EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: Cerebus on December 14, 2020, 02:40:28 pm
-
Elsewhere, Cjay said:
Through the years I've bumped into one or two like him who survive on ignorance of management and have been sent on so many training courses to try and educate the stupid out of them [my emphasis] that, on paper, they are the best qualified in the business and as such are flameprooof.
Heh, heh. That phrase made me giggle.
I wonder if Cjay has hit on an explanation for a phemomenon that I've encountered quite a lot. When I've been in a management position and hiring people I've noticed that there are a lot of people out there who, on paper, are well qualified, but in practice are useless. They are the people who always seem to have the industry qualification du jour for the industry that they are in, sometimes a list of them that almost mirrors industry fashions over the years. So for programmers and support people they've often been a "Microsoft certified whatnot", or in communications it's a "Cisco certified whatnot" and so on.
When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.
-
I've always taught my daughter that "ignorance can be cured, but stupidity can't".
When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.
Here's a way that might fail...
Imagine someone that really does have a lot of experience, and has disinterred many skeletons. Their head will be full of the interesting rare cases. In a real-life situation they might well do all the obvious diagnostics without thinking about it[1]. They might be expecting/hoping that you will be testing their expertise, not something a trained chimp could do.
[1] hence on this forum I will indicate how something could be dangerous, but I won't give any indication that something might be safe. There are too many very obvious (to me) things that I won't have mentioned, but they might not be obvious to someone else. E.g. pull plug out of mains socket (not just turn off at the socket), or work with one hand in your back pocket.
-
A good interview question is to let the interviewee explain in detail something they've designed or worked on. This will very quickly reveal their depth of understanding and the "level" they are comfortable working at.
-
Here's a way that might fail...
Imagine someone that really does have a lot of experience, and has disinterred many skeletons. Their head will be full of the interesting rare cases. In a real-life situation they might well do all the obvious diagnostics without thinking about it[1]. They might be expecting/hoping that you will be testing their expertise, not something a trained chimp could do.
My experience has been that when asking someone to explain something fundamentally simple in their field, three things become obvious and a fourth thing sometimes surfaces:
- Do they understand the basic fundamentals of this system?
- Do they have an understanding of the finer subtleties?
- Can they communicate their understanding?
- Do they have anecdotes about the times that something was broken when what looked simple wasn't?
I think point (2) is what you're talking about, and my experience says that it rapidly becomes obvious if someone has this kind of detailed experience from having dealt with interesting corner cases etc., often indicated by trotting out a (4). The folks that, even though they look great on paper, need weeding out are the one that can't hack stage (1). No (3) is a side effect, and tells you whether you should risk putting the engineer in question in front of customers, or whether they should be only be deployed behind the scenes with their peers.
Again, the phenomenon I'm talking about here is the one of people who apparently have all the qualifications on paper, often of specialities, but who just plain don't know how to do the basics, sometimes as basic as "trained monkey" level. Cjay's comment was initially prompted by discussion of a qualified, apparently highly experienced, EE who seems to regularly ask questions that the untrained, unqualified hobbyists end up answering for them.
I started noticing the phenomenon I'm describing in my ISP days. We were looking for intermediate to high-end network engineers. I kept on seeing people who had CCIE qualifications (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) but who in practice had no knowledge on how to do half the things that a "certified expert" ought to have been able to do according to the [tested] syllabus for that qualification. After a bit of floundering around, I found that not only did this particular class of "certified expert" not know the "clever stuff" but that they didn't know the basic fundamentals of IP networking. Hence I started, apologetically, asking interviewees to talk through a very basic IP networking example that anyone who "knows IP" ought to be able to satisfactorily explain.
-
I remember interviewing someone who had a PhD in EE, I was looking forward to talking to them because they had some quite interesting stuff on their resume but they turned out to be hugely disappointing and didn't really seem to know much of anything practical. It seems there are some people who are just very skilled at taking classes and passing exams. I don't know that "stupid" is the right word for it, but some people just lack the practical ability to do things that are not part of a structured course.
-
A good interview question is to let the interviewee explain in detail something they've designed or worked on. This will very quickly reveal their depth of understanding and the "level" they are comfortable working at.
Agreed. It's perhaps a good idea to give some advance warning to the candidates. Something along the lines of "Please be prepared to discuss a project you have worked on in the past that gives you a chance to explain how you approached the project, and that you can freely discuss.". I say this because (1) people often have confidentiality issues surrounding work, (2) some people, even though they have a wealth of projects to pick from, flounder in choosing one if they're put on the spot. I've been in that position myself and found myself struggling to immediately pick something that was both relevant and wasn't still covered by formal confidentiality agreements or just normal business ethics surrounding client information.
In practice, I'd probably come up with a longer "please be prepared..." formulation that provided some get-outs to work around confidentiality issues such as describing non-work related projects or older projects that might, superficially, seem too trivial for the level being interviewed for.
-
A good interview question is to let the interviewee explain in detail something they've designed or worked on. This will very quickly reveal their depth of understanding and the "level" they are comfortable working at.
That's the way I always started an interview. It puts the candidate at their ease and allows them to present themselves in a good light. Of course I ask questions like "what alternatives did you consider and why did you discard them", "what worked well", "what would you do differently next time".
Typically I would ask them to explain some industry general terms, and the physics behind them.
Then I would move onto a simplified scenario that they might encounter in the job, let them know there are no right answers, and explore the options with them. One example I used was "a toy car manufacturer comes to us and wants us to design traffic lights accessory. What would you suggest?" I'd expect them to winkle out the client's constraints, then suggest a range of implementation technologies, and select the best.
And somewhere in there I'd ask what hobby projects they had done. That tends to sort out the curious from the time servers.
-
There is an anecdote!
The HR Manager reads the programmer's resume: he has everything, knows everything, used everything, etc. I thought a little...
- You know, we have only one day a week working in our company, we provide each programmer with a villa on the coast and a yacht, you can not work at all, just be proud of your achievements, and in every office we have beautiful girls dancing!
- Yes, you're lying!
- What do you do in your resume?
:)
This is the problem of careerists who can well trump fashionable terms with words that have received many certificates, the value of which is not so indisputable. We know how to pass courses and get certificates, often even without any tests - just pay the money and they will give you everything. And the tests are usually very simple.
I had to work with several foreign specialists from Germany and Italy. Many are very smart guys, they know their jobs well and are able to think. But there were also outright fools who could only follow the instructions. Any event not described in the instructions put them in a dead end. This is in the technical field. In general, management is a disaster - there are a lot of frankly stupid people, but they have the skill to speak economic jargon and look like cool specialists. :)
The whole World is drowning in bureaucracy... We experienced this in the USSR. The bureaucracy was terrible and at the same time, any student, who barely finished his studies at the university with a grade of 3, had to be hired in his specialty. It ruined us.
-
The whole World is drowning in bureaucracy... We experienced this in the USSR. The bureaucracy was terrible and at the same time, any student, who barely finished his studies at the university with a grade of 3, had to be hired in his specialty. It ruined us.
A bureaucracy is what you get when the people with get up and go have got up and gone. This is only a bad thing when they are permitted too much power. Otherwise its good to have them pooled together. The rest of us can just skirt around them and get on with life.
-
The whole World is drowning in bureaucracy... We experienced this in the USSR. The bureaucracy was terrible and at the same time, any student, who barely finished his studies at the university with a grade of 3, had to be hired in his specialty. It ruined us.
A bureaucracy is what you get when the people with get up and go have got up and gone. This is only a bad thing when they are permitted too much power. Otherwise its good to have them pooled together. The rest of us can just skirt around them and get on with life.
I probably misspelled it in English when I called it bureaucracy. I did not mean the arbitrariness of officials and bribes. I had in mind a very formal approach, the lack of any flexibility. Yes, in some areas, people must follow instructions exactly. But I see a bureaucracy in business, when in large companies the paperwork and their turnover are almost more important than the result.
