Hiring programmers (2005)
neil.fraser.name
neil.fraser.name
http://neil.fraser.name/news/2006/11/01/
I printed out a couple of his papers on this stuff for leisure reading.
If your screening process is tilted towards screening out the untalented, it may also screen out senior qualified developers who done want to put up with it.
The other thing I found interesting was this one: >MCSE or other Microsoft certification
This makes sense. Getting an MCSE is a major investment in time and money in Microsoft technologies. Those people rarely also invest a lot of time learning nix as well (definitely some exceptions). I would not be surprised if many of those candidates simply moved on to other opportunities after finding out how tied to nix technoligies this particular job was going to be. Even if they were that person that had *nix skills in addition to their MCSE they probably found out they could make more money somewhere else that put more value on the certification itself.
I don't think there was any point in listing the demographic observations he did, the sample is way too small for anyone to try to draw conclusions.
If you only have 3 out of 30 candidates pass the bozo test, that limits your choices when it comes to testing them on having any real talent.
Do you really need something as complicated as a stack?
n = 0
for (char in string)
if (char == '(') n++
if (char == ')') n--
if (n < 0) print "Unbalanced"
if (n != 0) print "Unbalanced"But look at what you have: an integer (n) that counts the number of unmatched open parens, that is not allowed to drop below 0, and that can only be incremented and decremented. Your solution there is essentially a pushdown automaton, with n representing your stack of open parentheses (and the value of n representing the size of the stack). If you approached the problem thinking of it as a stack problem, you'd probably end up optimizing to your solution when you realized that actually stacking parentheses could be efficiently simulated with an integer. But the restrictions you've placed on that integer effectively simulate the restrictions of pushing and popping parens off a stack. You're even going through the string once without backtracking.
I'm not sure if it's useful or just comp-sci wankery to think of it this way, but there's an equivalence between that solution and the freshman stack solution after all.
- numerous people would, and often do, rally against gag orders handed down by various offices
- yet the wide society is pretty quick to gag or chicane a blogger for publishing politically-incorrect observations. Observations that were surrounded by disclaimers of small population sample and other factors that clouded them. And while it's not necessarily the same people as above, it's still the wide society.
programming females that are married (pref. with kids)
Since they're the only ones here that are not job hopping, capable from working at home and not all day on facebook instead of the majority of Thai students/fresh graduates.
There's nothing scientific about this data, despite the fact that it's been dressed up with words like "correlate". It's seems borderline irresponsible for him to have even written this.
The fact that we're heading towards this rathole of a conversation is a good reason to flag this post. It isn't newsworthy, and I think I have a strong argument that it isn't sound either.
In the one area he addresses sample size, all he says is that the limited sample size restricts the ability to find positive predictors. That's stupid. Limited sample size also severely restricts ability to claim significant correlation (which is implied in claiming predictive power).
Nobody is claiming that statistically rigorous data, which show that the women self-selecting for applications in this job post can't pass the qualifications, should not be made public; the claim is that claiming predictive power in a sample of two that hurts a negatively stereotyped group is irresponsible. And it is.
If I were to go out on the street, test 30 random people, two of whom happened to be black, and who randomly had lower tested IQ than the rest of the sample, would it be responsible for me to claim that being black is a predictor of lower IQ? It's the same deal. Do a proper study or don't claim predictive power. Particularly when being statistically foolish could hurt people.
I'm amazed you think that someone making true observations they think are interesting is being borderline irresponsible. Quite specifically he says the sample is too small, quite specifically he says that "not having these attributes was no guarantee of success." Quite specifically he says that they saw no positive predictors.
What should he have done? Observed these things, noted that he was surprised by some, then not told anyone? That seems to me to be borderline irresponsible.
I see this post as an invitation to make a larger experiment, one with controls, and where the sample is large and chosen appropriately.
When you write it out the way it actually happened, it doesn't sound so interesting. That this post dates back to 2005 is not the author's fault. And yet here we are in 2009 talking about gender politics and married people and whatever on Hacker News, based on what? Nothing.
I'm interested to hear your views, much as I might disagree with them. I haven't down-mud you, and I wish others wouldn't. I think your thoughts add value. They make me think again, even if I conclude that in my opinion you're wrong.
it hasn't.