- E04 - Leadership! Google, Guido van Rossum, PSF

[Alex Martelli]

Anton Vredegoor <anton.vredegoor at gmail.com> wrote:
   ...
> You are not my superior (or even considered to be more succesfull) as
> you seem to imply.

Depends on who does the considering, I'm sure.  If the considerer loves
the English language, for example, a horrible mis-spelling such as
"successfull" with two final L's would count for a lot in their judgment
(English is neither your native language nor mine, so it's not unfair to
either of us to consider it...;-).

> I am merely giving my
> point of view to the community. If that bothers you that is *your*
> problem.

You said that Google only hires people with "long histories of
backstabbing", thus directly insulting everybody who's ever been hired
by Google (among others).  If your spewing such hateful and baseless
insults bothers those who read them, it's not JUST the readers' problem:
it directly reflects on your base, spiteful, and hateful behavior.

> I would understand if you would settle matters rather by arguments than
> just waiting for me to run out of food. You might even make a small
> donation to prove your good intentions, but it shouldn't  influence the
> discussion in the way of argumentation.

My intentions in YOUR regard, given the above-mentioned insult, are
anything BUT good: on the contrary, I consider you a particularly
disgusting vermin, and should it ever be in my power to make you pay for
it without unduly inconveniencing myself (which is, of course, quite
unlikely), I might well do so.


> > I am perfectly aware of what university degrees mean and don't mean: in
> > a situation of asymmetric information, they're signals (ones somewhat
> > hard to fake) about how much somebody believes in themselves and are
> > willing to invest in themselves.  The literature is quite vast and
> > exhaustive on this analysis, and I'm reasonably well-read in it, even
> > though it's not my professional field.
> 
> The problem is that universities now have very strong competition in
> the form of internet, where noone bothers with trying to keep
> university title structures intact. Since that always was more than 95
> percent of the universities' effort (as I claimed before, but noone has
> given arguments against, and in fact some agreed implicitly) one can
> understand that this competition is fierce. If we want Google to
> survive in the noosphere it *has* to lose this attitude problem, be it
> the hard way or out of its own reflection.

Giving outstanding contributions to open-source projects or others made
feasible by the internet is, of course, another "hard to fake signal" in
terms of asymmetric-information markets.  And of course, Google will
happily accept resumes from such "stars of open source".  For example,
Eric Raymond has no university degree, but, were he to apply for a job
at Google, rest assured that his resume would be happily considered,
under the "or equivalent" clause of many of our job offers.  Of course,
Eric is "outstanding among the outstanding", but similar considerations
may apply to many lesser stars in the open-source firmament.


> Since your elitist selection process has you at the top, 

Nope -- that's Eric Shmidt (or, from a slightly different POV, Larry and
Sergey).

> you don't even
> have the slightest chance of coming around as a reasonable person,

Obviously not to *you* -- and considering the quality of your
"reasoning", I think that's quite a compliment to me.

> unless you would explicitly consider the idea that you could be wrong
> and degrees *are* BS.

I repeat: they're (among other things) "hard to fake signals" in an
asymmetric information market.  Your local library no doubt has (or can
get by inter-library loan) Akerlof's "An economist theorist's book of
tales": get it and study up on the essay "The market for lemons", which
was worth to Akerlof a well-deserved Nobel Memorial Prize.  Until you
understand the basics of asymmetric-information markets, it's not worth
discussing to what extent degrees interact with such markets.

> Can't you see that you have the guards guarding the guards here?

Are you objecting to the fact that a firm's existing employees have the
task of selecting future employees of the same firm?  Who else do you
suggest for the purpose -- astrologers?

> > > not even the likeliness of being able to grasp Haskell which you somehow
> > > seem to link to having a mathematical education.
> >
> > My working hypothesis in the matter is that there is a mindset, a kind
> > or way of thinking, which helps with both grasping FP languages AND
> > grasping abstract mathematical disciplines.
> 
> I guess it would seriously hurt you if programming abilities would be
> linked to your other forte, the (considered as soft alpha scientific)
> linguistic abilities.

Programming *in general* may well be linked to linguistic abilities,
although I'd really love somebody to explain to me why MOST excellent
programmers hate writing docs and aren't good at it.  Programming _in FP
languages_ appears to be favored by a somewhat different mindset than
programming in procedural and OO languages, and I observe empirically
that the former is more often linked to a grasp of abstract maths.

Not sure what you mean by "my _other_ forte" -- though I like many forms
of maths, I have no degree in maths or CS -- my degree was in Electronic
Engineering.  I'm definitely not in the upper centile among Googlers in
either abstract maths or functional programming, though I may be in the
specific field of (applied) "linguistic abilities".


> Sometimes adding an attractive female to a group of young male coders
> will slow down the developments while it wouldn't matter in a team of
> female coders. One has to consider the *complete* system, which is
> another fault in your monocultural elitist selection process. Sometimes

I think diversity along many axes may enhance a team's prowess, at least
when proper management guidance helps steer the whole through its
never-denied nonlinearities.  And anybody with the least knowledge of
Google would find "monocultural" the last word coming to mind to
characterize it.  But some aspects, which include both an appreciation
for diversity AND outstanding individual abilities, are indispensable to
make the whole mix work.  So we strive for diversity, but NOT by
including individuals whose abilties aren't outstanding, nor ones who
cannot thrive in an extremely diverse environment.

> adding a very strange element to a team can prevent it from being a
> 'linear combination of social peer pressure vectors'. Face your fears.

Anything but linear.  But that's not a FEAR of mine -- I would call it a
HOPE, were it not for the fact that I see it concretely happening every
day at work: teams that produce more value than the sum of their parts
would, with mutual respect and amity growing among people from the
wildest and most diverse mix of backgrounds and personalities.


Alex