-
No, you've got the right word.
-
My theory is that people who get stuff done are too busy fixing stuff that the people who can't get stuff done broke and don't have time for silly certifications.
-
When I interview candidates, I always ask about one of their past projects. You can always feel when he/she is proud of the work they had done in that project, and such people usually are very passionate and love telling about it to everyone who would care to listen. This is the kind of people I hire into my team. I want engineers to do things in such a way that they won't be ashamed to publicly talk about it, as that's how I do things myself.
As for certificates - they have zero importance to me, so I always ignore them, as the only thing they prove is that a person is capable of memorizing certain things and remembering them just long enough to pass a test. I mean, everyone who graduated University knows the drill - you memorize stuff the night before exam, you pass exam, you forget 99% of what you memorized by the time you get home from exam.
-
Never confuse a person who is highly capable with another who is just "highly trained".
There are two cost effective methodologies to hire the best candidate...
1) Pass candidates through a lengthy selection process including practical real world tests. For example, get the torque wrench out the toolbox and tighten the engine bolts to 20 newtons. (If you ask, "what's a talk wrench?", do not proceed)
2) Hire any candidate who can read, write, and possibly both. Based on the law that if you put enough monkeys behind enough typewriters you get Leo Tolstoy, if you train them all how to use the office computer system, they will become a collective literary genius. At half the price.
Indeed there are people who can paper a wall with their qualifications, and deservedly so. And there's the rest, who can't even paper a wall. I remember a doctorate with a PhD in AI software. He was possibly one of the most over-educated morons that I have ever met. Artificial and not intelligent. But managers were infatuated by his title. He had to be clever, right? No, he was just qualified.
There is a simple yes or no question you can ask yourself; would I want to be stuck on a desert island with this person, even if they had a night school diploma in surviving a ship wreck?
-
There is a simple yes or no question you can ask yourself; would I want to be stuck on a desert island with this person, even if they had a night school diploma in surviving a ship wreck?
This is a very good one!
-
1) Pass candidates through a lengthy selection process including practical real world tests. For example, get the torque wrench out the toolbox and tighten the engine bolts to 20 newtons. (If you ask, "what's a talk wrench?", do not proceed)
Newton what? Inch,feet,yard,meter?? Would be the correct response.
Someone who would ask that in return would be raised a few points on my list.
And if that person after that starts talking about thread lubrication or the lack there of impacting the accuracy of the torque,
or any alignment/calibration interval of the actual torque wrench and thermal conditions you now you are dealing with an autistic autodidact.
-
Elsewhere, Cjay said:
Through the years I've bumped into one or two like him who survive on ignorance of management and have been sent on so many training courses to try and educate the stupid out of them [my emphasis] that, on paper, they are the best qualified in the business and as such are flameprooof.
When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.
Problem is that these days, unless you're in a position to find and hire directly, the chances are you're going to have to deal with an HR department and agencies that have no clue about the role or suitability of candidates so they will take your job spec verbatim and you'll find that people drop through the net because they don't have "Frobnitz certified" on their CV.
I've been on the receiving end of agency and HR department rejections for that reason and I've also known people who were perfect for roles I've needed to fill but I wasn't the person offering invited to interviews, just the person doing the interviewing.
-
When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.
Hi Cerebus. Just few bits from my past...
When ever I was interviewing people, (including apprentice reviews etc), I always acted friendly, and tried to put them at ease,
because I know it was a stressful time for them, and so feedback may not reflect their true abilities/capabilities/knowledge. And
when talking to apprentices & new trades-people, I would always do so in an informative & helpful manner, to improve their knowledge
and understanding. All too often, I've found trades-people just using apprentices for very mundane tasks, for which I would berate
them! Often they had voiced concerns that if the new ones learn too much, they may loose there job!!! I, on the other hand, had
always taught everyone everything that I knew!! :)
Re: Specific questions/answers about knowledge in an interview...
I once was in an interview myself with a major Govt dept, and two of them grilled me for ages, about some specific types of control
systems, unsuccessfully getting the right responses from me. (They were using 'foreign' in-house terms, that were NOT used in the
'outside-world' in the industry...) They were about to dismiss me from the interview when a light came on in my head! I said...
"Oh, you are talking about 'Proportional/Integral/Derivative' action!!", so I went on to explain it in detail, verbally & diagrammatically!! 8)
They realized I knew all they wanted, and more, but THEY used different wording. Later that day, I refused their offer as by then I
had accepted an offer from Honeywell Security. Was interesting though... ;D
Last point...
I've found on many occasions that 'some' so-called engineers have certain technical qualifications just out of school/uni etc, but have
NO people-skills or real-world experience in the field. I always much preferred & had respect for those who had come up through the
proverbial ranks as well. With such hands-on experience, they truly understand how to address people, talk about problems in a
constructive manner, and appreciate how much 'work' is often required to complete certain tasks! :palm:
Anyway, have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!! Glenn. :-+
-
Interesting thread. I was going to comment earlier but I thought I'd see how it would progress first.
A couple of points I'd like to make.
Firstly, on qualifications. A monkey can pass certifications. This is something I am living proof of. But I did gain significant experience and common knowledge from the certification process. This has enabled me not to step on a few landmines and piles of dog shit. It also opens up common communication ground for working with technology platforms which genuinely does help collaboration. And it allows you to gate staff tentatively based on motivation. With great confidence I can state that a lot of people don't end up with them because they can't be bothered to do a job to completion.
On hiring, you really have no idea what you're hiring until you've worked with them for a bit. I had to let a guy go a few weeks back because while in theory he had all the boxes ticked, he was a complete half arsed dick. To be effective you need to be skilled, have decent interpersonal skills, rigour and be engaged with what you are doing. So keep a trial period open :)
A good thing I found to do in interviews is ask questions which there are no good outcomes for and get them to walk through to a compromise. That's a big decider. The one I always do at the moment is this one:
"So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?"
My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do" :-DD
-
"So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?"
My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do" :-DD
A long time ago, I applied for the position of head of the call center. I was asked: "what task do you consider the main one", I answered: "tell the customer to go to hell so he doesn't call again." I was denied a position... People don't like the truth in the face. :)
-
"So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?"
My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do" :-DD
I *love* that one, if the rest of their ducks were lined up I'd have definitely shortlisted them if not offered.
Qualifications are nice to have, they're often 'gateway' things, f'rinstance I've got a bunch of utterly useless COMPTIA ones because they were pre-requisites for other training (I think HP ASE Storage architect was the end goal, it was a number of years ago), when applying for a job I'd add or remove the relevant/irrelevant ones.
It is however always informative to check the dates (and even times) on training certificates, one tech i worked with (for a very short period of time) had *every* service qualification under the sun for one particular manufacturer, turned out he and a few of his former colleagues had a pile of cheat sheets and he'd done them all on two consecutive days.
Even though he had a level of basic competence he was never 'good' and he was 'let go' without reference after he punched a client who'd become frustrated with his work.
-
I started noticing the phenomenon I'm describing in my ISP days. We were looking for intermediate to high-end network engineers. I kept on seeing people who had CCIE qualifications (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) but who in practice had no knowledge on how to do half the things that a "certified expert" ought to have been able to do according to the [tested] syllabus for that qualification. After a bit of floundering around, I found that not only did this particular class of "certified expert" not know the "clever stuff" but that they didn't know the basic fundamentals of IP networking.
I've made that experience too, over and over again. That's why I don't give a damn about fancy certificates. And it seems that I'm the lucky guy who has to clean up the mess the highly trained "experts" have created. You can find them everywhere, even working for Cisco or Juniper.
