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95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

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Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#121

Post by esch89 »

k__ wrote: post #16
cdoxsey wrote: post #12

On the flip side. Sometimes you're just not that good at stuff despite your best efforts. In college I really struggled with math. Which was a challenge because computer science has you take a lot of math classes. In my calculus class I studied so hard for the final. Did every problem in the book. And I still just got a B in the class. At the same time my programming classes were really easy. I didn't study at all an…

Comparing you to some geniuses in the field isn't gonna help. Sure Mozart was better that Salieri, but there is just one Mozart. Companies are always talking about how they just take the best, but in the end they have to settle with what the market gives them.

It's true. The hiring market is a market, which means companies compete with each other to attract the best talent they can - and sometimes they lose out on that competition.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#122

Post by leoh »

flr03 wrote: post #111
5cott0 wrote: post #45

There is something so depressingly robotic about the obsession with being the best at everything all the time. Career, income, diet, exercise, lifestyle, hobbies; can't even have fun anymore without spending days holed-up researching esoteric hyper-optimizations. Some of you need to relax and stop sucking the fun out of everything.

There is some sort of rat race being this obsession, that kind of put me off sometimes. It's like, yes, I'm guilty of it somehow, I want to be better, to be more productive, to do less mistakes etc. I'll do my work better, I can get hired by a company that would choose me over another candidate, nice. But the cost is that it's dragging the all profession into this mindset. The 10x thingy, the hyper productivity compe…

Agreed. My hypothesis is that it's largely due to constrained markets in the Bay Area (housing, dating pool especially) that lead to individuals feeling impoverished despite having enough cash. Like kids in poorer areas wanting to be professional athletes and putting immense energy into street basketball games — they do get better, it's a way to distract yourself from the mess, and it may be good for you, but it doesn't necessarily fundamentally address problems without or within (though it can!).

If you look at the Bay Area before the 2000s, it wasn't like this at all. It was relaxed. For a while, it was said to be one of the best places in the world for dating. Housing was cheap. People had time. You could be a part time dishwasher and a poet in San Francisco. A lot of greatness grew out of that fecund environment — artists like Diebenkorn or luminaries like Alice Waters. Things are changing.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#123

Post by etblg »

merrywhether wrote: post #82
k__ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing you to some geniuses in the field isn't gonna help. Sure Mozart was better that Salieri, but there is just one Mozart. Companies are always talking about how they just take the best, but in the end they have to settle with what the market gives them.

This reminds me of a time when a hiring manager said something along the lines of “We’re trying to find Michael Jordan, not Scottie Pippen.” My colleague and I were pretty shocked by this, since Pippen was also a great Hall of Fame basketball player, just not one of the top 3 players of all time.

All companies want to fill their ranks with the Michael Jordans of the world, but there was only one Michael Jordan (that's why we call him by his name), and he wasn't even drafted first overall, he went third. The people who beat him were another Hall of Famer, and then some guy you've never heard of.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#124

Post by astrieanna »

disease wrote: post #73

For me, learning art has broken all of the rules I thought I knew about how to correctly go about getting better. I've made several serious efforts to get better at it with VERY limited results. Either my brain is not wired for it somehow, or my approach to learning it has been incorrect in some way. And just FYI my attempts included slowly going through all of 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain'.

Have you tried taking classes or otherwise getting 1:1 coaching?

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#125

Post by nemothekid »

ryandrake wrote: post #115
nemothekid wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overwatch has a competitive ladder which ranks players on a ELO-based rating system. The percentiles were published, by the game developers, at one point and are assumed to be stable. I play(ed) a lot of Overwatch, enough to get into the top 1% (Grandmaster). The rank he derides on, 90-95%, is Diamond, which is quite famously "ELO Hell", because that is where a lot of naturally talented players end up before deciding…

There seems to be something fundamentally wrong (with the game or with the measurement or with something else) when the top 10% is considered “not good” and the top 5% is “respectable”. I can’t really think of anything where this is true. Games, job performance, educational testing, income & wealth... Top 10% is kind of by definition great!

