The Lesson to Unlearn • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#401

Post by GavinMcG » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

_7fvc wrote: post #365

I feel like Paul Graham is unlearning his own experience. Maybe, he's at the top of the game and tries to figure out why it's messed up. Life is full of hacks. People hack stuff: school, test, career. The site we're on now called itself Hacker News. I suppose Paul Graham gave it the name. When I was in school, I did all kinds of hacks. I didn't graduate high school in the US. I took the GED to go to college. I did ch…

It seems like you're responding to the idea that "hacking is bad" and that's not at all what the essay got across to me. In fact, it outright agrees that "the focus on learning and doing is important."

Instead of "hacking is bad", the essay was saying "incentivizing young people with a single easily-hacked methodology is bad".

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#402

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

hooande wrote: post #106

I know that learning how to hack systems is valuable because that's how I got into YCombinator. I set out specifically to hack the application process and succeeded. It wasn't even that difficult to do. If pg believes what he's saying in this essay, I have two questions: 1. why did he design a testing system that was easily hacked? 2. why does YCombinator itself focus so much on hacking the venture capital system, as…

[deleted]

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#403

Post by johnm » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #385

xvector wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately portfolios would make finding jobs very difficult for myself and my colleagues. We aren’t really allowed to talk about what we work on outside of what could easily fit in a vague, 1-sentence summary on LinkedIn. This is actually frustrating me quite a bit because as I look for new jobs people like to ask, in detail, what I worked on, and I can’t really tell them.

I completely understand. That was a big reason that I learned to draw people out when they interviewed. I asked them to "tell me stories" about projects they worked on, without getting detailed about specifics. In my experience, they were always able to demonstrate plenty of enthusiasm and creativity without revealing the family jewels. A half-hour whiteboard test would have been completely useless. I was usually abl…

Re: your point about interviewers looking for their expected/standard answer vs an actually innovative one...

I take that as part of my job in interviewing the the company/interviewers. I will very deliberately give a more radical, non-standard but correct answer precisely to see if they fit into that broken/fixated mindset and see how they deal with being challenged. The dynamic of how they deal with that shows everything about not just how clever they are but how intellectually honest, curious, and emotionally mature they really are.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#404

Post by Aunche » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #299

burlesona wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a hiring manager at a big company, I can tell you this is just as frustrating for me as it is for candidates. I hate “leet code” and frankly find algorithmic interviews to be very low signal compared to more practical, open-ended, domain-specific problems. I will say though, the problem is one of “standardization” across an organization where it’s too big for everyone to fit in a room. Suppose you give each tea…

I was a hiring manager at a big company for years. We never did coding tests, and I like to think that I made good choices every time. I kept a high-functioning team together, under fairly humble pay, and stressful, sometimes demoralizing, conditions, for decades. I'm mediocre, at best, at these tests. I don't come from a traditional CS background (started as an EE). I tend to take unusual, hybrid approaches to solvi…

> I was a hiring manager at a big company for years. We never did coding tests, and I like to think that I made good choices every time.

I don't doubt that you did, but I doubt that everyone at your company places the same effort as you do. At my current company, 90% of interviewers half ass their interviews. They don't have much incentive to care, so you want interview questions with consistent standards and produce some signal with minimal effort. Algo questions fit this bill perfectly.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#405

Post by slipmagic » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

Great and inspirational article that’s pretty practical.

That said, the website is a pain to use on mobile safari and difficult to properly capture when sharing it to Notion or Bear. Notion doesn’t capture it at all, and Bear can’t capture the hyphens or line/paragraph breaks. It’s probably because of the read more button. It also has some jaggy scrolling issue where if you switch between apps it scrolls up and sometimes collapses the article or jumps to the bottom of the page.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#406

Post by scscsc » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

As a teacher, the way to fix this is to give "aligned tests". That is, where the test tests for exactly what you want the student to learn. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_alignment.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#407

Post by hogFeast » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

What is funny about this is that he doesn't realise most medieval historians have actually recognised this and solved it...answer: no exams. Just get students to write essays. Most history classes do exams but, where it is taught well (i.e. not the US), they give you the questions that will be on the exams...these aren't exams like in maths. This tests for understanding, and actual ability to conduct research yourself (you still get bias from professors, I had a Chinese politics professor who had some fairly inflexible views about the Chinese economy...but it does average out).

I still have no idea why this isn't used more generally in life. Want to see if someone can do this job...hm, rather than actually seeing them do the job...have you ever thought about how many windows there are in New York? All you are testing is whether someone has either been asked that kind of question before or, more likely, whether they went online and looked at what you would ask them.

It is truly stunning how stupid people are about this. And, tbh, I think it largely reflects what most students about the world at university where certain professors seem to revel in the utter banality of pointless tests.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#408

Post by johnm » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #386

johnm wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, for all of the focus on the interview processes to "prevent" false positive hires, those same companies suck as actually getting rid of the bad hires. Some is rational risk aversion to lawsuits and the like but that clearly bs when you see just how fast people that aren't liked by someone high enough up the food chain are shown the door. The effect on morale and real productivity of getting rid of the toxic and…

The first job I had there was a probationary period - it was good and bad. It was good because you knew everybody there was extremely talented and you could rely on your coworkers. There was a bit of an understanding about the cut throat nature of the place though, and obviously that's not for everyone. But at the end of the day, when it came time to just get shit done, there was never any problem. I can't name that…

Unless you work in a crazy place like Germany with the extremes driven by the work councils, probationary periods are an HR gimmick. If people aren't working out, they can be let go. Have simple, clear, legal policies and simple documentation, WIPs, and most importantly managers who actually care, communicate, and help their team members succeed. The fact is that most companies and managers don't fit those criteria and so create their own hells.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#409

Post by HeWhoLurksLate » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #364

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a hiring manager at a big company for years. We never did coding tests, and I like to think that I made good choices every time. I kept a high-functioning team together, under fairly humble pay, and stressful, sometimes demoralizing, conditions, for decades. I'm mediocre, at best, at these tests. I don't come from a traditional CS background (started as an EE). I tend to take unusual, hybrid approaches to solvi…

I've often wondered as well why tech companies seem to go out of their way to ignore portfolios. First I thought it's a misguided but honest attempt to make the process look more like a blind meritocracy, to basically turn the interview into a modern version of the Imperial Examination of ancient China. Then I read "Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder, a book that documents the design process of a minicomputer in…

Your username checks out here.

Maybe I won't become a specifically-software person.

Re: The Lesson to Unlearn

#410

Post by yotamoron » Sat, Dec 07, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

Ivan Illichlready said it 50 years ago. Read 'Deschooling Society', its all there. We are schooled to confuse process with essence, and the bad results are apparent.