-
On hiring, you really have no idea what you're hiring until you've worked with them for a bit. I had to let a guy go a few weeks back because while in theory he had all the boxes ticked, he was a complete half arsed dick. To be effective you need to be skilled, have decent interpersonal skills, rigour and be engaged with what you are doing. So keep a trial period open :)
I'll let the world in one of my hiring tricks. This works so well that I've kept it a closely guarded secret over the years because it doesn't work if the candidate knows it's a tactic but my hiring days are over, so it's safe to let the cat out of the bag.
In my first job where I was a manager hiring folks I had a candidate come in for interview. I had several seats to fill and the interview went well. I was pretty confident about the chap in question, a bloke called Steve, so at the end of the interview I told him we'd shortlist him. I hadn't made my mind up at this point whether he was getting the job. It happened to be lunchtime when we'd finished the interview. So, I said "OK, we're done, interview over. Do you want to come down the pub for lunch, on us?". Let me make it clear, at this point I was just being sociable, no ulterior motive. So we toddled off to the pub. In the next hour I found out twice as much about him as I had during the interview. He'd relaxed, the interview was officially over, and he was much more himself than "Steve sitting in an interview" was. By the end of lunch I was certain he was the man for the job. He joined us, did a great job and was still there after I moved on.
Since that experience I have deliberately set up future interviews for just before lunch and done the same thing. Do the interview, make it clear that the interview is over and that we're "off the clock" and then offer a pub lunch. It's worked fantastically well over the years. I've had people who performed terribly during the interview who've come over great once the pressure is off, and I've had people who appeared great during the interview who quickly became obvious non-candidates once they were talking away from their "prepared for interview" topics. It's got me some great staff over the years, and it's helped me dodge a few stinkers. Anyone subjected to this little subterfuge got told about it after they were hired.
One guy I hired, Rob, told me that he hated interviews, found them difficult, and prior to me hiring him had had difficulty finding a job. He told me that it had taught him that it was best to "just be himself" in interviews. We kept loosely in touch for his next couple of jobs or so and he said that what he'd learned that day had stuck with him and made his next few moves much easier.
-
I've made that experience too, over and over again. That's why I don't give a damn about fancy certificates. And it seems that I'm the lucky guy who has to clean up the mess the highly trained "experts" have created. You can find them everywhere, even working for Cisco or Juniper.
Having had to clean up after Cisco Professional Services or Juniper Professional Services have been in the place I know exactly where you're coming from. :)
-
Anyway, the thing that rang a bell in Cjay's original comment was the idea of the person that had been a serial problem, and that management had repeatedly sent off for training in the hope of "educating the stupid out of them" (that phrase still makes me chuckle). I've known one or two, but having done my best to avoid the larger companies where that kind of thing gets allowed to happen I haven't had any "on the team" so to speak in a very long time. Thus my initial emphasis on the hiring side of things; Cjay's comments made me think that perhaps this is where the highly qualified but actually useless candidates I'd seen over the years had come from.
So, has anyone any experience of seeing what Cjay described happening in real life? Stories? Anecdotes? Tales of revenge?
-
To paraphrase someone else, certificates exist because HR departments do and most don't know their arse from their elbow. They're a convenient shortcut when all else fails. Plus it's a great money making scheme as many feel forced to pay along. The truth is obviously less absolute and there are a few caveats but I don't think that position is entirely untrue.
-
I would dearly love to be able to tell you but I still work with a couple who would be identifiable from the stories.
-
Quite understandable. We all know that I've been skirting about one person's identity. :)
-
Since that experience I have deliberately set up future interviews for just before lunch and done the same thing. Do the interview, make it clear that the interview is over and that we're "off the clock" and then offer a pub lunch. It's worked fantastically well over the years. I've had people who performed terribly during the interview who've come over great once the pressure is off, and I've had people who appeared great during the interview who quickly became obvious non-candidates once they were talking away from their "prepared for interview" topics. It's got me some great staff over the years, and it's helped me dodge a few stinkers. Anyone subjected to this little subterfuge got told about it after they were hired.
I don't disagree even though I haven't used tactic that specifically. I've always done as much as I can to put the candidates at ease during the interview, often explaining why I'm asking some questions and that I'm not looking for any specific answers.
OTOH, I've always liked people that want their answers to be probed in order to find the limits of what they are claiming or stating. But that doesn't have to be confrontational, it can be "let's explore this together".
Fortunately I've never had any form of "pressure interview".
The only time I can remember being asked a "why is a manhole round" question (actuallly "you are an overseer building the pyramids, how do you know when the shift is over?"), I played around with the interviewer by giving many "inventive" answers before asking if he was interested in sandtimers :) I was offered the job, but declined it.
-
I remember a time when anyone who had been certified found it difficult to get any kind of employment. :)
-
Cue the possibly apochryphal story of a UK driver being pulled over in the US by a cop, who was impressed that his (paper!) driving licence had endorsements on it.
-
I remember a time when anyone who had been certified found it difficult to get any kind of employment. :)
I seem to remember an anecdote of a man at Speaker's corner who asked how any man could say they were sane only for a heckler to offer up his release papers from an institution.
-
I remember a time when anyone who had been certified found it difficult to get any kind of employment. :)
I seem to remember an anecdote of a man at Speaker's corner who asked how any man could say they were sane only for a heckler to offer up his release papers from an institution.
It used to be a common meme that the only people who can show they are sane are those with the paperwork from when they were not.
-
Fortunately I've never had any form of "pressure interview".
The problem is that for some people, no matter how competent they are, or how comfortable they are day-to-day on the job, any interview, no matter how laid back it is in fact, is a highly stressful experience for them. Getting them into a situation where the pressure is off completely - "We're just a couple of lads having a pie and a pint*" - gives them an opportunity to be their regular selves (for good or bad).
*On the, unfortunately, rare occasions that I was interviewing a woman for a technical post I'd also take one of the lasses from the office along as chaperone, just to avoid any "misunderstandings".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP0HHX4Ur9g (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP0HHX4Ur9g)
-
I remember interviewing a gal once who was so nervous she could barely hold the pen to write on the whiteboard, and she was sweating profusely. It was kind of awkward for me, I was trying to be friendly and relaxed but she was definitely under stress.
-
I remember interviewing a gal once who was so nervous she could barely hold the pen to write on the whiteboard, and she was sweating profusely. It was kind of awkward for me, I was trying to be friendly and relaxed but she was definitely under stress.
I've interviewed people with a stutter, who had no stutter outside the interview. I've interviewed second language speakers of English, whose English seemed poor in the interview, but who spoke it just fine outside the interview.
-
The resume is to help determine if a candidate is worthy of an interview. The interview process is still important (critical to making a good hire), of course.
On a resume you might see the following for each position held:
1) Job Title - somewhat indicative of the work performed
2) Job Responsibilities - at least indicates the candidate knew what they were responsible for; if these line up with what the new position requires it's possible the candidate could be a good fit; but just because someone had responsibilities doesn't mean they delivered or delivered well on any of them.
3) Achievements
a) those that are qualitative - if these are along the lines of what you need done and are confirmed to be real you are getting close
b) those that are quantitative - if these are are along the lines of what you need done and are confirmed to be real you probably have a qualified candidate
During the interview Q&A you should be able to determine if the candidate just happened to be in the vicinity of the achievements or if they were a really a contributor to the achievements by finding out if the candidate can explain how the achievements were made. This should reveal the extent to which the candidate was more than an observer and was actually an individual contributor, a team player, and/or a team leader.
It is of course possible that someone who doesn't have some or all of the desired experience could learn and grow into the position, but if someone can show quantitative achievements similar to what you want done what are the chances they are going to forget how they did it?
Possibly last but not least there are the soft skills (communications, attitude, etc.) that are often important to enabling a person to fit with your culture.
