The most stunning outcome here is the apparent internet consensus that Star Wars is better than Star Trek.
This is indefensible.
A Star Wars fan will tell you there are, at most, four good Star Wars movies. A Star Trek fan will tell you there are 6-7 good Star Trek movies, depending on whether you count Galaxy Quest. This might leave us with some room for debate about whether the cultural impact of Star Wars episodes 4 and 5 outweigh Star Trek's larger amount of quality material.
Except that Star Trek is a TV show.
For the movie franchise to not even be the better movie franchise is just... there's... it's not even a question.
For sure! I'm an SF-based software engineer who's also on an improv team that did monthly performances in the Before Times.
There are three "big" improv theaters in SF which I know of: Endgames Improv in the Mission, Leela in SoMa, and BATS Improv in the Marina. The show you might've heard of is "Your F'd Up Relationship", which is put on by Endgames Improv's main house team on Fridays at 9 and 10:30. That's a great one to start with. Speaking as an improviser, those performers are especially strong, and the format helps them be consistently funny.
You can also take classes from those theaters, or from a couple other spots, like Thunderbolt Comedy (who actually have a really neat online platform called Pineappl: a web app that's designed specifically for improv, so that performers can simulate being on stage, maintain consistent relative positions to each other, set custom backgrounds, etc. without wrangling any of the messy Zoom stuff like covering up your camera when you're "offscreen".)
Unfortunately the city's comedy scene has taken a massive hit due to the pandemic. I have to imagine that being locked in a crowded room with 50 strangers all laughing is just about the last thing that the city is going to allow to reopen. It seems like Endgames is in financial trouble, since they've put one of their theaters up for rent and the other one is running GoFundMe's. To me, watching Zoom improv really just isn't the same -- really, so much of the improv experience is sharing it with an audience. I really do hope the theaters survive the pandemic so we can have in person shows again when it's safe!
Follow-on question: OK, so how does your company's interview process test for these traits?
It's mind-boggling to me how many organizations understand that the most important traits of a great engineer are "soft skills" (how many answers here are about really understanding big-O complexity or pointer math?)... and yet are content to interview candidates with whiteboard algorithms problems.
Interview for greatness, not for having-brushed-up-on-Djikstra's-ness!
>“And by the way,” I added, “Stop calling your subscribers ‘users.’ They’re not ‘users,’ they’re listeners––our listeners in fact. You’re the ‘user.’ You’re using our music to monetize our listeners for your profit.” He looked at me as if I’d just shot Santa Claus in the face. “No, man! You’re wrong!” He was sweating now, and the dozen or so musicians who’d gathered around us began heckling him. He shouted, “Spotify is our product! You don’t get it at all!” He stormed off.
Then all of the very famous musicians in the room walked up to me and said "Wow, Blake! You sure did show that nasty Spotify executive!" They began to shower me with praise and small tokens of affection. Everyone was in awe of my wit.
Beyonce said "Blake - those words you've said were the most beautiful that I've ever heard. Will you write the lyrics for my next album?" And I said, "Beyonce - I'm honored. Ordinarily, I would say no, but because #IRespectMusic so much, I can't refuse this opportunity."
Next, Tegan and Sara came up to me. "Wow, Blake," said Tegan. "That was so amazing. I can't believe how brave you are." Sara chimed in "and handsome!", giggling. We made small talk for a few minutes, before they had to run to a recording session - but first, they surreptitiously slipped me their numbers.
By the time I was done talking with Tegan and Sara, most of the other famous musicians had already thanked me and left. I turned to finally leave the building, when I saw one last hooded straggler, standing in the corner. Suddenly, he looked up at me. "Tupac?!" I said. Indeed, it was Makaveli the Don himself. He looked deep into my soul and said: "Blake... God isn't finished with you yet." Then he smiled, a mysterious smile, and faded away, just like Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope.
And that was the day that I, Blake Morgan, saved music.
