4 ms·

How do we know this isn’t blind faith and the numbers are “made up”? Other than fiat wealth generation, what gains are there to treating each other like this?

sgtnoodle 5y ago
I'm not sure what you mean? Are you suggesting that companies shouldn't avoid hiring unqualified people that generate less value than their cost on average?
- mr_toad 5y ago
  I’m dubious that companies can accurately measure ability or performance, either in the interview process or on the job.
  - google234123 5y ago
    Have you ever been in a job or taken a class with other people and not been able to see the different between the more competent and more incompetent people?
    - sgtnoodle 5y ago
      Indeed. Experienced interviewers can size up a candidate in the first 10 minutes and fairly accurately predict how their debrief will go. The rest of the interviews are just building up confidence, and making sure there's enough redundancy to tolerate the occasional bungle or accidental awkwardness. Folk get hired all the time despite getting imperfect interviewer feedback. I've had interviews where the first 45 minutes were painful but then the candidate blew me away in the last 15 minutes.
    - mr_toad 5y ago
      Yes, but I only see facets of their performance. And I’m only interested in specific areas, and might be blind to other talents or issues. They might be the brightest bulb in the training class, but spend all their day reading hacker news and creating memes. It’s very difficult to quantify individual performance, and even harder to put a dollar figure on it.
    - oceanplexian 5y ago
      This is one of those things I stupidly thought I understood when I was a Jr. Engineer, and now understand quite a bit differently after decades have gone by. The more competent people weren’t necessarily the ones getting more things done, or the most visible, but were those engineers who understood the long term implications of what they were building, how it related to the business, and their relationship to other teams and customers. It’s trivial to be a good “performer” toiling away on a feature or system that shouldn’t exist. It’s exponentially harder to have the awareness to identify where the real problems are, and make sure you’re investing effort where it actually needs to go.
    - sgtnoodle 5y ago
      Re: experience and working hard vs. working on what the project needs, that's definitely a trait of more seasoned engineers. I'd say it's a matter of learning strategy over tactics. I've gotten pretty good at that balance over the years. When I came into my current project I focused on aspects of the software that had been sorely neglected before me, and plenty of folk where skeptical for the first year or so. Now in hindsight the results speak for themselves, and it's apparently become a story of legend that my coworkers tell new hires. Last week I had fully intended to spend at least 20 hours heads down coding, but instead I spent the entire work week writing and updating an architecture document. It was the best use of my time, though, as it allowed two other people to be heads down coding instead. Now this week it's three of us frantically writing code instead of just me, and we all know the final result will work and be boring. We're replacing a 7 year old piece of critical infrastructure.
- thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago
  Research into who brings value, what technologies improve efficiency, has been inconclusive. The models end up with so many variables the conclusions are meaningless; any one parameter is insufficient, all the parameters needed mean no one parameter is greater than another. How can a value assessment being useful given all the required context that also has to exist? Is it a measure of value or traditional human bias? Humans are prone to group think, belief in words of power, sigils; why believe in unfalsifiable value assessment when it comes down to tried and true ownership? If traditional politics win at the end of the day why the belief this matrix of value isn’t just another cognitive boondoggle?
  - sgtnoodle 5y ago
    I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding in what interviewers are testing for. Interviewers at most companies aren't trying to evaluate or quantify a candidate's inherent value or general technical prowess. They're trying to determine whether or not the candidate can help solve immediate and real problems that the company has, while also trying to get a sense of whether the candidate has the potential to grow with the company long term. There's very little science in interviewing, and it is indeed heavily based on heuristics. The whole point of lots of interviews is to reduce bias. Unfortunately, it's possible for candidates to mistakenly think an interview went poorly because they didn't get the answer right away, when from the interviewer's point of view it was one of the best answers they've heard because of the process by which the candidate arrived on the answer. A popular metric for whether a candidate is likely to be able to solve practical problems is whether or not they've shipped products before. A lot of people pad out their resume with collective achievements, though, and so it's something that needs to be dug into. It's unfortunately not uncommon for folk to not understand the stuff on their own resume.
    - thirdwhrldPzz 4y ago
      There is no misunderstanding on my part. I never consented to this culture. I see little different here than a church, meat based tape recorders thinking the noises they emit are “the way” with little proof except “feudal capitalism” continues to “work”. We don’t owe deference and agency to CEOs, VCs, and founders. The syntax is different but the LARP of being sheep for “wise men” is the same. Only 13% of the country has an advanced degree (mine is MSc in math earned in the 90s; I’m old) and knowledge is not locked away in those heads. Education does not make people infallible and omniscient. This is a result of traditional political memes; owners rule, everyone else drools. The filtering and sorting inside that cognitive bubble is just the proles making proles dance like jesters. No scientific theory makes this the one true way of organizing effort. Memorizing semantics is not proof they’re correct. If GME can be shorted to the extent it is despite that being illegal, our institutions are built on deference to BS, since that system is the bedrock used to prop up tech VCs.

