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The Lesson to Unlearn

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#301

Post by hardwaregeek »

Hackathons are a great example of this. Ostensibly they should just be about the project that is the coolest or most interesting. But participants started to realize that it wasn't really about the most fascinating project. It was about the project that got the usually non-technical, naive judges to go "ooooh". People started hacking hackathons by building projects that were totally infeasible and completely fake in terms of technical implementation, but had some sort of wow factor through buzzwords (AI/ML/CV/VR/etc) or "making the world a better place".

It's no coincidence that some of the largest hackathons are run and attended by students from the top universities pg mentions in the essay.

Which is why YC's hackathon was so satisfying. It was great seeing people pitch the normal hackathon-y ideas, then getting simple but direct questions such as "Why would someone use this app?" or "Why wouldn't I use instead?".

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#302

Post by manca »

loh wrote: post #292
manca wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I said in my retweet to PG's essay. Having hackable bad tests in the very tech industry proves the point that artificial tests are still the way of thinking for many and something we collectively need to unlearn. The question is how.

When I see a company conducting these kinds of tests during interviews, it's a signal to me that they are probably not a very forward-thinking company, and probably not a good fit for someone like me who tends to think outside the box. If it's another cog in their machine that they want, these kinds of interview tests are probably pretty good. But if they're an innovative company trying to change the world, they'd be…

I agree with all you said. However, 99% of major tech companies employ exactly the same process of hiring software engineers. I've been on hundreds of interview loops and unfortunately just one bad interview in a loop of 5-6 could make the candidate look like a "bad" fit and thus receive no offer. That particular candidate might be in fact great fit, but the way he was tested could not reveal that.

I don't know the solution to this problem. Eliminating tests whatsoever and just talking with the candidate about his experience and probing his knowledge on different topics is not efficient either. There are a lot of talking heads around who when given a simple task fail miserably.

We as a tech community need to come up with better ways to assess other people's competency while also making sure those people fit within our company's culture, work efficiently with others and after all create value. This is a hard problem. So, we try to simplify the problem by imposing the "proven" way of finding such people -- give them arbitrary tests and hope they pass them.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#303

Post by robocat »

bkohlmann wrote: post #80

An important corollary is that school and tests teach you not to be wrong. They teach you that incorrect answers will be punished. Yet, most interesting questions in life don’t yet have defined answers. Thus you need to have and test a hypothesis, which will very often be “incorrect” the first time around. But that doesn’t actually matter - the mere act of thinking about and defining what an answer could be sets you…

Even worse, most tests have a well defined question and a correct answer.

In real life you don’t know the question, there isn’t a single canonical answer, and there is no score-keeper to tell you if you are passing.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#304

Post by knzhou »

misnome wrote: post #284
knzhou wrote: post #264

As somebody who has designed some of the tests Paul Graham is complaining about, it really is hard from the other side! For example, it's long been known in the physics education research community that students come away from introductory courses with very little physical understanding, even if they can do the plug and chug problems on typical tests just fine. Students can all recite Newton's third law, but immediat…

Are there any resources good for finding out more about this and such studies? Myself, I went through this process in physics, and in many cases it was years afterwards that I properly understood the implications and context of the early courses, and only through repeat exposure could grok the actual connections in the problems. It seems especially hard to test and evaluate something that is planting the seeds for a…

I liked Randall Knight's Five Easy Lessons, which summarizes findings in the field and also comes with sample exercises and activities for the whole intro curriculum. There's also Mazur's Peer Instruction, which is a little older.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#305

Post by 29athrowaway »

pavlov wrote: post #240

The tech industry has unfortunately adopted the methodology of centralized hackable tests as the canonical gatekeeping method in the form of programming interviews. Most big tech companies don't care about how good you have been at delivering some value through creating software: they want to see you deliver a very specific type of performance at a whiteboard. Interviewers are given specific math puzzle questions to…

There was a time where computers weren't as fast and libraries were not as high-level/user friendly, and you required to know these things in order to get things done.

