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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

#121

Post by mbubb »

What I am saying here is anecdotal (but when did that ever stop anyone)...

I have to agree with Bock.

I was an English major at a solid school (Rutgers) and went on to do some grad work in Comp Lit at NYU. Years later I took CS/ Math classes at Stevens - there is no comparison in the difficulty. The only exception were the political theory classes I took which were grounded in Hegel - they were hard.

I have met 10 times as many Science / Tech people who were relatively well versed in Literature and/or Art than the contrary. There tends to be absolute illiteracy in Math and hard Science in the Humanities.

I remember years ago one of my profs got caught up in an embarrassing incident where a faked article which conflated Relativism and Relativity passed muster at a critical theory journal and was published with glaring scientific errors. (The Sokal Affair)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Now that i am in a tech field I wish I had spent more time studying math instead of so much Englsh and Political Theory as an undergrad.

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

#122

Post by VikingCoder »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #119
VikingCoder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like he wants those topflight English majors after all: graduates adept at conceiving, articulating, and supporting their own ideas—not some “specific answer” the professor is looking for. Bock just doesn’t realize they are what he is looking for. Guy Raffa goes so far as to claim that those topflight English majors are what Bock is looking for. If that were true, then a team built on this core principal…

Nowhere does Raffa claim that a team built entirely of English majors would be better than one built of any other constituency. That's a strawman you erected. QED.

Raffa says, "they [topflight English majors] are what he is looking for." Topflight English majors are the constituency Raffa says Bock should hire. You have to purposefully misread what Raffa has written, in order to see it any other way.

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

#123

Post by godzilla82 »

lloeki wrote: post #52
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.

> All of which I never see used in a professional capacity for the vast majority of software developers. Anecdotal irony: not 24 hours ago a colleague and I had to reverse engineer a hairy mess of deeply nested if/then/else clauses that should not exist that turned out to be composed mostly of tautologies. I definitely wish to throw books at some people, preferably of the steel-bound, razor sharp edged kind. Conclusi…

I feel, that no amount of manipulation of fundamental rules of logic can help the people you are aghast at. The ones who infer the broken "common sense" logic propositions(a=>b implies b=>a). Also, I know a lot more of non CS people who have excellent analytical skills than the ones with a CS background.

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

#124

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Spooky23 wrote: post #50
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 d…

jerf's position can apply to anything. That doesn't mean that it applies to all things with equal probability, though.

I'm fine with saying that there are rigorous English courses, and non-rigorous CS ones. But I still expect that, on average, the CS courses are more rigorous. Partly that's due to postmodernism, as jerf pointed out, but partly it's just because the subject matter of CS can be more rigorously defined and described than that of English.

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

#125

Post by kennymeyers »

frogpelt wrote: post #77
kennymeyers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The fact is most English majors don't enjoy heavy duty math or science as much" These statements need data to back them up, Mr. Science.

Perhaps I shouldn't call it a fact without data but I assume English majors choose English over the other choices because they feel that they would enjoy English more than the other choices. Is that logical?

Absolutely, but that doesn't exclude them from enjoying and loving the other topics.

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

#126

Post by smtddr »

philwelch wrote: post #102
smtddr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Technical people often underestimate the value of good communication. Not just underestimate, even outright condemn. Like the people who defend Linus's form of "communication" on the kernel mailing list as "to the point" or "efficient" . Anyone who thinks that's an acceptable style of communication from/to any human being is wrong and a perfect example of why the tech companies in general should probably make their…

Linus excels at communication. He makes it crystal clear what he's trying to convey and the standard he's setting, and has coordinated the development of the most widely-deployed kernel on earth entirely via email for decades. He communicates perfectly well. He's an asshole on occasion, but that's not the same as communicating poorly.

Completely disagree. I don't care how popular his kernel is; his communication style is ridiculous and the fact that there are so many devs that have no problem working for him isn't a sign that his communication is good.... it's a sign all the people working with him don't realize, or ignore, or accept his ridiculous behavior and is just an example of why the tech industry needs a communications/social relations course for a lot of engineers.

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

#127

Post by philwelch »

smtddr wrote: post #126
philwelch wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus excels at communication. He makes it crystal clear what he's trying to convey and the standard he's setting, and has coordinated the development of the most widely-deployed kernel on earth entirely via email for decades. He communicates perfectly well. He's an asshole on occasion, but that's not the same as communicating poorly.

Completely disagree. I don't care how popular his kernel is; his communication style is ridiculous and the fact that there are so many devs that have no problem working for him isn't a sign that his communication is good.... it's a sign all the people working with him don't realize, or ignore, or accept his ridiculous behavior and is just an example of why the tech industry needs a communications/social relations cou…

Are you judging by results or by your own subjective taste? Because I find results more interesting (and persuasive).

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

#128

Post by smtddr »

philwelch wrote: post #127
smtddr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. I don't care how popular his kernel is; his communication style is ridiculous and the fact that there are so many devs that have no problem working for him isn't a sign that his communication is good.... it's a sign all the people working with him don't realize, or ignore, or accept his ridiculous behavior and is just an example of why the tech industry needs a communications/social relations cou…

Are you judging by results or by your own subjective taste? Because I find results more interesting (and persuasive).

Even if maximum efficiency is achieved by his style of communication, I still don't agree with it. Efficiency is not more important than being civil.

"Ends don't justify the means" kinda thing... but I know I'm not going to convince you in this thread; and you're definitely not going to convince me otherwise. There are too many rude people in tech that don't know how to communicate properly with people. Rudeness has somehow become acceptable in the tech-industry so they can't see the problem they have.... and it _is_ a problem.

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

#129

Post by philwelch »

smtddr wrote: post #128
philwelch wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you judging by results or by your own subjective taste? Because I find results more interesting (and persuasive).

Even if maximum efficiency is achieved by his style of communication, I still don't agree with it. Efficiency is not more important than being civil. "Ends don't justify the means" kinda thing... but I know I'm not going to convince you in this thread; and you're definitely not going to convince me otherwise. There are too many rude people in tech that don't know how to communicate properly with people. Rudeness has…

I'm trying to draw a distinction between effective communication and not being an asshole. They are different problems. One is a problem of ability and the other is a problem of temperament.

Conversely to Linus, someone can be perfectly polite and pleasant but fail to communicate effectively because they don't convey any meaningful information. Such a person would have poor communication skills, but not be an asshole. Linus has good communication skills, but is an asshole.

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

#130

Post by JoeAltmaier »

deathcakes wrote: post #90
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. But then you're beyond the first-layer hiring filter, which is essentially FizzBuzz.
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