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blog.pmarca.com: How to hire the best people you've ever worked with:
One way to test for an aspect of ethics -- honesty -- is to test for how someone reacts when they don't know something.
Pick a topic you know intimately and ask the candidate increasingly esoteric questions until they don't know the answer.
They'll either say they don't know, or they'll try to bullshit you.
Guess what. If they bullshit you during the hiring process, they'll bullshit you once they're onboard.
A candidate who is confident in his own capabilities and ethical -- the kind you want -- will say "I don't know" because they know that the rest of the interview will demonstrate their knowledge, and they know that you won't react well to being bullshitted -- because they wouldn't react well eithe
This has always been a paramount issue for me when assessing others. Be willing to say, "I don't know." It's my experience that a person who will say "I don't know" can be counted on not to mess things up. And in the systems world, that is an important thing. I've never worked with anyone who knew everything, though I have worked with some people who sure seemed to know a whole lot. I have, however, also worked with people who thought they knew everything. Those were the people you kept from the root password.
They're not only at work. I see them in law school, too. They blather on about topic after topic, often very incorrectly. I don't know everything about the law or law school, but I do know some things, and I know when these folks are wrong.
During the Intensive Advocacy Program, we were instructed on using not knowing things to our advantage. In the alternative, since you're seldom supposed to find yourself unprepared in court, we were instructed to make it seem like we didn't understand some of the testimony going on. We needed to put ourselves in the shoes of the jurors and bring out the necessary testimony. During IAP, watching jury deliberations, we also got to see the know-it-all thing happening. In the criminal trial I observed, two jurors ran away with the deliberations, putting their feet down, spouting all sorts of "facts" about the gun, trigger pull, physical responses to gunshots, etc.
When I was in Air Force ROTC field training, we had six responses* we could use when addressed. "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" were the most common. The handiest was "Sir, I do not know, but I will find out." In the very worst case, you were then criticized for not knowing something. On the flip side, you took responsibility for that failure and promised to follow-up. Of course, it was critical to follow-up.
What was the alternative? "No excuse, sir." That was never acceptable. That was put in place as a trap. Obviously, the statements aren't congruent, but "No excuse, sir" often followed a weasely attempt at quibbling, another big no-no. Such quibbling was easy short-circuited by owning up to the deficiency in the first place.
The same holds for those interviewing or those you work with. If you don't know, just tell me you don't know.
* The six responses were: Yes, sir; No, sir; Sir, may I make a statement; Sir, may I ask a question; Sir, I do not know, but I will find out; and No excuse, Sir. That's just how ingrained in us they were; fifteen years later, I still know them.
Anti-Tailgating Plan Snarls Traffic:
Road crews painted dots 80 feet apart and posted signs telling drivers to stay at least two dots -- 160 feet -- from the vehicle ahead, based on the traffic safety principle of being at least two seconds behind another vehicle when going 60 mph.
Long backups developed Saturday, the day after the program began, when drivers slowed down because of heavy traffic and continued to maintain the two-dot separation, although that much distance was not necessary at slower speeds, said Lisa Mordock, a Transportation Department spokeswoman.
Apparently those Washington drivers actually read and try to obey the signs in front of them. I imagine this was a surprise for transportation officials, because I'm sure they counted on no one reading the signs or noting the large dots in the middle of the road. I can imagine the meetings this morning: "Who are all these morons who took this to heart!"
Of course, they can read and follow instructions, but they apparently exhibit absolutely no commonsense.
Meanwhile, drivers around here still haven't fully started reading all of the signs on the western terminus of the Bay Bridge, where the lane reconfiguration is very clearly marked. At least once a week, some idiot slams on his brakes in the second-to-right lane and insist on changing over a lane, despite repeated assurances, both on signs and painted on the road, that his lane will remain "HWY 101."
