I remember one article of Steve Yegge in which he wrote that for the most part the engineering culture at Google came from an early employee. Is this actually the guy?
Google's first employee
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Re: Google's first employee
#32He got 1600 (perfect score) on SATs. I wonder what the relationship of SAT scores and highly successful people is.
It really depends what you mean by highly successful. I doubt that there are many successful mathematicians that missed more than one or two questions when they took it. I also doubt that there are a lot of professional athletes with perfect scores. If what you mean is "rich" then, well, athletes make a lot more money than mathematicians.
Re: Google's first employee
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most smart people I know also got a better than ~1400ish score on the SAT, but a disproportionate number are also in the near perfect range (~1570-1600). I can definitely tell the difference between a 1400 and a 1570, and can usually tell the difference between a 1570 and 1600.
I find myself very skeptical of your last claim. According to the research my friends and I did when taking the SATs, the difference between a 1570 or 1580 and 1600 was often a single question. The scoring scale varied a bit based on the difficulty of the particular exam you sat, and as we were aiming for scores near the top of the scale we hoped to get an exam that allowed a question or two wrong to still get a 1600…
There's fairly little difference between someone who gets two questions wrong on the exam and someone who got one wrong. There's usually a fairly large difference between someone who gets two wrong and someone who got them all right.
On the modern (post-1995) SAT, 1600 is a fairly wide range, from people who got 1-3 questions wrong to people who breezed through the whole test, double-checked everything, and didn't miss a single question. If you're talking to one of the latter, you'll know it.
Re: Google's first employee
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most smart people I know also got a better than ~1400ish score on the SAT, but a disproportionate number are also in the near perfect range (~1570-1600). I can definitely tell the difference between a 1400 and a 1570, and can usually tell the difference between a 1570 and 1600.
This just seems unlikely. The difference between 100 points at the top end of the scale is minute -- a few problems swing -- and the change in a 1570 to 1600 is quite literally an issue of missing just a couple problems in either section. The SAT is a horribly noisy measure of excellent in either verbal skills or math, much less actual intelligence. I can tell you I managed to never peak over 700 on the math section…
The Math IIC is easier than than the SAT-I-M, but requires more subject knowledge. They test different things: the SAT-I is primarily a speed test, measuring how quickly you can reason under pressure, while the SAT-II is primarily a content test, measuring how much you've managed to cram into your brain before taking it.
Re: Google's first employee
#35I remember one article of Steve Yegge in which he wrote that for the most part the engineering culture at Google came from an early employee. Is this actually the guy?
He would be my vote.
Re: Google's first employee
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find myself very skeptical of your last claim. According to the research my friends and I did when taking the SATs, the difference between a 1570 or 1580 and 1600 was often a single question. The scoring scale varied a bit based on the difficulty of the particular exam you sat, and as we were aiming for scores near the top of the scale we hoped to get an exam that allowed a question or two wrong to still get a 1600…
There's fairly little difference between someone who gets two questions wrong on the exam and someone who got one wrong. There's usually a fairly large difference between someone who gets two wrong and someone who got them all right. On the modern (post-1995) SAT, 1600 is a fairly wide range, from people who got 1-3 questions wrong to people who breezed through the whole test, double-checked everything, and didn't mi…
You are right.
According to Wikipedia, SAT 1600 (post-1995) is 99.93 percentile, so about 1 in 1429 (3.4 standard deviations).
Given that there are millions of people taking SAT, in absolute numbers there should be plenty of people hitting the test ceiling.
Interestingly, pre-1995 apparently had much higher ceiling, with only 1 in 142,857 getting score above 1580 (4.6 standard deviations).
Which BTW means Microsoft was founded by some really crazy dudes.
Re: Google's first employee
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most smart people I know got a 'good' (say, better than ~1400ish) score on the SAT. I can't tell the difference between someone I work with who got a 1450 and a 1550 though (unless they tell me, of course).
Most smart people I know also got a better than ~1400ish score on the SAT, but a disproportionate number are also in the near perfect range (~1570-1600). I can definitely tell the difference between a 1400 and a 1570, and can usually tell the difference between a 1570 and 1600.
[deleted]
Re: Google's first employee
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most smart people I know got a 'good' (say, better than ~1400ish) score on the SAT. I can't tell the difference between someone I work with who got a 1450 and a 1550 though (unless they tell me, of course).
Most smart people I know also got a better than ~1400ish score on the SAT, but a disproportionate number are also in the near perfect range (~1570-1600). I can definitely tell the difference between a 1400 and a 1570, and can usually tell the difference between a 1570 and 1600.
If I were to send you my resume (sans test scores), do you think you could guess whether I got a 1570 or a 1600? Or is it something you can only tell from personal interaction?
Re: Google's first employee
#39"A There are these cultures you see in some companies -- they are just very negative, where the way that you show you are the hot shot engineer is by showing how stupid everyone else's idea is, or how bad everyone else's code is. And honestly, we see that more at Google now then we used to when it was small. And part of it is we've got people who were used to these other cultures; it's a very prevalent, sort of alpha…
Here's a very tiny "company" anecdote. I'm volunteering on a remake of an old game for fun. So far I've been the only programmer. I've had conversations with two other programmers who considered joining, and the conversations went similarly. That they seemed eager to tell me about something I was doing wrong and needed to do differently. I'm not really against that (even less if it comes with a patch...) but I guess it was the delivery that got to me.
For instance, in one conversation the first thing the other programmer said to me (after chatting with the guy introducing us) was "I've found tons of bugs in the build." My initial reaction was "well duh" :) But it didn't really set a good tone for the rest of the conversation. Haven't heard back from either of them. But it got me thinking in part about why I had such a negative reaction to it, but also what draws people like that. I figured it was because it's a game, but after seeing this I guess it's common in the industry (I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad).
Perhaps it's because we're working in relative anonymity on this game and a large corporation has a similar feel that it still would remain only there. I hold out hope.
Re: Google's first employee
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's fairly little difference between someone who gets two questions wrong on the exam and someone who got one wrong. There's usually a fairly large difference between someone who gets two wrong and someone who got them all right. On the modern (post-1995) SAT, 1600 is a fairly wide range, from people who got 1-3 questions wrong to people who breezed through the whole test, double-checked everything, and didn't mi…
You are right. According to Wikipedia, SAT 1600 (post-1995) is 99.93 percentile, so about 1 in 1429 (3.4 standard deviations). Given that there are millions of people taking SAT, in absolute numbers there should be plenty of people hitting the test ceiling. Interestingly, pre-1995 apparently had much higher ceiling, with only 1 in 142,857 getting score above 1580 (4.6 standard deviations). Which BTW means Microsoft w…
Exactly. This is what Craig means when he says he got a perfect score when it meant perfect -- he got all the questions right.
For example, I took one of the SATs of that era (before antonyms were removed), missed only one question on the math section but still got a mere 770. I got over it.