Hiring Developers By Algorithm 326
Strudelkugel writes in with a story about how big data is being used to recruit workers. "When the e-mail came out of the blue last summer, offering a shot as a programmer at a San Francisco start-up, Jade Dominguez, 26, was living off credit card debt in a rental in South Pasadena, Calif., while he taught himself programming. He had been an average student in high school and hadn't bothered with college, but someone, somewhere out there in the cloud, thought that he might be brilliant, or at least a diamond in the rough. 'The traditional markers people use for hiring can be wrong, profoundly wrong,' says Vivienne Ming, the chief scientist at Gild since late last year. That someone was Luca Bonmassar. He had discovered Mr. Dominguez by using a technology that raises important questions about how people are recruited and hired, and whether great talent is being overlooked along the way."
If it's proprietary... (Score:4, Interesting)
Leaving a backdoor in this program would be the ultimate job security guarantee.
"can be wrong, profoundly wrong" (Score:3, Insightful)
Hello, captain obvious. Yes, having a piece of paper doesn't mean you're good at what you do or that you even know what you're doing; plenty of college graduates are merely imbeciles.
Re:"can be wrong, profoundly wrong" (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just that, though. The interviews based around brain teasers or algorithms that very few people use in real life, which are supposedly used to see how the candidate thinks, are generally extremely biased towards people who either just got out of school or spent a lot of time studying for those sorts of questions. Neither of those things have much, if anything, to do with predicting job success.
At my old job, we had a pretty revolutionary strategy for picking someone: We talked with them. You can see who's in over their head very quickly, and the interviews at least seems like a lot less pressure because we shot the shit about programming and past jobs. There was no requirement or bias towards you reading otherwise useless brain teaser books, no requirement that you have to memorize all the terms from gang of four, etc. We had a great track record with our hiring. It amazes me more companies haven't tried of this method.
Re:"can be wrong, profoundly wrong" (Score:5, Insightful)
At my old job, we had a pretty revolutionary strategy for picking someone: We talked with them.
I've always done that too. Just get the interviewee to talk about their work, what was interesting about, the problems they encountered, etc. If a person doesn't know their stuff they won't be able to talk about it intelligently. Some people you have to coax out of their shell a bit, but that's it. If a person is reluctant I'll even ask them to pick something out of their resume to talk about instead of me suggesting a topic. I accept that most resumes have some exaggerations in them, so just let them pick something that isn't exaggerated. Also talk to them about the project they're being hired for, see what kind of questions or suggestions they have, etc.
It's purposely a low pressure technique. Some very good technical people don't do well being drilled about nonsense or brainteasers, or clam up if the interviewer starts playing Mr. Tough Guy and tries to trip them up on everything. Remember, you're trying to hire good technical people, not good interviewees. For other type of work this technique might suck.
It amazes me more companies haven't tried of this method.
Too simple and obvious - takes away the mystique of being a great interviewer. Also you've got to know your stuff to use the technique.
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Too simple and obvious - takes away the mystique of being a great interviewer. Also you've got to know your stuff to use the technique.
Nail hit squarely on head here.....
Many companies try to centralize hiring into HR departments who pretend they can evaluate any other field. These guys are easily bluffed and bafflegabbed and overly impressed with silly pieces of paper and training certificates.
Even when the HR department refers someone for a departmental interview, it is commonly done by some middle management type, rather than the actual programming team the recruit would have to work with.
Both HR and Manager types tend to think of peo
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Having HR do any kind of interviewing is a waste of time. I had to participate in some hiring of contractors at one job, where a group of us full-timers would together interview the candidate over the phone and then vote on him/her. The candidates were all pre-screened by HR, who assured us they were good candidates. Many of them, we found, had completely lied on their resumes and didn't know the basic things they claimed to know (like C++).
HR just looks at resumes, compares to some buzzwords, and thinks
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Re:"can be wrong, profoundly wrong" (Score:5, Funny)
At my old job, we had a pretty revolutionary strategy for picking someone: We talked with them.
