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

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

#81

Post by morgante »

frogpelt wrote: post #18

So one of the very few English professors in the country with a computer science degree is offended by Google's hiring practices. The fact is most English majors don't enjoy heavy duty math or science as much and it's not that weird to expect a computer science major to depend more on logic and rigor when approaching a problem than it is for someone whose thesis was devoted to a literary analysis of the symbolism beh…

> enjoy heavy duty math or science

Neither do I, and I'm a CS major.

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

#82

Post by PhasmaFelis »

philwelch wrote: post #65
williamcotton wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's easier to find CS majors who can communicate effectively than English majors who have the logic skills to read, write, and debug code. Especially at the level demanded by a company like Google. If you're a consultancy that writes CRUD apps I can see emphasizing communication skills over technical skills but you're not Google.

> It's easier to find CS majors who can communicate effectively than English majors who have the logic skills to read, write, and debug code.

Is it? I've met quite a lot of coders who think they're good communicators but really, really aren't.

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

#83

Post by qwerta »

I think most humanity studies develop critical thinking, but at very shallow level.

Mathematicians have to nest 100s levels of logical operations to get proof they want. Programming around 50 to 10 logical operations. Lawyers perhaps 10. Literature nests perhaps 5 levels of logical operations.

There is simply no apparatus to manage this level of complexity in human language. Just try to describe 3th level integral or matrix operations with pure words. It is like analyzing complex program on TI programmable calculator with 5 line display.

And I think English is not very logic friendly language, too many double meanings and context sensitivity. I like German for its logic and Esperanto for its simplicity.

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

#84

Post by nhebb »

YarnBall wrote: post #54
nhebb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the time of me writing this, it looks like you're being downvoted (which I don't think is fair), but I think your answer points to one of the problems. Grading in the humanities is more subjective. By analogy, Olympic gymnastic scores are subject to a lot more disagreements than 100 meter sprint times.

Let them downvote me: let them bring their slings and arrows! :) I can't argue against what you have said. The humanities are subjective but that does not mean that they are not valuable but the greater problem is that there is very little demand in the global economy for essays on social contract theory and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and anti-industrialism. The best thing we can hope for is that the humanities play…

I agree with you. I think the humanities are important not only for what they teach, but also in that they attract people with a different view of the world (and way of thinking, perhaps) than is common in the sciences. From the perspective of the Google hiring manager, though, filtering based on degree type is probably one of the easiest cuts to make when you're operating at that scale.

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

#85

Post by pingswept »

mapgrep wrote: post #26
joelgrus wrote: post #3

It's not that you can't learn rigor and critical thinking skills as an English major, it's that it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without learning those things. Hence the word "signals".

> it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without learning those things. How do you know this? (You know, since we're talking about logical rigor.)

(I''m not the OP.)

I have a degree in English, and another one in mechanical engineering.

The 9 English classes that I took were uniformly less difficult and less rigorous than the 25 or so engineering classes I took. When I studied English, I already had a reasonably well-developed understanding of logic, but it was not used in my English classes. I would estimate that I could have earned a B average in English with 5-10x less time spent than in engineering. Standardized tests suggest that I have more aptitude for engineering (or at least math), so English should have been harder for me if the curricula were of the same difficulty.

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

#86

Post by tomp »

vehementi wrote: post #46
gr3yh47 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that's exactly what "signalling" means - and Bock has decided (presumably based on experience and statistics) that the positive signal of CS is and B student is stronger than the positive signal of A student of English.

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

#87

Post by nerfhammer »

YarnBall wrote: post #16
joelgrus wrote: post #3

It's not that you can't learn rigor and critical thinking skills as an English major, it's that it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without learning those things. Hence the word "signals".

As former English literature and philosophy student (I am studying computer science while working for a startup now) I can tell you at that at my university you would not get an A if your reasoning and critical analysis were poor. When I was studying it was not uncommon for STEM students to get 100% for tests and exams but such a thing was unheard of in the humanities faculty. If an undergraduate got 100% for an Engl…

> When I was studying it was not uncommon for STEM students to get 100% for tests and exams but such a thing was unheard of in the humanities faculty.

Does this mean that grading in the humanities is more difficult or more arbitrary?

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

#88

Post by dkuntz2 »

vehementi wrote: post #46
gr3yh47 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Define "all things being equal", because unless the CS major and English major have both taken exactly the same courses (in which case, why aren't they both double CS/English majors?), things aren't equal.

If you've got your two students, and they're both applying for a software development position, wouldn't you rather have the person who's taken formal CS courses? Even if the English major has worked on some software projects on the side, the CS major probably has some experience with data structures and algorithms, and being able to think about those.

I'm not saying an English major can't do the same things, or that because someone studied CS they're better than anyone else. What I'm trying to get at is that your average B student who studied CS is probably a better candidate for a technical position than your average A student who studied English.

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

#89

Post by dkuntz2 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #82
philwelch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to find CS majors who can communicate effectively than English majors who have the logic skills to read, write, and debug code. Especially at the level demanded by a company like Google. If you're a consultancy that writes CRUD apps I can see emphasizing communication skills over technical skills but you're not Google.

> It's easier to find CS majors who can communicate effectively than English majors who have the logic skills to read, write, and debug code. Is it? I've met quite a lot of coders who think they're good communicators but really, really aren't.

Great, but they're not the ones evaluating if they have good communications skills, the people hiring them are...

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

#90

Post by deathcakes »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #12
michaelochurch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah but in CS, the program works or it doesn't. So there's none of that wiggle room. CS degree definitely signals something - a minimum competency that is uncertain in a humanities student.

While I agree with the main thrust of your point, there are exceptions. A program can work, but be 1000 lines too long with a ridiculous set of branching if statements. There is also the concept of working well, or efficiently, or elegantly.
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