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Comment by icyfox | Hacker News Reader

When I took the GRE in 2017, everything was digital as well. But I couldn't believe how locked down the experience was. The testing center in downtown SF had no windows, a metal detector, and you had to check all food outside of the testing room. Just in case you were going to try to cheat off of your banana. I think each computer was also recording a video of you taking the test although I might be mistaken here. Certainly there were cameras set up all around the perimeter.

I'm shocked at how laissez-faire we've gotten for college entrance exams, which I'd arguably say are much more important at getting you _into_ the graduate programs than the actual graduate program exams are themselves.

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> I'm shocked at how laissez-faire we've gotten for college entrance exams,

to the point that they stopped requiring SAT altogether, but are starting to bring it back. there's a lot of things they've done is head scratching. i loved when they changed the scores so that your result from 10 years prior suddenly become a lower result so people had to know when you took the test to properly weight the result.

The laissez-faire attitude to drivers licensing when they stopped requiring road tests for new drivers was bonkers as well to me.

Who is looking at your SAT score from 10 years ago?

If I compared my SAT score my child's, that would easily compare past the 10 years. If I compare my score to a Millennial or younger.... Lots of ways to compare a score. You're putting yourself in a box. You should really try not doing that.

I applied to Canonical a few months back and they made me write an essay describing my high school grades, extracurriculars, and test results. I've never had that experience in any other job app so it's pretty Canonical specific but it does happen.

I thought that part of the application was a bit odd. High school me is so different from current me that I might as well be writing about a different human being entirely.

These kinds of interviews just scream ageism. For younger applicants, High School may be the most significant bit of life experience they have yet had. For older employees, high school is just a distant memory that was at most a seed that has grown into a much more branched experience

It also selects for people that have spent their early life credential-chasing and turning their life into an easily repeated list of accomplishments.

A lot of great employees rightfully spent their teen years screwing around and having fun before settling into career mode.

Canonical's interview process is legendarily invasive and dumb, and they get very touchy when you tell them so. I enjoyed how, when I pointed out that the questions about high school extracurriculars would narrow down many of my demographics and let you guess at a few others (and just the way I write would let you make strong inferences about others), they clammed up and told me I could do it or drop. I dropped.

I've heard similar things from former employees too. One glassdoor reviewer (so take with a grain of salt) said that they were called stupid by leadership for suggesting that the process might be biased, which of course it is. It also feels dehumanizing. It may take months to go from applying for a job to talking to a real human being.

I applied for a job with the FAANG that rhymes with "pajamas on" and their interview process was dumb as well. I told them so and got the interview ended right there. Good riddance, I suppose.

Similarly, I had an interviewer (same place) who just oozed “I despise being here”. Dismissed everything I said and gave me only the last 2 minutes to solve the problem he was supposed go give me. Didn’t bother to check back in with the recruiter after that.

My approach on these things is to put that in the essay and make them suffer through it.

> Canonical's interview process is legendarily invasive and dumb

Since they put an Amazon affiliate link in he start menu I've just assumed they are full of them self.

Canonical? As in the company that makes Ubuntu? Those guys?

yes

Yeah they're (in)famous for their onerous hiring process, and specifically for asking lots about high school.

See for example this Reddit thread posted by a rejected candidate (and note Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth is in the comments!)

https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/15kj845/can...

or this HN post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34507640

I wish I hadn't found and read these posts. I have been an Ubuntu fan for the last 10 or so years. I will not be able to look at Ubuntu the same again...

Imagine you did all of that, received and accepted an offer, and then they made you work on snap. Grim.

Wow, this is fascinating to me.

When I interviewed at Red Hat is was almost entirely technical. There was a computerized technical test (essentially "here's a VM, set up <several things>" and then a script grades it), a verbal technical interview, and then a panel/presentation that was specifically about the process I took my previous company through in adopting k8s.

I literally couldn't tell you what my SAT scores were. Those and my high school grades were good enough to get into $SCHOOL. I'm sure not going to bother to try to dig them out. Here are some extracurriculars I did--not that it's relevant at this point.

i worked at one startup that decided to emulate the Canonical interview process because one of the managers was the kind of guy that loved cargo-culting this kind of stuff. he decided to start doing these interviews without coordinating with the rest of the hiring team.

it's one thing for a large company to do these kind of interview when the interviewee is knows what they're getting into, but it feels very different when a you're interviewing at a random early-stage startup and out of nowhere this guy starts asking you invasive personal questions. it really starts pushing the boundaries of legal interview questions.

anyway... this guy has since founded his own company writes inane linkedin-friendly blog posts filled with inspirational stories about "leadership" that make me gag.

