fact, the only way a user could see their own data is to search for themselves. My guess is that that'll be a fairly common practice. My hope is that people will identify their weaknesses and either improve them or re-evaluate their career goals. I know it seems harsh. But, the hiring practice is harsh. I sit people in a little, unfamiliar, echo chamber and send in a string of people to scrutinize and judge them. I'm not trying to get everyone hired on at obscene salaries and stroke everyone's ego. My goal is not to paint the world with a rainbow facade of unicorns and fairies. I want to enable Harvard, Yale, MIT, IBM, Microsoft, Google, et cetera to have a tool which quickly and accurately separates the wheat from the chaff. If an individual's skills are average or worse, they're not likely to be working at a company which receives so many applications that so sort of automated elimination is requisite. Rather, they're probably looking for average people for average work at an average company. And there's nothing wrong with that. Here on HN, there are a lot of startups with a different sort of problem. No applications, but strong desires/needs for well-qualified employees. In that case, this tool would also be useful. If a startup wants to rely on friends from college and guys met at HN meetups, that's fine. Again, I appreciate any and all feedback and am aware of the cold start and related problems. I have a few solutions that I'm not interested in discussing here and now; but, I understand that this is a major concern and certainly appreciate people pointing it out.
jmcentire 16y ago
Would love to have more insight from you on this. "Downer" and "demotivational" seem to indicate that you're approaching this from the perspective of an employee. The site does not operate according to the willingness of employees to be evaluated. I am happy to rate my coworkers who are good or bad (in my opinion). I'm happy to be rated by them, my employers, and my peers. Not everyone feels the same way. That's fine. And, yes, there _is_ a cold start problem. While I'm well aware of the issues with building a useful site (and have many ideas to circumvent them) -- I'm more interested in the perception of the utility of the site were it to exist and have a reasonably large data set.