The game's distribution is a normal distribution - and I think the problem may be with perception. What is the definition of "good"? Personally, I wouldn't claim to be very good at the game despite my past ranking - there are a number of players who would wipe the floor with me where it feels like I'm giving my all and they are barely even trying. At the same time I could probably do the same thing if I dropped down on the ranking. If you watch streams, you commonly hear top players complaining about having to play with "braindead masters players" who are the top 5%. All of this shapes the perception of what good means.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#126

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

speeder wrote: post #117
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overcorrecting here. I've been on the other side of the table for questions like that, and the intent is to ensure that you have been in the appropriate situations before. At most multinational companies, resolving conflicts between two engineering teams is an everyday occurrence, and any new hires above entry level are expected to know how to do it. That some people manage to escape the requirement by…

So you mean, that to work in a large multinational company above entry level, it is mandatory to have worked for one in the past?

Most companies smaller than multinationals are still large enough to have conflicts between teams. The most common failure mode I see is people who simply opt out of those conflicts, preferring to keep their heads down and write code rather than talking about what should be done and how. I'm not familiar with how it works in older companies like IBM, but at the FAANGs of the world, participating in those discussions is what distinguishes entry-level engineers from more senior ones.

If your experience is only in companies with a handful engineers, yes, it can unfortunately be pretty hard to get a senior position at larger companies. It's not impossible, but people will have justified worries about whether you can handle the responsibilities.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#127

Post by irishcoffee »

scottLobster wrote: post #120
SkyBelow wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Based on my interviewing history I'm not in the 95th percentile of programmers - I'm routinely outright rejected and don't even land the on-site interview. And this is basically my best skill for which I've invested an enormous amount of time and energy. This means you aren't high in the 'programming interview' skill set. While related, I consider it distinctly different than the 'programming' skill set. I think it…

Why lie? Ultimately an interview is about convincing the interviewer that you can solve their problems (and extracting information to determine whether you want to solve them in the first place). Assuming you have the ability to solve their problems, it's a pure exercise in communication. Take the "Why are you looking for a job?" question. The meme response is "because I need money duh!", but if you look at in a less…

If I didn’t need a paycheck I wouldn’t be at the interview, or working at all. Getting a consistent paycheck is “planning long term” for 99% of people. Hell, half my social circle probably doesn’t even know what the S&P500 is.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#128

Post by esch89 »

There's such a focus on being proficient in our society... but being bad at stuff is not all bad. It's only bad if you don't accept it and move forward more strategically.

The ability to recognize and admit the areas where we struggle / are mediocre actually allows us to better accomplish our goals.

It took me a long time to realize this... I don't need to be good at anything to make and sell an app, for example. I can outsource the app development, outsource the website design, outsource the marketing... basically - hire people to do all of the work for me. You might say - that takes money! I don't even need to have the money or know how to write a business plan. All I need is an idea - then I outsource the writing of the business plan and use that business plan to attract investors.

There are a lot of very skilled people out there - why not just borrow their skills to accomplish what you want to accomplish?

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#129

Post by didibus »

tyingq wrote: post #9

95th percentile for an SAT score is something like 1450. That's fairly impressive to me. Feels like scoring higher might often have more to do with effort than ability. Is that excluded from the line of thought in the blog post because it's among "people who regularly practice?" Or is it that effort vs ability thing? Not impressive because you were born smart? In a totally "no effort" arena, 95th percentile height fo…

Height is tricky, because its indirect to real goals. So it would depend what you'd want to achieve. Also, I'd think the 95%-ile of height might actually be better then the 100%-ile. Being too tall comes with its own set of limitations.

So again, its all about the framing. If you just frame ir as taller is better, then ya, 95%-ile starts being impressive, but not as much as 96%-ile.

Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach

#130

Post by vkaku »

Cut back to 10 years from now, insert "99.99th% percentile isn't that good" article on Hacker News. Someone tag me then.

No percentiles are good IMO. Often, the overall shape matters, in some cases, like in latency.

And in many other cases, it often becomes the way to go, due to practical challenges in sourcing.

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