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Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

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Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#21

Post by reificator »

beefield wrote: post #5

Don't know about questions, but there are couple of answers I have learned to be serious red flags: 1. Yes, I understand. (with no further elaboration or clarifying questions) 2. It's okay/good/going well (again, with no further elaboration when asking how something is going/set up etc) First one typically translates to something between "I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue bu…

I say both all the time, am trusted to handle projects on my own from start to finish, and those projects tend to go very smoothly.

I do also ask questions without hesitation when needed (to the point where it starts to irritate non-developers), but saying "Yes, I understand" or "it's going well" when I do understand and when it is going well is not a red flag.

Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#22

Post by mewpmewp2 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #11
beefield wrote: post #5

Don't know about questions, but there are couple of answers I have learned to be serious red flags: 1. Yes, I understand. (with no further elaboration or clarifying questions) 2. It's okay/good/going well (again, with no further elaboration when asking how something is going/set up etc) First one typically translates to something between "I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue bu…

>"I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue but don't dare to say it" Or "I'm tired of this droning conference call/meeting where I can barely understand some people's accents and I'd rather just clarify some points in writing later where I don't have to rely on my memory." >"I have no clue whatsoever" Or it really is going fine and I don't want to spend forever going into technical…

Yeah I am at meetings often like this because I have trouble paying attention or understanding voice communication - I also always watch films with subtitles, but I think tech wise or problem solving I am decent.

Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#23

Post by jaymicha »

latencyloser wrote: post #17
jaymicha wrote: post #13

Tell me about an opinion you hold on some piece of technology (framework, language, design pattern, etc.), one you have a fair amount of conviction about and hold pretty strongly. Now tell me how you arrived at that opinion and conviction.

Depending on what opinion they pull out, I might tweak that and suggest: "What's the argument against that opinion?" From what I've seen, a lot of people can rattle off reasons they've heard for why a particular thing is done, but have not deeply considered the opposite side of that opinion and what its benefits may be. Ymmv.

Yeah, that's a good followup. It's akin to having a strong counterargument in an academic paper. What I'm going for with the question is an understanding of how the candidate acquires knowledge. Are they generating it themselves via some process like the scientific method? Are they mostly doing that but maybe taking shortcuts here and there by credulously taking on the opinions of trusted sources? Are they throwing all of that overboard and just embracing opinions/received wisdom that are popular or correlate with higher compensation?

The problem I've run into is that it's a pretty easy question to game, if you know the purpose behind asking it; nobody is going to come out and say, e.g., "I think ORMs are dumb because that's what other folks seem to say, and I see those people having high-status/well-compensated jobs, and I'd like some of that too, plz." So maybe it's not a great "weeder" question. /shrug

Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#24

Post by BubRoss »

cjslep wrote: post #7

When people plain-language declare things as "safe" or "unsafe" it's clear they don't have a background in technical risk assessment. When people call 5G "safe" or "unsafe", it's clear they don't know about radiation effects on human health. The correct answer is "we don't have data". Edit: The fact that people would rather make fun of me and imagine me as an "non-ionizing radiation tin foil hatter" (I am not, non-io…

I could say the same thing about people who talk about radiation without mentioning what part of the frequency spectrum they are referring to.

Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#26

Post by m463 »

beefield wrote: post #5

Don't know about questions, but there are couple of answers I have learned to be serious red flags: 1. Yes, I understand. (with no further elaboration or clarifying questions) 2. It's okay/good/going well (again, with no further elaboration when asking how something is going/set up etc) First one typically translates to something between "I have a completely unfounded illusion of understanding" and "I have no clue bu…

I wish I was better at reflective listening.

Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#27

Post by mlady »

In grappling (Brazilian jiu-jitsu), it is very apparent from one sparring round with a person to get a sense for what they know and get a general idea for their skill/belt level. The exact belt is determined by that person's coach by measuring their skill against their personal potential.

An analogy to software would be to pair program with a person. You both get a feel for each other's strengths and weaknesses while working on a particular problem. I feel that coding interviews try to replicate this, but fall short given time constraints.

Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#28

Post by jawns »

Dunning-Kruger separating mid- and senior-level devs:

JUNIOR DEV: My code is simple and easy to understand.

MID-LEVEL DEV: My code is subtle, clever, innovative, expressive, hyper-optimized, and ingenious.

SENIOR DEV: My code is simple and easy to understand.

--

Source: John Arundel, https://twitter.com/bitfield/status/1219174978748370945

But take that for what it's worth: https://twitter.com/bitfield/status/1184741088067833856

Re: Ask HN: What would the Dunning-Kruger “test” be for your field?

#29

Post by ben509 »

Sigh. DK, as commonly cited, is not simply "competence."

It hypothesizes a meta-cognitive bias whereby a person who is incompetent is cognitively incapable of determining their level of competence.

Everyone has biases, and the reason citing DK may come across the wrong way is it tends to suggest that it's just Other People who have those biases.

From this piece[1] arguing that we routinely misinterpret DK:

> I suspect we find this sort of explanation compelling because it appeals to our implicit just-world theories: we’d like to believe that people who obnoxiously proclaim their excellence at X, Y, and Z must really not be so very good at X, Y, and Z at all, and must be (over)compensating for some actual deficiency.

But, generally, if the question of competence comes up, don't reflexively cite DK. It's been around for ages, it's not novel, and it's usually being miscited.

[1]: https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-...

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