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Comment by prunedevir | Hacker News Reader

I found the about page a bit strange. Why doesn't she list where she was a professor? (Googling turns up Johnson and Wales University.) Saying that her "background" is in machine learning makes it kinda seem like that's not her particular academic field; no problem with that -- I don't think you need a PhD in machine learning in order to do good machine learning or data science work -- but it just sounds like something's missing. Googling a bit more turns up some research on developing a "virtual Morocco"/virtual classrooms for Second Life, so I think her academic field was about digitizing education?

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I probably went down the same time-wasting search hole you did.

I did so because every time I've ever skimmed her blog, I've never seen anything interesting on it. Then I watched the PyCon talk linked above and it's full of "cute" things with no substance. Skimming through some other talk gave me the same feeling.

So I started digging.

In Fall 2008, she was part of Path101 (http://www.slideshare.net/path101/path-101-opportunity -- slide 3) and listed as having a PhD in Computer Science. But like prunedevir, I had to dig relatively hard to find what university she taught at. There's no CV on her blog. There are claims that she's on sabbatical, so this is REALLY strange. Availability of her information is _nothing_ like someone who is a researcher in machine learning with a PhD.

So I dug more.

As prunedevir points out, the university is Johnson and Wales. It's a technical college. And she was an _instructor_ there (google for the JWU catalog 05-06) for a few semesters before they finally upped her to assistant professor (JWU catalog 08-09, I think). And in the catalog, she's listed as having an ScM, NOT a PhD -- which makes a whole hell of a lot more sense.

I found a few slide presentations that she put together (sorry, it's a few hours later and I can't re-dig up all those links to post here) and they were all about PHP, CSS, and other web development stuff, as well as some stuff about the use of technology in education. I think most of this was from 2006-2008. You'd think the _chief scientist_ of bit.ly doing machine learning work would have been doing something else during this time -- not looking at run-of-the-mill web dev.

Her previous website (3greeneggs), archived by the Wayback Machine (http://waybackmachine.org/*/http://3greeneggs.com) shows more stuff consistent with web dev, etc, and awfully soft for a chief scientist working on machine learning.

Furthermore, here's a paged removed from her blog that Google Cache allows us to see:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hfTTGEb...

I'd probably delete it, too, if I were pulling the same act that she is.

Also, side note: in the PyCon talk she mentions that she looked up some old manuscript on statistics and it was by "A. D. E. Moyver" or something close to that. My jaw dropped. Surely she knew what she was talking about, but that name sounds suspiciously like a horrible bastardization of Abraham de Moivre -- and it was. He was exactly the guy she was talking about.

I fully realize this post comes off as hugely negative, but I hate seeing people get ahead because of repeated self-promotion and gaming the system.

Also, the Path101 slides could have been juiced up by someone other than her, OR the JWU catalog may be wrong and she really does have a PhD, but I way doubt the latter, and there's almost no doubt, for the former, that she at least would have seen the slide deck before it went out.

I wasn't going to post anything, but this whole thing left a really bad taste in my mouth and the truth tastes a lot better.

More: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGGUu5cYrCA&feature=playe...

She's doing sentiment analysis here (or trying to).

Notice she mentions that the website she's talking about has a higher positive score (about 2.x, she claims) than negative score (about 0.99) and thus it should because it's about a nice park or something.

Look more closely.

That positive score has a "e-09" on the end of it.

There's about 9 orders of magnitude between the two scores, and the positive score is far, far less.

I studied under Mason during her time at JWU (which may not be MIT, but is not a technical college, for the record). If you want to speculate as to why her titles were such, JWU has a high faculty turnover rate. To be considered a professor you have to be there full time for a requisite period of time, and I believe she was pursing a degree while working there.

You can doubt her all you'd like based on your "research", but based off of actual interaction and tutelage, she is one of the brightest minds I have ever known and she has a passion for computer science that would put most HN users to shame. I almost wish she was still teaching, because she is as inspiring as she is intelligent.

She isn't in her current position because she's "pulling an act" or "gamed the system." She is completely genuine in her endeavors, and as down to earth as they come. Its a bit heartbreaking to see all this cynicism. Why is it so unbelievable she's a chief scientist at bit.ly? I sincerely hope its not the "she" part.

I don't think her sex is an issue here. The only people mentioning that she's female are the ones defending her. The astrophysicist had actually assumed she was male.

I think you're right that she's got to where she is through skill/intelligence rather than gaming the system. I also think there's a perceived pressure on people in the start-up community to be unrealistically talented and I feel a lot fall to the pressure when they don't really need to.

Don't think you did enough digging. Her masters in computer science is from Brown. http://www.techstars.org/mentors/hmason/

Oh, that was easy to find once I got going.

What's harder to find is _any_ publication that she had while at Brown. Just those non-academic conference talks she had listed on the page she removed from her site.

In fact, http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Abrown.edu+%2... yields nothing

I don't think your comment adds anything to the discussion.

JWU is mostly known for hospitality / culinary related studies. It's not known for being a technical / engineering school at all.

That part may have been confusing. "Technical college" means "trade school". It was meant to be disparaging, to make a point, relative to the persona she gives off as a chief scientist involving machine learning.

We're agreeing here.

I get what you're saying here. I lived in New York years ago (where Hilary lives) and loved how genuine New Yorkers were. Then I visited again recently and was shocked by the way the ethos of the folks in the city has changed towards over-inflating their successes/experiences/credentials. Especially the start-up folks I met.

Does this mean that to get ahead in America in a start-up you have to become good at mis-representing yourself?

I know a lot of wonderfully talented people who have awful credentials. Should they feel pressure to over-inflate their 'personal stories' in order to keep up?

Is Hilary just doing what she has to to stay in the game or is she part of the problem and perpetuating it? It seems she's done a lot of good stuff for the start-up community in New York and she works hard.

Anyone got any insights on why some people have started to feel the pressure to 'talk big' in order to be in a position where they can get things done?

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