What possible insight would they gain knowing what someone did both as a youth and more than a decade ago? I'm a 1000% different person than I was in high school.

That’s insane. I barely graduated high school, my extracurriculars were smoking pot and programming. Then I graduated summa cum laude at a top cs school and a very successful career doing pretty cutting edge stuff as IC and manager up to senior exec levels at FAANG and adjacents. Digging into someone’s high school career is frankly bizarre but convinces me to never consider working there and to stop using their products.

If I was asked something like this, I'd refuse and withdraw my application.

That explains why Ubuntu is so full of bad ideas (such as snap) and reinventing the wheel (Unity, Mir).

They stopped requiring road tests? Man, seems like that would cause a bunch of cybertrucks to drive into hotels or something.

I believe that most states require road tests to get your first license or to get a license if you have been unlicensed for a while but stopped requiring them for a renewal, at least if you've got a clean driving record.

In at least some states this was based on data that showed that for people that had clean records the rate of road test failures was very low, and those were almost always due to test anxiety and the person would pass on a second or third test.

Many states no longer require a road test. Instead you take a state approved driving course and the instructor certifies you as meeting the state driving skill requirements. Most states with this system do have an option to still take a state administered driving test instead but most new drivers just take the course. My daughter got her license last August and we paid for the course. They didn’t teach her anything. They had her drive around the local neighborhood for the state mandated numbers of hours for the course and the “instructor” then signed off. All real driving instruction she received came from me.

In my state the real benefit of taking the course it that scheduling a road test with the DMV often has a multi-month waitlist. Then, if you fail, you have to wait another 2-3 months to retest.

A better lesson than the state approved course was paying for a morning on the skid pad at the local raceway with a real driving instrcutor. Once your young driver understands how to regain control of the car, they are much better prepared for the first emergency maneuver they will need to make while driving solo.

In an ideal world, you'd probably take one of the higher end courses like BMW offers. Of course, that's not a reasonable option for most people.

you mean a test track? how does that apply to the real world that would indicate that you actually know the rules of the road and can follow them?

I would assume it would complement normal driver ed on regular roads.

You don't want your first experience at the traction limits of the vehicle to be a time when the road is wet and a wrong move causes a head-on collision with a school bus.

Most of what they need to know includes knowing road signs and road markings, right of way, going through intersections, following traffic lights, speed limits, keeping safe distance, and even recognizing aggressive and impaired drivers to stay away from. None of that they will learn on the race track.

You can definitely push the car to the limit and see what happens when you go over in a _somewhat_ controlled environment (laws of physics still apply at the race track and you can still crash). Or you can teach them that a good driver is not the one who drives fast but the one who arrives alive.

For real? Which states are these?

In my case it is Virginia. You can only take a road test at the DMV if you are 18+. Below 18 you must go the driving course route.

Friend got his learners permit at 15 (that converted to a real license at 16) in DE no road test, just a drivers ed certificate

Man, there's an opportunity here. Split the difference and certify previously licensed drivers with good records in a simulator perhaps?

Wow, I didnt know states did that.

In my state the motorcycle licensing works similarly in that you can skip the state test, however unlike what you described for cars, the course is excellent (standard MSF course). Also, the MSF does administer a (pretty tough) test.

It has devolved into a pay for play scheme. I cut a check for a few hundred dollars and you stamp the form saying my kid can drive. You can also take the on the road driving course through your public school at no cost but the wait for that can be extremely long. Most people in my area just pay. A parent does also have to sign the form stating the kid has completed a certain number of hours driving under a certain mix of conditions with them. I think it is a total of 45 or 50 hours.

Over the last 15 years Virginia has tried to move as many DMV processes as possible to online and closed many DMV locations to save money. The elimination of the road test for most new drivers was part of this effort.

You should’ve lead with being from Virginia. That entire state is layers of pay for play schemes. They might’ve removed road tests to “save money” but they’re more than happy to keep up car inspection, emissions, registration and a vehicle value tax.

