37 pointsby headalgorithm5 hours ago4 comments
  • nitwit005an hour ago
    I gave the feedback at one Google interview that they should send Google employees through to see how many get hired. Good to see they basically tried that.

    The conclusion at the end that bringing someone on board is the ideal method is true I'm sure, but even that runs into the issue that employee evaluation is an even worse situation than the interview process.

    You can openly see some managers panic when they realize they have no idea what their employees have been doing for the last 6-12 months when they're asked to provide feedback.

  • sameers4 hours ago
    I couldn't find the text of this joke, attributed to Dirac. I'll paraphrase.

    A man walks into a pet store. There's a parrot for $100, it says this parrot speaks perfect English . The one next to it is $1,000, and says, This parrot speaks 12 languages fluently.

    Then there's a bedraggled looking, droopy, parrot, and its label simply says One Million Dollars.

    Does it sing opera and has successfully run for President? the man asks with a sneer.

    This parrot, says the store owner, _thinks_.

    That's what this entire post is about - how to evaluate people with a series of attributes, score, correlate, blah blah blah.

    Hire them, see if they think. If they don't, fire them. It's cheaper than this credential/signal rigmarole, most of which is about CYA legal b+llsh1t. Yes, it's a simplistic strategy and it doesn't work for Shoogle, Banthropic, Goober, whatever. You know what, boo f*cking hoo. You're a trillion dollar company, suck it up. You have a zombie horde at your doors and you're just upset the "true gems" are hard for you to spot amongst the slavering masses. You're going to heartlessly lay them off anyway in a few years. You SHOULD feel this pain and anguish of having to sort through them, constantly regretting all your choices. That's the only way to have balance in the Universe.

    • roxolotl3 hours ago
      There’s an old Malcom Gladwell podcast episode, I think the show was Revisionist History, where he says he’s an interview nihilist. As long as the person seems reasonably capable, and can probably do a bit of what you need, hire them. Interviews are so hard to get right that what you’re saying ends up being most effective.

      Edit: Didn’t link it initially because I thought it would be hard to find. Turns out it’s not. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/hamlet-w...

    • cindyllm4 hours ago
      [dead]
  • eikenberryan hour ago
    His idea has some merit but will require the old system to completely crash out before anything new will be considered and I'm not sure if it will crash or just keep limping along. If it really does crash out hopefully we will see multiple new strategies emerge as there are many possible options once the current one is off the table.
    • zffr17 minutes ago
      As yegge mentioned, there might be more appetite for trying out this idea now because there are many engineers who are currently unemployed. Offering them short co-op could be beneficial to both the engineer and prospective employer
  • Ancalagon3 hours ago
    And good riddance.