Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers in (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers in (2014)

paulgraham.com

10 pointsthewarpaint15 comments

I don’t want the rest of the world competing for my job and driving down wages. This may be good for companies but I have to look out for my own interests and if they let the other 95 % in it would affect me by decrease pay, more likely to have ageism discrimination, etc.

Assume that everything he says is right. When Google, the data analytics company, openly admits that there is no correlation between interviewing and job performance, how do you identify that tiny fraction of amazing talent you want to let in?

Where did Google say this?

In an interview with the New York Time by their chief of HR at the time: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-...

Just glanced, but does not seem to support the earlier assertion. Just that brain teasers aren't that useful.

Brain teasers are only mentioned at the very end of the interview. The whole beginning section discusses (and supports) GP's earlier assertion.

"Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring. We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except for one guy who was highly predictive because he only interviewed people for a very specialized area, where he happened to be the world’s leading expert."

From the third paragraph of the first answer here: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-...

Ah. My glancing-fu is not strong. Thank you.

They said that given you are hired, there is no correlation between job performance and your interview score, not that there is no correlation between someone's interview score and how that person will perform. It's analogous to saying people who scored 1600 on their SAT perform no better than those who scored 1500, not that SAT scores are unrelated to performance.

Thanks, i really can’t believe this had to be spelled out. Btw what they did find correlating with job performance was candidate’s GPA =)

Only if they recently graduated.

Schmidt & Hunter (1998) "The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology" was a metaanalysis of hiring across many fields and wound up noting that the only metric with any positive signal was if one measured General Mental Ability and work samples from prior work. And even then the signal wasn't great

> Google, the data analytics company, openly admits that there is no correlation between interviewing and job performance

Google never said this. It would be pretty dumb thing to say because otherwise they could save $$$ by just rolling the dice on application.

Wonder how many people there are who would be good programmers but never had the opportunity to code in the United States? Have there ever been studies on the programming capability of people who never coded before who are given some training?

Definitely what someone who's business is making money off of them would suggest

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