Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935020

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

Or that is to say, "natural".

It's called "zoning", and it's a perfectly natural construct.

And if you're going to be fair, you'd acknowledge that ultimately it presents a set of tradeoffs, with both positive and negative impact.

All of California's inequality problems go back to that.

Inequality is a very complex problem, with many forces and actors at play. Any analysis that attempts to reduce it to a single causal factor will instantly fail.

The spin I'm trying to put on this is -- they exist solely for one reason: to fill a vacuum. The vacuum created by the fact that both sides (mostly the employer, but also candidates) perceive that there's some value for them. Despite massive (and almost overwhelming) evidence to the contrary.

So my take is... to get to the root of the problem, focus on the vacuum, not on the dregs that rush into fill it.

Not using a calendar app to send out invites for interviews.

Or using them, but being too lazy (or just uneducated) to figure out this pesky time zone stuff.

So you're absolutely right -- the list goes on and on.

Though they certainly aren't helping much (and in many ways are quite simply harmful), recruiters are more of a "pain signal" than a problem source as such. The deeper problem is that the whole process (or rather, the lack thereof that many companies practice) itself is so broken, on so many levels. (Or more specifically: the expectations people have from this process, on both sides of the table).

The recruiters? They're just trying to make a living - and doing the best they can with the broken models, and let's not forget, bad data presented to them - again, from both sides. To the extent that they're to "blame", it's just that through their education (read: life choices made), they just don't know any better than to simply accept the process for what it is - and try to milk it for a buck or two.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15880104

Points: 25

# Comments: 12

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15844474

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

Same deal (give or take a few name and parameter changes) as with the preconditions for every speculative bubble - and crash - since the beginning of time, basically.

The key distinction is that, mercurial though their price fluctuations may be - traditional commodities such as oil or real estate at least have some intrinsic value, and hence, an intrinsic floor to their valuations. Meanwhile, to the extent that any of these "coins" have such an intrinsic value - if they can even be thought of as "currencies" at all - it is extremely hard to pin down.

Which is Bogle's central point: to the extent that any of these instruments have "value", it's in the belief that ... that value will keep going up, and up, and ever up.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15798735

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

If in fact it's for an actual PhD qualifying exam (or something similar), then this question might be OK.

The problem with the current crisis in interviewing is that it's become almost standard practice to ask questions like this (or its siblings: knapsack, outré graph search or sorting questions, etc) for what are basically run-of-the-mill API monkey / grunt finance programming / etc jobs.

As if the message these companies intend to convey is: "Fuck, we have no idea how to assess these candidates, nor do we have the time. So if we just ask a few gee-whiz questions that 75% of them will fail, then that might be an indication that the other 25% just might be a little smarter. Or at least very good at cramming. Because after all, that's how we got through college, too."

It's just a bit disappointing that media outlets (like TC in this case) consistently allow themselves to get pulled into spinning a lot these as pure cash donations (by emitting headlines that say "XCorp donates $Y" with no other qualifiers), as if that's what they actually were. Which, most of the time, they quite plainly aren't.

-- as the vast majority of BigCorp "donations" to noble causes reveal themselves to be, when you scratch the surface.

http://www.ciesin.org/docs/006-238/006-238.html

Unfortunately it's partially valid. Job ads in particular are (presumably for a want of some other way to whittle down the pile of incoming resumes) considerably biased towards frameworks and gizmos that have been around 3 years or less.

Yes there are new languages and frameworks we have to learn, but if we apply any effort ...

You'd think a lot of these places assuming we're all utterly incapable of "learning", they way they phrase some of these requirement lists.

The only way to "prepare" for situations like these is to go in with a willingness to trust one's own gut - and to simply break off the interview once you start to feel you're not being treated professionally, and that the questions you're being asked are, like the above, completely out of line.†

† Okay, maybe if you were applying for the job of chairing some IEEE committee on numerical standards or something, thiis particular question might be. But I somehow doubt that was the case with this particular role.

It's also -- for the very majority of people -- way too damn short to simply cut one's self off from salary and (don't forget, please), health insurance. Especially when your industry suffers from the illusion that "all the good people have high-paying jobs they love, that you could never possibly woo them away from", and hence "if you don't have a job already, what the fuck is wrong with you? You must really, really suck." Especially when one has family and/or other dependents to support.

You know, stuff like that.

But when one is highly skilled, one does not simply "just quit and get another job".