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The Bozo Event Horizon

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#21

Post by mquander »

protomyth wrote: post #18
rachelbythebay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about posts describing times when the author has screwed up? I try to learn something from my mistakes and then share that knowledge in the hopes it will reduce incidences of that same mistake in the wider world. I don't care that it means admitting that I did something stupid or was ignorant of some particular technique at the time. It's going to happen to everyone, so I just figure, why not turn it around and u…

I wonder if the current environment where HR googles everyone leads people to not give post-mortem stories of failures. Even if a technical person would see the wisdom of your post, HR might use it to discard your resume.

I can't imagine an HR department sharp enough to find, read, and think about your blog posts, yet dull enough to bin your resume because one of them describes some day-to-day error you made.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#22

Post by tytso »

The original poster wrote:

> The other is their hiring process (full disclosure; I’ve looked at Google a couple of times and it never worked) which has gotten pretty process-bound and odd. The last time I went through it, the site manager admitted that I was plenty smart, but they didn’t know what they would do with me. Given what they were obviously looking for, I wasn’t sure what I would do with them, either. But the whole process seems to indicate that they are looking for people to fit a pre-defined mold, which the top performers generally don’t do all that well.

My observation would be that the primary goal of Google's hiring process is that there is a very strong bias towards _not_ hiring any bozos --- even if that means that not hiring someone who might be a top performer. It's better than you miss out on a top performer than it is to hire someone into a senior position who turns out to be a bozo. That may be the cause of the OP's perceived "oddness".

The fact that Google's promotion system is done exclusively by peers (i.e., the people who decide whether someone at level N should progress to level N+1 are composed of engineers at levels N+1 and N+2; the manager can give input to the promotion committee, but it's not the manager's call) is a good way to hopefully prevent bozos from getting promoted from within.

Is it perfect? No human-created system is. But I think it's pretty good....

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#23

Post by stcredzero »

paulsutter wrote: post #7

I've seen startups with rigorous hiring processes, places where only top employees are hired. But then when it comes to hiring execs, they get so focused on luring in a "superstar", that they do little to no screening. The idea is that the person is so great, all you need to do is sell. And thats how great startups hire a bozo exec team. And we all know where that leads.

Much of the poster's concern is over their hiring process generally:

>...the whole process seems to indicate that they are looking for people to fit a pre-defined mold, which the top performers generally don’t do all that well. In fact, the Google process reminded me of the time, more than 20 years ago, when I interviewed at Microsoft. And we saw how well that worked…

Hiring processes can become infected from the top-down, however, as high-level employees exert influence over the process to fit their own comfort levels.

I also suspect that there's a point at which hiring like-minded people loses whatever benefit that accrues from increased group cohesion in a company, or that there's a point where such benefits start to get swamped by the effects of groupthink.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#24

Post by stcredzero »

barrkel wrote: post #19

the Google process reminded me of the time, more than 20 years ago, when I interviewed at Microsoft. And we saw how well that worked Microsoft from 1992 onwards? I guess we did; 20x increase in adjusted share price; in OSes alone, the release of Windows 3.1 (IMO the breakthrough move to GUI on PC, away from DOS), NT 3.1 (the original seed that grew to NT 3.51, NT 4, Win2K and all current kernels), breakthrough succes…

> Looks like it worked pretty well, and made a lot of people very wealthy.

The same could be said of [Insert great company here]. The same could also be said of many criminal enterprises and a variety of industries that were abusive before regulation and reform. Conclusion: The ability to say this is of no particular worth in determining if an enterprise is or isn't evil.

EDIT: Downvoters: see grey-area's granchild comment. I find it incredible to be downvoted for observing that a statement is essentially neutral.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#25

Post by rachelbythebay »

protomyth wrote: post #18
rachelbythebay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about posts describing times when the author has screwed up? I try to learn something from my mistakes and then share that knowledge in the hopes it will reduce incidences of that same mistake in the wider world. I don't care that it means admitting that I did something stupid or was ignorant of some particular technique at the time. It's going to happen to everyone, so I just figure, why not turn it around and u…

I wonder if the current environment where HR googles everyone leads people to not give post-mortem stories of failures. Even if a technical person would see the wisdom of your post, HR might use it to discard your resume.

