3 ms·

That, I am sorry, is an inefficient filter. I used at one point believe anyone who didn't know C++ wasn't a good programmer until I met a few people who wrote a

by sarvesh 18y ago

That, I am sorry, is an inefficient filter. I used at one point believe anyone who didn't know C++ wasn't a good programmer until I met a few people who wrote applications in languages like VB and they were as good as C++ developer would have done. There are other ways to filter out résumés. Within 10 minutes into a phone interview you can eliminate quite a lot of applicants and I for now just stop the interview at that point. Once someone makes it through the phone interview you are pretty much left with a good bunch of résumé to pick from for the next round.

sofal 18y ago
The purpose of a hiring filter is to reduce the false positives. Your discovery of false negatives doesn't say much about the filter quality in this respect. If you could take random samples from the group of people who would apply to Haskell jobs and from people who would apply to Java jobs and come up with a measure of motivation/willingness-to-learn, I believe there would be some statistically significant things to say. Samples from two mainstream (and in my opinion, trashy) languages like C++ and VB might be harder to differentiate. As a side note, I've noticed that companies that can afford a large amount of false negatives tend to have horrible interviewing practices. Google is in the top two of the worst interviewing experiences I've ever had. When everybody salivates over your company, you can afford use a quick and dirty filter that hones in on any one arbitrary characteristic. As a matter of fact, one could possibly argue that these lazy filters do better than more accurate filters in the same way that Google argues that more data is better than superior AI. It's stupid for people to look to companies like these for exemplary models of interviewing.
- Retric 18y ago
  The problem with Google is their filter also removes the most of the really high end people. I expect there are far fewer people at standard keeping a 4.0 and doing interesting work in their own time than there are people keeping a 3.5 at the same school and building cool things. Add in a insanely long interview process and poor salary's and many people they accept already have other jobs that they like. You can also see this in what they develop. They are good at incrementally improving something like web mail, or online maps, but you don't see them pushing into new areas.
  - jodrellblank 18y ago
    Depends on whether you're arguing that they don't push into new areas, or that they only do it by purchasing other companies, but I do see them pushing into new areas: Google is pushing/has pushed out from their original search into ad sales, online video, webmail, domain hosting, online document and spreadsheet programs, desktop searching programs, browser development, health information, web analytics, a mobile phone operating system, iPhone software, location and tracking systems, a code repository, voice recognition, statistical language translation, price comparisons, online payment systems, photo editing and hosting, sketchup, feed reading, mapping, satellite imagine, astronomical imaging, local free wifi, Google Earth, chat and video chat, blog engine, app engine, book ripping... that's not all, either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products I don't expect them to come out with a new kind of paint or an electric car, but they do a lot with information.
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    Google can afford a lot of false negatives, but it can't afford false positives. And from what I've seen, the interview process does a fairly good job of screening them out. Maybe it's just my team, but I don't see a whole lot of deadwood around. FWIW, they hired me and I have nowhere near a 4.0 (it actually was a 3.0 + interesting projects). And most successful products are just incremental improvements on what's out there. You really don't want to be a true innovator: who uses an Altair, or WWW (the browser, not the web), or AltaVista, or CP/M, or Visicalc, or Betamax, or a Xerox Alto, or Xanadu? But if you put enough innovations together, you get something really kickass like GMail. Going after established markets is just prudent business sense, it doesn't mean they aren't innovating. (And there are some pretty crazy off-the-wall experiments that go on inside Google to, it's just that nobody can talk to you about the ones that haven't launched, and it's a good bet that 99.99% of the crazy stuff never will launch because it's basically useless.)

by sarvesh 18y ago

sofal 18y ago

The purpose of a hiring filter is to reduce the false positives. Your discovery of false negatives doesn't say much about the filter quality in this respect. If you could take random samples from the group of people who would apply to Haskell jobs and from people who would apply to Java jobs and come up with a measure of motivation/willingness-to-learn, I believe there would be some statistically significant things to say. Samples from two mainstream (and in my opinion, trashy) languages like C++ and VB might be harder to differentiate. As a side note, I've noticed that companies that can afford a large amount of false negatives tend to have horrible interviewing practices. Google is in the top two of the worst interviewing experiences I've ever had. When everybody salivates over your company, you can afford use a quick and dirty filter that hones in on any one arbitrary characteristic. As a matter of fact, one could possibly argue that these lazy filters do better than more accurate filters in the same way that Google argues that more data is better than superior AI. It's stupid for people to look to companies like these for exemplary models of interviewing.

Retric 18y ago
The problem with Google is their filter also removes the most of the really high end people. I expect there are far fewer people at standard keeping a 4.0 and doing interesting work in their own time than there are people keeping a 3.5 at the same school and building cool things. Add in a insanely long interview process and poor salary's and many people they accept already have other jobs that they like. You can also see this in what they develop. They are good at incrementally improving something like web mail, or online maps, but you don't see them pushing into new areas.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  Depends on whether you're arguing that they don't push into new areas, or that they only do it by purchasing other companies, but I do see them pushing into new areas: Google is pushing/has pushed out from their original search into ad sales, online video, webmail, domain hosting, online document and spreadsheet programs, desktop searching programs, browser development, health information, web analytics, a mobile phone operating system, iPhone software, location and tracking systems, a code repository, voice recognition, statistical language translation, price comparisons, online payment systems, photo editing and hosting, sketchup, feed reading, mapping, satellite imagine, astronomical imaging, local free wifi, Google Earth, chat and video chat, blog engine, app engine, book ripping... that's not all, either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products I don't expect them to come out with a new kind of paint or an electric car, but they do a lot with information.
- nostrademons 18y ago
  Google can afford a lot of false negatives, but it can't afford false positives. And from what I've seen, the interview process does a fairly good job of screening them out. Maybe it's just my team, but I don't see a whole lot of deadwood around. FWIW, they hired me and I have nowhere near a 4.0 (it actually was a 3.0 + interesting projects). And most successful products are just incremental improvements on what's out there. You really don't want to be a true innovator: who uses an Altair, or WWW (the browser, not the web), or AltaVista, or CP/M, or Visicalc, or Betamax, or a Xerox Alto, or Xanadu? But if you put enough innovations together, you get something really kickass like GMail. Going after established markets is just prudent business sense, it doesn't mean they aren't innovating. (And there are some pretty crazy off-the-wall experiments that go on inside Google to, it's just that nobody can talk to you about the ones that haven't launched, and it's a good bet that 99.99% of the crazy stuff never will launch because it's basically useless.)