Our previous governor tried to eliminate state safety inspections but the auto repair shops were able to successfully lobby to block it. Emissions inspections are only required in parts of the state and are a federal requirement which the state can’t avoid. As for vehicle personal property tax that is a local tax and not a state imposed tax.

>> They had her drive around the local neighborhood for the state mandated numbers of hours

My instructor drove me for 3 hours instead of the mandated 6, saved himself some gas.

The actual drivers license (the one you can get at 18yo) does require road test in most states. The learner's permit that one can get at 14yo does not require road test, but when you apply for full driver's license at 18yo you will have to take it.

Do you mean 16? I don't think there are any states where you have to wait until 18 to get a license.

It is state dependent, yes, but in all the states I looked at 16 you get restricted driver's license. You can drive without an adult but you cannot have more than one passenger, cannot drive at night, cannot use your phone, etc etc. In many states this still requires road test.

The "adult" driver's license can be acquired at 18.

In my state you can’t get a learners permit until 16. You get your drivers license after having your learners for 6 month, completing a classroom and a road driving class. There is no road driving test involved at any point.

Pennsylvania had some sort of track test many decades ago. No idea the situation there and in other states today.

Never had to do a test when renewing my license even when switching states. (And, yes, I've had a very clean record.)

When I first got my driver's license in California, I had to do a test driving on the streets. The driving test also required driving on the freeway, but the examiner waived it. When I asked why, he said they waive all freeway driving because "it's too dangerous for the examiners". Sounds fair, if not legal.

I subsequently got my license.

When I moved to Oregon years later and re-applied for a license, a driving test was required but the DMV lady waived it. Why? Probably because the DMV was way out in the country and she was literally the only one working the office.

I subsequently got my license.

Freedom(tm) is great.

Yes, when I received my license, I had to do a road test with a state trooper riding shotgun. Four years later, my younger sibling did not have to do the road test. I don't know what the particulars were of qualifying to not have to do the test, but taking a certified driver's ed class was still a requirement. So it's not like there was someone just taking a multiple choice test with no behind the wheel training.

In some cases, it was a good idea for top students applying to college or grad school to take a gap year if possible around 2020. When things get lax, mediocre students fare better.

> i loved when they changed the scores so that your result from 10 years prior suddenly become a lower result so people had to know when you took the test to properly weight the result.

I took the GRE just before they switched from scoring out of 800 on each section to scoring out of 180. After the switch they kindly mailed me “converted” scores on the new 180 scale, which turned my perfect math score—I hadn’t missed a single question—into a 178. I was not amused.

So 179 and 180 are just entirely unused in the new system?

You’d think that no matter how weird of a mapping they decide to use, it’d at least preserve the endpoints…

I believe they percentile-mapped it. Like that guy, I too got a full score on Mathematics (it's very easy) and that was p96 when I took it so I bet I got downscored too. I would almost certainly have been full score if it had had the tougher questions.

I’m sure it very much depends on locality, but I watched an elderly person backup over some cones and then drive out ahead of me with their new license. The road test also consisted of essentially going around the block a few times. I was 18 so there were no prerequisites. If you took the test and the evaluator gave you a pass, you got your license.

Explains all the collisions I pass on the way to dropping the kids off at school nearly every day.

There is also no testing or vision rechecking requirement, so there are just a lot of people on the roads who should probably have their license taken away.

I'm curious as to the states involved.

Michigan takes car culture seriously. You have to parallel park on the drivers test, and the Secretary of State offices (there is no DMV, because what a waste of taxpayer funds...) have eye charts when you renew your license.

I never realized our test was anything strange. Parallel parking was the big scary part of the test but I remember it being huge, almost two car lengths long or something. It was very easy.

The eye chart machines (they are electronic and usually at each clerk window) look like they are from the 70s for what its worth.

CA here. The eye charts are a joke. They’re visible at all times so you could easily memorize them during your long wait (even with appointment); and the specific line they have you read is huge. I’ve never looked into it but I suspect it’s just to show you can read a sign on the highway.

Your comment seems odd. If the vision test is enough to show you can read a sign on the highway, why does that make it a joke?

Are you suggesting that someone shouldn't have a license if their vision is not correctable to 20/20, even if it's good enough for all essential driving tasks?

