95th percentile isn't that hard to reach • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by j-c-hewitt » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

krick wrote: post #57

Yeah, no, that's just about lousy definitions. The premise suggests that it's easy to become 95%-ile in anything, say, deadlifting among men who deadlift and not just entire population of the planet Earth. Before I can suggest author to try, he hastily corrects himself, that it doesn't mean "95%-ile among people who practice regularly", so "men who deadlift" is invalid domain after all. Rather, it should be... "peopl…

95th percentile of the Overwatch ladder is also not the same thing as 95th percentile of competitive tournament players. This entire article is just full of category fallacies to try to support a vague subjective assertion.

Gaming ladders with automated ELO systems are also not run like tournament ELO systems in more controlled environments like competitive chess. Games like Overwatch, WoW, Starcraft, Hearthstone, etc. will not dynamically update when the player is inactive in order to not discourage players. You have to lose games to lose your ELO category rank, although obviously you can go up and down the leaderboard without playing games. There are some gaming rank systems like CSGO that have some rank decay for inactivity but it is just at a flat rate.

So, "95th percentile" in these systems is not actually indicative of that unless it is based on the precise rank on the leaderboard. In many of these seasonal games rank inflation happens towards the end of the season because of this lack of passive decay. It means that at the beginning of the season, the top rank is very competitive, but as people become less active as the season goes on, it becomes easier to attain rank.

In a lot of domains, if you are 95th percentile, you are extremely competitive. You may be noncompetitive with the 99%ile cohort and the bottom of the 99%ile may be noncompetitive with the 0.1%ile, but to argue that that's not "very good" is just goofy perfectionism. The fact that the author is using goofy noncontrolled systems as an example to support his weakly-defined subjective argument only undermines his own case.

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

#132

Post by GCA10 » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

avip wrote: post #90

merrywhether wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As an nba fan I find that qoute really misplaced. It's not like you "settle" for a Pippen? He's probably a top 50 player ever.

Continuing the analogy, Michael Jordan doesn't get to display his full Jordan-ness on the court unless he's got a teammate like Pippen who creates opportunities and solves problems that will be huge energy drains on Jordan if only Jordan is there to solve them. (Guarding opponents; salvaging something out of busted plays, etc.)

Finding stars and paying them a lot is pretty easy. It also isn't necessarily the path to great success, especially if you can't build a coherent rest of the team. Just ask Allen Iverson.

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

#133

Post by kenforthewin » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #59

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…

>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…

I think you don't get the point of OP's comment. Maybe they are simply not in 95th percentile of interviewees, or maybe they are indeed a middling programmer. Their point was more to accept your skills and talents for what they are rather than getting caught up in being the best, to the detriment of yourself and those around you.

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

#134

Post by whatshisface » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #87

eshyong wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with your points, although I wouldn't use the word "lie". "Marketing yourself" would be a better way to put it. It's not about falsely representing your experience; it's about knowing and emphasizing your strengths, and aligning that with the needs of the team.

I'm talking things like "what is your biggest weakness". You don't answer that honestly, you come up with a 'nice to have' weakness but that still seems enough of a weakness to not appear to be holding the question in contempt. If it comes to why you are leaving your current job, depending upon why you actually left you could be able to give honest answers, half truths than hide the major reason, and twist the facts…

Has anyone ever had success with simply deflecting that question? I've never been asked but I wouldn't lie or start a therapy session if I was.

Examples of what I mean by deflection:

"My greatest weakness is for Gouda cheese."

"If I knew what my weaknesses were I would already have worked to resolve them."

"Triceps."

"I don't have any weakness, what are you talking about?"

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

#135

Post by brtkdotse » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

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…

Hah! I often reflect on (the purely fictional Characterization of) Salieri in that movie. Especially when he talks about mediocrity - I am 100% a mediocre developer. And you know what? It’s perfectly fine. Most of the development work out there is LOB apps that don’t require programming Mozart’s.

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

#136

Post by scottLobster » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

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?

Can you blame a company for prioritizing people who have worked in similar environments before?

In large corporations technical responsibility is often more distributed than in startups just due to size, so your technical skills, while important, are typically less important than they would be in small-business/startup land. What fills in the gap is communication skills and your ability to navigate corporate social networks. If you can't conflict resolve issues between engineering teams, well guess what? That engineering team you can't work with is going to hold you up and cost the company money while your superior, who really has better things to do, has to take time out of their day to address the issue you should have been able to handle.

Not saying it should be a mandatory skill, but you can't blame large corporations for filtering for it. It's a factor.

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

#137

Post by gumby » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

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…

(This is a side point to your excellent comment)

The movie really distorted what we know about Salieri and Mozart. That doesn’t matter in that Amadeus is just a fun story and doesn’t claim to be any sort of documentary, and such a story made a good case study for your comment.

But Salieri was a very good composer and I personally like more of his work than Mozart’s (though Mozart at his best blew away most of his contemporaries, including Salieri). Mozart appears to have lived a more conventional middle class life and Salieri a more contemporaneously successful one which is kind of henopposite if he film.

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

#138

Post by msrmthehomeless » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

I'll take this article more seriously if the author is 95th percentile in css

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

#139

Post by scottLobster » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #127

scottLobster wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So your long term goal is stability, and you'll be reliable and consistent in addition to the talent they've clearly already noticed by bringing you in for an interview. From a thematic perspective you're a sturdy foundation they can build their company on.

See how much better that sounds? And there are probably better ways of putting it. Granted if an interviewer isn't looking for that mentality it could be an issue, but that's a big sign you probably wouldn't want that job anyway.

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

#140

Post by brailsafe » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #127

scottLobster wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Getting a paycheck, for a lot of people, is planning for the next time they don't have a paycheck. The people in the former group that you mention might be long term investment, but imo are more likely to promise their future paychecks to a car dealer