kafkaesq

The Economist explicitly brands and declares itself a journal of both reporting and opinion. As for "unsourced", it choses to adopt an anonymous style and tone of writing (such that any statements of opinion, which in any case are hardly disguised and pretty obvious to spot as such, take be taken to be the opinions of the entire editorial board, more or less).

As such, it's one of the few organs (though I frequently find myself in disagreement with it) I almost always enjoy reading.

You can look at it that way, if you want to.

My way of looking at is: "Are these people dealing with me in a way that makes me feel respected and valued, both as a potential colleague as a human being? And above all, trusted? Maybe in a 'trust-but-verify' sense, but fundamentally - trusted? If not, then who they are, what they're doing, how successful they are or how many people are supposedly all ga-ga to work for them -- none of that can begin to matter."

That's (very) interesting and useful information, on a certain intellectual level.

But you know, sending legions of paid goons (clad head-to-toe in black, comic-book style, no less) to randomly beat people in the streets (and in stairways, hallways... wherever they felt like it, apparently) has a way of nor only more or less completely delegitimizing your position, within the EU and on the international stage -- but in getting those affected put aside their differences, and take a stand to protect themselves, once and for all, against further abuses.

Which, as a directly result of the national government's actions, is apparently what is now happening. And the fact that you aren't even mentioning the recent violence in your 8-point summary goes a long way to explain what's increasingly driving so many people to the the pro-independence side in the first place.

And BTW on the history front, there was also this guy named Francisco Franco, and certain extremely unpleasant events in the 20th century you're also very conspicuously not mentioning. And all the bodies being dug up and forensically analyzed, in all those unmarked graves, even today.

But let's not go there.

Actually, there is. And it's quite simple, really:

"Thanks very much for your time, but I've gone through many, many rounds of questions like these, and have come to the conclusion that, while interesting and to some extent topically relevant, ultimately the ability to regurgitate answers to them on the spot has extremely low relevance to the work that one actually does as an engineer. And BTW I noticed your statement of the problem was not only very muddled, but English-wise, barely readable. And actually, as presented, the problem isn't actually tractable, math-wise. And like, you brought me in here to solve the knapsack problem on a quadrillion integers in 2K of space or whatever and yet, you couldn't even think to stock the whiteboard with fresh markers? Or clean it first, for heaven's sake? Really, what's up with that? And gee, isn't the vibe in here, like, really really starting to suck now, given that at one of the interviewers is starting to fumble with his phone already, indicating that he would clearly very greatly prefer to be somewhere else, doing just about anything else - like you know, actually productive - than what you've forced the poor sap to do for you right now?

"But we don't need to dwell on that. The point is that we have different perspectives on these things, which is of course perfectly fine. So if you don't mind, howabout we part ways and do something else with the rest of our respective afternoons?"

You have to do them.

Beyond tending to basic needs (shelter, clothing, food, etc) you don't "have to" do anything.

You may not get to work for those companies (and it is a great many, unfortunately) that have bought into the whiteboarding cult. And that may seem to kind of suck. But it's not like you "have to" work for those companies (as much as they would dearly, dearly like for you to implicitly and unquestioningly believe exactly that).

If one can "crack" these interviews by spending a couple of hours on some interactive tool... then shouldn't that be an indication to those conducting these kinds of interviews that, fundamentally speaking, they might not be all that useful in the first place?

And not only that - but perhaps counterproductive? In that they explicitly reward not the thoughtful, disciplined engineers you want to hire -- but the drudges and go-getters who think, "Gots to get me into a top company - just tell me what I gotta do to pass the test!"

Shouldn't it now?

Thanks, Alexa. I actually didn't look much at the graph, one way or another. My point was simply that in a country as large as India (or even not nearly as large), one should be looking at at local rates (and local factors of potential causality) not simply national averages, if ones wants to make heads or tails of a complex set of claims like these.

Your conclusion ("was likely unrelated") differs with what the authors of that study put forth in their abstract, BTW.

Granted, this has been for gigs (or temp-to-perm) situations, not official, up-front fulltime roles. And some of these people ended up being flakey or sketchy (as spontaneous / whimsical people sometimes are). But nonetheless, hired (or substantially fast-tracked into their process, bypassing most of the usual interview crap) - pretty much on the basis of single demo or code sample (or in one case, literally on the basis of a single stats plot).