What you're saying here reminds me of a short conversation I had once. Someone said to me: "this post might make it hard for you to work with in the future." My response was: "if I have to work with , then I will have failed."

In this case, are the ones in HR who somehow think that skipping over someone like me is warranted because I'm honest about mistakes I've made in the past. Just what kind of company would that be, anyway? What would my coworkers be like in that environment?

If you accept that everyone makes mistakes, would you rather work with the ones who discover them and deal with them ably, or the ones who conceal them and/or don't learn from them?

That said, I do see what you are getting at. If you haven't gotten to a point where you can say "to hell with this corporate misery" and live with the consequences, maybe you don't want to rock the boat. It might impact your ability to get into yet another miserable place.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#26

Post by Karunamon »

stcredzero wrote: post #24
barrkel wrote: post #19

the Google process reminded me of the time, more than 20 years ago, when I interviewed at Microsoft. And we saw how well that worked Microsoft from 1992 onwards? I guess we did; 20x increase in adjusted share price; in OSes alone, the release of Windows 3.1 (IMO the breakthrough move to GUI on PC, away from DOS), NT 3.1 (the original seed that grew to NT 3.51, NT 4, Win2K and all current kernels), breakthrough succes…

> Looks like it worked pretty well, and made a lot of people very wealthy. The same could be said of [Insert great company here]. The same could also be said of many criminal enterprises and a variety of industries that were abusive before regulation and reform. Conclusion: The ability to say this is of no particular worth in determining if an enterprise is or isn't evil. EDIT: Downvoters: see grey-area's granchild c…

Evil? This isn't a conversation about making moral judgements, why are you dragging moral constructs into it?

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#27

Post by stcredzero »

grandalf wrote: post #13

The most absurd thing in my opinion is self-promotion. Let's be honest, some of the most influential people in HN, Github, etc., are accomplished, naked self-promoters. Many rants posted to HN could simply be entered as text on HN but end up being blog posts one someone's blog. Lots of creative ideas turn into blog post rants that point to code on github with no history, no evidence of the messy process of creation,…

> In some circles, this is called keeping it real. Open source should not require such artifice if we have a meritocracy.

On the other hand, maybe all great luminaries started out as aggressive self-promoters (picture accomplished performers busking on the street in their younger days).

The extent to which people need to self-promote to establish themselves is an indicator of whether or not such circles are subject to Reputation Bubbles.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1514688

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#28

Post by sown »

tytso wrote: post #22

The original poster wrote: > The other is their hiring process (full disclosure; I’ve looked at Google a couple of times and it never worked) which has gotten pretty process-bound and odd. The last time I went through it, the site manager admitted that I was plenty smart, but they didn’t know what they would do with me. Given what they were obviously looking for, I wasn’t sure what I would do with them, either. But t…

   It's better than you miss out on a top performer than it 
   is to hire someone into a senior position who turns out 
   to be a bozo.
Is it possible that this model stops working when you get to have tens of thousands of employees and you've scoured the planet looking for people that you end up empty-handed, so you have to increase your risk tolerance for bozos if it means you can hire a top performer?

I guess google knows better than I about their hiring practices but it seems like they have probably taken more risks in these later years than they did when they had only 1000 employees.

Re: The Bozo Event Horizon

#30

Post by stcredzero »

Karunamon wrote: post #26
stcredzero wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks like it worked pretty well, and made a lot of people very wealthy. The same could be said of [Insert great company here]. The same could also be said of many criminal enterprises and a variety of industries that were abusive before regulation and reform. Conclusion: The ability to say this is of no particular worth in determining if an enterprise is or isn't evil. EDIT: Downvoters: see grey-area's granchild c…

Evil? This isn't a conversation about making moral judgements, why are you dragging moral constructs into it?

The suffering caused by many kinds of bozo managers is evil, though there are also the depredations of well-meaning bozos.

Much of life is livelihood, so I don't think morality can be or should be precluded from such discussions.

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