The beauty of hiring people based upon a program is that it's not the hiring manager's fault when the new hires are terrible. It's the computer's fault.
Re:"can be wrong, profoundly wrong" (Score:4, Insightful)
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1. It is natural for human beings to surround themselves with the same way behaving human beings. Translated for you, you, would, NEVER, ever, would hire, anyone, who is better than you, if he, just for example, hates your favorite baseball team.
2.You assume, wrongly, that you and your mates are genius, and that's why you hire genius, because you are able to recognize them. I will say only one thing. You are an idiot.
3.People, for some strange reason tend
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All but about a dozen?
How the hell would you measure that? The most extreme testing stuff I've ever heard of can't get you anywhere near that much information. If you could get definite information that you were at the 1-in-1,000,000 level, that'd get you into the top seven thousand and change. And the thing is, we can't get accurate measurements even that far out.
Once you're to "the test can't produce meaningful results anymore", you're done. You might be way smarter than other people with that trait, you
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All but about a dozen?
How the hell would you measure that? The most extreme testing stuff I've ever heard of can't get you anywhere near that much information. If you could get definite information that you were at the 1-in-1,000,000 level, that'd get you into the top seven thousand and change. And the thing is, we can't get accurate measurements even that far out.
Once you're to "the test can't produce meaningful results anymore", you're done. You might be way smarter than other people with that trait, you might be on the stupid end of the pool, we don't know, we can't tell, we have no way to measure it.
We don't know. He does. He's a genius.
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We talked with them. You can see who's in over their head very quickly,
Yep, it's easy. If you know what your talking about you can spot a wannabe/bullshitter in the first 2 minutes. I don't know where all this fuss about hiring "rock star" programmers comes from, is it an American thing? What most employers in Oz want is a good solid worker who can turn unfamiliar and vague ideas into working code (I've hired at least 50 of these people since 1990, and done a few hundred interviews to find them). Sure, if they happen to be a genius it's a bonus, but it's not a requirement. Of
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These days, when I hire a software developer he's usually someone I've known for several years already, or recommended to me by someone else I've known for a long time.
On the other side of this, I have not had a job that I did not get through a friend or colleague in over 10 years. I have not seen the inside of an HR office in longer than that. If it is a hiring requirement, that is a good clue as to how the company works.
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These days, when I hire a software developer he's usually someone I've known for several years already, or recommended to me by someone else I've known for a long time.
On the other side of this, I have not had a job that I did not get through a friend or colleague in over 10 years. I have not seen the inside of an HR office in longer than that. If it is a hiring requirement, that is a good clue as to how the company works.
And then you will moan about managers and CEOs just getting jobs through their networking skills.
I have only ever once gone for a job where I knew the person from a previous job, and it didn't help at all.
If you employ people through an old boys' network, you're going to end up with a company full of old boys.
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Sounds like management material.
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My dad told me a good one the other day:
A PhD EE had a broken 15k board doing development work at a major electronics company.
He takes the board to his lab tech, who jokingly tells him 'All the resistors are in backwards!'
Said lab tech has a departmental meeting to go to.
When he gets back he finds the PhD sitting there, iron in hand, with a pile of resistors next to the board.
Exclaiming to the EE, 'What do you think you're doing, that's a brand new 15k dollar board!'
The EE replies: 'You said all the resisto
Re:"can be wrong, profoundly wrong" (Score:4)
If that joke is actually based on reality (which I seriously doubt), that EE should have his degree revoked. You don't need any practical experience to know that resistors are not polarized circuit elements; they teach this in Circuits 201, the first EE course taught (the freshman year is all general engineering courses).
The usual joke about EEs used to be about a fresh EE going to work and being sent to the parts department of his company by his coworkers to retrieve a 1 farad capacitor, since supposedly EE grads didn't have any practical experience and wouldn't know that capacitors don't come in sizes that large, even though many of his sophomore-year problems dealt with sizes in that range for convenience. Of course, the joke is now obsolete since they really do have such capacitors now, called "supercapacitors", normally used for unpowered memory retention in digital devices. But even before the supercapacitors hit the market, it'd have to be a pretty poor EE to not know about this, because any decent college has EEs building real circuits and working with real components in classes long before graduating.
