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What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

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Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#71

Post by hellbreakslose »

I don't get why you have to argue with a company on the way it does its recruiting. They feel that's the best for them and they have the right to.

Yes I believe that a person that studies English could become an Engineer. But being an Engineer requires experience and time. It's not like you'll pick it up in a day. On the other hand a person that studies CS or Engineering has learnt the basics and its easier for him to become one.

The way google is recruiting feels the right way for them (and for me) since they don't want to take in someone that has no idea and start teaching him on that.

Also if someone wants to work for a Tech Company like google I don't see why he will go study English... if English is what he likes best then why would he pursue working under a tech company.

I think you are trying to apply the logic that all the banks have that they'll hire whoever if he passes their tests. But they will train him into investments and guide them through. And also that person like everyone working on finance will have to undergo exams every-year to prove himself. (That's pretty much like studying finance if even more advanced).

Well Google doesn't want to go with the paragraph above.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#72

Post by matwood »

joelgrus wrote: post #39
mapgrep wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not all that hard to complete an English degree without learning those things. How do you know this? (You know, since we're talking about logical rigor.)

Based on the English (and other humanities) courses I took as an undergrad, in which the key to getting good grades was not rigor but repeating back what I imagined the professor wanted to hear, and based on my friends who were English (and other humanities) majors, who were delightful people but (for the most part) not particularly rigorous thinkers in the sense that Google is trying to hire for.

Did you take any high level literature or english courses? Repeating back what the teacher wants to hear is fairly standard across all disciplines in low level courses.

The people who I know who didn't just complete english degrees, but excelled were all very critical thinkers. The classes required reading, understanding, and then writing critically about what was read. Thinking was highly valued, particularly about nuances of the language and meaning.

Of course people who are not good can slide by and get through school, but that can happen in any field. See CS grads who cannot write FizzBuzz for example.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#73

Post by TheCapn »

tsunamifury wrote: post #15

It's google's loss. And believe me it will be. A CS degree may be the best signal of a worker who will program all day, but it's not a good signal for the wide variety of other skills that are required to make a popular, well rounded and valuable product. For example, making a workflow that is general understandable for the average user requires a strong set of less defined soft skills, like empathy, clarity of thesi…

I think its more feasible and smart of Google to find engineers with a subset of soft skills that you describe than hire on those soft skills alone and hope they have a subset of technical skills.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#74

Post by ThrustVectoring »

tokipin wrote: post #68
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but in CS, the program works or it doesn't. So there's none of that wiggle room. CS degree definitely signals something - a minimum competency that is uncertain in a humanities student.

I'm not so sure about this. Maybe if you've graduated from a good school. I've known at least one person who graduated with a CS degree but didn't actually know how to program. There are many schools where students get by just by copying each other's homework and the professors never punish them for it. My own major (electrical engineering) at the school I went to was almost nothing but students like this. It's a sys…

>There are many schools where students get by just by copying each other's homework and the professors never punish them for it.

This is much easier to notice in the rest of the hiring process than the same sort of faking in a humanities context.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#75

Post by Iftheshoefits »

jzwinck wrote: post #10

This article is ridiculous. While there are certain areas (e.g. pattern matching) where a typical English major is likely to do well, rigorous logical thinking of the sort needed when we program computers is simply not developed as well as it is in CS, EE, and various other programs. As a third-year undergrad I took a 400-level course on logic from the humanities department. I remember being blown away by how inept t…

> you don't hear CS folks claiming they're well suited for writing poetry.

It may be technically true, but the dismissive "english/humanities is easy" narrative that is (or, in my day, was--it seems it still is) extremely popular in the STEM undergraduate community carries a kind of implicit claim of exactly that sort. Stating that something is easy necessarily implies the person making the statement thinks he could, with some relatively lesser effort than he applies to his current focus, achieve comparable results to those who focus on that something.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#76

Post by matwood »

learc83 wrote: post #35
kennymeyers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The fact is most English majors don't enjoy heavy duty math or science as much" These statements need data to back them up, Mr. Science.

