caffeine

Edit: I should add, thanks for pointing out a third group - people who think the tests don’t work!

> To me, this showed that the tests are not an accurate measurement of how successful someone will be at college

The test proves you are smart enough.

Like, do you believe you were not intellectually capable of getting through college? That you flunked out for a pure lack of IQ and no other factors? From the writing in your comment alone I find that hard to believe.

There are some other factors you need to be successful in college, like interest, motivation, work ethic. Also luck - avoiding illness for example.

And I don’t think anybody is suggesting colleges should ONLY use standardised IQ tests for admittance, they should try to select for those other things too if they can do so fairly and accurately.

I can’t pretend to know you enough to know why you dropped out. But if I had to bet it wasn’t raw IQ.

Hah! I hadn’t intended that at all but this is hilarious.

I wonder if the IRS would play along: “I identify as a corporation so you may only tax me on my profits not my income”

> The far right and far left

I wish we could just call them all “far” people and ignore the side.

It would help those of us who are not “far” recognise that we have more common values with each other than with the “far” regardless of side.

> There's an embedded ambiguity in your sentence in that there are two kinds of failure.

Fair enough.

In 2008 somebody asked me if I wanted to try cocaine. I didn’t. He eventually moved on to heroine and his life is now utterly “failed.” in the worst sense. My life is good.

In 2013 somebody told me I need to buy as much bitcoin as I can. I didn’t. That guy is now a billionaire and I’m still an average dude.

Personally I see those two situations as basically the same: decision -> outcome.

There is a continuum of outcomes and the “fail” end could be really catastrophic, for you, your finances, your life, loved ones, possibly even the whole planet in the extreme.

When I went to $(fancy school not quite Yale but like Yale), they were even more blatant - the admissions people just flat out stated they have a quota for legacies and they have different standards.

> high-level math students have very few opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge using a standardized metric.

AP math and physics exams? Or IB?

True that these are not accessible to everyone though..

The $250k to put a totally unqualified student through school would pay for a lot of test prep hours at some impoverished schools.

It would likely take about 10 contact hours (1h/week, 10 weeks), basically enough coaching so that the result is not artificially low through under-preparation.

Let’s say it costs $100/hr all-in to coach 10 kids. So for $1k you can get 10 applications from motivated, underprivileged kids whose SATs are representative of their ability.

For one $50k annual ride you could run this in 50 low income schools and get 500 underprivileged applicants and then actually admit some of them who might benefit.

Rather than refusing to test, and wasting those resources supporting some kid who obviously won’t hack it.

The no-test policy is espoused by two groups who find themselves to be unlikely allies: naive progressives and actual racists.

The naive progressives think what you’d expect: “Minorities and poor people can’t possibly be expected to do well on anything objective, so it’s unfair to test them”. It is bigotry, but at least it’s well-meaning.

The actual racists are more cynical: “I don’t want Yale to be 67% Asian.” Obviously, this is even worse.

> Do you have kids?

Yes.

> I sincerely hope that you don't actually conduct this thinking deep into your lifestyle

I think what I said holds true about your economic decisions (which the article I’m commenting on is about).

I don’t believe you have to (or even really can) view your entire life through an economic lens. I didn’t mean to imply you are ONLY a company and nothing else.

I did mean the last bit that nobody else is going to make sure you don’t have a bad outcome as applying to life generally.

> We are hardcore social animals with huge biological & affective needs, this is scientifically proven.

Totally agree.

> We are NOT companies

Actually, we are humans. However, when it comes to our economic activity, we are also a company. Both things can be true at once.

> this is so one-sided, extreme, partial and damaging. What decades of neo liberal brainwashing has done to people.

Woah. Anything you specifically disagree with?

I put it in economic terms to address the article, but if you replace “company of one” with “life” and “returns” with “outcomes”, the message is largely the same..

Edit:

I think you disagreed so hard because you think I’m saying “you’re only an adult if you think everything is about money and personal gain.”

But what I was trying to say was “you’re an adult once you realise you’re it; you can fail; and it’s nobody else’s job to make sure you don’t” - which I didn’t think was such a controversial point..

You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc.

It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns.

It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc.

There is nobody else to run this company. It does not have a right to a good outcome. A lot of companies fail. Your company of one WILL fail if you make poor decisions.

When you truly internalise that last fact is when you become an adult.

(Edit: clarified that the last paragraph refers to the previous one specifically)

Can’t speak for OP, but there are a lot of things people do out there, not just web apps.

People building games, robots, trading systems, distributed databases, CDNs, etc could be really limited in their capability if they didn’t grok networking concepts on a deeper level. It also tends to tie in heavily to other systems concepts (things like zero-copy, or even basic elements like ring buffers).

I think you might also underestimate just how little knowledge a lot of people have. You went to a legit uni and took a legit course.

The interview question OP asks is an old favourite I used to ask too. A lot of people answered something like “clicky-linky-page-rendery!” So a bit of education on the many layers below that doesn’t hurt.

Have you tried 2x 27” screens vertically, ideally models with minimal bezel?

I’ve found that it doesn’t increase head turning because it’s not much wider than a single screen, but I can fit twice as much stuff.

Also I can read a much longer file of code at once, which is more useful than you’d expect..

It comes from the “residual” of a linear regression.

So you take some obvious variable like the market basket of stocks, do a regression, and then do your machine learning on the residuals.

The reason is that you don’t get “credit” for doing whatever the market did, you only get credit for doing even better.

There should be a special badge you get to wear forever once you have been In Charge of Symbology at some point in your life..