Today, unless you are doing things at scale (tiny fraction of startups), you don't need to know how to make things run in the most optimized way possible.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#306

Post by suyash »

pavlov wrote: post #240

The tech industry has unfortunately adopted the methodology of centralized hackable tests as the canonical gatekeeping method in the form of programming interviews. Most big tech companies don't care about how good you have been at delivering some value through creating software: they want to see you deliver a very specific type of performance at a whiteboard. Interviewers are given specific math puzzle questions to…

Software Engineering interviews are the worst offenders of this “test for grades approach to hire candidates”. On that other hand, programmers are spending huge amount of time, money and energy into hacking these coding interviews just to get a job. Situation is horrible and needs immediate disruption.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#307

Post by knzhou »

rglullis wrote: post #279
knzhou wrote: post #264

As somebody who has designed some of the tests Paul Graham is complaining about, it really is hard from the other side! For example, it's long been known in the physics education research community that students come away from introductory courses with very little physical understanding, even if they can do the plug and chug problems on typical tests just fine. Students can all recite Newton's third law, but immediat…

> If the people aren't motivated, any standardized measure will miss the mark Shouldn't that be a sign that trying to come up with standardized measures is a fool's errand? Short of blatant social engineering, I don't see how we can have a system that could improve people's motivation and drive for education. And if we don't have a way to actually change human nature, why do we keep trying to design this system that…

We have to try, because the alternative to standardized testing isn't some egalitarian utopia, it's nepotism.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#308

Post by correlator »

It sounds a lot like raising venture funding. Make sure there's a slide that says "$10 billion" because that's the new billion. Talk about your "AI" which was formerly "blockchain" or "big data" and make sure you fit the mold of whatever the funding is looking for. Leave creativity at the door please.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#309

Post by dominotw »

pavlov wrote: post #240

The tech industry has unfortunately adopted the methodology of centralized hackable tests as the canonical gatekeeping method in the form of programming interviews. Most big tech companies don't care about how good you have been at delivering some value through creating software: they want to see you deliver a very specific type of performance at a whiteboard. Interviewers are given specific math puzzle questions to…

Haha here is the email i have from my facebook interview thats coming up.

"Your initial Facebook interview is coming up and we want you to ace it!

Here are some tips and resources so you know what to expect and can prepare adequately. Preparing is key.

Our initial interview determines whether to continue with a full series of onsite interviews. This initial interview is primarily a coding interview that will take place between you and a Facebook engineer.

It's important for any engineer to brush up on their interview skills, coding skills and algorithms. Practice coding on a whiteboard or with pen and paper, and time yourself. Preparing increases your odds significantly! Below are two helpful links to a Facebook Interview Prep Course led by Gayle Laakmann McDowell, author of “Cracking the Coding Interview”. Use password FB_IPS to access the videos. Cracking the Facebook Coding Interview - The Approach Cracking the Facebook Coding Interview - Problem Walk-Through This article provides much more advice about how to prepare: Preparing for your Software Engineering Interview at Facebook

Here's a sample problem to get started.

Sample Problem Write a function to return if two words are exactly "one edit" away, where an edit is: Inserting one character anywhere in the word (including at the beginning and end) Removing one character Replacing exactly one character Most importantly, you can view this and other Facebook sample interview questions and solutions here.

Want more sample questions? Try HackerRank, LeetCode, and CodeLab. Be sure to practice questions in a variety of subjects and difficulty levels."

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#310

Post by dominotw »

loh wrote: post #292
manca wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I said in my retweet to PG's essay. Having hackable bad tests in the very tech industry proves the point that artificial tests are still the way of thinking for many and something we collectively need to unlearn. The question is how.

When I see a company conducting these kinds of tests during interviews, it's a signal to me that they are probably not a very forward-thinking company, and probably not a good fit for someone like me who tends to think outside the box. If it's another cog in their machine that they want, these kinds of interview tests are probably pretty good. But if they're an innovative company trying to change the world, they'd be…

> it's a signal to me that they are probably not a very forward-thinking company

Can you give me an example of a forward thinking company according to you?

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