Are those ACT scores? Surely you realize that an ACT score is not a sole determinant of "qualification" for admittance into college. If it were, there would be no such thing as an admissions department. Everyone would just use ACT scores instead.
The difference between a 34 and a 32 on the ACT is the difference between the 99th percentile and the 98th percentile. This is well within the range of an individual's personal variation. A given ACT taker's score can vary by a couple points around their "true talent" based on short-term environmental factors (e.g. the quality of their pencils, the temperature of the room, their luck with guessing...) An admissions process that admitted a student with a 34 and not a student with a 32 would be deeply arbitrary. Which is why every college admissions officer I've ever spoken to has said they use standardized test scores as a rough initial screen and then never look at them again.
The relative qualification of students should be measured by their performance at the school, not by their standardized test scores.
Technische Universität München dropout says new zeppelin "won't be another Hindenburg"
Well, yes, I'd certainly hope this startup won't be another Theranos, one of the most high-profile disasters in recent memory. Best of luck to the founders in clearing that rather ignominious bar, and here's hoping at some point another biotech startup can once again craft a public image other than "we're not a complete trainwreck".
An interesting idea. Fowler certainly deserves credit for her work. As the author correctly notes, it was not only a courageous thing to publish, but also an impressive piece of writing.
On an unrelated note, the experience of reading this article for me was absolutely destroyed by the Forbes ad-block-blocker and the ad-first design of their article view. There were a couple of autoplaying video ads and one particularly pernicious scroll-locking ad on the sidebar to the right. Forbes is one of the very worst offenders in web monetization, as they demand you turn off AdBlock and then serve you a garbage reading experience (usually of a poorly written article by an unpaid or low-paid "contributor"). Every time I visit their website, I feel a sudden urge to start espousing Ev William's gospel that Something Must Be Done about content monetization on the internet, before Futurama becomes reality:
> If we assume that group A and group B have the same average skill level
This assumption, on which your argument rests, is invalid.
I'm an engineering college student who's had conversations on this subject with admissions officers at my school. The gender ratio of accepted students is much more balanced than the gender ratio of applicants. Every year, the admissions department fields complaints from upset male applicants who were rejected; they feel that they were done a disservice because "the bar was higher" for them than for the female applicants. They point to the different acceptance rates for men and women as proof of this "lower bar" for women.
In reality, according to my school's admissions officers, the average female applicant is significantly stronger than the average male applicant. There exists, apparently, a huge volume of unqualified male applicants, who inflate that "80%" figure despite having no real chance at earning a position. We're talking SAT scores hundreds of points below the typical admitted student, no actual engineering experience, things like that. (I have heard that large companies like Texas Instruments also have this problem, which is why they place restrictions on which specific degrees applicants can have - to filter out that chaff.)
These men remain in the applicant pool where women would've washed out, the admissions officers at my school hypothesize, because it is easier for women to "give up" on STEM fields at the first sign of trouble due to social / societal pressures. Incompetent men, however, can think they're good at STEM more or less forever.
A more reasonable conclusion to draw, instead of "Facebook's male engineers are more skilled than their female engineers", would be the one that is presented in the article by the people who have the data. Namely, that this statistic arises from the confounding effect of seniority: Facebook's more senior engineers tend to be male, since the drive to hire more women has been more recent, and more senior engineers have code accepted more often.
By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity.
I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning. A friend of mine was actually warned off by her software engineer father. I've heard stories from friends who've worked there that corroborate Susan's tales of infighting teams and inexplicable reorganizations due to high-level backstabbing. The one woman I know who works there wants out. Susan is a high-profile and credible source; hopefully her post takes Uber's work culture issues from "open secret" to "problem that has public consequences for the company".
The CEO should crack down and take serious steps towards addressing this problem - not just for PR, but because his company is seriously suffering as a result of these issues. Unfortunately for Uber, from what I've heard, Travis is part of the problem as far as Game-of-Thrones internal politics and backstabbing goes. His "move fast and break things" persona sounds like a poor model for subordinates. Between that and the company's relative external success, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anything internal to get better any time soon.