Because by this point, pretty much everyone knows how silly those live fizzbuzz sesions are anyway - including those administering them.

Since you're into stats, what do you think of this graph?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bt_Cotton_Hectares_and_Fa...

Point being, the story people "pushing" isn't about the overall rate of farmer suicides in the world's second most populous country - but about the rates in specific regions, and how those rates have changed in recent years, in response to specific events.

But as a footnote, the sibling comment here happens to also be correct: like any truly effective propaganda outlet, RT leverages a mix of largely legitimate / mundane news along with a certain proportion of fake or distorted news. But for the sake of simplicity it's best to stop citing RT or feeding it attention of any other form, altogether.

And so hopefully won't be flagged.

They changed your world, because they got you into programming, and how cool and complicated and frustrating and wonderful that can be an activity.

So don't underestimate that aspect.

Exactly - it's the "whatever" part I'm having trouble working with.

I'm seeing the basic point about population samples you're making. But even so, both logically and numbers-wise, the original commenter's argument was just extremely handwavy. Which is, how to put this nicely... strange, coming from someone dissing an entire class of people (Podunk U graduates) as not just lacking rigor... but 99% likely to be, in their words, "completely incompetent".

I'll readily concur that students from top-tier schools are on average better than students from Podunk schools.

But (based on a wide sampling of data points) I don't see anything like a 1:100 ratio of "better", by any metric.

Any school lower on the perceived status hierarchy than the school they went to, most likely.

So your implication is that the ratio of "competent" : "completely incompetent" for students coming from these schools is roughly... 2:100?

I know you can't possibly mean that. But your language clearly implies that ratio. The only question is why you're making such a bizarre implication.

I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State

Was the original article suggesting that your company hire "primarily" from Podunk State? Or simply that you probably don't want to hire near-exclusively from the Top 5?

The key is not to focus on the schools (rather than to focus extra on state schools. Instead, develop methods for identifying talent based on its own merits, regardless of where it is or what university it went to.

Which is exactly what the original article was advocating - a "completely blind, skills-first approach". In particular, it was definitely not arguing that one should "focus extra" on state schools.

The thing is, I wasn't making any assertions (or counter-assertions) about the original storyline. The person I was responding to did, in the form of, basically, "But there was already a similar-sounding product on the market, wasn't there? Therefore this kid couldn't possibly have come up with anything all that novel or interesting."

Which to my ears sounds like an unsupported inference.

Hmm. Of her device, the article says:

The result is Tethys, a sensor-based device designed to detect lead in water faster than other techniques currently on the market.

So have you considered the possibility that her device works differently (and perhaps better) than yours? You seem to be basically knocking her innovation, based on the fact that you once used a device that was "similar" in some way.

I don't doubt this necessarily, but could you provide a quick recap? As in, did they create a slimy tabloid site from scratch? Or did they, like, buy some site that was already slimy, and just continue trudging along in the path of sliminess?

Coz like "we needz the ad revenue from the slimy stuff to bankroll our dalliance with serious journalism", and all that.

When the former students are justly compensated for their dashed hopes and tarnished reputations† -- that I'd consider to be "probably a good move all around."

† "Ah, I see you went to the Flatiron School - heard about all the crazy shit that went down there. Which we won't hold against you. But please understand that you'll have to go through 3x as many Dance Monkey sessions as most of the other candidates, just so we can be doubly sure we aren't taking on any damaged good, you see. Oh you've never played Dance Monkey? It's easy, just come to this whiteboard here. Yeah that's right, the one with the squeaky markers, behind the busted swivel-chair..."

They got it from the same place they found out they found that Germany also had "more than 300000 laws and rules for everything". You know, the "it feels like it must be so, therefore it might as well be so" place.

But at the same time - if anyone's giving you free beer (as opposed to some other non-mind-altering amenity), there's always a reason for it.

Remember all those outright shitholes many companies used to work in (in their bootstrap phases) at least? Or this whole "borrowing office space from a friend, until..." thing? Or, until not too long ago, literally using coffeeshops or restaurants as meeting rooms? WeWork seems to have succeeded in making that culture pretty much go away, at least.

You may want to revisit that assumption.

Being as the science on this subject is changing very rapidly, as we speak.