Re:"can be wrong, profoundly wrong" (Score:4, Funny)
The EE replies: 'You said all the resistors are in backwards, so I'm putting them in the right way.'
But surely even an idiot would have known that if all the resistors were backwards all he had to do was put the battery in the other way round.
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They don't teach anything about electricity in Computer Science classes. Would you expect a Theater or Mathematics or Business major to know better?
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Why would a CS graduate talk about electricity, except maybe that the computer needs to be plugged in. You don't need to know anything about electricity to use a computer, except how to plug it in, which anyone knows these days.
You wouldn't expect auto mechanics to be experts in tribology (the study of oil) or suspension design or ECU programming or the manufacture of auto glass, so why would you expect a CS graduate to know any more about electricity than an average layman?
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I don't know, an EE PhD might...
As a (candidate for) PhD CS, though, I'm fairly certain if I turned up with a screwdriver one day, people would panic and/or probably tackle me to the ground.
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Yeah, and how is an employee supposed to get experience without having employment? Spare time projects aren't enough anymore. You've got a chicken-egg problem there.
So it analyzes former projects (Score:2)
Hiring based on previous references isn't really a new thing.
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... and sadly neither is not getting a job because of lack of experience.
Sadly quite true (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been programming professionally since 1994. I'm sure I'll get around to taking a computer course one of these days. My first task with any new job is "Get past the HR moron" followed by "Find someone who actually knows something." If you're lucky, this is a manager. Frequently, however, describing the code abstraction structure in your overall application design often whizzes right over a manager's head.
My suggestion? Keep it simple. Have some apps to show them, or a a web site with your latest web apps. Talk about how it solved a problem. Don't worry about the details until you get to another developer.
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Whether or not you need the degree really depends a great deal on the specifics. If the company isn't paying for properly engineered code, then it probably doesn't matter at all.
If they do require properly engineered code, then it probably doesn't matter, provided you've bothered to learn the necessary engineering outside of school and can convince them of that fact.
The big problem is that HR morons are being used to make the hiring decisions. That's a pretty huge red flag and I never take such a job when I
We're artisans (Score:3, Interesting)
... you've bothered to learn the necessary engineering outside of school and can convince them of that fact.
We're talking about programming here and software design. By 'Software Engineering" are you referring to this [wikipedia.org]? I have never seen anyone with that cert or anyone who really cares. Has anyone actually seen it asa requirement for a job?
Actual "Software engineering" is something that I have never seen in practice - ever.
Every company that I've been at and every project that I've seen everywhere including all over the internet, designs and develops software the same way: hand over vague specs, figure it out and
Re:We're artisans (Score:5, Interesting)
We're Artisans - not engineers.
As an electrical engineer I can assure you that engineers largely work the same way. And the job titles that they're always playing with are ridiculous. Programmer, system analyst, software engineer, computer scientist, blah, blah, blah. Please, nobody try to educate me on the fine distinctions. I know them, I don't care, and I think anybody who really does care is either a stuck-up ass or so insecure about their abilities that they cling to buzzwords. At least EE's just call themselves EE's (and I've never met anybody who bothered to distinguish between electrical engineer and electronic engineer). The best programmer I ever knew (who also had a Ph.D. in CS from a fancy school) simply called himself a programmer.
Re:We're artisans (Score:4)
Please, nobody try to educate me on the fine distinctions
There aren't any. I routinely call myself by all of them depending on which will help me most in a given situation. But in situations where I go based on my own preference, I call myself programmer. It is a noble title and quite accurately describes what I do.
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Except there is actually an engineering organisation that actually owns the word Engineering, and if you take an actual software engineering course instead of computer science you are learning quite a lot of difference skills.