Because we get lots of University of California news at work, I read random articles about things going on there. I know that some of the numbers (SAT and high school GPA) floor me at times. Newsweek has a series of articles from Kaplan on colleges. I'm certainly pleased to see Carnegie Mellon University listed as a "New Ivy." Then, there's lots of talk about other aspects of college admissions in 2007. I particularly liked the notion of the ACT putting the SAT out to pasture. I did particularly well on the ACT, and only pretty well on the SAT, and I always felt that the ACT was just a saner test.
Of course, the last time I took either exam was, I guess, 18 years ago. (Whoa!)
Anyhow, one of the articles uses the huge increase in application numbers to support the notion of something they're calling "Prestige Panic," a concept any law student can understand:
From 1994 (the recent low) to 2006, the increase is 28 percent. Still, 64 percent of freshmen attend schools where acceptance rates exceed 70 percent, and the application surge at elite schools dwarfs population growth. Take Yale. In 1994, it accepted 18.9 percent of 12,991 applicants; this year it admitted only 8.6 percent of 21,000.
They do mention that there are more high-schoolers now then there were then. And certainly, it strikes me that people are more obsessed with mastering the entrance exams than we were back in the late 80s, and I assume the early 90s. Heck, the standard practice for SAT and ACT prep for me an my friends was to buy a prep book, set it on our shelf, and look at and think about doing some practice exams here and there.
What this article seems to completely ignore between 1994 and 2006 is the rise of the Web and other technologies that have made college admissions much easier. When I was applying to schools, I had to take paper applications down to a Kinko's, rent a typewriter (gasp!) and type my college applications. I applied to exactly one school (Stevens Institute of Technology) that allowed for electronic submissions. How did that work? You used a modem and a terminal program -- at 1200 baud -- and called up a computer system they ran and entered all of your application information that way.
When Emily was graduating from high school and applying to colleges, she was able to buy a CD that filled out many parts of her college applications for her. A major service now appears to be CommonApp, which is supported by nearly 300 schools. Even schools that don't support CommonApp (MIT's a notable) have online admissions procedures. Using a computer to prepare an application is a whole lot easier than using a typewriter.
Do high school students today even know what a typewriter is? My contracts professor made a joke about IBM typewriters one day in class, and I think Stan and I were the only ones who laughed. I figured most of my classmates weren't sure IBM had ever really made typewriters.
That's beside the point. I can't help but thinking a huge reason for the increase in applications to schools like Yale, while maybe in part related to "prestige panic," isn't also aided by the fact that it's far easier to submit a college application today than it was in 1994. That makes shopping for prestige much easier than it used to be.
Oil Prices Climb to Record Above $75:
(07-05) 12:50 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
Oil prices jumped to a record above $75 a barrel on Wednesday, propelled by a rally in gasoline that analysts said could send average U.S. pump prices past $3 a gallon by the weekend.
It's so nice to be at the forefront. I paid $3.29/gallon when I filled up the scooter on the way home from the airport last night.
Coming up on the last minute, I decided to scrap my Torrey, UT, plans. I still needed a front tire (or felt I did) and didn't quite have everything in order at home and work to take off on such a long trip, which would also require some decompression at the end.
And so, I decided to see what Harrahs would give me in Tahoe, and the answer was a free room, which was fine. I got there, proceeded to lose what I would have paid for the room in short order, and then got checked in. An upgrade to a suite. Cool. For one night? Maybe a little silly.
However, I'll have to say, if they want to bump me to a suite in the future for my more extended stays, that would be just fine. It had a nice-sized refrigerator in the bar area just inside the room. That's right, one corner taken up by a bar, surrounded by stools. The typical for Tahoe dual bathrooms, which has always seemed a little crazy when I'm there by myself. The bathroom I didn't use this trip could be closed off an isolated by the separate bedroom. Finally, there was a big, comfy couch and a full-sized table with four chairs. TV's, of course, were in both the living room and the bedroom (not the mention the TV's in each bathroom... but those are there in the standard rooms.)
In any case, what they gave me in living space this weekend they took from me in gambling losses.