Until it does, I simply hope that my acquaintances at Uber find somewhere less shitty to work.
The reason this is more HN-relevant than your average article on pure American politics is the top comment. Someone suggested to a well-known VC that he could do something about the fact that software he invests in powers the comments on Breitbart, and he said "on it". Something like 5% of Breitbart visits currently come through Disqus. Removing Disqus integration from Breitbart would be a remarkable use of tech industry tools for political activism.
Of course, the fourth Google hit for "Fred Wilson Disqus" is now a post on right-wing reddit clone Voat entitled "F*#%^t Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson who owns Disqus threatening to pull comments from Breitbart website" [0]. So that's a real thing, apparently.
The Trump team's "polling prescience" has been vastly overstated. Trump himself has admitted that, reading the polls, he thought that he was going to lose the election as late as election night itself [0]. In fact, he says, this is why he rented a smaller ballroom for his end-of-night speech than he would've rented had he thought he was going to win. (Leave it to Mr. Trump to feel the need to defend the size of his ballroom.)
The idea that no outlet which was incorrect in predicting election results can be used as a credible source for post-election reporting is preposterous. Where do you get your news, if you abandon sources the instant that they make an incorrect prediction? Do you ignore meteorologists because they were wrong about that big thunderstorm that one time?
You have completely missed the point of the comment to which you are responding. In kafkaesq's analogy, knowing the time does not really indicate good understanding of the color of the sky, and should not be considered as evidence of credibility about sky color claims. Similarly, being able to read polls well does not really indicate ability to predict voter fraud. They both have to do with voting. That's about it, as far as similarities go.
Actually, there are "junior product" positions at many large tech companies. They're called "APM programs" (the A is for associate) and tend to hire new graduates with engineering backgrounds. Hires are rotated through multiple projects and usually given a lot of mentorship. I believe the first such program was created by Marissa Mayer at Google, and other companies later emulated it in an attempt to recapture its success. The current programs I know of are:
Google | Facebook | Uber | Yahoo | Twitter | Yelp | LinkedIn | IBM
There may be others that I haven't heard of, so feel free to respond with more. Google and Facebook are the big two; the others only accept single-digit candidates per year. Many of these programs are extremely new. (In fact, Twitter's is so new that it has no graduates yet, as far as I know).
Source: I'm a college senior with an engineering degree. I have applied to many of these positions.
Your heart surgery question is ridiculous. As anyone who has taken the SAT can attest, it has nothing to do with ability to perform complex medical procedures.
As for your question about which number drawn at random from two differently distributed populations would be higher on average - yes, in this hypothetical college that admits black students with SAT scores below the black population's average but only takes white students who are 1+ STD above the white population's average, I would expect the white students to have higher SAT scores.
What I would interrogate is why you seem to be defining the worthiness of students by their SAT scores, which most elite colleges now essentially disregard, since studies have shown that it correlates alarmingly well with parents' income.
I also don't understand why so many people, when discussing the merits of college or job applicants, are so focused on the exact point of application, to the point of refusing to consider earlier opportunities and environmental effects.
Wouldn't you consider a 500 SAT score from a low-income family's student more impressive than a 500 SAT score from a high-income family's student, based on the relative availability of SAT prep classes to the two students?
Shouldn't such contextual information be considered when evaluating candidates?
Wouldn't you say that the candidate from the less advantageous background who has achieved identical "on paper" results is more deserving of selection, considering what they must've overcome to achieve such results?
If the candidate from the less advantageous background is more deserving, why do studies find that, when presented with identical applicants, hirers will choose the one with the whiter name? [0] http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/15/...
Again: I cannot demonstrate that "aforementioned factors" like "values" are homogeneously distributed between ethnic groups, because it is not true. I don't understand why you keep asking me to try. You have repeatedly said that this somehow disproves the assertion "equal opportunity -> equal outcomes". I do not agree.
