Software companies may see themselves as being very selective about who they hire. Out of 200 applicants, they may hire just one or two. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re hiring the top 1%. The programmers who weren’t hired are likely to apply for jobs somewhere else. Overall, the worst programmers will apply for many more jobs over the course of their careers than the best. So programmers who are applying for a particular job are not representative of programmers as a whole. This phenomenon probably shows up in other places as well.
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Just Lose Hope Already, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
[SEQ RERUN] You Are Not Hiring the Top 1%
Today’s post, You Are Not Hiring the Top 1%, was originally published on 02 March 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Just Lose Hope Already, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.