Edit: PS, these are good things to look for when interviewing a candidate - and also very useful things to consider for your own resume when you are the candidate. To make this effective a candidate should read the job description and then tune the resume so that their prior experience highlights the most relevant prior achievements that best align with the requirements for the new opportunity. Too many candidates just launch the last draft of their resume rather than carefully reading the job description and/or without specifically addressing the specs in the job description. This is akin to sending a boilerplate engineering or business proposal and it will generally lose to an engineering or business proposal that actually addresses the customer's specific decision-making criteria and priorities. A better mapping between the resume and job description will help the right candidates surface to the interview stage and also make for better Q&A during the interview. Finally, it's useful for the interviewer to remember that any candidate good enough to possibly earn the job might have some other opportunities so it's important to not only qualify candidates but also sell to them about why the position and the company represent a good career opportunity just in case they turn out to be the winner. You want the candidate to not only be qualified but also enthusiastic enough to accept your offer. Even if a candidate doesn't win an offer you want them walking away admiring your company in case they show up later as a potential customer, partner, or consultant/recommender.
-
A long time ago, I applied for the position of head of the call center. I was asked: "what task do you consider the main one", I answered: "tell the customer to go to hell so he doesn't call again." I was denied a position... People don't like the truth in the face. :)
Thats not the truth though. Generally the task is to get the customer off the phone as fast as possible while still having a high feedback rating.
Maybe things work differently in Russia, or, maybe the issue was your personality.
-
Cue the possibly apochryphal story of a UK driver being pulled over in the US by a cop, who was impressed that his (paper!) driving licence had endorsements on it.
I believe the officer issued a "citation" to the driver.
-
US drivers licences have endorsements on them too, though they're not paper. You need an endorsement to ride a motorcycle, not sure what others there are. Personally I think an endorsement should be required to drive a 4WD vehicle due to all the idiots who think 4WD makes them invincible in snow but that's another matter.
-
On a UK driving licence one gets endorsements for speeding, driving without due care and attention, and so on. Yes, they're both endorsements in the sense of "an annotation on a document" but the UK ones are generally annotating "naughty boy points" not additional privileges (those are covered by the list of permitted vehicle classes). There are more neutral endorsements on UK driving licences too, I have one stating that I'm only permitted to drive while wearing suitable vision correction (i.e. I wear glasses for shortsightedness).
-
I tend to have as much disdain for HR as anyone, but have to admit they have a purpose and a method that works to some degree. Everyone knows that most of the work gets done by a few of the most capable people (most in this thread would quickly elect themselves to that group - perhaps correctly). But everyone also knows that there aren't enough of that category to get everything done, and there are mundane jobs that don't require the superstars and quickly bore them to tears. So how do you quickly sort the rest of the herd to get a someone richer mix of spear carriers. That is what HR does and they aren't totally incompetent at it. Their biggest crime is that they really suck at finding the top group, often sending people you really want packing before you ever find out about them.
-
On a UK driving licence one gets endorsements for speeding, driving without due care and attention, and so on. Yes, they're both endorsements in the sense of "an annotation on a document" but the UK ones are generally annotating "naughty boy points" not additional privileges (those are covered by the list of permitted vehicle classes). There are more neutral endorsements on UK driving licences too, I have one stating that I'm only permitted to drive while wearing suitable vision correction (i.e. I wear glasses for shortsightedness).
Ah, yeah that's different. Some of our states have a system where you get points for certain types of citations, but they're called points. An endorsement here is specifically something that grants additional privileges.
-
I tend to have as much disdain for HR as anyone, but have to admit they have a purpose and a method that works to some degree.
Also, HR comes in handy when, in spite of your best efforts, you hire a completely psychotic and useless employee. HR can help make sure you dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s as you go through the firing process. Otherwise you may find yourself in a time-consuming and expensive legal mess. This happened once at my company, and there was no way in hell that we were going to let the creep keep his stock options. HR made sure we did it all correctly.
-
I found this guy's take on HR very interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn9ejR2VW94 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn9ejR2VW94)
-
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.
If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.
-
I remember interviewing someone who had a PhD in EE, I was looking forward to talking to them because they had some quite interesting stuff on their resume but they turned out to be hugely disappointing and didn't really seem to know much of anything practical. It seems there are some people who are just very skilled at taking classes and passing exams. I don't know that "stupid" is the right word for it, but some people just lack the practical ability to do things that are not part of a structured course.
We used to have a saying in the lab. You can tell who the theorists are because they read the instructions for the copy machine.
-
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.
If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.
That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.
If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.
-
Elsewhere, Cjay said:
I wonder if Cjay has hit on an explanation for a phemomenon that I've encountered quite a lot. When I've been in a management position and hiring people I've noticed that there are a lot of people out there who, on paper, are well qualified, but in practice are useless.
Yeah, and I have a relative who is one of those. He works in IT (and has reached the level of manager), has zillions of certificates, gets paid a lot of money, but has no idea how to even use a command line or write a script that echos "Hello." I am convinced lots of companies pay by the number of content free buzzwords someone can recite by rote. To the best I can tell, the hardest thing he's ever done is install software (that he doesn't know how to use) and tell people to reboot their machines.
-
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.
If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.
That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.
If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.
I understand what your saying. But in my world, time is money. If your subordinate is not making you money, you know, within hours of starting, then they are costing you money. I realize corporate HR is different. What gets me is that a HR department can spend forever choosing someone who still turns out to be a dud. But is anyone in the HR department ever responsible?
-
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.
If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.
That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.
If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.
I understand what your saying. But in my world, time is money. If your subordinate is not making you money, you know, within hours of starting, then they are costing you money. I realize corporate HR is different. What gets me is that a HR department can spend forever choosing someone who still turns out to be a dud. But is anyone in the HR department ever responsible?
And in the civilised world, people have employment rights.
-
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.
If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.
That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.
If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.
I understand what your saying. But in my world, time is money. If your subordinate is not making you money, you know, within hours of starting, then they are costing you money. I realize corporate HR is different. What gets me is that a HR department can spend forever choosing someone who still turns out to be a dud. But is anyone in the HR department ever responsible?
So you need contractors rather than employees. That is perfectly reasonable.
What is not reasonable is to confuse the two, and try to have the benefits of either option without the penalties.
-
Seems funny to me the need to 'interview'.
If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip. Hire and fire as required.
That's a beguiling concept, but it is equivalent to HR discarding CVs because they don't have some certification or buzzword.
If I had ever applied that concept, I would have missed several extremely good and creative people. Not recommended.
I understand what your saying. But in my world, time is money. If your subordinate is not making you money, you know, within hours of starting, then they are costing you money. I realize corporate HR is different. What gets me is that a HR department can spend forever choosing someone who still turns out to be a dud. But is anyone in the HR department ever responsible?
And in the civilised world, people have employment rights.
And are not fungible 'human resources' to be hired and fired on a whim, but are people. One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.
-
One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.
Quite; I've bemoaned that too.
Do any companies still have personnel departments?
-
I’ve not seen one for a few years. HR is in the job title so there has to be an HR department :-//
-
One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.
Quite; I've bemoaned that too.
Do any companies still have personnel departments?
Don't think any modern ones do, there may still be a few long established ones which do though.
Can't see what's wrong with getting the measure of a person with a firm, manly handshake and a hard look into the eyes, should be able to size anyone up in only a minute or two surely?
-
I sometimes was involved in interviews in the early 90's, usually with persons just out of university, for the technical part.
I had one question I liked to ask: "How many bits does a CD-ROM contain? Why?"
Usually the best candidates were the ones who did not know the answer straight away (remember: early 90s), but could find the answer when helped with some data - a basic level of digital signal processing knowledge was needed for the job.
The answer from one candidate went beyond my imagination:
"I don't know"
"Ok, no probs. How'd you go around calculating that?"
"I could not care less, I want to be a manager"
At least he was honest, though jobless.
If you need the job done, you should be able to size up the person in a three minute informal chat. Unless it's for years-long contracts, such scrutiny is just for the power trip.
