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Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

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Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#291

Post by toasterlovin »

danjoc wrote: post #177
toasterlovin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

>Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. I think you're wrong about that, http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...

Your link is to a story about an employer who uses a test which is a proxy for intelligence (they even give the rough equivalency between the test they use and IQ). I think that supports my point that intelligence is one of the more important things employers are looking for. Most employers don’t have the resources to develop a hiring screening test and then certify that it is not discriminatory, so they use educational attainment instead.

Another way to approach this is to ask yourself: if not as a proxy for intelligence, then why do some jobs require a college degree?

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#292

Post by jpm_sd »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #191
eightysixfour wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the anecdote and OP’s statement support one another - companies have a hard time reliably staffing generalists and one of the reasons for that is that they are bad at identifying them and determining how to use them. Parent showed them a generalist skill set and they saw a lack of professionalism.

It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply. The hard part is giving in to a job . I think my hesitancy in this area s…

You think you're too good for a job, hence, you are unemployed.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#293

Post by toasterlovin »

crdoconnor wrote: post #236
toasterlovin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

Higher education seems like more of a "class marker" to me.

Or maybe the causal factor for both class and higher education is intelligence. The Bell Curve makes a compelling case that the transition away from agriculture toward knowledge work over the last 100 years has created a society in which intelligence is funneled into higher education and from there into high paying professions.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#294

Post by toasterlovin »

pavlov wrote: post #88
toasterlovin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher education is used as a proxy for intelligence by companies who are hiring because they are not allowed to use IQ tests. So I think it kind of makes sense that our society is confused about the purpose of higher education.

If IQ tests were a reliable measure of any job capability, surely the brilliant minds at Mensa would already have made a mint by selling recruitment services.

See this commment elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15828513

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#295

Post by marcus_holmes »

jpm_sd wrote: post #292
blurbleblurble wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be straightforward to find/get a programming job that'd more than take care of my material needs. There are a buttload of entry/intermediate level jobs out there that'd provide more money than I even know what to do with. If I wanted a job really bad, I could study up for it, put the technologies they're looking for on my resume and apply. The hard part is giving in to a job . I think my hesitancy in this area s…

You think you're too good for a job, hence, you are unemployed.

you think there is stigma in being unemployed.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#296

Post by sgustard »

ramses0 wrote: post #187
jogjayr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they are not allowed to use IQ tests There's actual employment law that prohibits using IQ tests? I'd never heard that before

It's related to anti-discrimination / "psychology-test" laws. If there is any sort of "test" given as a condition of employment, it must be relevant, standardized, non-biased, reviewed by specialists and approved, etc. http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Test1... The value and definition of "IQ" is widely disputed and generally seen as of limited relevance to the actual work and performance of that…

The classic "how many gas stations are there in the USA?" type of interview question seem exactly like an IQ test and not at all relevant to job requirements.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#297

Post by mangodrunk »

jknoepfler wrote: post #247
patientplatypus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money so whether it "technically" should be a monastery of cloistered academics pondering the universe (based on some high minded notion of what learning "ought" to be for) is besides the point. University costs a shit ton of mone…

There are two things wrong with this perspective. First, if you walk out of a four year degree in computer science without a strong foundation in discrete mathematics, algorithms, data structures, and at least one of distributed systems theory, stochastic systems theory, control, statistics/machine learning, AI, data visualization, or design, you've stunted your horizons for growth as an engineer pretty badly. I use…

>You should come out of a four year program able to write well, critically analyze difficult material (not "Catcher in the Rye"), articulate complex ideas persuasively, and understand the world you live in and how to live in it substantially better than when you went in.

What a great comment. I think that's also missed by schools where the focus is on memorization and/or trivia. It would be great if they focused on the areas you talked about, not necessarily directly, but at least that is the goal.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#298

Post by yesenadam »

drewrv wrote: post #17
wnoise wrote: post #3

> CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. Well, that's because CS programs are designed to teach CS, not to be a vocational school for programmers.

I've been spending a lot of time lately wondering if people who treat colleges and universities as though their job is worker training are confused, or if I'm naive in believing colleges and universities exist to expand human knowledge through research and education. I suspect the answer is that our culture is confused, we want people who are smart and well rounded to also be useful. And the ugly side of it is, we wa…

Fascinating point. Is "training vs education" a useful pair of terms? Universities used to be for education, now often its assumed they are for training only. (Bachelor of Science in Hotel Management I come across nowadays - in what?!)

I often hear people talk as if education was something that happened to them, then it finished. (Like learning is something you just do in an institution.) I guess training is more like that, teaching knowledge and skills for some particular task/role/job.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#299

Post by jpatokal »

jondubois wrote: post #283

I agree with most points except this one: >> Most open source software is written by programmers who are full-time employed by companies which directly consume the software, at the explicit or implicit blessing of their employers. It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes. Most open source projects don't go anywhere... They have about 3 stars on Github and nobody uses them. To say that open sou…

Open source projects are founded on self-interest, not altruism: "I can do this better than any existing solution"! On rare occasions this is true, and on even rarer occasions others agree and start contributing.

Re: Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already

#300

Post by combatentropy »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #160
md224 wrote: post #104

> Charge more. Charge more still. Go on. This might sound stupid, and maybe it's my inner hippie talking, but did this make anyone else slightly uncomfortable? I get that it's "good business", but something feels kinda gross about saying "extract as much money from other people as you possibly can." Like... shouldn't you just charge whatever you think something (a product, your time) is worth? I realize that "what so…

He's not writing "extract as much money from other people as you possibly can". He's making a subtler point, similar to Hofstadter's Law, in that you're not charging enough, even if you know that you aren't! So, the point isn't too extract as much money from other people as possible. It's too charge more than you'd otherwise be comfortable charging because, even when you do, you may still be under-charging relative t…

Yes. I think it's related to the Pareto principle, in that the last 20% of a project takes 80% of the time.
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