I was in one for a few years. If I had graduated I would, for example, been able to OK the blue prints of a bridge, I was told. When you are an engineer you are considered, legally, to know what you are doing, and can practice in any engineering field (because if you say you know enoug
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The real problem is software that is being used to automate so much of HR task. Writing a resume to get past an HR drone is easy. "Check all that apply" then "penalty of perjury", that's harder.
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You angry P.E.s really need to watch who you're picking on. You can beat up on software engineers all you like, because let's face it, we're in general neither physically tough nor politically connected. But messi
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I see this assertion made a lot, but I've never seen anyone back it up with an explanation of why it is not conceptually possible for engineering to be applied to software.
No enough keywords (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, this article did not make it past my keyword scanning filters. Moreover, it does not have 7 years of experience to back up it's introductory claims. Since I cannot find a suitable article, I will have to source one from India.
A "Gilded" boost for Open Source Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like one more boost that will give impetus for more people to become involved in open source projects.
What a nick name! (Score:2)
I'm now trying to envision a Strudelkugel - man, it's a doughnut!
First its a ball shaped object like a Kugel, and then a vortex appears in it, i.e. a Strudel. This creates a hole, ideally a in the midst of it. The result is a torus.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
If I have a day job? (Score:2, Interesting)
I am beginning to worry about this trend to have an online coding portfolio.
I think open source is great, but once I got done with my day job coding, I never want to touch another line of code until work the next day. Adding to that, what about the basic need to socialize, spend time with the family, and spend time on hobbies?
I have definitely seen SF job postings for people with extensive open-source commits. Those posts are biased towards a few people who are lucky enough that their company pays them to
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Having some sort of portfolio of previous work (that you can share, of course) isn't that crazy of an idea in any field.
What is crazy -- and sort of sick -- is the idea of hiring people based on what they do in their off hours. The private life of a potential employee should be off limits as far as hiring is concerned.
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Why wouldn't you? Especially if he likes doing that?
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If programming is not one of your hobbies, you are going to be worse at it than most of the people for whom it is also a hobby.
Passion matters. So does experience. People who enjoy programming will have more of both.
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Re:If I have a day job? (Score:5, Insightful)
I kind of hate this recent assumption that all open-source programmers with work on github must be programming geniuses.
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I think you're conflating two issues such that I think what you say is misleading.
I agree that someone who is passionate about what they do and does it in their spare time is on average going to be better than someone who just does it for a day job and then goes home and doesn't touch it. I don't think there's much room to argue that.
But the problem with you comment is with your implication that open source is the only way of doing this- that's complete bollocks. There are many things you can do that are pr
Synopsis (Score:2)
They can measure specific data points, such as would constitute "technical merit".
They can not measure 'human undefinable's', things such as human co-interaction, gut instinct, charisma.
(I would think once we have enough data points to define how, for example, 'gut instinct' is actually determined by out brain, we could put that in an algorithm as well)
I think society would really be shocked if things were actually merit based.
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True, but the neat thing is: For stuff like "evaluating the prospective success of employees", they utterly stomp the best humans can do with instinct or expertise right now. Want to measure likely future success? Even half-assed use of data and metrics will beat the best human evaluations available right now. See also Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow for lots of explanations and evidence.
Of course talent is being missed (Score:2)
The question is, do you have something that works better at finding talent, can be administered for a cost reasonable relative to the additional productivity it identifies, and will stand up to scrutiny by the EEOC?
Hmm... (Score:2)
To paraphrase TFA:
Dr. Ming, who *now* has an undergraduate degree in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego, a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon in psychology and computational neuroscience and completed a fellowship at Stanford -- *after* flopping at college, kicking around at various jobs, contemplating suicide, and hitting the proverbial bottom -- is working to identify talented non-traditionally trained/skilled potential employees. Interesting.
More interesting, from both an in
Come on (Score:2)
The summary was a POS full of qualifiers and gave no idea what the story was actually about. Try harder.
