New comment by fredphilo in "There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers"

fredphilo — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 05:40:49 +0000

This is similar to what my advisor told me my PhD thesis defense would be; your committee would probe you until you got to the limit of your knowledge (generally in your domain but not specific to your exact topic) and only then could they test how well your reasoning abilities. I think this is a great evaluation technique but it was common practice in my PhD program that, as you started getting close-ish to your defense, you'd organize some practice sessions with your peers where you could recreate that kind of environment because being able to step beyond your knowledge, especially in front of a group of gatekeepers (your thesis committee or potential employer), while maintaining a professional level of composure is difficult! And most of us couldn't quite handle it well when we would practice with each other but after a few sessions we'd feel comfortable in that state, at which point the pass/fail is, in our opinion, much more reflective of your actual reasoning abilities. As an interview tactic, especially for juniors, it's an interesting idea and I'd be curious to know how well you think it works, but I think it would take most 90th percentile candidates 2 tries to really demonstrate the kind of critical thinking and reasoning skills that you're looking for.

New comment by fredphilo in "Nobody cares"

fredphilo — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 06:15:42 +0000

this articles has a ton of typos but that reinforces the emotional state the author was - an emotional state that i think is becoming more and more common. theres an underlying anxiety here; the world you grew up in is gone. this is bad and we (the author and myself) are not falling victim to nostalgia. all the things i interact with are becoming more and more dysfunctional. everybody has their answer to whose fault it is, people to blame for the fact that things simply don’t work anymore, but i think an analysis of this “lack of care” or “i just dont dgaf” attitude on the part of the workers, the employees of the companies who, theoretically, make the USA and similar countries the beacons of good living that they appear to be, might be fruitful. i’ll definitely be thinking about this observation for a while.

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New comment by fredphilo in "There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers"

New comment by fredphilo in "Nobody cares"