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What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

chronicle.com

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Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#41

Post by Strilanc »

I think of English courses as teaching you about being convincing to humans. Correctness is important, but secondary. This is probably best exemplified by anecdotes being arguably the most evocative form of explanation, and yet the weakest form of evidence.

It makes sense to me that a technology company would downweight achievements in the humanities when hiring (for their technical positions). It's a noisier signal. Computers and nature aren't convinced or understood in the same way as humans are, so a lot of the English major benefits get lost in the translation to STEM.

(Serious question: what are the best examples of people in the humanities contributing to science and technology? For example, Noam Chomsky basically invented formal grammars.)

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#42

Post by mathetic »

williamcotton wrote: post #27
jzwinck wrote: post #10

This article is ridiculous. While there are certain areas (e.g. pattern matching) where a typical English major is likely to do well, rigorous logical thinking of the sort needed when we program computers is simply not developed as well as it is in CS, EE, and various other programs. As a third-year undergrad I took a 400-level course on logic from the humanities department. I remember being blown away by how inept t…

> They were simply unprepared for the torrent of proofs, deductions, tautologies, De Morgan's laws, etc. All of which I never see used in a professional capacity for the vast majority of software developers. What I do see used quite often is the ability to communicate to customers or other engineers in a clear, succinct and enjoyable manner using the English language.

That is simply because the top of the stack in our field is full of application developers and not computer architects. I fail to see how quantity becomes more important than quality.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#43

Post by ThrustVectoring »

michaelochurch wrote: post #9
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #7

"Guess the teacher's password" is a strategy that works for many English majors and few Computer Science majors. You can succeed at rhetoric by either learning how to make good rhetoric, or by learning how to tell people what they want to hear. It's significantly more difficult to write good programs by learning how to tell people what they want to hear.

There are English professors who are legitimately hard to game, people who are smarter than most or all of us but have chosen to focus on something different. Yes, there's more noise in the system in the humanities, but don't underestimate them just because they have a different skill set. However, the game-the-system students generally avoid those professors, who get a reputation for being difficult graders. So your…

Google's entire hiring process is slanted towards rejecting bad candidates, not towards accepting good ones. The "more noise in the system" is exactly why Google is wary of candidates with a humanities background.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#45

Post by Alupis »

api wrote: post #20
jzwinck wrote: post #10

This article is ridiculous. While there are certain areas (e.g. pattern matching) where a typical English major is likely to do well, rigorous logical thinking of the sort needed when we program computers is simply not developed as well as it is in CS, EE, and various other programs. As a third-year undergrad I took a 400-level course on logic from the humanities department. I remember being blown away by how inept t…

I'm not sure about typical English majors vs. CS majors, but in a cognitive sense there is quite a bit of overlap in certain areas. Writing and high-comprehension reading involves the deep understanding and manipulation of language. So does programming.

Yes, but CS majors come out of school with some level of understanding about how computing works... not just how to write code.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#46

Post by vehementi »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #24
jzwinck wrote: post #10

This article is ridiculous. While there are certain areas (e.g. pattern matching) where a typical English major is likely to do well, rigorous logical thinking of the sort needed when we program computers is simply not developed as well as it is in CS, EE, and various other programs. As a third-year undergrad I took a 400-level course on logic from the humanities department. I remember being blown away by how inept t…

in fact, the author attempt to tear down an argument completely of his own invention: 'But then I read Bock’s rationale, and that’s when I nearly lose a mouthful of Cheerios: Unlike English—and presumably other non-STEM fields—computer science “signals a rigor in your thinking,” an ability “to think in a formal and logical and structured way.” He said what?' from this the author decided to read that ONLY CS majors ca…

This would be a legitimate critique if Bock were saying "Here's how I screen through 100,000 resumes". Your interpretation would serve as a good heuristic. But that's not what we're talking about: he implied that, all things being equal, he would hire a B student majoring in CS over an A student majoring in English because of "signalling" when comparing two candidates he had to choose from.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#49

Post by stuki »

api wrote: post #20
jzwinck wrote: post #10

This article is ridiculous. While there are certain areas (e.g. pattern matching) where a typical English major is likely to do well, rigorous logical thinking of the sort needed when we program computers is simply not developed as well as it is in CS, EE, and various other programs. As a third-year undergrad I took a 400-level course on logic from the humanities department. I remember being blown away by how inept t…

I'm not sure about typical English majors vs. CS majors, but in a cognitive sense there is quite a bit of overlap in certain areas. Writing and high-comprehension reading involves the deep understanding and manipulation of language. So does programming.

All "language" is not the same. To be reliably and consistently machine executable, a language needs to facilitate manipulations that are logically rigorous. While in a language for general human communication, emphasis needs to be on manipulations that are more fluid and aesthetic in nature. Facility with one does not necessarily translate well to another. Particularly in the English -> Programming direction, which makes it doubly dangerous to assume it does, when hiring for STEM type jobs. Extreme aspies and savants aside, most good programmers can communicate well in English, in the sense they can formulate their intent precisely. While the converse is much, much rarer.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#50

Post by Spooky23 »

jerf wrote: post #34

Of course you can teach a rigorous English course. The problem is that you can also not. I took an intro to philosophy course in which we were graded reasonably rigorously on our logic. But the prof also made it clear via both a bit of text and a bit of subtext that we were getting so graded because nobody really takes the old stuff that seriously anyhow, so there's no sacred oxes getting gored. You can write an essa…

Your position can apply to anything. There are Computer Science graduates who cannot tell you what a linked list is.

You need to look for signals that imply humanities majors that are smart. Do they have published articles in student publications? Were they active in campus organizations?

End of the day, look for smart people who get things done.

If you need specific, rigorous domain expertise, hire somebody with a degree in that discipline of engineering or whatever. Otherwise, you're better off with a smart person who knows how to think and communicate vs. someone with an engineering degree who cannot function.

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