Low bar (Score:2)
If you're trying to be a better filter than the typical HR department, it's not hard. An algorithm based mostly on a random number generator would likely work. Including the xkcd RNG.
wow, what an amazing technology! (Score:2)
the first step in getting people to accept algorithmic excuses for mass firings, hiring discrimination, and mandatory career planning is to propagandise the rare, unlikely (faked?) positive flukes.
you thought you trained to be a computer programmer, but our magic computer says you're better suited to order fulfilment in an amazon warehouse with crap conditions and crap pay.
Klout again... (Score:3)
So yeah... not impressed.
Talented Introverts are Tough To Spot (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:By algorithm makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all programmers are suitable for all projects (Score:5, Interesting)
No one is good at everything
I've worked with legendary programmers throughout my career and I can tell you this --- you must understand the strong points of a particular programmer (even the legendary ones) so that you can tap into his potential and let him/her perform
That "hiring by algorithm" is indeed a new way of looking at things, but it does take experience - excellent programmers all comes with their own particular quirks - and you need to provide them the room to stretch, the freedom that they need, in order to get them to do whatever they are good at
Re:Not all programmers are suitable for all projec (Score:5, Interesting)
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The trick is that you want to get rid of the ones who want to coast, whether or not they've got degrees. A lazy ass is a lazy ass, whatever pieces of paper they've got. However, I'm not going to pretend that a lack of a degree automatically makes you better either. The advantage of a degree — apart from having a piece of paper that says you can actually work and think a bit, at least some of the time — is that you've probably got better contacts and have been exposed to more sophisticated ideas
There is big gap from HS drop out to college of ot (Score:3)
There is big gap from HS drop out to 4-6-8+ years of college.
There are lot's of tech / trades / boot camps / ECT.
Also on the job learning.
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No one is good at everything
I've worked with legendary programmers throughout my career and I can tell you this --- you must understand the strong points of a particular programmer (even the legendary ones) so that you can tap into his potential and let him/her perform
That "hiring by algorithm" is indeed a new way of looking at things, but it does take experience - excellent programmers all comes with their own particular quirks - and you need to provide them the room to stretch, the freedom that they need, in order to get them to do whatever they are good at
Interesting... You describe programmers much like other people describe artists. This is not a bad thing. I see programming, as a programmer, as part art, part science. Programmers need a deep understanding of logic and not a small bit of creativity to solve problems.
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Use your own algorithm (Score:5, Interesting)
I've hired about a hundred programmers in my career, and education and career background are a good set of indicators, but they're not the be-all and end-all of selection. I've had the best results from avoiding agencies and their filtering methods, believing it's worth plowing through a lot of crap myself, in order to not lose that one gem that can transform your entire development effort.
And again, oddly enough, some of the best indicators were clear, intelligent, structured English and an interest in music. There seemed to be almost no correlation between those factors and their achieving a degree, or their lack of one.
On a whim once I interviewed someone who had a non-standard resume that consisted of a well-reasoned argument for her self-taught programming skills, in impeccable English. I brought her in, and she showed me code samples that were sophisticated, well-written, well-commented and offered proof that they worked. Her background was "housewife", no job background at all, no degree. I hired her, and she ripped through the workload like a veteran.
Don't be lazy, do your own filtering.
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clear, intelligent, structured English
Why is this a surprise? Someone who can't properly use a language they've used daily since birth is unlikely to do much better with one they had to learn later on.
Re:Use your own algorithm (Score:5, Informative)
English is *NOT* my first language --- and I had 4 "first languages"
And yet, I try my best to write the best English, within my own ability, every single time I write / speak something in English
Why ?
If I am to do something, I want to do it right --- if I were to do something half-ass, I rather not do it at all
That's just me, of course
Re:Use your own algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
some of the best indicators were clear, intelligent, structured English and an interest in music. There seemed to be almost no correlation between those factors and their achieving a degree, or their lack of one.
That is fascinating, thanks for the tip.
Re:Use your own algorithm (Score:4, Informative)
And again, oddly enough, some of the best indicators were clear, intelligent, structured English and an interest in music.
