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In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

nytimes.com

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Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#111

Post by rollo_tommasi »

themstheones wrote: post #108
hkmurakami wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR. from: "The trick Max Levchin used to hire the best engineers at PayPal" Levchin realized the best engineers wanted to be challenged both in their jobs and in the interview process. “We cultivated a very public culture of being incredibly hard to get in. Even though it was actually very hard to get good people to even interview, we made a point of broadc…

There are approximately 7 people on earth with an IQ of 190 or higher, so I'm calling bullshit on that requirement.

That's clearly hyperbole to illustrate the perception they wanted to create, not an actual checkbox on the hiring form.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#112

Post by troni »

Every time I click any link on HN that points to qz.com I get QZ without any reference to the article in question. Currently it points to "Why Tesla wants to get into the battery-swapping business that’s failing for everyone else"... in Chrome. Firefox seems to work. Terrible website.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#113

Post by raverbashing »

ownagefool wrote: post #109
raverbashing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30k? Data. Not Big Data And "Small Big Data" is probably data as well.

He's not talking about 30k rows, he's talking about 30k people. It could easily be big data if you monitor & document their every working moment, but they probably aren't doing that so you're probably right.

Yes, 30k people, so it's what? Some interview reports, some performance reviews, HR report/history of the employee?

It really doesn't look like something big.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#114

Post by kybernetyk »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #110
kybernetyk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That's a challenge. I'm going to go interview there just to prove to these suckers that I'm better." Well that, or: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Dunning Kruger does not mean that unskilled people think they do better than skilled people. On average, the more competent people at any skill will rate their abilities higher than the less competent people. See this graph[0] from the original study[1] for a better explanation. [0]: https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/p480x... [1]: http://ttsg.org/pdfs/Dunning-Kruger%20Effect.pdf

I meant it the other way round: That some smart people won't have that "I show 'em" attitude and won't even try because they think they are too bad anyways.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#115

Post by n00b101 »

Joeri wrote: post #74
dasil003 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to go all senselessly pedantic, but doesn't Excel have a limit of like 55,000 rows?

16 384 columns and 1 048 576 rows actually

2^14 columns * 2^20 rows * 8 bytes per cell = 128GB. Bang on.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#116

Post by moron4hire »

fduran wrote: post #106
Udo wrote: post #100

There are questions that are actually fun and I can sort of see them starting a conversation with the right kind of interviewer that tells both parties a lot about who they're dealing with. From the article: > How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? Basic economics estimating - probably not that useful and a bit dull, but hey why not. At least the problem has several angles to it that might be…

> A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? horrible question, it took me a few seconds to figure out they are talking about the game Monopoly.

how horribly culturally specific.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#117

Post by daemonk »

hkmurakami wrote: post #45
rdouble wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Google's HR data set really "Big Data" or just "data?" Seems like it would fit into a normal database. Or maybe even an unwieldy Excel spreadsheet.

I quote my friend who works in "Big Data": "sometimes I think Big Data is just Excel on 128GB of RAM"

Big data is a misnomer. Complex data is a better description. Having a terabyte of simple data with 2 columns is really not that difficult to analyze and won't give you much information. Whereas having a few hundred mbs data with complex relationships and many dimensions can yield tons of information and is far more difficult to analyze.

Difficulty in "big data" should be about its horizontal breadth (covering many aspects of a system) rather than its vertical depth (covering one aspect of a system in great resolution).

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#118

Post by Udo »

fduran wrote: post #106
Udo wrote: post #100

There are questions that are actually fun and I can sort of see them starting a conversation with the right kind of interviewer that tells both parties a lot about who they're dealing with. From the article: > How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? Basic economics estimating - probably not that useful and a bit dull, but hey why not. At least the problem has several angles to it that might be…

> A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? horrible question, it took me a few seconds to figure out they are talking about the game Monopoly.

Yeah, but why? Nobody should be surprised that familiarity with Monopoly rules is a bad predictor for job performance (and I'm not only saying that because I suck at these).

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#119

Post by bane »

I was contacted by a Google recruiter a few months ago, I had no intention of changing my day job at the time, but for shits and grins I went through a couple phone interviews. The position they were hiring for wasn't an area I have any experience in (the recruiter had made a mismatch), but I thought the questions were reasonable for somebody who works in that field and were kind of fun. They were quizzy, but could be practical. It was a management position so there weren't any coding questions, but things like basic cost estimating that sort of thing.

I had fun and wouldn't mind it again, it didn't feel like a bunch of stupid random brain teasers like I've experienced before (how many t-shirts would it take to make sea worthy sail? why are manholes round?) etc.

Re: In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

#120

Post by drawkbox »

The only true way to tell if an interviewee will be a good employee is actual work/product output with the right amount of responsibility. Product focused people not just coders looking to code lots of tricks to compete.

Contract to hire is one way, another is what they have done previously as a good predictor. It is a risk for sure but that really is the only true way in the end.

Plenty can be gained from just letting the interviewee talk and maybe looking at some of their code they have done previously while they talk about it. Whiteboard coding should not apply as it is completely out of element for many coders.

The type of person they are can't really be detected correctly until they are in the team and delivering because everyone is selling themselves on an interview.

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