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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

#91

Post by tragic »

To be instrumental about it, English (and the arts/humanities subjects in general) teaches the skill of decision making under conditions of uncertainty: we are required to make inferences on the basis of ambiguous 'data' (a literary text whose meaning will generally be slippery) and competing bodies of theory which cannot be proven against each other, of sufficient solidity that they can be defended in a logically coherent argument.

This is a real skill. And if you actually apply yourself to an arts degree, it does develop it. (Before the emergence of national literature studies and modern historiography, the study of the Classics played this role, broadly speaking.)

It does not have direct relevance to software engineering at all (speaking as someone with two literature degrees). But not all problems in development are strictly technical. Someone down there said:

> Yeah but in CS, the program works or it doesn't.

Indeed. Google+ works, right?

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

#92

Post by thathonkey »

mathetic wrote: post #42
williamcotton wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were simply unprepared for the torrent of proofs, deductions, tautologies, De Morgan's laws, etc. All of which I never see used in a professional capacity for the vast majority of software developers. What I do see used quite often is the ability to communicate to customers or other engineers in a clear, succinct and enjoyable manner using the English language.

That is simply because the top of the stack in our field is full of application developers and not computer architects. I fail to see how quantity becomes more important than quality.

What is your point exactly? It sounds like what you're suggesting is simply not practical (that all developers should be well-versed in all facets of software development, even those skills only employed by a minority of developers).

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

#93

Post by delinquentme »

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…

A screaming example of academic signaling, but where the "signal" is only _just_ stronger than the noise.

Karnaugh Maps: While I love vocab as much as any other kid out there. We're not calling them " colored-truth-tables " which is what the fuck it is. You're advocating that one is more rigorous than the other. However the only thing which is actually being conveyed is usage OF A TRUTH TABLE!

Academics gleefully accept this more specific vocabulary as a proxy for context knowledge.

Its a (fucking) shit workaround.

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

#94

Post by StavrosK »

jonnathanson wrote: post #69
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…

I was with you until the last sentence, which packed a low and somewhat unfair punch. There's plenty to do with an English degree besides writing poetry. Law is a typical exit path. So are lucrative positions in media, entertainment, publishing, journalism, and public policy. To excel at these fields, one needs to be pretty smart. It's a different kind of smart from the kind you need in technology jobs. No question a…

I think you're reading too much into it. I took it to mean that writing poetry (or, at least, doing it well) is something that requires many years of practice, and that isn't something anyone can just pick up.

I didn't perceive a slight at all, it seemed like a very fair analogy to me. "Writing a novel" would be the same.

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

#95

Post by tlogan »

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…

It is interesting article. But I think that it emphasizes one thing which hurts companies growth. Let's put Google aside - because this is not about Google.

The companies end up having hiring techniques and processes (and subconscious biases for hiring as result of these) which might work well before but they might do not work for today. This is very hard thing to solve and problems becomes obvious to outside world when companies try to get into new field / area.

Some companies have head of recruiting reporting directly to CEO to fix these kind of problems. Some companies will do acquisitions.

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

#96

Post by jgwynn2901 »

Growing up in housing projects I had a hard time realizing how many people internalized even the most egregious stereotypes as fact.

Spent a lot of time in gyms with a lot of hypertrophied chest, shoulder and arms walking on crane legs.

Thinks we don't really know how to measure each other when it comes to it.

Never met a carpenter who didn't complain about the prior carpenter's work.

Finds there's a lot of ways to describe things and some say more than they are designed and often leave a bitter aftertaste.

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

#98

Post by agorabinary »

I used to be a philosophy major at a top 10 school notorious for its rigor. Now I am a CS major at my local university after transferring (for various reasons including cost). What the author doesn't understand is that when we says, "It sounds like he wants those topflight English majors after all: graduates adept at conceiving, articulating, and supporting their own ideas—not some “specific answer” the professor is looking for", you actually get much more creative solutions to CS problems because implementations may vary, but are still bounded by the problem. In English (and potentially moreso in philosophy), you are not really bounded by anything, so it's incredibly easy to get at least a "good" grade, while getting an A is entirely at the mercy of a subjective grader with no clear grading rubric to distinguish a B+ from an A. Further, there isn't any domain to learn, so you can fairly easily skim the cliffnotes of every assigned reading and produce at least a B essay. Thus, no work ethic. CS really forces you into a discipline because there is a domain to learn as well as projects to code, and you can't BS a program at the last minute. If an essay doesn't have a coherent conclusion at 4am, turn it in and get a B. But if your program doesn't compile at 4am...

From my experience I consider CS to be far more challenging in terms of critical thinking, work ethic, and ability to solve complex problems. Also interesting is the camaraderie the students in these classes develop as we solve hard problems together, with the knowledge that if you've made it this far in the major, you're pretty capable. To echo the sentiment of another poster, you would be pretty blown away be the ineptitude of many liberal arts majors (apart from their complete lack of relevant domain knowledge) who are able to cruise through their classes for all the reasons mentioned above.

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

#99

Post by dragonwriter »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #66
dragonwriter wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah but in CS, the program works or it doesn't. So there's none of that wiggle room. CS grading is not the same thing as just programs working (and often that's not even the most important part of it), and, in my (obviously limited and potentially not representative, I'll admit, but there's not a lot of structured evidence being presented on any side here), the variability between institutions and individual class…

Your last line is telling. I know Many programmers who have no CS degree, or no degree at all. They are some of the best. SO clearly a CS degree as a bar is going to miss an important demographic (potential hiring population). But a CS bar is also clearly useful in an effort to weed out inappropriate hires (vs one that filters for hiring the best).

But note that the preference that Google's hiring director has stated is not a bar -- there is a difference between a positive signal and a sine qua non litmus test.

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

#100

Post by methodover »

agorabinary wrote: post #98

I used to be a philosophy major at a top 10 school notorious for its rigor. Now I am a CS major at my local university after transferring (for various reasons including cost). What the author doesn't understand is that when we says, "It sounds like he wants those topflight English majors after all: graduates adept at conceiving, articulating, and supporting their own ideas—not some “specific answer” the professor is…

> while getting an A is entirely at the mercy of a subjective grader with no clear grading rubric to distinguish a B+ from an A

Huh? This is true in programming too. Getting something to compile can't be all CS professors are looking for, right?

Programming is more about communication than anything else. You can write something a hundred different ways which will all run more or less fine -- but they all won't be equally readable and maintainable.

I didn't get a CS degree, so I don't have experience on the matter. Do CS professors grade for readability at all?

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