Almost everything about our industry is weird and fucked up.
Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
81–90 of 205 posts
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#82Where are these horrible places that people work and hang out? I’ve worked at places as small as a tiny ISP where I was basically the only tech employee, startups with a dozen employees to companies as large as HP and everything in between. I’ve worked on the east coast and west coast. I’ve worked for private companies and public ones. Ive been on small teams and large. Ive had dozens of managers. I’ve been an SA and…
I think the author was exaggerating a bit, or perhaps is more sensitive to other peoples' opinions than most (e.g. the bit about crying in the bathroom). In the past I have definitely worked at companies where "web developer" was a completely different job title than "software engineer" (back-end developer), and paid less money. Definitely second-class citizens. The industry seems to have turned a corner with the adv…
Weird (to me). I don’t care what a coworker makes or what their title is. I don’t even care what my own title is. When a former employer let me choose the title for my business card I went with “problem solver.” All I really care about is having competent coworkers with integrity who are respectful to each other. It’s not my job to judge the value of a coworker’s work.
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Experience looking at thousands of CVs and talking to people who are behind the CVs.
That's not a statistic, nor is it quantifiable. I'm not taking issue with your experience, I'm taking issue with the fact that you've implied your claim has quantitative rigor to it, because I'm extremely skeptical that's the case. For what it's worth, I'm challenging you as someone who is neither a JavaScript developer nor a Clojure developer. I'm of the opinion that biases like the one the author laments are perpet…
Don't get hung up on the language. People sometimes say "statistically speaking" to mean "Based on my experience over a large number of tests". It doesn't mean "I applied a test of statistical significance to arrive at my conclusion".
You're then meant to combine their stated experience with their stated credentials and your assessment of their trustworthiness to arrive at some conclusion.
This imprecision may annoy you but it is a common way of speaking English so it's probably not in your interest to fight over the choice of wording.
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#84As someone running a technical recruitment agency, I can assure you that it is true that someone having built stuff in Clojure is more likely to be considered as a good engineer than someone who did JQuery all the time. Recruiters use an intuitive approach to conditional probability. Given only the info alone (if someone did JQuery or Clojure) exposes you to two bell curves, with the X-axis being "programming ability…
I never talked to a recruiter with any technical expertise in my whole 12 year career.
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t using Java, PyTorch, Elasticsearch, and neural networks for a TODO iOS app the same?
Why would you use any of those technologies to build a TODO app?
Well instead of you telling TODO app what you have to do, TODO app tells you what you have to do, and that frees you up to think about doing it. Or it just does it for you and you go to beach.
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#86As someone running a technical recruitment agency, I can assure you that it is true that someone having built stuff in Clojure is more likely to be considered as a good engineer than someone who did JQuery all the time. Recruiters use an intuitive approach to conditional probability. Given only the info alone (if someone did JQuery or Clojure) exposes you to two bell curves, with the X-axis being "programming ability…
Now apply this logic to men in tech and woman in tech bell curves and see how that works out. Is it still rational?
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#87Coming from embedded, the web is such an awful platform. No versioning. Polyfills everywhere! XML (satan's markup). Javascript... Every line of code is a rabbit trail into "can I use" BS.
Web devs didn't make it that way. They're just the ones who have to live with it.
We should be buying them lunch and thanking them for their service, not crapping on them.
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#88As someone running a technical recruitment agency, I can assure you that it is true that someone having built stuff in Clojure is more likely to be considered as a good engineer than someone who did JQuery all the time. Recruiters use an intuitive approach to conditional probability. Given only the info alone (if someone did JQuery or Clojure) exposes you to two bell curves, with the X-axis being "programming ability…
I never talked to a recruiter with any technical expertise in my whole 12 year career.
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#89As someone running a technical recruitment agency, I can assure you that it is true that someone having built stuff in Clojure is more likely to be considered as a good engineer than someone who did JQuery all the time. Recruiters use an intuitive approach to conditional probability. Given only the info alone (if someone did JQuery or Clojure) exposes you to two bell curves, with the X-axis being "programming ability…
Presumably people are paying you to find good engineers, not just people who match particular profiles. If "rational prejudice" doesn't always find the good engineers, why justify it like this? Wouldn't it be better to take this as evidence that your approach could use improvement?
> people are paying you to find good engineers
No, they're paying them to find engineers that will pass the interview process. It's a subtle, but important distinction since prejudices that exist among engineers will naturally develop in recruiters. It's the recruiting equivalent of teaching to the test.
And like it or not, the kind of signaling the article describes is real. When an engineer says they can write clojure, it indicates a curiosity that ability to program JavaScript does not. Almost no one is forced to learn Clojure because of some job, project or even job prospects. It means you likely cared enough to devote your own time to learning for the sake of learning. And a lot of engineers look at this kind of thing as important and screen for it in interviews.
A recruiter operating any differently would be like a machine learning algorithm that ignores its training data.
Re: Signaling in tech is some fucked up shit (2016)
#90As someone running a technical recruitment agency, I can assure you that it is true that someone having built stuff in Clojure is more likely to be considered as a good engineer than someone who did JQuery all the time. Recruiters use an intuitive approach to conditional probability. Given only the info alone (if someone did JQuery or Clojure) exposes you to two bell curves, with the X-axis being "programming ability…
Now apply this logic to men in tech and woman in tech bell curves and see how that works out. Is it still rational?
Women in tech would presumably have the same signalling as Clojure users - greater probability of being competent ? Is that the point you were making?