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After Credentials

paulgraham.com

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191–200 of 209 posts

Re: After Credentials

#191

Post by brett1211 »

The hiring process in general is outdated, if not broken. It is exactly the same (Resume to Interview) regardless of the type of job in question (Banker vs Developer vs Babysitter). Where is the customization?

As more and more work becomes digitally distributable thought-work, why aren’t we judging people based on relevant examples of their work? Why is an entry level hedgefund analyst judged by a 30 minute "tell me about yourself" interview as opposed to the performance of her personal account (and the verbalization of the rationale behind it)?

I think it is interesting that we just assume that "talking to someone" is the ultimate tool for determining intelligence, competence, and fit. Ultimately, talking to someone measures how well they can talk, not how well they perform. Are there more pertinent tools for assessment or will hiring always come down to how we "feel" about someone after a 30 minute interview?

(Good related post on interviewing by Eric Ries: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/abcdefs-of...)

Also, a provocative essay on "elite education" that is a good foil to Paul’s point about how elite education makes people feel about themselves. From this author’s perspective, it is a disadvantage. Get past the first four paragraphs and some ridiculous ivy-towerishness and I think he makes some good points): http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.htm...

Postscript: This is a tangential point related to measurement. I just spent a scholarship year interviewing entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to understand how they evaluate or measure the progress of early stage ventures before the standard financial metrics become available. Paul, would love to hear your thoughts given your unique position. Thanks.

Re: After Credentials

#192

Post by stephant »

bd wrote: post #176
DaniFong wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, one issue from the SHJT list is that they weight more recent awards more heavily. Cambridge was a preeminent force in science and engineering in the earliest half of the century, but seems now to have diminished somewhat relative to others.

Here is a list of the Nobel Laureates per university straight from the source (based on affiliation at the time of the Nobel Prize announcement): http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/universities.html Wikipedia has another list based on what universities claim themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Laureates_by_univ... So while Caltech is doing very well indeed, there are 15 universities with more…

The first list is the list of the Nobel Laureates they OWN not they EDUCATED! Richer is the University more N.L it can hire and pay. :)

The Wiki is the one.

Re: After Credentials

#193

Post by stephant »

pl0nk wrote: post #187
mbac wrote: post #183

The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur: MLstate - currently in stealth mode - is an IT company, whose functional programming approach to SaaS and cloud computing has been recently recognized by the French Ministry of Research Innovation Award and support from leading investors. We are research-oriented, we value technical excellence and innovation and we believe our technology has…

> the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur Hmm. You might want to check the etymology of the word.

< the etymology points where you suggest :) but the fact is that in France if you can align a "good" school name in your CV you can be a moron you get the job!

Re: After Credentials

#194

Post by fab13n »

Reactions on a couple of secondary points:

First, there's a huge drawback in the "reward accordingly to the value you produce" paradigm: you can't punish people accordingly to the value they destroy. So if you estimate that an operation has 50% chances of winning $100M, and 50% chances of loosing $200M, your rational interest is to make that operation, even if it's not in your employer's interest, because you can't lose more than your job (this only works if your salary is much lower than $100M, but you can pick other numbers).

This effect is much stronger when individuals work for extremely wealthy companies, but I'd guess the protection from bankruptcy must have some comparable effect. It depends on your national business laws obviously.

About the footnote "[3] Progressive tax rates will tend to damp [the] effect [of money as an incentive]": it's only true if you suppose that money has linear value for individual, i.e. if going from $50K to $550K is roughly as valuable as going from $5M to $5.5M. But if you suppose that money has less importance when you have more of it, states should rather get it from where it's the least efficient as an incentive, i.e. from wealthier taxpayers.

Re: After Credentials

#195

Post by tmcmhughes »

"History suggests that, all other things being equal, a society prospers in proportion to its ability to prevent parents from influencing their children's success directly."

I'm not sure I agree. Surely a lesson from the fall of Communism is that private property matters to the efficient functioning of an economy; and the value of most private property to most people is in their ability to transmit it to their heirs.

Obviously there is a need for balance here. Too much inheritance and society loses all cohesion; too little, and society loses forward motion. (I'm deliberately ignoring any moral question about whether inheritance is unjust; this is purely about the pragmatic question of what creates the most wealth for the most people.)

At a macro level, of course, we want the best person for the job. The best line in The Communist Manifesto, actually, is (this quote may not be precise) "to each according to his needs; from each according to his abilities." The hard part is knowing how to get there!

Thank you for an interesting essay on a fundamental question.

Re: After Credentials

#197

Post by perpetapaul »

Paul sees a major trend - the value and meaning of "education" is changing. For too long, it meant getting into a school, going to classes and graduating. That means less today when you can be "educated" on how to learn a new software language, develop a market-driven solution and earn a living from it.

I am one of those who 10 years ago stopped caring about hiring people based on college degrees. I cared more (and still do) about their skills, abilities and what they had created.

I am also a firm disbeliever in having to get software "certifications" - they are meaningless, as Paul proves out, because they have no indication in regards to performance.

Re: After Credentials

#198

Post by Radix »

Prrometheus wrote: post #171
illumen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the left/right abstraction is really silly. It's a broken, continually redefined buzzword concept that is too simple... so don't bother with it.

I don't think that's true. There are certain ideologies that travel together, whose fortunes tend to wax and wane together. If you told me an ideology (say, environmentalism or unionism), then I could easily tell you whether it was on the right or left (in this case, both left). There are exceptions in practice, but to say the labels are meaningless is silly.

Meh, I disagree. There are groups that claim to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. There's no catch phrase for someone who tends toward slight conservatism, but is generally open to government intervention, though I imagine such people exist. That's at least two dimensions to consider, it seems to me we should at least have a plane.

Here's one, Net Neutrality, what is that?

Re: After Credentials

#199

Post by syntostic »

definitely true. meritocracy is the way a free market works; instead of the alarmist notion that the fit survive and thus it's unfair for the unfit, i see a new treatment:

the good will cause the bad to conform, either by peer pressure, economic competition, or simply by social imitation.

the human being is not designed to be wiped out like now-extinct animals, nor were those animals unfit for survival. instead, the human being is pre-programmed to survive. got a sprained ankle? it self-heals. so does the body--and the mind.

the measurement system then will work out just fine. it will be only a matter of time.

Jamal in Beijing

Re: After Credentials

#200

Post by rakesh_d »

You seem to be overlooking the fact that most of the times the academic credentials of a candidate tend to be directly proportional to his/her performance. In places like South Korea or India (my place), it is damn hard to find qualified people for the posts of professors even in 'Institutes of Excellence' like the IITs. There's an astronomical amount of gap between the amount of funding a normal university receives and the grants that IITs receive. It should be then very easy for a prospective employer to decide between a candidate from IIT and one from a normal university. The candidate from IIT most probably (99.99%) outperforms the other guy.

That's why admission to the IITs becomes the all-important thing not only for the students, but also to the parents whose only hope to get rich is through their wards. The offshoring / outsourcing phenomenon further catalyzes the sexiness of 'Brand IIT' as the students from IIT end up with offers from MNCs, which are far more lucrative than what the Indian Space Research Organization offers to its most senior scientist.

IITs get to chose their students from a vast pool of 500,000 students who cram day and night for more than 3 years during their high school. This further adds to their glamor. Hence it is not uncommon to find companies preferring a chemical engineering graduate from an IIT over a computer science graduate from other universities for the job of a programmer.

Thus third world citizens still live in the age where "Credentials Do Matter".

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