In a previous job, after a few years I settled on (Type, Expiration, ISIN, Listing CCY, Listing MIC, Trading CCY, Trading MIC, Fudge) as The Tuple that could handle almost everything…. Once in a while I would still get a messed up case of non-uniqueness, that’s what the “Fudge” is for :)

Nope. You are just not understanding it.

To simplify: The hackers had minimal access to stuff and couldn’t do much.

Being really good at using boring tech is better than being a noob with cool tech.

So as you get older and you get more competent, the relative benefits of boring tech grow.

Whereas if you’re a noob at everything, being a noob with cool tech is better.

If the problems are hard enough, and you are competent, you iterate on boring tech for a while to solve the hard problems, and then it becomes cool tech.

I think a lot of the inaccuracy is just innumeracy. People have a hard time conceptualising 1% or 99%.

The estimations range from 20% on the low end to 60% on the high end, which are numbers that easily come to mind and have relevance in reality (like you have probably cut something into 5 pieces before, but not into 100 or 1000).

You get the same effect if you ask people to estimate the likelihood of dying in very improbable events like school shootings or lightning strikes.

Yes definitely. I think especially if people ask it’s great to tell them as much as they ask for.

I personally did everything I advised not doing in that post, and learned the lessons, so I will just tell you my experience of it, and YMMV.

For me, the downside of telling the war stories was the opportunity cost - I could have spent that time listening, and as the new joiner the information and rapport is way more valuable than the status gained from telling the story and entertaining, impressing, or educating people.

The other downside is that people are eager to please a new joiner. They might sometimes say “Yeah we should do that here! Why don’t you be in charge of it!” But this is just to please you - you don’t actually know enough yet about what is happening in the new company to know if your way will bring value. Now you are busy spearheading a tangent that may have no value rather than continuing climbing the learning curve.

Main thing is don’t expect too much. You will not experience that same feeling of comfortable camaraderie again for a long time.

Make an effort to listen to people. Keep your ego in check - avoid saying “Well at my old company we did …” - just listen to what people are doing here and now.

I would also say try to maximise informal 1-on-1 time with other people, ask them about their work, their opinions, etc. If you are in a larger group don’t opine, just listen. If you have questions, don’t interrupt the group - use it as an opportunity to go ask the relevant person after and build a 1-1 relationship.

Try to keep a smile on your face. Avoid dark humour or joke-complaining.

Edit: Say yes to everything, at least once, for the first year. Any time anyone invites you to a drink or a talk or a meeting, just say yes.

I had a similar experience on Triplebyte and it turned out to just be terrible UX. When you first booked the interview, it would give you a phone number to call.

Later on, the company could add Zoom details. That would get stuck in some sub-section of Triplebyte UI. So if, like me, you didn’t go check their website at the moment of the interview, you would call a number and nobody answers and you think you got ghosted - and the company also thought they got ghosted.

It happened 3 interviews in a row until I figured out what was going on.

Have you tried living in any liberal part of the country?

People there don’t just think they should dictate what you do, but also what you think!

Of course not! You missed the most (only?) important one: more debt!

We can provide you with a loan that will consolidate all your existing debt! Student debt, medical debt, car debt, credit card debt, mortgage debt - you name it, we’ll refinance it!

Install our app and you can handle all your debt in a single easy payment! No job? No problem! Let us take care of you. Install our app now!

The best is have both types on the team.

You give Coder 1 projects and in a week they have a working version that starts generating revenue, albeit with cut corners and limited scope. After it bakes for a month or two and we are sure we want to keep this thing, you hand it to Coder 2 to improve quality, integrate with the rest of the stack, etc.

If it was a bad idea you throw it away and C2 never needs to support it.

C1’s fast velocity is largely a product of the high quality codebase curated by C2. C2 is always spending their time on known-profitable projects, thanks to C1. We also make sure C1 and C2 are both involved in deciding what we build and in deciding architecture.

Usually C1 is a more business-motivated type who is excited about the domain. C2 is usually more of a technical purist who is excited about building great software.

On a team with good leadership this is a very powerful combination, everyone is valuable.

Why? Seems perfectly accurate, purely factual.

I think you can translate this to “the hardest thing about doing stuff is deciding the right thing to do.”

Which I 100% agree with. But it’s not just for engineering, it’s for everyone..

They can’t help it, it’s built into the very core of the doctrine.

As soon as progressivism “works” and the oppressed group is no longer oppressed - then they are now the oppressor!

The selfish desire for womens’ safety is oppressing violent criminals who can’t join dating apps!

Sometimes common sense needs to be packaged up in a sellable format like a popular book. That makes it easier to adopt, refer to, etc than just saying “It’s common sense.”

Universities are ditching the SAT en masse because it is an excellent predictor of outcome, and that is interfering with affirmative action political objectives (much easier to get away with racially discriminating against more-qualified Asian applicants if you can deny knowing they were more qualified).

My goal in running a team is performance rather than political signalling, so I prefer to use the best performance metrics available to me.

The benefit of the coding puzzle platforms is as a hiring firm you get shown data about all applicants who took that test, and it’s standardised.

You also get pretty high resolution data about how your applicant performed (like their intermediate submissions, editing history etc) and how their solution performs compared to other applicants.

So all of that comparative info on a less directly relevant test can actually be more useful than n=2 or 3 on a direct proxy of your actual job.

Also I disagree with the premise that these exercises don’t carry over. The ability to puzzle through an algorithm you haven’t seen before in under an hour is directly useful and a common task in any domain that is algorithmically complex and not just gluing CRUD frameworks together (and even that gets complex once the scale is big enough)