They were multiple interviewers, one interviewee. The article states at least a half dozen people interview the potential hire: supervisors, potential coworkers, etc etc etc. I think it would work much better than having HR doing all the interviews, especially in technical areas. As an added bonus, it could help gauge how well the potential hire will get along with coworkers (Or "Fit Into the Corporate Environment" if you need an MBA term for it.) The interesting thing about this is Google claims that this interview process will lead to a positive feedback loop in employee quality, where having good employees means that future hires will also be good (whether or not this actually is true, I don't know. But coworkers probably know the best exactly what skillset is needed to get the job done.)
I find it very interesting that this is not how its always done. I've had 3 major job searches in my life and in each of them, (all small companies) I eventually interviewed with my future immediate superior and co-workers before being hired. And in any job search any company I work for has had, co-workers and supervisor did the interviews. Personally, I found it gratifying on both ends. As an interviewee, it gave me the chance to meet with the people I'd be working with and back out if they were assholes. On the interviewer side, I found I was as least as good as my bosses and way better than any HR person at determining whether person A would fit into slot B.
As an example, my current company hired a DBA a few months ago. We ended up having two interviews with potential candidates at the office. I recommended that we hire one guy, but we ended up hiring the other guy (availability and money were the reasons I was given). He was fired for not being able to perform his job to the level required. But hey, what do I know about HR, I'm only a programmer.....
I was once brought back in even though my code was absolutely maintainable. I had left the company for other reasons ( Inner Mongolia ) but they brought me back because something didn't work. I spent 10 minutes figureing out that the problem was hardware, 5 minutes directing the tech on how to fix the hardware, and 2 hours and 45 minutes bullshitting with my former co-workers, all at $75 an hour.
I have to put this in only because taken out of context it looks ridiculous and probably corresponds to some of the principals of the article. but my software system contains this line of code:
HomeHome homeHome = (HomeHome)
the worst thing is that I wrote it and THEN realized how stupid it was.
well, actually thats only the second worst thing. The worst thing is that it is 100% valid and makes perfect sense in context.
I think the one thing we overlook as geeks is how UN-geeky the rest of the people out there are. All I have to do is look at my parents, inlaws, and parents of friends, etc. These are people who's computers I generally have to fix. They might not use AOL for a browser or an internet service (though that's often because of mine or my wife's advice) but they represent what people in the rest of the world use the internet for. Its not for the games. Its not for developing software, or investigating new computers or talking about operating systems or technology or geeky stuff that we talk about.
They use it to talk about their fish, or home improvement, or sports, or porn or crafting or dogs or cats or politics or all those other things that most of us either don't care about or don't want to admit we care about. The battle for those users, because there are SO many of them, is always going to be intense. AOL is a well entrenched name in the internet. Most geeks and long time users hate it, many new users pan it, but everyone KNOWS it. (of course they know Microsoft and Google too.)
If Microsoft buys AOL, most people will yawn and move on. But if Google buys them, especially after published reports of Microsoft wanting it, then Google not only buys a bunch of new users, it makes a HUGE statement that Microsoft is NOT invincible. I think we all want that.
Here's the 10 cent easy answer. Because to 200 million americans who all have cash to spend, AOL means more to them than WWW. Now, before you all flame me, understand that I know that a) Americans are not the world, and b) the 60 million tech savvy Americans all know that AOL has no cred. But there's still alot of money in those 200 million Americans who see AOL as their ticket to perhaps getting online. To me, there's no question who I want to win this fight. There's also no question how important it is for Microsoft NOT to lose this fight....
"Were Microsoft to not put the internet explorer version of its browser on general release, Netscape would begin to sell people their browsers. This would put enormous pressure on the price of Microsoft's own browsers-- something the company is naturally keen to avoid."
Of course I now expect several comments telling me why this analogy is wrong. They will range from "Microsoft is a convicted monopolist!!!" to "Apple needs to control the hardware to create the best user experience". Bottom line is, Apple wants to keep its hardware prices high and doesn't want Dell to undersell them.
To address the second issue MS would argue that they need IE on Windows to control the Windows experience. That it wouldn't be the same without it. (This is true, it would probably be much better without it). To address the monopoly issue...everyone's gotta start somewhere;)
What's to stop Apple from simply releasing copies of OSX to the general public AND to vendors while setting a price so high that its not cost effective NOT to buy Apple Hardware. Like for example, $750 for a retail OS and $500 for vendors. Then your Dell Apple costs as much or more than your Apple Apple. Maybe except for the ultra-high end high performance graphics workstations that Dell can't sell anyway.
If you are referring to the current involvment of US Forces in Iraq, then the issue there isn't fighting for oil, its simply removing a dictator who a) invaded his neighbors, b) killed his own citizens by the thousands, c) aided and harbored terrorists, including the ones who killed thousands of americans in New York and committed an ACT OF WAR by attacking the Pentagon, and d) Bragged about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction that they planned to use on the United States.
Notice how the "lets kill all the americans" chanting has died off since the US invaded Iraq. even in Iran, where they hate americans like no others, the people are shouting, "lets kill all the Israelies". Why? because the Israelis don't have Marines next door.
Combine those $300 billion dollars with all the other amounts of money spent by other countries for military purposes, plus all other amounts for stupid things (for example paying athletes millions for kicking a ball), and you get the idea of were money is wasted at.
With that amount of money, we could start building the NCC Enterprise and finish it in 100 years, while in the meantime discovering antigravity and antimatter warp drive.