It’s a joke because the testing method is inadequate to prevent even the simplest of cheating and does not adequately test that the driver’s vision legally qualifies for an unrestricted license.

people drive on more than just highways. particularly on a street, road signage is not nearly as large

Fair enough. Thanks!

WA allows renewal by mail without even stepping into an office.

WA also allows transferring of drivers licenses without additional testing. To me, this is the most problematic part, because different states have different rules around priority, proper usage of the left lane, etc. and WA is a transplant destination, and the resulting mix of driver backgrounds is chaotic. As a general example, in WA pedestrians have priority at all intersections, including where there is no visibly marked crosswalk, but this is not true in all states.

Young people get into more crashes (and more deadly crashes) than old people, we should probably just flat out not allow people under 25 to drive long before we get around to worrying about things like vision checks.

Young people have more accidents because they have less experience driving. Raising the driving age doesn't help with that. If anything it should be lowered so that more of the learning period occurs when people are still under parental supervision.

It's also because younger people are more impulsive. If the driving age were raised to 25 there would be fewer accidents among beginner drivers. Of course it would be terrible in so many other ways, but the point is the accidents are not just about lack of experience.

I agree that having more of a supervised learning period would be a good idea.

> It's also because younger people are more impulsive.

This is more of a stereotype than a universal constant, and you could just as easily say things like "younger people have faster reflexes and better eyesight" etc.

The question isn't whether some group in the aggregate has different statistical properties, it's whether we're willing to discriminate against an entire class of people, including the ones who aren't the cause of it, because of that statistical correlation.

Which is the same reason people saying things like "people over 65 should have their license taken away" are just as wrong.

> This is more of a stereotype than a universal constant,

It's a well-known fact.

You may also observe how prisons are full of young people. Brains that are still developing are far more likely to make really stupid decisions without regard for consequences.

If I were to pick qualities for a driver, and had to choose between 'Makes good decisions' versus 'Faster reflexes', I'd pick the former any day.

Note that we don't let 12 year-olds drive. We have arbitrary age cutoffs that have nothing to do with quantifiable capability.

> It's a well-known fact.

It's a well-known fact that different people mature at different rates.

> You may also observe how prisons are full of young people.

The bulk of prison inmates are in their 30s and 40s:

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_age.j...

> Brains that are still developing are far more likely to make really stupid decisions without regard for consequences.

Then how come there are so many more 40 year olds in prison than 20 year olds?

> If I were to pick qualities for a driver, and had to choose between 'Makes good decisions' versus 'Faster reflexes', I'd pick the former any day.

But now we're back to experience, and you have to be allowed to do the thing before you can get that.

> Note that we don't let 12 year-olds drive. We have arbitrary age cutoffs that have nothing to do with quantifiable capability.

We do, but we shouldn't. If a 12-year-old can pass the driver's test then either that 12-year-old is competent to drive or your driver's test is inadequate in testing drivers.

> how come there are so many more 40 year olds in prison than 20 year olds?

You'd want to look at the age at which someone committed the crime for which they are imprisoned, not their current age, to assess the affect of age on crime-related statistics. Also, the juvenile justice system typically lets people out at 18 or 20, unless they were charged as an adult. So you don't have the same buildup of late teenagers being imprisoned at 20 as you do for people who are older.

It is factually the case that brain development continues until around age 25. The impulsive areas of the brain develop/myelinate earlier than than the prefrontal cortex, for example, which exercises executive function and impulse control.

> It is factually the case that brain development continues until around age 25

No, its factually the case that brain development continues for most of life, with different capacities peaking at wildly different ages on average (with some peaking after others have gone into significant decline), and considerable variation between individuals in each capacity, with executive function, specifically, reaching a plateau starting around the mid-20s on average (but again with considerable variation among individuals.)

> Then how come there are so many more 40 year olds in prison than 20 year olds?

Because age demographics of prison are very distant from age demographics of people committing crimes at the time they commit them for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that imprisonment happens after conviction which happens after the crime. But also because of both discretionary leniency to first time offenders (which younger criminals are more likely to be) and younger criminals even apart from whether they are first time offenders, and because of formal enhancements to punishment for repeat offenders, which combined mean that, for otherwise similar immediate predicate offenses, older criminals are more likely to be imprisoned at all and likely to be imprisoned longer.

