Hacker News: Klockan

New comment by Klockan in "We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)"

Klockan — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:08:32 +0000

> I didn't fail those portions. Actually did quite well on them. So did my friends.

Then I don't see your point, what are you saying caused you to fail? I have a physics degree from an unknown school, learned to code in my thirties and got a job at Google by just doing well at their algorithms and maths questions so it is definitely possible to get in without ticking any of the hip boxes.

New comment by Klockan in "We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)"

Klockan — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 14:37:57 +0000

> I've got a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, am very math heavy, created a number of algos for my work over the last 25+ years (in physics sim, bioinformatics, systems management/orchestration, etc.), run sessions at an ACM conference, yadda yadda yadda.

> Two google interviews, and nothing. From what I hear from other people I consider way smarter than I, they also got nothing.

Then you and your friends weren't fluent enough with algorithms. That is the point, they don't care about all of your degrees, years of experience, conferences etc, they care about your fluency with maths and algorithms. This means that even a person with a shitty background can get hired at Google while a person with a stellar background gets rejected. Should you have gotten hired? Probably, but their system lets them find a lot of diamonds in the rough who wouldn't get hired anywhere else which is why they use it.

New comment by Klockan in "We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016)"

Klockan — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:42:42 +0000

That is the point, a person who is good at mathematics and algorithms will get hired at Google even if she doesn't have a cs degree.

New comment by Klockan in "We Can’t Stem the Tide of Language Death"

Klockan — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 04:18:48 +0000

It works, see for example smörgåsbord -> smorgasbord. They have exactly the same meaning.

New comment by Klockan in "Ask HN: Why hasn’t Google killed Google Plus?"

Klockan — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 12:32:41 +0000

I think that Google plus is too integrated in things like youtube to be killed.

New comment by Klockan in "What you should know as a founder of a software company"

Klockan — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 08:19:31 +0000

What would sales do in a B2C shop? In my mind you just create a product people want, slap AdWords on it for revenue and add a marketing team for growth. I have a hard time imagining what for example Reddit would do with a sales team.

Edit: Apparently Reddit have a sales team since they have their own ads platform, they wouldn't need it if they used AdWords.

New comment by Klockan in "The Mathematics of Inequality"

Klockan — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 12:40:44 +0000

> In economic theory, rationality is defined only as: when faced with a decision over many choices, the actor always chooses the choice they value most, according to their own "utility function".

That definition is correct but it isn't useful which is why it is never used in models. In the end we need to assume that the actors values something and that assumption will have a huge impact for any mathematical model. So the point is that since our assumptions about what people value can have so large consequences the maths doesn't really matter, it all comes down to people choosing their assumptions such that the result verifies their own beliefs.

New comment by Klockan in "The Mathematics of Inequality"

Klockan — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 10:17:08 +0000

The main problem with economic theory is that people aren't rational economic actors.

A rational billionaire would realize that he have nothing to gain from more wealth and would live the rest of his life in lavish and luxury (while donating 99.9% of it if he cares about public opinion), aiming to spend all of it before he dies. So if billionaires were rational we wouldn't have such a large inequality.

Similarly if poor people were rational they would organize against rich people, forcing them to share their wealth in one way or another. This could either be via violence or they could democratically elect representatives who will distribute it for them or they could even unionize to gain power.

The question then isn't how we stop inequality when all actors are rational, but how we stop inequality when some people have irrational tendencies to hoard wealth while others irrationally prefers to vote for those who stands for some abstract ideals rather than those who would give them the most monetary rewards.

New comment by Klockan in "Feynman’s Breakthrough: Disregard Others"

Klockan — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 11:37:48 +0000

That's a part of step 2.

New comment by Klockan in "Haskell Typeclasses vs. C++ Classes"

Klockan — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 07:33:20 +0000

It is fairly straightforward, created a pastebin showing how it can be done, you can also make it check that it is implemented at compile time but the logic around that is a bit iffy:

https://pastebin.com/DiFh4GuM

New comment by Klockan in "Haskell Typeclasses vs. C++ Classes"

Klockan — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 16:09:31 +0000

> Which can't be achieved in most OOP languages that I know of, except for Scala and that's because Scala has "implicit parameters" which are equivalent to Haskell's type classes.

C++ can do that with template specialization.

New comment by Klockan in "TerrariaClone – An incomprehensible hellscape of spaghetti code"

Klockan — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:37:55 +0000

> As a manager, one of my main jobs is ensuring that the team's bus number is always above 1

Bus number of 1 would be nice to experience for once, I have yet to see a team with a bus number above 0...

New comment by Klockan in "Competitive Self-Play"

Klockan — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 08:46:36 +0000

Humans aren't magic but we don't start out from zero, we have a billion years of evolution behind us.

New comment by Klockan in "Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs"

Klockan — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 07:58:08 +0000

Diversity training doesn't work though and it often makes things worse.

https://hbr.org/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt-work

New comment by Klockan in "Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs"

Klockan — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 20:03:47 +0000

I know, I work there. Most I know don't even bother applying since it is hard to get an interview, they don't see getting into Google as an alternative. All Google would need to Gobble up all talent in Europe is basically to start pestering every developer like they do in Silicon valley, they already pay twice of what 99% of developers are earning so taking everything would be easy for them.

New comment by Klockan in "Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs"

Klockan — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 19:55:53 +0000

Several products are already stationed in Europe so it is just a question of how much. Ireland does mostly support, yes, but both London and Zurich owns products.

New comment by Klockan in "Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs"

Klockan — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 19:43:33 +0000

Those are not issues when you have thousands of employees at a location, then you can base entire products there. There is plenty of people in Europe who would love to work for Google but there are so few positions here that it is almost impossible to get one unless you want to move to the US, it wouldn't be hard for Google to get ten times as many engineers here as they currently have if they just wanted to.

New comment by Klockan in "Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs"

Klockan — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 19:32:07 +0000

I don't understand why they don't open more remote offices instead. Around 90% of their employees are currently within the US, wouldn't it be a lot easier to find tech talent if they had a major position in other areas of the world as well?

New comment by Klockan in "Apple's new gender neutral emojis"

Klockan — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 20:25:59 +0000

Aren't most emoji gender neutral?

New comment by Klockan in "Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you"

Klockan — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 17:50:37 +0000

20% are women in the places I have worked so you would expect there to be around 2 on average then. The probability then that a team of 10 has zero women would be around 10% so not that common.