aje403

Stop, you're making a comment that is not unequivocally anti-Facebook, therefore it is incorrect

"I agree with this, but I'd replace soft with relentlessly selfish. Instead of realizing the need to work together to make something better, they're in it for personal gain."

Please do not use the phrases "simple misreading" or "deliberate attempt to twist words" to describe anyone else

My portrait is pretty objective - please get deported to some other countries so you can find out what living conditions are and what "in it for personal gain" turns into in the rest of the world. Our system is really not that bad, even taking into account the malevolent actors

Airbnb is a service. Bitcoin is a commodity in the same way online poker chips are a commodity

Elderly people are not soft. Elderly senators caught the tail end of WW2 and the Cold War. Relentlessly selfish refers to young people who think believe mother nature itself entitles them to the newest iPhone, free housing, healthcare, and debt forgiveness with less financial awareness than the senators they're complaining about.

No but seriously, who else wants a VP of Social Good trophy

TBH it does make sense that the "VP of Social Good" isn't going anywhere

Whoops! Slanted review

Slant article of a topic that has been slaughtered to death by people with more industry knowledge than the author

By both virtue of education and selection process, and given that their education was adequately rigorous, they've likely been working hard at academics for > 10 years, they had the mental faculties to understand everything in their field, and they're certified by grades from the most educated people in their field on the planet (same is true for other top universities, as well). There are far more problems with hiring 15 year olds at NASA than sheer volume of applications - I would advise you to think more deeply about what you're suggesting as, even in your alternative education scenario, it's a truly terrible idea.

Devil's advocate: why is that a bad thing? Kids get social/organization exposure, to sports, music, basic education. The motivated ones are still apparently rising to the top despite the shitty environment. Most humans don't need to go into rocket science, and half of your graduating class will end up directly selling things to other people (in some form or another).As well, are you arguing that kids need less social exposure? That would be true if most kids were going to become software developers, which is not the case. Most of our social interactions do not occur in childhood; you're not speaking for everyone.

What I will say, that is somewhat similar to what you're arguing, is that it would be great if students had direct access to more challenging curriculums at every stage of their education. To my knowledge, ambitious high schoolers need benefactors willing to pay for college courses that are standard fare for secondary school in a lot of countries. If you're naturally bright and hard working without affluent parents, you're SOL in HS, which is not fair, and I think it's also unreasonable that they need to rely on being autodidactic from a young age, which is really the only alternative.

Great example, rocket science, let’s throw a bunch of 15 year olds who say they want to be a rocket scientist into nasa. What could go wrong? The mit engineering grad has proven for a few more years that he’s less likely to screw things up. The system sucks but it’s not an easy problem to solve

Mortgages are not a remotely valid analogy here unless, in the case of Robinhood, you try to compare it with margin accounts, which I think is actually a fair analogy but is not the case here. And even then, the bank does not steal your transaction history without your awareness or consent, as is the case here.

When I open up a checking account, all I need is my license and my SSN and $1000. They don't need the transaction history from every other checking account I have because they are not assuming any liability or risk. Such is the case with the average Robinhood customer, ergo, they should not steal the customer's transaction history from their bank. This should honestly be prosecuted.

I don't mean to be rude, but I think you have to be either high, really dumb, or a robinhood stakeholder to think that people would want this or that it would be a good idea. I would suggest moving to China if you think it's a good idea - I'm sure you will be able to get great discounts on a lot of things if your transaction history is conducive to the greater good in the near future.

Same thing after a few magical alchemists in labs started inventing things ~100 years ago, who would've thought?

Earnest Davis from NYU right? Next bit of news we’ll hear is “Yann Lencun starts fist fight with fellow professor”

It’s what the Buddhists were saying all along long! You’ll just need to accept that you don’t have any self. I think Nietzsche was whining this was gonna happen too.

Or wait are you seriously suggesting it won’t happen? Honestly it’s better than the social credit system can’t own property or ride a train thing if we have to be honest.

Here’s a really hyperbolic example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.4425.pdf

Do you have any proof that non technical managers are setting the hiring bar and writing the requirements for data science positions at most companies, which is what it seriously sounds like you’re implying. The guy above you was joking

Actually no, a lot of PhD's are a bit smarter than you, some PhD's are a lot smarter than you

The average CS student didn't do that great in LA/Calc. Most CS programs don't require vector calc. At an average uni, the vector calc class/linear algebra will be extremely forgiving and you really don't need to understand the material. I don't think any undergrad CS program in the country teaches enough statistics and probability to understand some of the harder latent models or generative modeling. The math can get arbitrarily hard enough where a lot of decently ranked universities don't even teach the classes required to understand some papers, but that's overkill. An Udacity gold star isn't really a replacement for that either.

So basically, people like you are a huge risk for a company. You really can't prove you have anything more than a practical ability to use the algorithms. Most algorithms are hard to implement from scratch (robustly, let alone correctly), and you would be doing so by reading papers you have a scant understanding of..

I'd bet a large sum of money 2/3 of the candidates applying for a machine learning role without a PhD could not even provide any derivation of OLS or something like that if it came up in an interview.

Incoming downvote train, choo choo

Big data's also like a big dick. Everyone's running around telling their clients they've got an 8 incher if they buy.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're right (although the definition of 'genius' is always up for debate). This is just one of a million opinion articles on the same questions which happens to have a regression line behind it.

If we're going to use invalid analogies, there's also a big difference between "I declare murder to be legal in the home that I own!" and "I think murder should be legalized!"

There are no doubt hypocrisies and fallacies on both sides, employers included. I am certainly not arguing against that. That's a different debate, though.

Employees want to get rich, employers want free work from overqualified candidates so they get rich. People usually try to pick what they think at the time is the best option available to them, job or candidate.

I'm not misreading it at all.

The two parent comments fall under the general umbrella of complaining about job listings requiring too much experience which is a standard point of contention against employers on HN. Leaving "20 years required low latency python experience with executive level leadership experience to manage our old undocumented report writing application" listings written by incompetent HR people out of the picture, there is plenty of valid monetary reasoning why a company would try to minimize its Type I error (that is hard to do, and nobody complaining seems to have any cogent solution). There are more than plenty of jobs an overconfident new grad who is good at interviewing and fibbing on his resume will fail at where a developer with several years of experience bringing projects into production is a much safer option. That is not disproved by singular anecdotal evidence of "I lied on my resume but I did do a good job so their hiring bar filtered out most of the good candidates and it isn't fair!".

However, most people reading this are employees, not employers, and have been burned by this in some way or another, so I'm going to get downvoted.

Personas and reputations are beneficial in any human pursuit. People who are respected and acknowledged more by others have an advantage. We now have the internet and social media and other ways to market one's self. With less networked electric metal things involved, it has been that way since groups of primates started gathering together, and probably well before that with other species. Welcome to being a living being on Earth.

Can you post where you work so that people reading this know not to apply to your company? Thanks

Exactly this. You have to be very naive and sheltered to not recognize this as being the case.

What are you even talking about? His opinion is not remotely controversial. Every populist hivemind drone on this site contends some form of this argument. Not a single person is (at least, getting upvoted) DEFENDING high or reasonable hiring bars - that is a controversial opinion.

Dude your post is orthogonal

Perhaps colleges can start adding an "applied" math major with a focus on subjects that more directly involve the human environment more directly to alleviate the problem you're describing?

It's pretty much ubiquitous in any quantitative field... would not even know where to start