Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#21

Post by mynameishere » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 12:59 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #20

mynameishere wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to his claims, as I went to a crap school and got a crap GPA. Okay. I'd love it if people had judged me based upon my winning personality, my good looks, or my tendency to point out everyone's foibles, but I'm not sure those are a superior measure of coding skill... Even if they were, they could be subjected to analysis and so become objective measures themselves. The practical reality is that lots of…

I think his argument is that the best objective measurement of a basketball player's skill is his ability to play basketball.

Sure. But that's tautological. If that's really his point (and it seems to be, yes) then he's obviously playing a joke on his audience.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#22

Post by Retric » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 2:17 PM UTC

ible wrote: post #8

I think Gladwell has a good point that trying to do a job is probably the best predictor of who will be good at it, and as a general principle moving that point up, via apprenticeships, internships, coop programs, and so on would probably be useful. What troubles me is he seems to say that because people do a bad job of objectively identifying predictors of future success, that those predictors simply don't exist, or…

It's a self selecting population so a lot of statistics ideas need to be tossed out. If you test random 5 year old people with IQ's under 80 are unlikely to become successful doctors / chemists etc. If you look at the IQ of people graduating from Medical School it's hard to correlate IQ's with job success because you are looking at a population that passed a lot of tests to get to that point. If you look at the median pay of Harvard Graduates its well above that of the average Collage graduate but it's also taken from the high end of the High School talent pool.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#23

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 2:20 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #14

ible wrote: post #8

I think Gladwell has a good point that trying to do a job is probably the best predictor of who will be good at it, and as a general principle moving that point up, via apprenticeships, internships, coop programs, and so on would probably be useful. What troubles me is he seems to say that because people do a bad job of objectively identifying predictors of future success, that those predictors simply don't exist, or…

You're being skeptical for the wrong side. We humans have a long, inglorious history of inventing objective metrics that absolutely fail to be useful at predicting the things we want to predict. From the IQ tests to the NHL combine, we're traditionally quite awful at inventing predictive tests of performance. Which is to say: if you're being intellectually honest, you should be far more skeptical that a test does wha…

> From the IQ tests

IQ tests actually do a pretty good job.

http://iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#24

Post by Retric » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 2:21 PM UTC

delackner wrote: post #18

mynameishere wrote: post #13

Almost everything he says needs a [citation needed] tag at the end of it. I guess that's one problem with public speaking--it's pretty hard to take apart in that manner. One of his comments highlights his overall problem, ...that ineffible, illusive gift, "Being a good teacher" ...in other words, he seems to think that teaching ability is "ineffable" and that therefore the best way to find the good ones is to (???) h…

"hire a large number, find the best ones, and fire the rest" Actually, in many cases this is the only way to find the best candidates. The near impossibility of firing teachers is the biggest impediment to improving teaching quality in the United States.

I don't think the problem is finding great teachers it's finding any teachers. I was a great tutor in Collage but I would never become a teacher because the pay sucks. If we payed teachers 100k / year and fired the poor ones we could have a great talent pool but as long as they make 1/2 what I do there are just not going to be a huge pool to draw from.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#25

Post by cdr » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 3:22 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #6

This is exactly what always bothered me about Google's white board testing (and testing like it at other big firms). It lets them know that you can do pointers and O notation but it completely misses the specific kind of tenacity that seems to make great programmers great.

I think the point is more to weed out people that can't do pointers and Big O than to determine greatness.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#26

Post by dpapathanasiou » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 4:13 PM UTC

It's interesting that Gladwell doesn't bring up baseball in his examples.

If you read "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis, you come away with the impression that there is a definitive way to predict the probability of future success, albeit using untraditional metrics.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#27

Post by mattjung » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 5:40 PM UTC

Would be interesting to know if software engineering has also a mismatch problem. Is there any information about that? But in any case it should be easier to find a good programmer than to find a good basketballer because its easier to test them while they are doing their actual job. The mismatch problem should also be an important topic for YC - it's the daily work of an VC to predict success. Maybe they could provide Gladwell with some interesting statistics for his book ;)

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#28

Post by aristus » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 7:28 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #13

Almost everything he says needs a [citation needed] tag at the end of it. I guess that's one problem with public speaking--it's pretty hard to take apart in that manner. One of his comments highlights his overall problem, ...that ineffible, illusive gift, "Being a good teacher" ...in other words, he seems to think that teaching ability is "ineffable" and that therefore the best way to find the good ones is to (???) h…

I don't know if he's conscious of it, but Gladwell is parroting Socrates, right down to the impossibility of transmitting "true knowledge". Circular arguments anchored by a mystery. As a philosophy it has no practical purpose except to waste people's time while appearing sage.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#29

Post by timr » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 9:17 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #23

timr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being skeptical for the wrong side. We humans have a long, inglorious history of inventing objective metrics that absolutely fail to be useful at predicting the things we want to predict. From the IQ tests to the NHL combine, we're traditionally quite awful at inventing predictive tests of performance. Which is to say: if you're being intellectually honest, you should be far more skeptical that a test does wha…

> From the IQ tests IQ tests actually do a pretty good job. http://iqcomparisonsite.com/occupations.aspx

Assuming that linked chart is accurate (which I don't automatically grant), pointing out that the average IQ for a janitor is lower than the average IQ for a doctor isn't the same thing as predicting someone's success as a doctor based on their IQ. There's a lot of overlap between those ranges.

Re: Malcolm Gladwell on Hiring: the Mismatch Problem

#30

Post by timr » Thu, Jun 05, 2008, 9:26 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #21

timr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his argument is that the best objective measurement of a basketball player's skill is his ability to play basketball.

Sure. But that's tautological. If that's really his point (and it seems to be, yes) then he's obviously playing a joke on his audience.

So what? A tautology is not a bad argument.

If the "objective metrics" are useless discriminators, then the only effect of using them is to make us feel as though we have control over a situation that we don't understand. In that scenario, it makes far more sense to restructure the game to allow more initial participants, and to cull the best players.

You seem to be arguing that we must have "objective" filtering mechanisms, even if they're random. Gladwell is saying that the whole paradigm is wrong.