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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

#241

Post by donohoe »

benjamincburns wrote: post #206
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?

My personal pet peeve... A huuuuuuuuge banner image pushes the article text below the fold on my 13" rMBP on default display settings in a maximized (by height and width, grr OSX) Chrome window. Screenshot: http://imgur.com/fFqt2ud Maybe I'm a bit irrational about this, I know scrolling isn't hard, but I came to read your text, dammit. Edit: Also, seriously... HUGE thanks for asking! Edit 2: Scrolling down I'm notici…

Thats a tough one. We want to be visual as well as just text. Text is king, but nice to have best of both worlds (if possible)

Editors choose "Featured Images" and we really want to allow for the big expressive photos.

Its hard to constrain them and maintain a sane aspect ratio. I'm not disagreeing with you - I don't have a good answer.

These definitely work really well on larger monitors - however laptops, older computers its not the ideal.

Will need to think about this more.

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

#242

Post by donohoe »

jbapple wrote: post #184
donohoe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed No, this is Linkspan: Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit.[9] Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher rankings the more other highly ranked websites link to it. These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the…

I think you should have made it clear in this comment that you work for Quartz.

I take it for granted so I forget - but I think its spelt out very very clearly in my profile so I don't have to put an * every time I comment.

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

#243

Post by donohoe »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #191
donohoe wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed No, this is Linkspan: Link spam is defined as links between pages that are present for reasons other than merit.[9] Link spam takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, which gives websites higher rankings the more other highly ranked websites link to it. These techniques also aim at influencing other link-based ranking techniques such as the…

I think he meant to use the term "blogspam", which colloquially refers to paraphrasing or copying other content.

Fair enough. I still respectfully disagree.

In fact - the NYTimes links back to our article from here:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/todays-scuttlebot-t...

So I feel value has been added.

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

#244

Post by donohoe »

glesica wrote: post #144
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?

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...

Its a case of damned if you do and damned if you dont.

Regarding AdBlock - our site looks the same with it on as it does with it off.

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

#245

Post by benjamincburns »

donohoe wrote: post #241
benjamincburns wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal pet peeve... A huuuuuuuuge banner image pushes the article text below the fold on my 13" rMBP on default display settings in a maximized (by height and width, grr OSX) Chrome window. Screenshot: http://imgur.com/fFqt2ud Maybe I'm a bit irrational about this, I know scrolling isn't hard, but I came to read your text, dammit. Edit: Also, seriously... HUGE thanks for asking! Edit 2: Scrolling down I'm notici…

Thats a tough one. We want to be visual as well as just text. Text is king, but nice to have best of both worlds (if possible) Editors choose "Featured Images" and we really want to allow for the big expressive photos. Its hard to constrain them and maintain a sane aspect ratio. I'm not disagreeing with you - I don't have a good answer. These definitely work really well on larger monitors - however laptops, older com…

If you want to make it the editor's choice, build a feature that at least gives them visibility into what they're doing. Worst case, just load an article preview in a bunch of fixed-size iframes which match the viewport size of common browsers. Better but more expensive, cobble together a browser farm (getting cheaper now thanks to modern.ie images). Either way, make it a prominent part of the editorial process.

Edit: I think the reason it bugs me is that text is the primary value your site provides. The image is ambiance. Ambiance that blocks me from the value I seek goes from tasteful to gaudy real fast. I get the desire to let editors be expressive, but if you're in a situation where you're forced to prioritize, always prioritize the thing that brought the visitor to your site in the first place. Otherwise you might not have need for the editor at all.

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

#246

Post by donohoe »

genwin wrote: post #157
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 like Quartz in general but usually get tripped up by the scroll bar within a frame. My mouse is normally near the right edge of the monitor, outside the frame.

We have that in Jira - we'll get to it - promise.

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

#247

Post by donohoe »

tokenadult wrote: post #223
tokenadult wrote: post #102

From the original New York Times article that Quartz has linkspammed here: "On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart." Long before this was reported in the New York Times, this was the fi…

REPLY TO UPDATE SELF: Yes, the correct term was actually "blogspam," and I appreciate (and upvoted) the grandchild reply that pointed that out. I see that now the Hacker News curators have changed the link on the story submission from pointing to Quartz to pointing to the original New York Times article, which fits the Hacker News guidelines. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (I mention this because many com…

I find that a bit disingenuous on the part of the HN moderators.

I still maintain that the piece was original. It was based on (and expanded on) one of the eight points made within an NYT article.

To me "In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal" could not describe the same article as "Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring".

Even the headlines indicate two separate directions.

Please read again and compare this (relevant passage on NYTimes will be Highlighted):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b...

to this:

http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous-brainteaser...

Serious question - am I completely off the mark?

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

#248

Post by nostrademons »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #234
nostrademons wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ has fat tails: the extreme ends of the distribution are much more common than a bell curve would predict.

Do you have evidence for that? I've worked on cognitive ability testing as it related to workplace performance, and have never seen anything that deviated dramatically from a normal distribution, especially at the high end.

Google [iq fat tails] and there're a bunch of articles on it (and one comment I wrote here about 4 years ago). The original data source for most of the articles is Terman's 1921 study of high-IQ people; they've plotted out the observed frequency of Terman's data against a normal distribution and found that it deviated markedly after about 3-4 SD.

Some additional Googling seems to have found some other independent studies:

http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/John_Scoville_Paper.htm

http://www.abelard.org/burt/burt-ie.asp

I'm curious what sort of population your work draws from. The results above showed that IQ follows a normal distribution until about 140; other papers I've read indicate that IQ correlates with life outcomes until an IQ of about 140, and then appears completely uncorrelated. If you're studying workplace performance, I wouldn't be surprised if a good fraction of high-IQ people simply aren't in the workplace. (See eg. Christopher Langan.)

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

#249

Post by minimax »

raldi wrote: post #130

I've never seen any citation that Google ever used these kinds of question. Especially the idiotic one about pushing a car to a hotel. I think it was just an urban legend and a good piece of linkbait. There must be thousands of people on HN who interviewed at Google over the years. Did anyone ever get a question like this?

I've interviewed with Google a couple of times over the years and the interview questions are usually of the form "you have X data in such and such format, and we want to answer question Y as efficiently as possible." Then you have to puzzle out the algorithm, answer questions about its asymptotic complexity, and then whiteboard the code.

Sometimes the questions feel a little bit gimmicky in that they aren't really representative of what software developers spend most of their time doing. I understand that one guy at Google had to come up with a clever algorithm to figure out a snippet to use in the search results, but that can't be what the thousands of developers at Google are doing all day.

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

#250

Post by gruseom »

donohoe wrote: post #247
tokenadult wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

REPLY TO UPDATE SELF: Yes, the correct term was actually "blogspam," and I appreciate (and upvoted) the grandchild reply that pointed that out. I see that now the Hacker News curators have changed the link on the story submission from pointing to Quartz to pointing to the original New York Times article, which fits the Hacker News guidelines. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (I mention this because many com…

I find that a bit disingenuous on the part of the HN moderators. I still maintain that the piece was original. It was based on (and expanded on) one of the eight points made within an NYT article. To me "In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal" could not describe the same article as "Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring". Even the headlines indicate two separate di…

Since your question is serious, here's one serious answer. The article is really two (or three, depending how you count them) pieces of blogspam spliced together with a linkbait title on top. So while it's true that it doesn't draw exclusively on the NYT piece, that doesn't make it original, because everything else is cribbed too. Isn't it?
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