sgtnoodle 5y ago

I'm not sure what you mean? Are you suggesting that companies shouldn't avoid hiring unqualified people that generate less value than their cost on average?

mr_toad 5y ago
I’m dubious that companies can accurately measure ability or performance, either in the interview process or on the job.
- google234123 5y ago
  Have you ever been in a job or taken a class with other people and not been able to see the different between the more competent and more incompetent people?
  - sgtnoodle 5y ago
    Indeed. Experienced interviewers can size up a candidate in the first 10 minutes and fairly accurately predict how their debrief will go. The rest of the interviews are just building up confidence, and making sure there's enough redundancy to tolerate the occasional bungle or accidental awkwardness. Folk get hired all the time despite getting imperfect interviewer feedback. I've had interviews where the first 45 minutes were painful but then the candidate blew me away in the last 15 minutes.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    Yes, but I only see facets of their performance. And I’m only interested in specific areas, and might be blind to other talents or issues. They might be the brightest bulb in the training class, but spend all their day reading hacker news and creating memes. It’s very difficult to quantify individual performance, and even harder to put a dollar figure on it.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    This is one of those things I stupidly thought I understood when I was a Jr. Engineer, and now understand quite a bit differently after decades have gone by. The more competent people weren’t necessarily the ones getting more things done, or the most visible, but were those engineers who understood the long term implications of what they were building, how it related to the business, and their relationship to other teams and customers. It’s trivial to be a good “performer” toiling away on a feature or system that shouldn’t exist. It’s exponentially harder to have the awareness to identify where the real problems are, and make sure you’re investing effort where it actually needs to go.
  - sgtnoodle 5y ago
    Re: experience and working hard vs. working on what the project needs, that's definitely a trait of more seasoned engineers. I'd say it's a matter of learning strategy over tactics. I've gotten pretty good at that balance over the years. When I came into my current project I focused on aspects of the software that had been sorely neglected before me, and plenty of folk where skeptical for the first year or so. Now in hindsight the results speak for themselves, and it's apparently become a story of legend that my coworkers tell new hires. Last week I had fully intended to spend at least 20 hours heads down coding, but instead I spent the entire work week writing and updating an architecture document. It was the best use of my time, though, as it allowed two other people to be heads down coding instead. Now this week it's three of us frantically writing code instead of just me, and we all know the final result will work and be boring. We're replacing a 7 year old piece of critical infrastructure.
thirdwhrldPzz 5y ago
Research into who brings value, what technologies improve efficiency, has been inconclusive. The models end up with so many variables the conclusions are meaningless; any one parameter is insufficient, all the parameters needed mean no one parameter is greater than another. How can a value assessment being useful given all the required context that also has to exist? Is it a measure of value or traditional human bias? Humans are prone to group think, belief in words of power, sigils; why believe in unfalsifiable value assessment when it comes down to tried and true ownership? If traditional politics win at the end of the day why the belief this matrix of value isn’t just another cognitive boondoggle?
- sgtnoodle 5y ago
  I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding in what interviewers are testing for. Interviewers at most companies aren't trying to evaluate or quantify a candidate's inherent value or general technical prowess. They're trying to determine whether or not the candidate can help solve immediate and real problems that the company has, while also trying to get a sense of whether the candidate has the potential to grow with the company long term. There's very little science in interviewing, and it is indeed heavily based on heuristics. The whole point of lots of interviews is to reduce bias. Unfortunately, it's possible for candidates to mistakenly think an interview went poorly because they didn't get the answer right away, when from the interviewer's point of view it was one of the best answers they've heard because of the process by which the candidate arrived on the answer. A popular metric for whether a candidate is likely to be able to solve practical problems is whether or not they've shipped products before. A lot of people pad out their resume with collective achievements, though, and so it's something that needs to be dug into. It's unfortunately not uncommon for folk to not understand the stuff on their own resume.
  - thirdwhrldPzz 4y ago
    There is no misunderstanding on my part. I never consented to this culture. I see little different here than a church, meat based tape recorders thinking the noises they emit are “the way” with little proof except “feudal capitalism” continues to “work”. We don’t owe deference and agency to CEOs, VCs, and founders. The syntax is different but the LARP of being sheep for “wise men” is the same. Only 13% of the country has an advanced degree (mine is MSc in math earned in the 90s; I’m old) and knowledge is not locked away in those heads. Education does not make people infallible and omniscient. This is a result of traditional political memes; owners rule, everyone else drools. The filtering and sorting inside that cognitive bubble is just the proles making proles dance like jesters. No scientific theory makes this the one true way of organizing effort. Memorizing semantics is not proof they’re correct. If GME can be shorted to the extent it is despite that being illegal, our institutions are built on deference to BS, since that system is the bedrock used to prop up tech VCs.