Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

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"Oh boy, I can hear the sophomore software engineering studio students firing up their word processors from here" works just as well.

I don't think the critique was of self-learning or bootcamps. It was a critique of a certain sort of cringe-worthy self-promotion.

And not just cringe-worthy. Spreading information based upon a cursory analysis of some CSV files without any training or experience in epidemiology, public health, public communications, etc. seems... irresponsible.

Also, off-topic, but most of my peers at university taught themselves how to program years before starting college -- typically in middle/early high school. And I mean actually taught themselves, from books and zine tutorials, not 'attended a formal course of instruction that was offered by a venture-backed firm instead of a formal course of instruction at a traditional university'. I guess times have changed, but the characterization of university students in CS as 'not self-taught programmers' is definitely the opposite of my experience. You came into the CS degree knowing how to program and learned how to do CS. And the characterization of "anything not university" as "self-taught" -- even formal courses of instruction that cost five figures -- is even more strange.

That just doesn't seem like a fair standard. Why should only experts in a relevant field talk about the coronavirus? Nobody tries to stop people from sharing hospital stories from their friend's cousin's boyfriend who's a nurse.

Oh, I think it's completely fine to play with the data and talk about it with friends.

But SEOd medium posts have different reach potential than a facebook comment/phone call with friends/family. That's kind of the whole point of them.

I get what you're saying, but I don't consider the two things separate magisteria. I don't think there's anything generally wrong with people trying to spread honest ideas they've had, even if they aren't experts.

For something like Covid, I'd question how much time should be spent on "trying to spread" vs the amount of time spent on refining the idea.

One thing about experts is that they’ve usually made it through the Dunning-Kruger “confidence pit” and come out the other side. They’re often cautious about making very strident remarks, and when they are really confident in a conclusion, it’s usually because it has a very high probability of being correct. When someone new to a field comes to a contrarian conclusion, they’re often willing to show more confidence in their conclusion because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. This makes it hard to take non-experts at their word, since they’re often unaware of how likely they are to be wrong.

Now, if a total non-expert had come out of nowhere with an analysis that contradicted the public health establishment, definitively showed that the danger was massively overblown, and was right, that would be one thing. But this medium post was incorrect in its conclusion, quite confident in its conclusion, and advised courses of action that would put many people in danger (such as reopening schools).

I'm not sure which medium post you're referring to here. I'm sure people do sometimes write incorrect advice on Medium that would be dangerous if followed, but experts can do the same thing. Remember when the WHO said not to ban travel?

I'm also not sure that distinguishes the case I mentioned. It might also cause problems to assume some particular anecdote is true and representative.

That's a very romanticised view of expertise that doesn't match what is seen in the real world. If your view were true the replication crisis would not be happening, but it's barely even got started.

Self promotion is a skill. If it makes you cringe you need to get better at it.

Self promotion with ??? analysis about public health crisis should make EVERYONE cringe.

Not all self promotion is good self promotion. I've nuked candidates because their online portfolios demonstrate bad technical judgement, questionable professional ethics, a fundamental misunderstanding of core ideas, etc.

Put more simply: a portfolio is a demonstration of your work. Anything you put out in public with your name on it is part of your portfolio. Obviously, don't put bad work in your public portfolio.

There's a reason you see very few serious data scientists publishing hot takes on their medium blogs -- it's a serious threat to your professional integrity and brand if you get it wrong. The only people I know & respect who are writing publicly about this topic have SME collaborators. (Of course, we're all playing with the data and talking about it in private with friends/coworkers over coffee.)

Self promotion specifically by spreading your amateur take on a health crisis seems a bit... immoral? Or at least the sort of thing that makes me question the candidate's judgement.

If you want to write publicly and in a formal way on this topic, get a subject matter expert to serve as a co-author. Anything less is more risky than it's worth, even from a purely selfish perspective.

Love your layers of hate-keeping. Not only did they learn before uni, they actually learned before uni, none of that fake bs!

Never mind that most of the people learning before uni did so from opportunity - they often had an engineer in the family or lived in a well-to-do area where such skills were apparent. (This magnified even further the older you are).

FWIW, I studied CS at a great cs uni (cal), and most of my peers were not self-taught. They still ended up at the same companies in the same positions as those who did ️.

> I studied CS at a great cs uni

Do you feel that your time there was wasted, and that you would have been better off attending a more focused bootcamp?

Not at all. My twin brother went that route, and we’re both at FAANG. I also don’t feel any different for not having done much cs before uni.

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