This is what happened to me in my first ever job interview.
Just a short informal chat: being right out of Uni, about my master dissertation and interests.
I think I made a good enough impression:
- I got the job
- In two years I married the examiner (and no, we didn't know each other before).
PS, about long ongoing contracts: The job lasted four years, but the marriage is still going after 28...
-
I tend to have as much disdain for HR as anyone, but have to admit they have a purpose and a method that works to some degree.
Also, HR comes in handy when, in spite of your best efforts, you hire a completely psychotic and useless employee. HR can help make sure you dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s as you go through the firing process. Otherwise you may find yourself in a time-consuming and expensive legal mess. This happened once at my company, and there was no way in hell that we were going to let the creep keep his stock options. HR made sure we did it all correctly.
I've worked with two people who were perfectly good employees who cracked up. One went through a period of harmless eccentricity, like wearing a kilt every day, to being a threat to other people. The other descended into heavy drinking and aggression, to the point where he was dangerous to others. People felt sorry for these guys, as something had clearly gone horribly wrong in their lives, but they needed to be removed from the work environment for the safety of others. In both cases HR was largely useless. In one case a fresh grad, straight out of a human resources management course which he'd studied well, was hired at the right moment. He gave us the proper formula of warnings and letters to get the guy out of the place fairly quickly. If he hadn't been hired I think there would probably have been a violent incident coming. In the other case the guy's drunken behaviour got him into trouble with the law outside work, and he disappeared. This was in the UK.
-
I sometimes was involved in interviews in the early 90's, usually with persons just out of university, for the technical part.
I had one question I liked to ask: "How many bits does a CD-ROM contain? Why?"
Usually the best candidates were the ones who did not know the answer straight away (remember: early 90s), but could find the answer when helped with some data - a basic level of digital signal processing knowledge was needed for the job.
The answer from one candidate went beyond my imagination:
"I don't know"
"Ok, no probs. How'd you go around calculating that?"
"I could not care less, I want to be a manager"
At least he was honest, though jobless.
Every country where I've been involved in recruiting has seen a trend to people thinking an engineering degree should take them directly into some kind of management role, before they have developed any understanding of what it is they might be managing. When recruiting fresh graduates "I want to be in management" used to be an answer to the question "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?". Not "Where do you aim to get your first job?".
-
I tend to have as much disdain for HR as anyone, but have to admit they have a purpose and a method that works to some degree.
Also, HR comes in handy when, in spite of your best efforts, you hire a completely psychotic and useless employee. HR can help make sure you dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s as you go through the firing process. Otherwise you may find yourself in a time-consuming and expensive legal mess. This happened once at my company, and there was no way in hell that we were going to let the creep keep his stock options. HR made sure we did it all correctly.
I've worked with two people who were perfectly good employees who cracked up. One went through a period of harmless eccentricity, like wearing a kilt every day, to being a threat to other people. The other descended into heavy drinking and aggression, to the point where he was dangerous to others. People felt sorry for these guys, as something had clearly gone horribly wrong in their lives, but they needed to be removed from the work environment for the safety of others. In both cases HR was largely useless. In one case a fresh grad, straight out of a human resources management course which he'd studied well, was hired at the right moment. He gave us the proper formula of warnings and letters to get the guy out of the place fairly quickly. If he hadn't been hired I think there would probably have been a violent incident coming. In the other case the guy's drunken behaviour got him into trouble with the law outside work, and he disappeared. This was in the UK.
Yeah only times I've met people like that it's always because something is seriously fucked in their lives. As always "friends" drift away when that happens so they're stuck on their own and the only outlet is work. Also why I never go to work Christmas parties.
-
I’ve not seen one for a few years. HR is in the job title so there has to be an HR department :-//
Ironically the one fungible resource that comes in meat popsicle form often has that job title. >:D
-
One of my touchstones for the civility of a company is whether they have a Human Resources Department or a Personnel Department. The choice of words can tell you a lot, sometimes.
Quite; I've bemoaned that too.
Do any companies still have personnel departments?
Don't think any modern ones do, there may still be a few long established ones which do though.
Can't see what's wrong with getting the measure of a person with a firm, manly handshake and a hard look into the eyes, should be able to size anyone up in only a minute or two surely?
I think that only works for "chaps", especially chaps with a handlebar moustache and who smoke a pipe. :)
-
Also why I never go to work Christmas parties.
I've always kept work and home separate, to minimise the chances of everything going wrong simultaneously.
At my first job, the company was taken over and merged into a division of the larger company 15 miles away. During interviews the engineers were told that an advantage(?!) would be that we could socialise after work. Without exception we either smiled politely (while laughing internally) or looked quizzical.
While we got on with each other just fine at work, there was no way that we wanted to continue that elsewhere! None of us had any idea what the droids were thinking.
-
I'm friends with a number of my coworkers, prior to covid we would occasionally go grab dinner or a couple beers after work. Actually quite a few of my friends are people I've met through work over the years. I guess it really depends on the company.
-
I've always kept work and home separate, to minimise the chances of everything going wrong simultaneously.
I've broadly tried to be good friends with some of the people at work, but keep those friendships largely confined to work. There are important exceptions, though. A couple of my closest friends through life have been people I worked with, and I met my wife at work.
-
The last place I worked had a large HR department extremely capable of dotting "i"s and crossing "t"s. They used this to follow corporate mandates like "cutting the bottom 10%" and so forth. I saw many very good, hard-working, and capable people get pushed out, and many others left in disgust. All technical folks were considered fungible. My experience is that HR will keep the toxic manager as long as they can, and get rid of a long line of subordinates in an attempt to keep the fire under control rather than risk an explosion.
Also, I second the use of contractors if you want to hire and fire as you need. I have worked with contractors, selected contractors, and supervised contractors. My luck has been mostly good, but only because I have only used them for either very well defined projects with a fairly tight boundary, or for projects not in the critical path.
But, contractors are not employees. If you are doing anything core to your business, you take a big risk with a contractor. They take their hard-won knowledge with them, and if someone decides to pay them more, they can drop you in a flash. They can also leak information, even unintentionally. Kind of like a FET leaks current when it's supposed to be off. Sure, you can take legal action, but there goes your savings.
Cheers,
John
-
On a different note, I have a hardware centric job. One of the best places to interview potential hardware engineers is in the lab, i.e. a lab tour. If they are a good fit, they will be happy to get a lab tour. If they don't recognize anything, maybe you shouldn't hire them.
Cheers,
John
-
corporate mandates like "cutting the bottom 10%" and so forth.
I've worked in places where we cut the bottom 10% while bringing in new-hires, and I've also worked at places where the human deadwood accumulated to the point where many engineers left in disgust (on a few occasions me being one of them). No doubt times and circumstances are also critical factors, but on the whole I prefer the vitality of enforcing some turnover. Obviously it sucks if some clueless manager deems you to be one of the deadwood, but that's actually a separate problem.
-
But, contractors are not employees. If you are doing anything core to your business, you take a big risk with a contractor. They take their hard-won knowledge with them, and if someone decides to pay them more, they can drop you in a flash. They can also leak information, even unintentionally. Kind of like a FET leaks current when it's supposed to be off. Sure, you can take legal action, but there goes your savings.
Agreed, you could try a restraint of trade clause, but that's not going to be enforceable unless they copy your business contact database. But then what the hell, our newly signed third party services company based in Bangladesh is already doing that.
A truth of the modern company is fewer employees are full-time employees. Consultants, contractors, consultant-contractors, consultant's contractors, semester academics and random pre and post grad interns, all make up the team mix in the workplace. "Do you work here full time?" is a question often whispered at the vending machine. A reply maybe, "everyone who works here is loyal to the business. It's just not our business they're all loyal too."
