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I find it amazing that anyone uses it in the business world. Next up HR will be adding tarrot cards and oiji boards Then again I find it amazing that anyone us

I find it amazing that anyone uses it in the business world. Next up HR will be adding tarrot cards and oiji boards Then again I find it amazing that anyone uses it at all. It's complete trash

mathattack 6y ago
The voodoo I’ve seen from HR departments makes MB look like Newtonian Physics. Yet they are so bad at stats that you can’t even enter a discussion on if it passes any kind of empirical test.
baron_harkonnen 6y ago
It should not be surprising at all. How many companies have you worked at where part of your performance review involves dividing and averaging ordinal numbers? If you give someone some sort of numeric rating in N categories you cannot mathematically (trivially) average these rating to get a meaningful score. Ordinal numbers only allow you to say A is greater than B and B is greater than C therefore A is greater than C, but it says nothing about the distance between A and B, B and C and A and C. Yet at countless companies compensation is determined by literally nonsensical mathematical operations. Before the pedants get me, there are ways to transform ordinal numbers to do perform more complex mathematical operations on them, but I can assure you that your HR department does not do these. So given HR's disregard for basic principles of mathematics it should not be surprising that they find the variety of personality tests worthwhile.
- Terretta 6y ago
  HR isn’t spending time on this ritual for performance reasons, but for risk management. It doesn’t serve your desired purpose, and the math would make no sense. Yet it perfectly satisfices what’s asked of them. // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
dang 6y ago
Would you please stop posting shallow dismissals and calling names in HN comments? Posts like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289644 are not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you this sort of thing a ton of times. Eventually we ban such accounts. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- paulie_a 6y ago
  "we've had to ask you this sort of thing a ton of times. Eventually we ban such accounts" No you haven't. What's wrong with calling out bad products for what they are?
  - iso1210 6y ago
    You'd get better response if you gave reasons for your statement. You may be right that this test is complete trash, I suspect many people here would agree. The top comment on this thread says that Myers Briggs is complete trash https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26291262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26291262 The difference is they defend their assertion, and that post led to a very interesting discussion from both sides. The article and the comments generally lead me to believe that there is correlation between MB and "Big 5", there is little from the tests that is actionable, but that's because of argued points one way or another, not be stating it's "complete trash" Likewise, if you think rackspace is overpriced, or the customer service is lacking, perhaps some examples would get a better response. Why even post the statement if you aren't going to defend it? Is it to try to persuade people that rackspace is awful? You won't persuade anyone without a reason. Something like "Rackspace is overpriced trash as they charge $500 for a 1U colo and my server had frequent outages, where BobRackInc charge $100 and has never had downtime" would, despite being an anecdote, at least open up the conversation.
  - dang 6y ago
    You replied to several of these at the time, but perhaps a refresher will be helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22280026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22280026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17335152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17335152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17181868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17181868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16814032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16814032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16788897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16788897 The problem isn't "calling out bad products", though I wouldn't use the phrase "calling out", since the online callout/shaming culture is something we try to avoid here. Thoughtful critique is obviously welcome. The problem is that you have a long history of breaking the site guidelines by posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments. If you can't or won't stop this, we will ban you, so please stop.
ronhav3 6y ago
Considering that some HR tests still include analyzing your handwriting by 'graphologists'.

I find it amazing that anyone uses it in the business world. Next up HR will be adding tarrot cards and oiji boards Then again I find it amazing that anyone uses it at all. It's complete trash

mathattack 6y ago

The voodoo I’ve seen from HR departments makes MB look like Newtonian Physics. Yet they are so bad at stats that you can’t even enter a discussion on if it passes any kind of empirical test.

baron_harkonnen 6y ago

It should not be surprising at all. How many companies have you worked at where part of your performance review involves dividing and averaging ordinal numbers? If you give someone some sort of numeric rating in N categories you cannot mathematically (trivially) average these rating to get a meaningful score. Ordinal numbers only allow you to say A is greater than B and B is greater than C therefore A is greater than C, but it says nothing about the distance between A and B, B and C and A and C. Yet at countless companies compensation is determined by literally nonsensical mathematical operations. Before the pedants get me, there are ways to transform ordinal numbers to do perform more complex mathematical operations on them, but I can assure you that your HR department does not do these. So given HR's disregard for basic principles of mathematics it should not be surprising that they find the variety of personality tests worthwhile.

Terretta 6y ago
HR isn’t spending time on this ritual for performance reasons, but for risk management. It doesn’t serve your desired purpose, and the math would make no sense. Yet it perfectly satisfices what’s asked of them. // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing

dang 6y ago

Would you please stop posting shallow dismissals and calling names in HN comments? Posts like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289644 are not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you this sort of thing a ton of times. Eventually we ban such accounts. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

paulie_a 6y ago
"we've had to ask you this sort of thing a ton of times. Eventually we ban such accounts" No you haven't. What's wrong with calling out bad products for what they are?
- iso1210 6y ago
  You'd get better response if you gave reasons for your statement. You may be right that this test is complete trash, I suspect many people here would agree. The top comment on this thread says that Myers Briggs is complete trash https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26291262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26291262 The difference is they defend their assertion, and that post led to a very interesting discussion from both sides. The article and the comments generally lead me to believe that there is correlation between MB and "Big 5", there is little from the tests that is actionable, but that's because of argued points one way or another, not be stating it's "complete trash" Likewise, if you think rackspace is overpriced, or the customer service is lacking, perhaps some examples would get a better response. Why even post the statement if you aren't going to defend it? Is it to try to persuade people that rackspace is awful? You won't persuade anyone without a reason. Something like "Rackspace is overpriced trash as they charge $500 for a 1U colo and my server had frequent outages, where BobRackInc charge $100 and has never had downtime" would, despite being an anecdote, at least open up the conversation.
- dang 6y ago
  You replied to several of these at the time, but perhaps a refresher will be helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22280026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22280026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17447722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17335152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17335152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17181868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17181868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16814032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16814032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16788897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16788897 The problem isn't "calling out bad products", though I wouldn't use the phrase "calling out", since the online callout/shaming culture is something we try to avoid here. Thoughtful critique is obviously welcome. The problem is that you have a long history of breaking the site guidelines by posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments. If you can't or won't stop this, we will ban you, so please stop.

ronhav3 6y ago

Considering that some HR tests still include analyzing your handwriting by 'graphologists'.