Those would be good correlates. The English skills are an indication that they can read very well (useful for background research) and communicate (also really useful), and music skills are often associated with ability in math and logic; they appear to use the same area of the brain.
Re:Use your own algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
And again, oddly enough, some of the best indicators were clear, intelligent, structured English and an interest in music.
Those would be good correlates. The English skills are an indication that they can read very well (useful for background research) and communicate (also really useful), and music skills are often associated with ability in math and logic; they appear to use the same area of the brain.
English skills could also be about attention to detail and caring about the quality of what you do. And both, but especially music, could be about not just being able to focus for long periods on one, solitary task, building it up a little at a time until it works, but of actually getting satisfaction from it. ie, it could be substantially an indicator of introversion.
Not in all cases (Score:3)
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I'm really loving this attitude that PhDs are not any different from high school drop outs. This is perhaps true for menial tasks. It says something about the posters who tell these stories. Try assigning that high school dropout to do something non-trivial and highly conceptual, and you are mostly likely completely screwed.
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I'm really loving this attitude that PhDs are not any different from high school drop outs. This is perhaps true for menial tasks. It says something about the posters who tell these stories. Try assigning that high school dropout to do something non-trivial and highly conceptual, and you are mostly likely completely screwed.
I know Slashdot isn't the place to say this, but almost all programming is menial. You wouldn't hire a high school dropout to do something serious like physics or chemistry or biology, but for driving a bus, washing a car, writing a UI, or cleaning toilets they're perfectly serviceable.
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You attitude is why we have abominations like Unity, Gnome3, and Windows8/Metro now.
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I know Slashdot isn't the place to say this, but almost all programming is menial.
No!
Most programming work is tedious, however most important decisions have to be made constantly, in the midst of that tedious work. You can't make decisions by yourself, then pass the work to an idiot -- he will not notice where he has to make a decision, and will do something random that seems right, and those decisions will eventually destroy everything.
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Re:By algorithm makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Theoretically, hiring a PhD would give you some guarantee about what the programmer is capable of doing - you can expect him to know not only how 2nd degree equations work, but also the basics of transcendental functions and how to apply base concepts into real-life problems. Theoretically. In practice, shure, maybe most dropouts don't have the basis to understand a lot of stuff - but many PhDs don't understand it either. And some of them, while understanding it, are unable to put in in practice.
I'm one of the few (only?) completely self-taught developers on the company I work for (>100 developers). For most tasks, no "special" knowledge is needed - a monkey could do it. Even so, some academic folks struggle with concepts. For non-trivial, conceptual tasks, I'm usually at the top of the list of the guys to ask stuff. I've done stuff ranging from math coprocessor emulation to signal processing, image processing, 3d programming, embedded systems, compression algorithms, data processing/mining, etc. I'm probably not better than a good PhD (or a guy like me with proper academic background), but I'm way better than *a lot* of median ones.
I would recommend to anyone that wants to be serious either in programming or CS to get a degree - proper mathematics is something that is usually hard to learn without a teacher - but having expectations on a guy just because he has a degree is just stupid. As it is having great expectations regarding a high-school dropout.
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Actually most CS PhD's out there don't do too heavy theoretical work. They do, however, write more proof-of-concept level programs and systems, than actually producing engineering quality programs.
Try to pick up a paper in non-theoretical journals or conference proceedings you'll see most of them describing a new concept or application of theory, and then its implementation. A lot PhD students come up with the concepts and write the code, which are sometimes referred to as "experiments". Many projects are e
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This attitude is common in programming mostly because the field changes so quickly and schools still do a poor job among other things. However you DON'T see this attitude for hiring chemists, biologists, mechanical engineers, chemical engineers etc.
It might be okay to be a self taught programmer and writing some software but a self taught bioengineer that will be creating custom bacteria in a multimillion dollar reactor to create some new drug is another matter entirely.