You don't think it's a given that, on average, students who choose a degree that requires "heavy duty math" enjoy it more than students who choose a degree that doesn't require "heavy duty math"?

Given my science background, very little is a given until I see data. CS people get on their soapbox and talk about being superior in logical and rigorous thinking and then lead off with statements like it's a given.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#77

Post by frogpelt »

kennymeyers wrote: post #30
frogpelt wrote: post #18

So one of the very few English professors in the country with a computer science degree is offended by Google's hiring practices. The fact is most English majors don't enjoy heavy duty math or science as much and it's not that weird to expect a computer science major to depend more on logic and rigor when approaching a problem than it is for someone whose thesis was devoted to a literary analysis of the symbolism beh…

"The fact is most English majors don't enjoy heavy duty math or science as much" These statements need data to back them up, Mr. Science.

Perhaps I shouldn't call it a fact without data but I assume English majors choose English over the other choices because they feel that they would enjoy English more than the other choices.

Is that logical?

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#78

Post by morgante »

batbomb wrote: post #55
frogpelt wrote: post #18

So one of the very few English professors in the country with a computer science degree is offended by Google's hiring practices. The fact is most English majors don't enjoy heavy duty math or science as much and it's not that weird to expect a computer science major to depend more on logic and rigor when approaching a problem than it is for someone whose thesis was devoted to a literary analysis of the symbolism beh…

Oh please, the amount of math and (physical) science a typical CS major goes through is pretty laughable compared to a math, physics, or chem major. It's usually on par with biologists with a bit more calculus. It's not that CS majors are magically people who love science and math and English majors don't. It doesn't even matter most of the time. The fact is Google wants CS majors because should be able to hit the gr…

> Oh please, the amount of math and (physical) science a typical CS major goes through is pretty laughable compared to a math, physics, or chem major. It's usually on par with biologists with a bit more calculus.

Sure, but CS isn't supposed to teach you physical science.

It's supposed to teach you logical reasoning, and at that we definitely are better. Most "hard science" students I know struggle through parsing a basic decision tree.

If I had to hire a logical thinker and couldn't hire a CS major, I'd definitely go for a philosophy major. Purely anecdotally, they're the only other discipline I've had a lot of success in teaching programming to.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#79

Post by kennymeyers »

learc83 wrote: post #35
kennymeyers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The fact is most English majors don't enjoy heavy duty math or science as much" These statements need data to back them up, Mr. Science.

You don't think it's a given that, on average, students who choose a degree that requires "heavy duty math" enjoy it more than students who choose a degree that doesn't require "heavy duty math"?

I'm unsure of the motivations most people have in choosing majors. When I see generalizations of a very large group of people, no matter how obvious it may seem, I just like to see data to back it up.

Re: What the Head of Hiring at Google Doesn’t Understand About Skills

#80

Post by scarecrowbob »

gexla wrote: post #11

> In “Dante’s Hell and Its Afterlife,” an undergraduate course I teach at my university, students have to work hard to achieve good results (not to mention an A-level grade) on a research essay. The “excellent” paper will contain a substantive thesis that is appropriately focused, coherent, and interpretive, not merely descriptive; a detailed analysis of well-chosen examples to support the argument; a logical orderin…

"How do you become a good writer and get good feedback? I don't know."

Write a lot and have other people read it.

Try and communicate, and see where that communication breaks down.

Write for large audiences, and see where you are either misunderstood or how you piss of the readers.

These recommendations are some of the tools you're asking for, though they aren't as automated or have answers as clear as piping something to a standard output.

Remember, when you first start to learn programming, you don't have access to "debugging tools, tests and output for feedback", either... these are tools you develop because you realize that you need them. That doesn't mean that these tools don't exist, or that you can't find them, or that they are useful to you in your situation.

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