-
I've worked in places where we cut the bottom 10% while bringing in new-hires, and I've also worked at places where the human deadwood accumulated to the point where many engineers left in disgust (on a few occasions me being one of them). No doubt times and circumstances are also critical factors, but on the whole I prefer the vitality of enforcing some turnover. Obviously it sucks if some clueless manager deems you to be one of the deadwood, but that's actually a separate problem.
Companies that need to cut an arbitrary percentage per unit time already have a problem in identifying deadwood, so they don't get rid of the right people. If they do it year after year, people develop survival strategies that rarely have to do with actual performance, but rather perceived performance. Typically much of the deadwood in these companies is higher up, and that almost never gets cut.
If a company has already accumulated so much deadwood that it needs a program to repetitively cut the bottom 10%, it is too late. If you are an engineer or scientist at such a company, you would be wise to "git while the gittin's good". Don't look back, because there is nothing you can do.
Cheers,
John
-
If a company has already accumulated so much deadwood that it needs a program to repetitively cut the bottom 10%, it is too late.
You are probably right, but an institutionalized process like this can help at some levels. As you suggest, there are probably other problems that won't be addressed. This is no doubt why I've always thrived in smaller, more agile companies. In fact, I've helped start up a couple and the experience, while often grueling, was also immensely professionally rewarding.
-
Na, turning that into an institutionalised process is an incredibly bad idea. Doing it will require some metric to do it on. To be fair, the metric would have to be published (and with a bit of Googling it wouldn't be hard to find employment tribunal cases or similar that have ruled against using hidden metrics to evaluate people). The second it was published, people would start gaming it. The kind of people who game metrics rather then get on with their jobs are exactly the kind of people you don't want to retain.
-
Companies that need to cut an arbitrary percentage per unit time already have a problem in identifying deadwood, so they don't get rid of the right people. If they do it year after year, people develop survival strategies that rarely have to do with actual performance, but rather perceived performance. Typically much of the deadwood in these companies is higher up, and that almost never gets cut.
Whether a company culls in this way or not, being politically savvy always ensures greater progress than being competent. Just look at the people who rise to be senior politicians.
-
it wouldn't be hard to find employment tribunal cases or similar that have ruled against using hidden metrics to evaluate people
Perhaps it's different over here in California or Washington State, where we have "at will" employment (at least for non-union jobs). Here, I can be fired at any time, no reason necessary. If I can make the case that I was fired because of my race, sex, religion (and perhaps more protected classes, I'm not sure) I have some protection. Otherwise, no. Since I'm a straight white male I guess I'd better be good at what I do, and not work for idiots.
For what it's worth, one of the best things that happened to me was being fired from my first tech job. Of course I was young, and recovery was fairly easy. I wouldn't recommend it to someone with a family and a mortgage.
-
Yes, being somewhat politically savvy is important. But, I'm an engineer at heart, not a manager or politician. So there's that.
Most places in US are "right to work" for "exempt" employees, which ironically means you can be fired without cause, and you are exempt from overtime pay :-\. All my employers have had this. However, it is actually very expensive to fire someone without cause, because you are on the hook for unemployment, etc., and costs go up if you make a habit of it.
My prior employer handled this by telling them that they were "on the improvement plan", which all knew was code for "we are going to fire you in x months". After a year or two of bottom 10% cuts, you can't avoid having to cut good people. A key selection criteria of savvy managers and HR people was to pick those who they thought wouldn't put up much of a fight, and would quit before they were to be fired, thus saving the company money. I worked with a number of these people. Most got better jobs and ended up happier, but most had to move. Many top employees also left in disgust after witnessing this.
It is one thing to get rid of bad employees. This should be done carefully, but once you know they should go, do it quickly without BS. It's better for everybody. Picking 10% (or any arbitrary percentage) is indicative of serious and long-term management failure or the desperation of an MBA in over his or her head.
Just MHO,
John
-
Na, turning that into an institutionalised process is an incredibly bad idea. Doing it will require some metric to do it on. To be fair, the metric would have to be published (and with a bit of Googling it wouldn't be hard to find employment tribunal cases or similar that have ruled against using hidden metrics to evaluate people). The second it was published, people would start gaming it. The kind of people who game metrics rather then get on with their jobs are exactly the kind of people you don't want to retain.
Yeah sounds like the old stack ranking fuckup at Microsoft...
-
it wouldn't be hard to find employment tribunal cases or similar that have ruled against using hidden metrics to evaluate people
Perhaps it's different over here in California or Washington State, where we have "at will" employment (at least for non-union jobs). Here, I can be fired at any time, no reason necessary. If I can make the case that I was fired because of my race, sex, religion (and perhaps more protected classes, I'm not sure) I have some protection. Otherwise, no. Since I'm a straight white male I guess I'd better be good at what I do, and not work for idiots.
For what it's worth, one of the best things that happened to me was being fired from my first tech job. Of course I was young, and recovery was fairly easy. I wouldn't recommend it to someone with a family and a mortgage.
Those anti discrimination laws apply to you too, but you're in a demographic where it's less likely you'll need them.
Which should give you pause for thought about why they are still needed.
Over here in the UK we have some rather strong employment rights, there are holidays, maternity leave, paternity leave, pensions, sick leave, all paid.
To get fired on the spot you have to have done something grossly wrong/illegal, if the company crashes and you're made redundant you have rights and pay due (subject to certain conditions).
Will be interesting to see how they stand up to the massive changes that are about to happen.
-
Yes, being somewhat politically savvy is important. But, I'm an engineer at heart, not a manager or politician. So there's that.
Then unless you are consistently so vital to business that you are truly indispensable until you are ready to retire, you are screwed. One slip, one slack period, one great design that isn't quite what the market turns out to want and you are deep in doo doo.
-
All of these just for ... tree ... z ? :-DD
-
Then unless you are consistently so vital to business that you are truly indispensable until you are ready to retire, you are screwed. One slip, one slack period, one great design that isn't quite what the market turns out to want and you are deep in doo doo.
Actually, this turned out not to be true. Despite all the BS, most people still give a damn. Also, if you help enough people, some of them will stand up for you. Also, this kind of management tends to be fear-based. That's why the bottom 10% is chosen based on least likelihood of pushing back as much as anything. If you are actually a decent performer, you have nothing to lose by respectfully standing your ground. But, even if you keep the job, if you stay at a company like this, the odds are indeed high that you will be screwed at some point. Best to leave on your own terms if you can.
A company that allows no room for failure is not going to do much of interest, anyways. It drives people to do nothing of significance, lest they be punished. This leads to a global failure, but one that is difficult to blame on any individual.
I work for a small company, now, and really enjoy it, even if it is rather tumultuous at times. If I ever work for a large company again, it will be as a contractor or consultant. Or, if I can earn advanced certification in "Bluster and BSTM", then I could always join as a VP, CxO or something >:D
Cheers,
John
-
I've worked with two people who were perfectly good employees who cracked up. One went through a period of harmless eccentricity, like wearing a kilt every day, to being a threat to other people.
Should I worry? I started wearing those last year and so far no signs of threatening traits :-DD
Back on topic, recently I did a couple of courses aimed at people with a university degree or higher and the bar to pass the final exam was a complete joke. I'm not the brightest bulb but they were also starting to let everyone go when I got my title some years ago.
-
Back on topic, recently I did a couple of courses aimed at people with a university degree or higher and the bar to pass the final exam was a complete joke. I'm not the brightest bulb but they were also starting to let everyone go when I got my title some years ago.
A serious problem with people paying the full cost of their education is they become a customer, and its very hard to expect anything of them, or fail them. As universities have expanded from a place for the wealthy or very smart to a mass market, most have followed a path of grabbing all the students they can, with little regard for ability or preparedness. You can't expect much of people like that.
-
I've worked with two people who were perfectly good employees who cracked up. One went through a period of harmless eccentricity, like wearing a kilt every day, to being a threat to other people.
