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How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

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Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#71

Post by azakai »

nostrademons wrote: post #66
azakai wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It largely is in an employment situation. There are a number of people that are all well-qualified for the job, and any one of them can do it as well as any other. No, that is simply not true. There might be a cutoff over which everyone is "reasonably competent", and perform "acceptably", but there are still huge differences between people. You immediately say "no" to people that don't reach the "acceptable" bar. B…

How large an organization? There are big differences between what a 10-person startup needs and what a 20,000 person mega-corp needs. (FWIW, I would pay much more attention to individual performance differences if I were hiring for my own startup than I would when interviewing for Google. But I thought the context of this discussion was organizations large enough for gender quotas to matter, i.e. the Microsofts and G…

> And I have never worked in an organization with a hiring quota - the companies I've worked for will all take you if you meet the hiring bar

You must have worked only at places where the amount of acceptable candidates is greatly constrained. Either because the hiring bar was extremely high, or there simply were extremely few candidates out there with the right skills.

In practice I've seen quotas everywhere I've worked. At small startups, at the beginning you often have no money to pay salaries, so you give out equity, and you don't want to be diluted into nothing from day one. It's also crucial to find great talent for the very beginnings of your company and codebase.

For large companies, there are always quotas because otherwise they would grow until they quickly become unprofitable, and of course there is a limit to how fast you can integrate new people into an existing structure. Each division and team has a target size for the next year, and they hire up to that limit.

I have never been in a company, big or small, where we said "hire as many good people as you find! no matter how many! we'll take 'em all!"

Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#72

Post by azakai »

jes5199 wrote: post #68
azakai wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It largely is in an employment situation. There are a number of people that are all well-qualified for the job, and any one of them can do it as well as any other. No, that is simply not true. There might be a cutoff over which everyone is "reasonably competent", and perform "acceptably", but there are still huge differences between people. You immediately say "no" to people that don't reach the "acceptable" bar. B…

The startups I've worked at hire everyone who's good. Quotas and headcounts exist at companies like Intel, but VC funded startups can't possibly hire quickly enough to spend all their investment.

Really? I always see funded startups limit their hiring to their investment and because it just isn't practical.

If you are a 10 person startup, there are likely thousands of people in silicon valley who could work for you, and hundreds of thousands who could work remotely. You're not going to hire them all - it would take too long, you would run out of money, and you would have your equity diluted into nothing.

edit: shorten and focus

Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#73

Post by Smudge »

esrauch wrote: post #63
Smudge wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anecdotally it really does exist You can take just about any conceivable trend and anecdotally "confirm" its existence based on a small enough sample size or the right anecdote. That doesn't mean it is statistically relevant.

Can you clarify this, are you claiming that reverse discrimination for women in CS doesn't exist? I wasn't aware that there was any question about that; I understand it to be publicly stated policy at all big tech companies. Note that I'm not making a claim that women are more likely to be hired or promoted; as I said there is a lot of discrimination against women that is less visible which is exactly what reverse di…

I wasn't claiming anything, in terms of whether it does or does not exist.

I was just pointing out that the two anecdotes you presented are merely that. Anecdotes. I see a lot of people on HN making statements like "that claim makes sense to me because [anecdote]," without regard for how representative the sample size is. This is called cherry-picking and is a great way to (unintentionally) reinforce a flawed world view.

It might be true that reverse discrimination in CS is commonly practiced, but your initial statement did nothing in the way of proving or disproving it.

Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#74

Post by nostrademons »

azakai wrote: post #71
nostrademons wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How large an organization? There are big differences between what a 10-person startup needs and what a 20,000 person mega-corp needs. (FWIW, I would pay much more attention to individual performance differences if I were hiring for my own startup than I would when interviewing for Google. But I thought the context of this discussion was organizations large enough for gender quotas to matter, i.e. the Microsofts and G…

> And I have never worked in an organization with a hiring quota - the companies I've worked for will all take you if you meet the hiring bar You must have worked only at places where the amount of acceptable candidates is greatly constrained. Either because the hiring bar was extremely high, or there simply were extremely few candidates out there with the right skills. In practice I've seen quotas everywhere I've wo…

I work at Google. The hiring bar is definitely high, but the quotas are also definitely just guidelines. (I was hired during a hiring freeze, for example.)

I've previously worked at 2 startups, founded 1, and also interned at a large and a mid-size company. None of them had quotas. The two startups were very constrained in the number of acceptable candidates, but the internships had a fairly large pool of candidates to choose from, and would make a position for a suitably-qualified candidate if one did not exist.

Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#75

Post by rdw »

esrauch wrote: post #47
rdw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence that talent can be linearized in such a manner that it is possible to tell objectively within 1% how well an intern will fit at the company? Of course you can linearize on test scores or number of publications or something, but is there evidence that these values will translate precisely to job performance? In my experience, such evidence does not exist, so the zero-sum reasoning is fallacious fr…

I'm interested in your position. I mainly don't agree about the non-zero sum or definite ordering parts (the BigTechCos that I've worked out explicitly stack rank applicants, so that means they do think there is some definite ordering that can at least be approximated), but I don't think that is a really interesting debate to have. I think more interestingly, it seems like what I've seen is looking to hire interns wh…

Not exaggerating at all. I've never been in a position where I felt I had to lower my standards below "the best in the world (for our team)", and I've always been able to turn down a candidate who doesn't meet that criteria without having to worry about having an empty seat. That's how tech hiring should be; you're building an effective team rather than laying bricks.

Maybe I've been lucky with the organizations I've been associated with, but none of them has thought of hiring as filling slots, or of internships as anything other than nurturing the most promising young people to become great hires later.

Are people really hiring interns to get work done? No wonder we have so much unimaginative cookie-cutter software! I mean, there's no doubt that tons of people use absolutely abysmal hiring practices where making certain decisions would make them even worse, but that's not really interesting to talk about.

Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#76

Post by azakai »

nostrademons wrote: post #74
azakai wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I have never worked in an organization with a hiring quota - the companies I've worked for will all take you if you meet the hiring bar You must have worked only at places where the amount of acceptable candidates is greatly constrained. Either because the hiring bar was extremely high, or there simply were extremely few candidates out there with the right skills. In practice I've seen quotas everywhere I've wo…

I work at Google. The hiring bar is definitely high, but the quotas are also definitely just guidelines. (I was hired during a hiring freeze, for example.) I've previously worked at 2 startups, founded 1, and also interned at a large and a mid-size company. None of them had quotas. The two startups were very constrained in the number of acceptable candidates, but the internships had a fairly large pool of candidates…

I think we are saying basically the same thing in other words.

If the hiring bar is very high, it can be set high enough so as to limit the number of people you hire. So you end up hiring only (ones you think are) the very best.

The fact remains that even in such a "quotaless" situation, if you saw 1,000 amazing people you would not hire them all for your 10 person startup. That would be lunacy. In fact you would stop interviewing after hiring a tiny fraction.

The point here is that, contrary to the discussion before, it isn't that there is a "near-infinite" amount of candidates of equal talent. All companies want to hire the best, and the right amount of them within some reasonable range.

So it isn't that you can pick a criterion like "we will hire only left-handed people" without that having an effect, since left-handedness is only about 10% of the population (of all coder skill levels). If you start looking at far fewer candidates, you will miss some of the very best that otherwise you would want to hire.

Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#77

Post by esrauch »

Smudge wrote: post #73
esrauch wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify this, are you claiming that reverse discrimination for women in CS doesn't exist? I wasn't aware that there was any question about that; I understand it to be publicly stated policy at all big tech companies. Note that I'm not making a claim that women are more likely to be hired or promoted; as I said there is a lot of discrimination against women that is less visible which is exactly what reverse di…

I wasn't claiming anything, in terms of whether it does or does not exist. I was just pointing out that the two anecdotes you presented are merely that. Anecdotes. I see a lot of people on HN making statements like "that claim makes sense to me because [anecdote]," without regard for how representative the sample size is. This is called cherry-picking and is a great way to (unintentionally) reinforce a flawed world v…

I'm aware of what "anecdotally" means, that is exactly why I qualified my statement with the word "anecdotally".

Re: How to Reinforce Impostor Syndrome

#78

Post by espyb »

kylebrown wrote: post #60
espyb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. A good friend wouldn't. That's a comment from someone looking to find a reason to explain their own lack of success. A good friend would congratulate you, regardless of whether you beat them out for the job or not. Sounds like a case of sour grapes to me... and some people don't just have a few, they have entire vineyards. Nothing will ever be their fault, it can't be because the other person was more skille…

A good but insensitive friend. And maybe he was right (though overstated), perhaps being female was an advantage in getting the intership. If she wasn't sensitive, she could have responded, "maybe so, but you had the advantage of being male." And she'd be right.

I see your point, there are likely just as many people who consider being male an advantage, as there are people who consider being female to be an advantage in this situation. The only person(s) who actually knows why she got the internship and he didn't is/are the person(s) making that decision. Frankly I'm more concerned with her self-doubt than I am with his lack of tack. If you aren't going to believe in yourself, why would you expect anyone else to?
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