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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

#141

Post by pavanred »

ig1 wrote: post #46
objclxt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've skipped over the original NYT article, which the qz.com article being linked to here quotes from. He does say they're worthless. Here's the complete quote: One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation This chimes with m…

Makes sense, most companies only care about university grades for first jobs (because there's very little else to distinguish candidates at the stage).

I quit my job after 5 years as a programmer for my Masters. I must say, just working on one small class project with any candidate can help you find a world of a difference. I think its the experience and my personal interest that drives me towards worrying more about actually learning stuff instead of scoring grades. Getting a grade is more about identifying what a Professor expects and giving it to them. There are many students who slack off their effort in team projects. And, the worst part, the slackers spend a lot of time applying and preparing specifically for interviews, so as I see the ones who get the "best" jobs are generally the ones that I would never hire them if I was looking for candidates for my company.

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

#142

Post by dbecker »

donohoe wrote: post #129
donohoe wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

I can't reply directly, but in reference to: huge fixed banner at the top of the page, and a fixed sidebar. I see what you mean - but I don't think I"d call that "cruft" but thats my opinion. Thats the Navigation Bar at the top, and the sidebar is a Queue of the Articles in the feed. These are basic page elements. We get feedback specifically calling this out as good and relatively distraction-free (hence your commen…

Are the users who liked the navigation bar and the sidebar using quartz in a different way from us? For example, are they using quartz primarily to browse rather than following a link to a specific story?

I found these page elements very annoying, and I suspect those who liked it have a different use pattern.

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

#143

Post by potatolicious »

donohoe wrote: post #129
donohoe wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

I can't reply directly, but in reference to: huge fixed banner at the top of the page, and a fixed sidebar. I see what you mean - but I don't think I"d call that "cruft" but thats my opinion. Thats the Navigation Bar at the top, and the sidebar is a Queue of the Articles in the feed. These are basic page elements. We get feedback specifically calling this out as good and relatively distraction-free (hence your commen…

But the navigation bar doesn't serve any purpose to me, at least not floating. It has your logo, which I care about, but not once I'm deeper into the article.

It has a search field I will never use. It has social media buttons I will never use (because if I wanted to share this I would just copy/paste the URL). It has a "more" button that I will never use also.

The nav bar is fine at the very top of your page, making it float and scroll with me is just a waste of space.

Floating UI elements should be reserved for critical functionality that's core to the site. Facebook gets a pass because the things on the floating nav bar are actually important. If you really must float it, consider floating to the side - most of us on modern laptops have an abundance of horizontal space but not a great deal of vertical space.

Some more feedback:

- The organization of content is confusing. Just scrolling casually I cannot immediately tell where one post ends and the next begins. The large images aren't a good indicator, since some of them appear to be ads. I shouldn't have to read the tail sentence of something just to determine if I'm looking at the end of a post or not.

- There is a mismatch of expectations. When I go to a link that clearly refers to a single piece of content, I do not expect to keep scrolling and go right into a completely different piece of content.

- I find the photos oversized for their purpose. In this particular piece you have generic-stock-photo-of-Google-employees, which is only superficially related to the topic at hand. It doesn't have business being this huge. It's distracting and keeps me from the actual content I'm here for. Note in the original NYT link the image is also only tangentially related, but it does not overwhelm the text.

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

#144

Post by glesica »

donohoe wrote: post #122
edent wrote: post #3

The original article - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-huntin... Distraction free reading and without all the annoying cruft of Quartz. Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

The fixed header is a complete waste of space. Why is it necessary? It's frames all over again, it's like a web design straight out of 1998. Also, is the right-hand sidebar supposed to contain ads? I can't think of another purpose for it, but I don't feel like turning adblock off for long enough to find out...

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

#145

Post by pavanred »

Jabbles wrote: post #8

I don't understand people's problem with estimating. It's a useful skill. Perhaps it would be better if the questions actually related to technology, rather than golf balls - but the principle is the same. For instance - "how many hard drives does Gmail need?" requires a rough guess of how many users Gmail has (if you're interviewing at Google, you should know it's 1e8-1e9). How much space each one takes (probably no…

Even if this idea had some merit, I think once the candidates start preparing for interviews by reading some idiots guide to brain teasers then it loses it purpose and further hurts the candidate who is actually skilled, quick on his feet and has good instincts.

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

#146

Post by tomp »

ig1 wrote: post #23
rorrr2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, the interviewers often judge how accurate your estimation is, and not the fact that you know (the highly flawed) Drake Equation. These estimates are completely useless in real life, because in real life nobody guesses how many drives you need for GMail, or how many gas stations there are in LA.

I'm not sure where you've worked, but doing resource estimation for projects has been pretty important for most greenfield projects I've worked on. It's also good for sanity testing, it's a useful skill to be able to spot that something is out by an order of magnitude as it can allow you to catch problems early on.

Perhaps these kinds of questions would be met with less "wtf" looks if they were asked in reverse, as in: "My manager ordered 10 000 000 hard drives for GMail. Do you think we'll need them?" It's much easier to judge an estimate when you see it than to come up with it (especially in an interview where the emphasis is usually on whether you're right or wrong), at least for me.

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

#147

Post by barrkel »

donohoe wrote: post #122
edent wrote: post #3

The original article - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-huntin... Distraction free reading and without all the annoying cruft of Quartz. Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

Mobile view can't be disabled, on Android stock browser at least. That means I can't zoom out and read the text at the much smaller size and higher info density I prefer.

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

#148

Post by tomp »

engtech wrote: post #133
donohoe wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We built Quartz to be as distraction free as possible - mind telling me what the "cruft" is?

1. when I go to this link: http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous-brainteaser... It shows several stories at once, not just the google brainteasers stories. 2. In general, people would rather read the real article instead of a summary of the article. When someone submits a summary of an article to a site like HN or reddit, it is usually flagged as blog-spam because we'd rather read/support the original cont…

Add to that the inability to quickly scroll to the bottom of the article. At least you fixed the top scrolling.

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

#149

Post by rlanday »

stephencanon wrote: post #140
goblin89 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their findings wrt. formal education are interesting, too. The first time I see a big company's representative saying “test scores are worthless.”

Not really surprising at all. A huge amount of selection has already taken place by the time you get to the interview, and most of that selections is based either on grades or on other metrics that measure similar traits. The “low-GPA” individuals who get an interview are therefore very different from the general population of “low-GPA” individuals, and one expects there to be little or no correlation between GPA and…

The sorting continues in college; SAT scores are most predictive for the first year, before less-capable students switch out of the hard majors. My guess is that nearly all of the engineers Google hires score very highly, and in that sense the SAT is indeed predictive of success there (since you can take it in middle/high school), but they might have determined that discriminating on the high end between differences of <1 SD (about the validity between retakes) might not tell them much.

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

#150

Post by quux »

edent wrote: post #3

The original article - http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-huntin... Distraction free reading and without all the annoying cruft of Quartz. Fascinating use of "Big Data" to cut through the bullshit. Wonder if it will change anything. I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

The "structured behavioral interview" he mentions is what I've settled on over the years too. You get a much better idea of what the applicant has really done and is passionate about than seeing if they're good at pop quizzes.
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