Should I worry? I started wearing those last year and so far no signs of threatening traits :-DD
Oh aye laddie? Well wait until ye've been through a hard winter wearing one and ye might ha' a new perspective on bits cracking up. :)
-
Back on topic, recently I did a couple of courses aimed at people with a university degree or higher and the bar to pass the final exam was a complete joke. I'm not the brightest bulb but they were also starting to let everyone go when I got my title some years ago.
A serious problem with people paying the full cost of their education is they become a customer, and its very hard to expect anything of them, or fail them. As universities have expanded from a place for the wealthy or very smart to a mass market, most have followed a path of grabbing all the students they can, with little regard for ability or preparedness. You can't expect much of people like that.
Sad thing is, education here is `free` and our universities are still regarded as high quality on a global level (albeit ranking lower).
You can find excellence and and attitude towards that but overall the trend is not going that way.
-
Oh aye laddie? Well wait until ye've been through a hard winter wearing one and ye might ha' a new perspective on bits cracking up. :)
Your winters are certainly colder than ours but I can't wait for it to come.
Last week we had temps around 30°C (86°F) in the shadow. At morning. And summer is just starting.
-
Back on topic, recently I did a couple of courses aimed at people with a university degree or higher and the bar to pass the final exam was a complete joke. I'm not the brightest bulb but they were also starting to let everyone go when I got my title some years ago.
A serious problem with people paying the full cost of their education is they become a customer, and its very hard to expect anything of them, or fail them. As universities have expanded from a place for the wealthy or very smart to a mass market, most have followed a path of grabbing all the students they can, with little regard for ability or preparedness. You can't expect much of people like that.
Sad thing is, education here is `free` and our universities are still regarded as high quality on a global level (albeit ranking lower).
You can find excellence and and attitude towards that but overall the trend is not going that way.
There seems to be some bizarre idea that more graduates equals better so we've got a system that became really good at awarding lots of degrees that are of no use to anyone other than the people who profit form awarding them.
-
[...]
There seems to be some bizarre idea that more graduates equals better so we've got a system that became really good at awarding lots of degrees that are of no use to anyone other than the people who profit form awarding them.
I recently read an article that theorized that the disappointment of a massive number of downcast and discontented graduates chasing too few good jobs was part of the general climate that e.g. led to Trump, Brexit, etc.
-
[...]
There seems to be some bizarre idea that more graduates equals better so we've got a system that became really good at awarding lots of degrees that are of no use to anyone other than the people who profit form awarding them.
I recently read an article that theorized that the disappointment of a massive number of downcast and discontented graduates chasing too few good jobs was part of the general climate that e.g. led to Trump, Brexit, etc.
There is a university that advertises regularly on the radio here. A few years ago they popped up with an ad slagging off other places that have an established curriculum. The gimmick was that a student could a-la-carte their way to a graduation of some sort.
Yesterday I heard the same place's latest ad talks about how much integrity they have. Painted themselves into a corner.
-
There seems to be some bizarre idea that more graduates equals better so we've got a system that became really good at awarding lots of degrees that are of no use to anyone other than the people who profit form awarding them.
I think it was pure cynicism on the behalf of New Labour. There was an observation that graduates were more likely to vote for a middle class version of left-leaning politics, the exact demographic the (failed) SDP had aimed for, and they thought that broadening the group of people who went to university was a way to create a bigger pool of voters sympathetic to New Labour's 'Tory lite' policies. They just rode on the back of all the earlier Tory messing about with higher education adding their own twist to it. So, suddenly we had university degrees in hotel management, leisure management and other things with a much lower entry bar than academic and engineering subjects.
-
Think you may have just hit the nail through the wood with that one.
-
[...]
There seems to be some bizarre idea that more graduates equals better so we've got a system that became really good at awarding lots of degrees that are of no use to anyone other than the people who profit form awarding them.
I recently read an article that theorized that the disappointment of a massive number of downcast and discontented graduates chasing too few good jobs was part of the general climate that e.g. led to Trump, Brexit, etc.
The figures don't bear that out for Brexit though.
70% of voters whose educational attainment is only GCSE or lower voted to Leave.
68% of voters with a university degree voted to Remain in the EU
Those with A levels and no degree were evenly split, 50% to 50%.
Under-25s were more than twice as likely to vote Remain (71%) than Leave (29%).
Among over-65s the picture is almost the exact opposite, as 64% of over-65s voted to Leave while only 36% voted to Remain.
Among the other age groups, voters aged 24 to 49 narrowly opted for Remain (54%) over leave (46%) while 60% of voters between the ages of 50 and 64 went for Leave.
So Brexit was voted for mostly by uneducated old farts.
-
Could have done with COVID a few years back to thin the herd :-DD
-
There seems to be some bizarre idea that more graduates equals better so we've got a system that became really good at awarding lots of degrees that are of no use to anyone other than the people who profit form awarding them.
I think it was pure cynicism on the behalf of New Labour. There was an observation that graduates were more likely to vote for a middle class version of left-leaning politics, the exact demographic the (failed) SDP had aimed for, and they thought that broadening the group of people who went to university was a way to create a bigger pool of voters sympathetic to New Labour's 'Tory lite' policies. They just rode on the back of all the earlier Tory messing about with higher education adding their own twist to it. So, suddenly we had university degrees in hotel management, leisure management and other things with a much lower entry bar than academic and engineering subjects.
It goes deeper than New Labour. Expanding the universities was about managing the dole queues.
In the 80s, when Japan was doing extremely well, we kept hearing how Japan put 18% of its youngsters through university, and Britain didn't. This ignored something key - Japan calls most tertiary education university, while the UK had a mixture of universities, polytechnics, technical colleges and other ways to study beyond school. When you totalled that up it came to over 15% of UK youngsters, so not a world apart from Japan. However, at a time of high unemployment, politicians saw keeping a whole bunch of young people off the streets for an extra three years as an excellent idea. Damn the cost, which was borne by the government then. So, the great expansion of universities began. The really big step change in universities occurred in the early 90s, during Conservative rule, before Blair was on the scene. 40 years ago the number of left wing people at university was not that big. They were very vocal, but not that numerous. I think left wing politicians just had a windfall. More people at university means more average people at university. That means an expansion of undemanding courses. That's fertile ground for things going off the rails.
-
40 years ago the number of left wing people at university was not that big.
People who identified as hard left, yes very few. People who identified as soft left was almost everybody else apart from the tiny handful in the Federation of Conservative Students. I was at one of the universities that was universally regarded as one of the least left leaning (we had a Tory grandee as Chancellor), and that certainly describes the situation there. Our Student Union was remarkably centrist as Student Unions go, but it was still most definitely left of centre.
The Tories in the late 80's and early 90s didn't expand higher education, they just relabelled it. So polytechnics became universities, Colleges of Education merged into a university or a newly chartered ex-polytechnic and so on. My university suddenly acquired an extra campus 20 miles away that was a former College of Education (Teacher Training College). There was a lot of merging going on, there were no new institutions being formed or extra capacity being added. All that changed was that the number of people graduating with CCNA certified degrees suddenly got added to the number of people graduating with university degrees. It did this:
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/training-out-the-stupid/?action=dlattach;attach=1135546;image)
(Source, House of Commons Library)
Notice how the trend line from '93 to 2000 pretty much follows the existing trend (after you've taken out the 'former polytechnic' jump), possibly even flattening out a bit. Then it gets into the period where Labour's new students start graduating and the curve bends sharply upward - it's no accident that happens 3-4 years after New Labour got into power.
-
People who identified as hard left, yes very few. People who identified as soft left was almost everybody else apart from the tiny handful in the Federation of Conservative Students. I was at one of the universities that was universally regarded as one of the least left leaning (we had a Tory grandee as Chancellor), and that certainly describes the situation there. Our Student Union was remarkably centrist as Student Unions go, but it was still most definitely left of centre.