Here is where I think we differ: we are using "opportunity" to mean two different things. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that when I'm saying "equal opportunity", you're hearing "at the point of hiring, equally qualified candidates are equally likely to be hired". I am taking a much longer view of "opportunity" - one that considers cultural context, childhood exposure, and socialized gender differences like the ones represented in the paper you linked. To me, if one candidate went to engineering camps growing up, and another did not, they did not have "equal opportunities" to develop into equally strong engineering candidates, who would eventually reach the point of hiring. The "aforementioned factors" you're talking about (e.g. cultural values, income inequality across ethnicities) are baked into my understanding of "opportunity".
This is why I haven't believed you when you've told me that the existence of cultural difference proves me wrong. To express my position in propositional logic terms, I'm saying that I believe A ("equal opportunity") implies B ("equal outcomes"). From my point of view, with how I'm meaning "opportunity" - which I don't think is how you're understanding it - you're trying to get me to admit that in the real world, "equal opportunity" is False. I have admitted that repeatedly. A is False. This does not contradict A -> B. [edited to hopefully clear up this confusing analogy]
You've told me I'm "playing with words to insinuate bigotry", but this is what I've meant by "unequal opportunity" the entire time. Because this is what I think "opportunity" means, in terms of becoming an employed engineer. I tried to explain that in my very first reply to you. I'm sorry if I didn't explain it clearly.
I can't control what you feel is disingenuous, so I won't try, but I really think our disagreement here is just a matter of verbiage.
Ah. My apologies for misreading. I went back and re-read what you wrote. Please correct me if the following interpretation is wrong:
First, you said that moral outrage is the motivation for "racist" policies such as Affirmative Action. Next, you said that moral outrage also motivates state-sponsored violence. (I suppose this does not constitute a comparison per se.)
I'm sorry, but I really don't see the point of bringing up the Nazis, if not to tar "state-forced equality" programs with the same brush of "moral outrage leading to moral impropriety". Can you help clear up my misunderstanding?
I do want to define equality of opportunity that way. As you originally asked me to consider (before editing your post), the consequence that I believe would follow would be equality of outcome, give or take random sampling variation.
To respond to your newly edited (four times! ack! I am scrambling to keep up) comment: I do not want to argue that all groups of people are the same. You have already challenged me to prove the nonexistence of such difference. I have already refused. Your new phrasing has not made your challenge any more reasonable or relevant to my original post.
I'm honestly not even sure what you want me to say here...? "Yes, there are differences between ethnic/religious/cultural/racial groups. These differences contribute to inequality of opportunity, which... exists." Does that somehow nullify the question that I asked wallace_f?
EDIT: On something like your third or fourth edit, you took out the ad hominem attack at the end of your post. I will leave my response in brackets after this note, if only so that comment-readers don't feel like they are losing their minds. [You seem very touchy about this topic. Why do you feel compelled to say such mean things about my posts? What part of them made you feel accused of being a bigot? I don't understand, but I would like to.]
What exactly makes you think that a degree "means less" for a black job applicant than it does for a white one, when a white applicant is approximately 150% likelier to have a degree than a black one is?
Are you attempting to assert causation in the absence of correlation?
1) You've carefully chosen two examples of jobs that depend highly on physical attributes with well-understood genetic causes (height, muscular development), and you've extrapolated this out to technical employees at Oracle, whose skills are hardly defined by such well-understood genetic markers. This is faulty logic.
2) Just so we're clear, you literally just compared affirmative action to Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition. I would call this "false equivalence", but I suppose it's useless to try to "use words until the end of time" (unless, apparently, those words are "moral principle").
This is indefensible.
A Star Wars fan will tell you there are, at most, four good Star Wars movies. A Star Trek fan will tell you there are 6-7 good Star Trek movies, depending on whether you count Galaxy Quest. This might leave us with some room for debate about whether the cultural impact of Star Wars episodes 4 and 5 outweigh Star Trek's larger amount of quality material.
Except that Star Trek is a TV show.
For the movie franchise to not even be the better movie franchise is just... there's... it's not even a question.