starship

I've done the same (50 resumes for two positions, phone interviews with 15-20, follow-up in-person interviews with 4). That's 10X interviews. But 100X? Assuming anyone he hires goes through multiple follow-up interviews, I don't see what information he's getting from these interviews that couldn't be handled by a subordinate or by email. Evaluating someone for "fit" is impossible in a short interview like that.

"Though I averaged two interviews a day, we had only grown the team by three-four engineers each year."

Wait a second, he was interviewing 100X more people than he was hiring??? Does that seem a little extreme to anyone, or is it just me?

Let me clarify my point. Our economy is based on the notion that things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. What if some people are willing to pay more than others? Then businesses have to choose: either they practice price discrimination, i.e. try to sell each and every unit for exactly what that person was willing to pay, or they set one price that will attempt to maximize their profit.

You can find many examples of each. Anyone who auctions off their goods practices price discrimination. i.e. 3 identical baseball cards auctioned separately on Ebay fetch 3 separate prices. Same thing with a seller in a street market who gives different prices to different buyers (tourists vs. locals) and then haggles with each and every buyer.

My point is, people seem fine with this kind of price discrimination in a lot of settings, but not all settings. For some reason, there are certain settings and triggers that change their view from "hey this is how things are supposed to work, this thing is worth what I'm willing to pay" to "hey I'm getting ripped off!" Why is that? And what are the triggers?

Businesses put a lot of work into finding pricing discrimination "tricks", including discounts and premium upgrades, and that on the whole is a fascinating topic to me.

Did you read the article you just linked to? Here's a direct quote "From a social welfare perspective though, first degree [perfect] price discrimination is not necessarily undesirable. That is, the market is entirely efficient and there is no deadweight loss to society."

Without price discrimination, unless you're operating tax-free and subsidy-free there is always a dead-weight loss. Perfect price discrimination eliminates it. It is literally right there in the article you just linked to.

Regardless, it never ceases to amaze me how controversial pricing discrimination is. Especially since most people have taken Econ 101: pricing discrimination eliminates dead-weight loss, which should be a good thing right? Nope, instant controversy.

I'd like to second the request that someone test this who is in a place where they can easily do so. Thanks in advance.

The 1990's were fifteen years ago. Since then Carmack has spent 60 hours per week writing code for every conceivable console, PC, and mobile platform. Most people in his position would have moved into management by this point, he chose not to. As a result he has more expertise on more topics than just about anyone else in the gaming industry. And more than most in computer science generally. If he has an opinion on something, its because he knows what he's talking about.

Profiling is absurdly counterproductive, but not for the reasons the paper describes. We don't need detailed analysis for this one, simple math will do. Just to be clear, we're talking about heightened security procedures for passengers of Arab ethnicity (as a proxy for people of Muslim faith.)

The problem? The majority of muslims aren't Arab! There are large numbers of: - asian muslims, Indonesia = world's largest muslim country - black muslims, across various African countries, i.e. The Underwear Bomber - white muslims, in the balkans and Chechnya for example - And of course there's large numbers of muslims in India, Pakistan, and Iran who are not of Arab ethnicity, although they might or might not look similar enough (depending on dress most likely) to get thrown into the same profiling bucket.

The paper goes into the details of how a profiling system would be optimally set up, but the entire issue is moot. The premise that we have a good understanding of what groups should be receiving heightened security screening is itself wrong.

(Note: I couldn't find the statistic with a few minutes of Google searching, so I'll keep looking, but I know I have seen it reported that >50% of muslims in the world are of ethnicities other than Arab.)

Uh-oh, lookout, it's a Highlight killer! Just like how facebook killed foursquare (fb check-ins), quora (fb questions), Craigslist (fb marketplace), and whatever it is they were trying to kill with fb credits, now they're coming for Highlight.

Might as well give up now, Highlight. You're doomed.

I don't think it's possible to celebrate Turing's life without mentioning how his life ended. Turing was without a doubt a war hero. His work allowed the Allies to crack the Nazi's enigma code, without which the war could have gone very differently. Nonetheless, a few years after the war the UK government, upon discovering that Turing was gay, prosecuted him for homosexual activities and treated him horrifically. His security clearance was revoked, and it's not hard to imagine that this had something to do with his suicide at age 42. Just something to keep in mind on this gay pride weekend.

It seems the barbarians of medievalism and quackery are always there just outside the gates, ready to drag us back into the dark ages if those who value science over superstition don't proactively keep the light burning.

Anyone know of any Turing events going on in the Bay Area?

This isn't that complicated. From your original post: > If I go with a friend who understands the context, they can explain to me the history

Either your friend's explanation improved your experience at that museum/gallery, in which case I say "Put it on a plaque", or it didn't because our understanding of art can't be improved by any kind of brief explanation and really you need to "take an art history class" as you directed us to do. So which is it?

My conclusion is this: if including any kind of explanation --short, long, anything-- can improve the average person's experience at a museum or gallery, then they should do so. The fact that they don't makes a lot of people skeptical about the entire thing, which is a shame.

I meant the company that was bought. "face.com"

I wasn't saying facebook just bought it for the domain name. I was saying face.com, as a startup, at some point bought that the domain name "face.com" despite having little to no revenue.

Also, I can't believe the top post for this article is by someone who, a little further down one of the threads, basically said "eh, actually I take it all back".