It was nice to get away, even if only for a bit. The scooter worked flawlessly, though there's something up with the front end I've to work out. I got around 50 MPG on the highway, versus my 40 MPG commuting. Had some jerk in a Passat who apparently only knew where her accelerator was in the passing lanes. Suffering from a bit of road rage, I did take advantage of her lacking driving skills at the end of one of the passing zones. It was pointless, because we were about to hit the 4-lane portion anyway, but it made me feel better. She also, curiously, dropped back. I'm sure it's because I look like such a tough guy on the scooter.
I picked up a new jacket in anticipation of the Torrey trip. My first everyday leather (I bought some track leathers when I did the Code school a while back), I've been quite pleased with it. It handled the variations in weather conditions on this trip nicely. I was concerned I was going to get rained on on the return, but, fortunately that didn't happen. I had failed to pack any of my rain gear.
Did chimp and human ancestors interbreed? - LiveScience - MSNBC.com:
Based on the study of human and chimp genomes, the scientists believe the split between the human and chimpanzee lines occurred much more recently than previously thought — no more than 6.3 million years ago and perhaps as recently as 5.4 million years ago.
Human and chimpanzee ancestors began branching apart on the primate evolutionary tree about 9 million years ago, scientists say, but there are significant gaps in the fossil record. The new analysis suggests that a full split, which scientists call speciation, wasn't achieved for nearly 4 million years and might have occurred twice.
I think I know some folks who came from the second split.
AP: Zoo visitors watch bears kill, eat monkey:
Bears killed and devoured a monkey in front of horrified visitors at a Dutch zoo, officials and witnesses said Monday.
I've seen monkeys in zoos. I've seen monkeys in person: in Malaysia, a band of monkeys -- not macaques -- surrounded a house we were visiting and forced us all indoors. I feel like I can relate to the bears.
Emily, Jacob still top names for new moms - Mother's Day - MSNBC.com.
I would never have thought new moms' names would be correlated, much less that Jacob would be a common name for any mom.
I just got confirmation today that my loan for my 2001 BMW X5 has been paid off. As annoyed as I was by the used car dealer who bought it before the deal, they sent the check out almost immediately, clearly, because BMW cleared the payment and declared it paid-in-full today.
This has been one of those nagging things. The car had lots of problems, making it a tricky sale for anything near what I owed on it, I was too busy to properly take care of such a sale, and I didn't want to put the money into fixing it up just so I could get it sold more easily. Stupidly, that's been going on for over a year, to the tune of around $850/month between payments and insurance.
UPDATE: Okay. I was really mad. But they came by again, apologized, and swore they were ready to buy it, and we closed the deal the following Monday.
About two weeks ago, a group of guys stopped at my door to inquire about my BMW X5. It's been sitting idle for some time, waiting for me to do something about it, and I was planning to do something -- anything -- during this upcoming break in school, because my parents are donating some decent and cheap transportation to my car cause (I've still got the three bikes.)
So, one of these guys, Igor, ends up at point, and stops by nearly nightly to check out the car, telling me how much he wants the car, etc. I gave him my bottom-line price very early on, which slightly undercuts what I owe on it, and which is around $6K under the Edmunds quote for a comparable vehicle in "Rough" condition.
I keep telling Igor that I'm extremely busy right now, as it's the middle of finals. He seems to ignore that. He called and wanted to stop by yesterday with his boss, Alex, interrupting my studying, but I figured, "Oh well. It will be nice to have this taken care of." They again ask price and try to knock another $500 off. I tell them no. We schedule to take care of the transaction today, and I email into work taking the day off so I can handle this (the interest keeps going up daily.)
Today comes, I'm still prepping for my Antitrust exam, and it hits noon, when we're supposed to do our thing. Nothing. I call Alex. He says, "Igor hasn't called you?" Well, no. He's no longer interested. Says he stopped by today and found too many problems.
I was seething. The least he could've done is call me. He had my number. Not a great way of doing business, Bay Motors of San Mateo.
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