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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

#161

Post by SkyBelow »

yibg wrote: post #148
SkyBelow wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve actually mostly answered honestly, but also follow up with what I’m doing to try to improve on this weakness. For example I know one of my weaknesses is I get impatient and cut people off half way, believing I already know where they are going. Besides being rude I’m also wrong some times. It’s a legitimate short coming, but the key is I’m aware of it and am activity doing something about it. Some interviewers a…

But is that your biggest weakness? Or is that a smaller weakness that, while still being a definite weakness, is socially acceptable and something you can show improvement on?

If they asked what is one of your weaknesses and how are you working to overcome it, then that is a perfectly legitimate answer. Perhaps too many interviewers ask for the biggest weakness when they actually mean to ask a question more like that.

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

#162

Post by orasis »

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…

Top 5% deadlifting normalized by body weight is not hard at all. It just requires consistency.

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

#163

Post by SkyBelow »

whatshisface wrote: post #134
SkyBelow wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

The key is to lie about what is your biggest weakness, while still giving an answer that doesn't come across as a lie nor being dismissive of the interviewer/question. The political tool of answering a related but different question that has a more favorable answer plays well here, such as instead answering "What is one of your weaknesses and how are you overcoming it?"

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

#164

Post by SkyBelow »

kenforthewin wrote: post #133
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…

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.

>Based on my interviewing history I'm not in the 95th percentile of programmers

I wanted to call out the problem with this logic because it was something I also struggled with at the very beginning of my career. There is more to the response than what I replied to, but my reply is only limited to that specific line of logic and not the reply in whole.

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

#165

Post by eslaught »

> It's known that having laypeople try to figure out how to improve among themselves is among the worst possible ways to learn something, direct instruction is more effective and having a skilled coach or teacher give one-on-one instruction is more effective still.

Is this actually true? Does anyone have citations for this?

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

#167

Post by bigbadgoose »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #131
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, et…

Ranked and unranked already exist to address your insight

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

#168

Post by empath75 »

hearthstonebad wrote: post #32
empath75 wrote: post #5

Aside from all the other things he said, at least for games — 1 out of 20 people get there, and the vast majority of people who play a game play very casually. So if you put a reasonable amount of effort at all into getting good at a game, you’re likely to make the top 5% of players or close to it. I play hearthstone about, I dunno, an hour a day or so, while I’m on the train. I’ve never made it to the legend rank, b…

this is because improving your rank at hearthstone is a matter of playing as many viable games as possible. the outcome of most matches is mostly dependent on randomness as opposed to player error. The largest source of randomness being the order of card draw, which can turn around a highly favorable or unfavorable matchup between decks. the actions of players have very little impact in hearthstone. in a typical game…

> this is because improving your rank at hearthstone is a matter of playing as many viable games as possible. the outcome of most matches is mostly dependent on randomness as opposed to player error.

I think because of the matching system it seems that way because you quickly get to people at your own skill level so randomness and luck feel like they have more of an impact. You pretty much by definition get to players you’ll lose against half the time pretty quickly. From then you have to figure out how to get just a 1 or 2 percent edge and play a lot of games.

I lose half my games at rank 3, but put me up against rank 20 or even rank 10 players and I’ll win 80 or 90% of my games. I’ve done the climb from the bottom a few times and it’s basically trivial. Even against people playing well tuned net decks. So yeah, skill matters.

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

#170

Post by disease »

astrieanna wrote: post #124
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?

Not yet, but I am planning on re-visiting learning how to draw. I've been looking at some different approaches and the one that seems to address my weaknesses the best is an online course named 'Draw a Box'.
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