Hacker News Reader

Let's look at how this works in real life. How do you know you have, e.g., implemented a feature in a way that helps the business?

Is your product manager saying, "I give this implementation a C" the point where you go, "whew, I met the goals I needed to meet!" and then you move on to the next feature?

Does that sound like a helpful, healthy interaction?

Does it teach you anything about your users?

When I work on a feature, I collaborate with other developers, product people, and occasionally customers to try to figure out what problems they need solved, and where my work can efficiently fit into that. It's a dynamic, nuanced discussion with no clear right or wrong answer.

That's what we need to teach our children.

The obsession in school with getting the "right" answer stymies critical thinking, exploration, and, well, learning -- which can only happen when you get things wrong and figure out why on your own.

That is absolutely how performance management works in every large corporation. You set "SMART" goals, and then you periodically review how you're progressing to those goals.

You have a point that in life sometimes, particularly in creative tasks, goals are unclear. But goals aren't unclear in a college class that hundreds of students take per year. In fact the goals generally should be listed on a website before you even apply for the course.

No clear right or wrong answer, sure.

But do you not take any sort of measure both before and after the feature launch to evaluate what effect it had? How much “more right” (or not) you got?

How do you know that all the talk with the customers led to a feature that made a difference?

Of course! "How do I know I'm successful?" is one of the most important questions one can ask of oneself at work. And one students should ask themselves, too.

The current grading system teaches people not to ask this. That's a problem.

> The current grading system teaches people not to ask this.

I would love to see your evidence to back this claim.

> Of course!

Can you tell me a little bit more about the pre and post measures you used? Were they numerical? Were they based on observable facts? Did they give you a sense of how close to (or far from) your goal you landed?

Pink's Drive cites some studies on grading as extrinsic motivation, and one of the Kahneman books touched on it too, but I don't remember if it was the bias or noise one.

How I measure success (or recognise failure, at least) varies between problems. Sometimes quantitative, sometimes qualitative. Sometimes based on theory and process, sometimes based on observation and outcome.

I rarely, however, find it meaningful to know "how close to the goal I landed" because that generally says more about the goal than the outcome.

Regarding the research - thanks! I do like Dan Pink. Kahneman is still on my to-read list.

So the assertion is that, if grades act as an extrinsic motivator, they replace passion/pride/curiousity as intrinsic motivators? That argument vaguely makes sense to me but personally it feels like more of a “both and”.

As for your approach to measuring success - no offense, but it sounds like the sort of vague, feel-good, don’t-fret-it sort of goal-setting that techniques like SMART goals, KPIs, and OKRs are intended to supercede. Do you do anything like those?

> never get concrete feedback on whether you're meeting the goals you need to meet

… but you do get concrete feedback. What more concrete, detailed, specific feedback could there be than comments on what's good and where you need to improve in your work?

Meet all the goals you need to meet, and the teacher's comments will reflect that. Fall short of the goals, and the comments will show you where and how to improve.

See also the passages in the post about students who are there to get the grade more than to learn the material. One approach is about meeting someone else's goals, while the other is perhaps more about meeting your own goals for yourself.

Feedback about what you can improve doesn't necessarily provide you any feedback about how well you are meeting expectations. This is especially true of writing and other work that doesn't have a right or wrong answer. There are always ways to improve, there are always other aspects to consider. As a teacher, the author likely delights in finding students that are gifted, and finding ways to develop them even further, so she will always have some feedback to provide.

Also, there is nothing wrong with a student simply wanting to learn material well enough to get a decent grade. All students have to take classes that go beyond their interests or even needs; it should be their choice as to which classes they want to be merely competent at and which they want to master.

How are you supposed to know whether a comment is “this is a standard good for a B, improve for an A” or it’s a “this is good enough for a C, improve for a B”.

Grades don’t prevent students who are there to learn the material, but they do harm students there to get the grade, and since the corses we are talking about are prerequisites to graduate it’s reasonable to expert at least some people to be there for the grade.

I don't know if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you, but I once got a paper back graded 56/100. The only written comment on it was "Good job! Almost an A paper"

I guess assigning or not assigning a grade doesn't matter if the teacher can't provide constructive feedback.

It matters in that the 56 is what's going on your transcript and the feedback isn't.

> this system forces you into over-committing to the course.

This is a good point! This is why I always say getting a 4.0 doesn't mean you understand the material more than the person with a 3.8 but means you put more time into the class. Getting 4.0's is less about understanding the material and more about jumping through the teachers hoops and doing everything you can to get every small bit of credit. I've spent ~2 hours to get a few extra points on one small assignment just because you cannot miss a single thing if you want a 4.0. Did that extra 2 hours give me a great understanding of the material proportional to the time spent? No, not at all!

“ The thing that really spins my head about this, is that since you never get concrete feedback on whether you're meeting the goals you need to meet, this system forces you into over-committing to the course.”

I think this is a problem in educaion in the N. America. What are these “goals” that your are potentially “overcommitting” to?

Nothing you produce in undergrad is of any value except to advance your knowledge. The grade isn't the teacher’s payment for good work, its an assessment of how well you’ve mastered the topic.

Seen this way, you know how well you’ve mastered a subject even if you get nothing back.

> Nothing you produce in undergrad is of any value except to advance your knowledge.

Tell that to the job recruiters that require a 3.6 minimum GPA and verbally berate someone for wasting their time for handing them a resume with a 3.5 GPA on it.

Okay most recruiters won't verbally berate you[1], but GPA is regularly used to winnow resumes for college graduates.

1: The one time I witnessed this was at a college job fair. To this day it was the most unprofessional public behavior I have witnessed by a recruiter; he had 3 coworkers next to him at the booth and they seemed neither perturbed nor surprised. As long as I have the luxury of choosing who I work for I will not work for that company.

Well thats the decay, aint it?

GPA is a great predictor of ones ability to work hard, finish the stated goals, etc. Basically its great at predicting a good busy bee.

But I think its perhaps poor at predicting orthogonal people; people that will create things that weren't envisioned by those who built the thought tracks.

Some thoughts:

1. A company that treats you with disdain for a 3.5 is not a company to work for. 2. GPA inflation is real. In a healthy education system no company could hope to attract only >3.5 GPA hires.