What has the student's union got to do with anything beyond the small number who have any involvement in the students union? Compulsory payments to the student's union have always been a scam pumping money to activists working against the interests of those making the payments. When I was at university the activists used to tour the refectories every lunchtime in the run up to students union elections, because the turnout was so small it made them look bad. Nothing happened in my time at university on which anything about my political views could be assessed, other than perhaps the rude way we told those trying to get us to vote to leave us alone to enjoy our lunch.
The Tories in the late 80's and early 90s didn't expand higher education, they just relabelled it. So polytechnics became universities, Colleges of Education merged into a university or a newly chartered ex-polytechnic and so on. My university suddenly acquired an extra campus 20 miles away that was a former College of Education (Teacher Training College). There was a lot of merging going on, there were no new institutions being formed or extra capacity being added. All that changed was that the number of people graduating with CCNA certified degrees suddenly got added to the number of people graduating with university degrees. It did this:
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/training-out-the-stupid/?action=dlattach;attach=1135546;image)
(Source, House of Commons Library)
Notice how the trend line from '93 to 2000 pretty much follows the existing trend (after you've taken out the 'former polytechnic' jump), possibly even flattening out a bit. Then it gets into the period where Labour's new students start graduating and the curve bends sharply upward - it's no accident that happens 3-4 years after New Labour got into power.
With the early 90s expansion a huge number of people previously working and doing a mixture of day release and evening classes became full time students doing degrees quite quickly. The big expansion in the number of degree awarding institutions didn't expand the total number of people studying overnight. Obviously it couldn't. It took time to build out and expand those institutions, but it was a necessary first step to provide the space to expand. Too many existing universities were reaching their limits of expansion, unless they uprooted and built an entire new campus in a more remote location. At the end of the second world war there was an expectation of universities rapidly expanding over the following decades, as the need for STEM people was expected to explode. Some of the famous city bound places, like UCL, had discussions about relocating to an entirely new and unconstrained campus. I don't think any of them actually moved. So, instead, the number of universities expanded in the 60s. Then the number had to expand again in the 90s, as many of the new universities from the 60s also reached constraints. By then, the UK's demand for STEM people had collapsed, so the expansion was not meeting industrial needs.
-
What has the student's union got to do with anything beyond the small number who have any involvement in the students union? Compulsory payments to the student's union have always been a scam pumping money to activists working against the interests of those making the payments. When I was at university the activists used to tour the refectories every lunchtime in the run up to students union elections, because the turnout was so small it made them look bad. Nothing happened in my time at university on which anything about my political views could be assessed, other than perhaps the rude way we told those trying to get us to vote to leave us alone to enjoy our lunch.
As usual, you're focusing on the supplementary illustration about the Student Union, that you hope is arguable, and ignoring the main point. My judgement of the political sympathies of the student body as a whole is based on direct personal experience of the hundreds of individuals I knew, at exactly the point in time you're trying to say that there were next to no people with soft left tendencies in the student body, not on the composition of the SU's elected officials. It might be a bit tricky for me to jump back in time and get an affidavit from each of them to provide material support for my case, but I think most people would agree that there's a tendency for the young voter to be left leaning (and I could quantify that if forced to), and that tendency is stronger in university students.
Just to drum the point home, voting intentions by age and by education for the last general election:
(https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2019-10-31/Voting%20intention%20by%20age%20October%202019-01.png)(https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2019-10-31/Voting%20intention%20by%20education%20October%202019-01.png)
The broad left always gets more votes from the young and well educated and that's been true for as long as I've taken note of politics. The question here is would a political party be cynical enough to take note of that, and re-engineer higher education to include people who would not otherwise have gone into tertiary education by encouraging the creation of syllabi and courses that would accept people who hitherto where not thought of, or likely to think of themselves as 'university material' in a bid to create more 'natural' voters for themselves? Given the sort of unprincipled power hungry chancers that are naturally attracted to politics, I'd say yes.
Are you really telling us that you were so socially isolated at university that "nothing happened in my time at university on which anything about my political views could be assessed". I find that unlikely given how quickly you'll offer an opinion nowadays. For that to be true you'd have to either have talked to no one, or talked about nothing interesting - half the fun of being at university is sitting up way too late at night arguing about how to set the world to rights with friends and people who were strangers at the start of the evening.
-
Are you really telling us that you were so socially isolated at university that "nothing happened in my time at university on which anything about my political views could be assessed". I find that unlikely given how quickly you'll offer an opinion nowadays. For that to be true you'd have to either have talked to no one, or talked about nothing interesting - half the fun of being at university is sitting up way too late at night arguing about how to set the world to rights with friends and people who were strangers at the start of the evening.
I know my experience of college is not typical, because I studied in London. We went to college. We studied. We went home. We very rarely socialised beyond chatting at lunch or in break periods. One of my friends spent one year in a hall of residence. I can't think of anyone else who did. In private discussions most of us were pretty much middle ground politically. We were STEM students, and that's where the maths takes you. :) You'll notice how much bigger the Lib Dem percentage is for the highly educated in your chart. However, unless there were spies watching our every move we did nothing that would have left a record of our political views. These days the internet means all sorts of things get inadvertently recorded, but in the 70s?
-
You know the old saying:
If you don't lean to the left when you are young, you don't have a heart.
If you don't lean to the right as you get old, you don't have a brain!
-
There's another saying: It's not a line, it's a circle.
Too far left or right, you begin to believe you understand the world better than everyone else, and will resort to violence to make them understand your brilliance. You're just arriving at the same place from a different direction.
I prefer the immortal words of Bud: https://youtu.be/Zn5lEuiwtfQ (https://youtu.be/Zn5lEuiwtfQ)
Cheers,
John
-
There's another saying: It's not a line, it's a circle.
Too far left or right, you begin to believe you understand the world better than everyone else, and will resort to violence to make them understand your brilliance. You're just arriving at the same place from a different direction.
I prefer the immortal words of Bud: https://youtu.be/Zn5lEuiwtfQ (https://youtu.be/Zn5lEuiwtfQ)
Cheers,
John
Its more like a sphere. Start at the point on the sphere facing the light. You can go up for authoritarian, or down for libertarian. You can go left for economically centralised or right for economically diverse. However, go too far in any direction and you end up in the same dark place.
-
How much training would it take for someone with a degree in gender studies to become an engineer? :palm:
What we really could use is training of journalists to actually fact check in depth before publicly announcing their opinions. |O
-
How much training would it take for someone with a degree in gender studies to become an engineer? :palm:
What we really could use is training of journalists to actually fact check in depth before publicly announcing their opinions. |O
You've got a bit of a problem there because opinions are opinions, and facts are facts. Fact checking opinions doesn't make sense, unless one happens to have confused one's own opinions with fact, when it still doesn't make sense, but at least it has a diagnosis.
-
How much training would it take for someone with a degree in gender studies to become an engineer? :palm:
What we really could use is training of journalists to actually fact check in depth before publicly announcing their opinions. |O
You've got a bit of a problem there because opinions are opinions, and facts are facts. Fact checking opinions doesn't make sense, unless one happens to have confused one's own opinions with fact, when it still doesn't make sense, but at least it has a diagnosis.
There are many poorly thought out opinions expressed in the media which would be shot down by some elementary fact checking. e.g. The opinion that X should stop doing Y will easily be crushed by finding that X has never done Y.
-
There are many poorly thought out opinions expressed in the media which would be shot down by some elementary fact checking. e.g. The opinion that X should stop doing Y will easily be crushed by finding that X has never done Y.
That's a demand, not an opinion. "Your shirt is ugly" is an opinion, "You need to stop beating your wife", is a demand and the question "When did you stop beating your wife?" is a dirty trick.