You might trust a self taught program
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I agree with all of that. I was trying to make a point that this considering a degree worth almost nothing is mostly only valid in fields where obtaining the knowledge and practical experience is not hard to come by. If something requires a lot of specialized equipment to learn and the act of learning can be dangerous without professional supervision then the degree matters more.
I would put my knowledge of programming up against any CS degree. I am a self taught programmer. However I would not trust a self
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Damn straight - kick the poor!
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1. One of the benefits of this country is the lack of an official caste system. Unfortunately, an unofficial one is solidifying out of the economic downward spiral the country's going through. Why would you support either? It's likely that you would be in that lower caste and not able to work in technical fields even if you have the ability...and if you were born into an upper caste family and still had the time to post on slashdot, you'd be one of those dead-end children, like paris hilton.
2. What's a re
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1. One of the benefits of this country is the lack of an official caste system. Unfortunately, an unofficial one is solidifying out of the economic downward spiral the country's going through. Why would you support either? It's likely that you would be in that lower caste and not able to work in technical fields even if you have the ability...and if you were born into an upper caste family and still had the time to post on slashdot, you'd be one of those dead-end children, like paris hilton.
The caste system in the US is unofficial and more rigid than places with a formal caste system. You are more likely to better your situation in India than the US.
That and rich rarely fall. Paris Hilton isn't that smart. She isn't as dumb as she looks, but she isn't smart. But, with the rules out there, she has a massive advantage over millions of smarter people born to the wrong parents.
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Yet she routinely engages in imbecilic behavior and shows a lack of aptitude in everything she does. I think this is due to a mix of (below) average intellect and spoiled brat syndrome. She was never encouraged to be independent because she never had to be.
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You know, I have this sneaking suspicion that my landscaper makes more than I do.
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They're a significant part of American society. They even have churches telling people that poor people are poor because God doesn't like them as much as rich people.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah.. or employers could hire dull minds, who were selected precisely because they willingly conform to every little managerial passive aggressive manipulation. Of course, these people are useless for anything but the most basic office work, but that's of secondary importance. The state set up our school system to produce these drones after all, and now even colleges are dumbing their programs down so these drones can get pieces of paper saying they're qualified computer scientists/programmers/engineers. These little drones are even encouraged to split themselves up into identity groups based on irrelevancies like race and gender! Now they have something else to bluster over when someone points out their mediocrity! Today's culture obviously values mindless obedience and adherence to every minor social convention over creative, adaptive, critically thinking minds. Too bad.
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I bet 100 BILLION dollars and a pool of sharks with LASER beams that this algorithm can approximate the age of a candidate.
No takers on that bet. Yeah, there is that sort of potential for bias. Depends on how you use it. However you don't need fancy software for age discrimination. You can roughly figure someone's age just by looking at them. You can guess it before you meet them by looking at their resume.
This also has the potential to eliminate some biases though. Going to a fancy school is not a great proxy for how someone will do. I wouldn't discount it, but there are other things that indicate you're qualified. Also, how
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Many genius level IQ people find highschool an absolutely boring, dreary, mindless, and lonely existence.
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Many genius level IQ people find highschool an absolutely boring, dreary, mindless, and lonely existence.
You went to Scumbag High with me, obviously...
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, wasnâ(TM)t motivated in high school and didnâ(TM)t see value in college,
and no doubt will not see the value in work either - especially if he's hired by a company that values sensible, maintainable, serious engineering-style coding rather than playing with fun puzzles.
Oh, he joined a startup... guess he'll be fine then.
Inviting opposite gender can look like flirting (Score:2)
Formerly, I didn't respect that tradition and I ha
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The phrase you are looking for is 'uncanny valley'.
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Actually, bigotry creates ostracization. Modifying your body doesn't intrinsically do that. These days, most people deal with trans folks just fine; the few Archie Bunker wannabes running around calling them names are still a problem, but are rapidly becoming a small problem.
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May be some variance. I know a fair number of pretty decent programmers, and many of them use at least one or two social media sites.