Most of those would explain a delay of a couple years, not a couple decades, and the rest is rather the point. If this was disproportionately youthful indiscretion then there wouldn't be many repeat offenders in their late 20s and 30s, since they'd have grown out of it.

When I took the GRE in 2017, I got a really bad bloody nose right when the test started and I couldn't pause the test.

The person monitoring wouldn't let me have a bunch of tissues at the computer (Perhaps due to cheating concerns), so each time I needed a new tissue I had to raise my hand and she gave me one.

I didn't end up scoring very well.

Sounds like you should have bled all over the computer and let them deal with it. The lack of empathy they showed is abhorrent. Ugh. I’m sorry to hear that.

That's like suggesting you trash a hotel room because of some grievance with corporate policy. What actually happens is some innocent housekeeper gets stuck cleaning up the mess you made. The local test proctors are tasked with following very strict procedures and not given any room for discretion, especially if the testee isn't voluntarily withdrawing. It has nothing to do with an individual lack of empathy.

ironic. they demonstrate the exact lack of empathy they think they are deriding

> What actually happens is some innocent housekeeper gets stuck cleaning up the mess you made.

Thus costing the company money which, was the ultimate goal.

One person doing this can be thought of as an asshole, when a meaningful percent of people behave this way you get actual change and or lawsuits.

No it isn't, nothing is being trashed. The proctors should be better trained instead of required to behave like unsympathetic robots.

The fact that the proctor refused to break protocol while the test was in-session demonstrates proper training.

Do you think they have a written tissue protocol?

Absolutely.

I find that kind of hilarious. Especially as they are the ones providing the tissues.

This happened to me during a written final exam, and yes I bled on the test a bit. Was using one hand to control the bleeding, but sometimes I had to turn pages, plus it was dripping all down my arm. Even the digital scan showed my bloody fingerprints on every page plus some large drop stains.

The way some people have zero empathy hurts me a lot....

I had this experience as well outside the US. And while the police stations in my country are famous for its bad experience and treatment, They still much better and you get to deal with more reasonable rules and people (although it is oppressing regime) than what I saw during my GRE test.

Hint: To be fair all my few visits to stations were me reporting things (finishing paperwork) not being arrested.

I agree with your main point but leaving food outside was probably to protect the computers, not the integrity of the test.

Its def for cheating. You can find examples of replaced ingredients lists, products labels, barcodes, and people writing on the inside peel of oranges and other fruit on reddit and other places.

What would you write on a cheat sheet for the SAT? Equations for volume of a sphere or something? I don't remember there being anything that required memorizing, and since you could bring a graphing calculator there would have been no need to write things down anywhere else.

The exams for engineering licenses have mostly switched to computer based testing. You have to go to one of those specialized Pearson testing centers and they check to see if you wrote anything on your arms and legs. The old test was famously open book, with people taking carts full of reference material. The new one gives you a searchable pdf.

Been taking certifications exams (Microsoft, then AWS) since early 2000s. Certification centers (eg Prometric) have cameras everywhere, and personnel watches you while you're taking the test, they make you put all your belongings into a locker, including watches. Workstations are locked down to the point that they can only run proprietary testing software.

I honestly prefer it to doing it remotely at home, where you have to show them your entire room (in the beginning and whenever they ask), install their software that wants full control to everything, and it still doesn't work half the time. One time I tried it told me bandwidth is insufficient - well, normally it's sufficient to have 2 or 3 Rokus stream in HD.

Man, I hate computers. Just let me user paper.

My experience was nearly identical taking the GRE in 2003.

Yes, the GRE has been way ahead of the curve for a long time because it's an adaptive test: it actually adjusts the difficulty of the questions it presents you based on your performance up until that point in the test, as it tries to hone in in exactly what your correct score should be.

I don't know if the algorithm has changed since the early aughts, and I don't know if that approach is better or worse than the one-size-fits-all non-adaptive SAT, but the difference was always striking to me. You'd think that if the GRE adaptive approach was better statistically (by whatever measure) they'd move towards it soon for the SAT as well since they're going full digital finally.

When I took the Network+ exam in 2008 there was a camera at every desk looking down on you. I didn't think much of it - still a little weird though.

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