I am a citizen of the world. Everyday I talk to tens of people from all around the globe, thanks to the internet. I feel silly when the world 'war' is mentioned, because I do not have any real differences with other people. All our differences are artificial, introduced by megalomaniac leaders that want to take over the world, but have no more brain that...Pinky and Brain.
WE/.ERS MUST START AN INTERNATIONAL MOVE FOR STOPPING ALL PRODUCTION OF WEAPONS OF ALL TYPES OF PURPOSES IN ALL COUNTRIES. THINGS ARE GETTING SILLIER BY THE MINUTE, AND IT IS UP TO US TO SAVE THE WORLD!!!
the world just called and told me to tell you to shut the fuck up, it doesn't want you to save it.
(fucking tree-huggers) Look. People fight for what they believe in, and they fight for survival, whether its against aggressive neighbors or their environment. I guarentee you that if every country in the world destroyed every weapon that they had, some yahoo in Arkansas with a hidden cache of AK's will take over the world.
And the analogy can be extended. Maybe I'll just ask to mod you flamebait and ignore you otherwise.
If this plan fails they'll hire Jeri Ryan to personally hand deliver every copy of a Voyager season bought. They figure that if she sold the series once, she can do it again.
I'd pay $2500 to have Jeri Ryan come deliver Voyager to me. and she doesn't even need to bring the dvd's.... or clothes....
You know, to be fair, I tried this last weekend, and it worked. I was halfway through upgrading my win98 box to XP when the installer borked (I think because of an odd CD-ROM setup I have). As we all know, this is usually the worst possible moment for something to go wrong, as the system is between two (theoretically) stable configurations, but when I crossed my fingers and rebooted the machine, I was given a useful(!) error message, that gave me a clue as to the problem, a suggested work around, and the option to restore my Win 98 system. To my surprise my old system restored perfectly, I was able to set up the work around, and then installed XP with no more problems. It didn't even try to beat up on my GRUB loader.
I tried this last week. I had a machine which had Windows XP Pro installed and I wanted to put WIN 98 on it from my old MSDN. worse yet, it was a laptop on which I had to chose whether I wanted to use a floppy or a CD rom but not both.
I did accomplish my task, but it took reformatting the hard drive, 57,000 reboots, a couple of third party apps (one of which allowed me to setup a cd as a boot-floppy). It also took two evenings (about 10 hours!)
By the way, what OS always has the best uptimes? Linux right...
Why is uptime constantly used as a measure of all things good and wonderful in the IT world? Those updates are pretty important, and every now and then a healthy reboot will load some of those new kernel toys/fixes etc. Not to mention, a fresh boot from time to time can expose problems that might otherwise be hidden by an old (but now updated) driver etc.
because those pesky users like to have access to their server. If you take the server out of the client-server equation the client is NEVER happy. Often, companies are only paid when their server is up. Even if they aren't, companies who host servers don't stay in business very long if their servers go down all the time.
I think you might be trying to be funny, but if not, understand that there are two issues with this. 1) rebooting a server alot means less uptime, and that's bad for the reasons I said earlier. 2) rebooting a server should be superfast so as to minimize any downtime associated with that reboot.
After all, if uptime wasn't an issue why would companies spend so much on UPS's?
"Followed by Vader whining about where Padme is, and then, of course... "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!""
Yes, you're absolutely right of course. It would have been much more credible for the character not to have given a damn about his wife because at that point he's wearing a mask and cloak.
There are many ways to express emotion using voice. There are many ways of expressing loss, expressing feelings, expressing anguish. Screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" is just one of those ways. Many people feel that it was either unnecessary, contrived, or just plain stupid. Personally, I just thought it was inadequate. But then again, I should have expected as much from the characterization of Anakin, which was, well, sucky. (no better word for it)
Except what they were doing was setting High prices for one type of ram, that being the Rambus type of ram. As someone who actually has some sticks of Rambus type RDRAM, I will say that I paid at least twice as much for them as I would have for any other type of ram. Obviously price fixing was at work here...
The problem with hebrew is that even if the characters are identical to what they were 2000 years ago, the meanings can easily change. Just because we see the same word in hebrew doesn't mean it still translates the same, or even means the same in modern hebrew.....
Its kinda like reading Beowulf in the original Middle English and then wondering if Beowulf was human or a monster.
Not to drift the topic here too much, but I just had this thought. I think it might be time for NASA to be split into two different organization. One could be a simple Space Agency which could handle the more mundane business aspects of space, (Satellite insertions, orbital construction, habitat construction, colonization, etc...) and the other which would focus on the Scientific and Exploratory aspects of space. Maybe the second agency could be placed under the auspices of the NSF or something.
It seems to me that most of the whining about different types of research could be lessened if it were obvious that the Mars Rovers are there to explore mars, and not look for something in particular.
Agreed. Small towns do have their problems. but they are peaceful. The one I live in has the advantage of being close enough to a major city that my commute is not too outrageous. But boredom in kids can be ameliorated using the web. It also allows for independent research on their part which 20 years ago would have been impossible.
try moving out of the city and into a small town. Small town america has those feelings and many more. No locks on your door? sure, why not. After all, if someone were to come into my house and try and take something, the neighbors would stop them and ask them who they were. Park your car on the street, no problem. Would someone take it? hell no. Power outage? the electic guy comes and fixes it. In a disaster, everyone works together to fix things, instead of looting and stealing....
Which is also why communism works very well in small communities in Israel (called Kibbutz's).
Me, personally, I really despise left-handed long-haired Puerto Rican Democrats who are between 5' 10" and 5' 11.5" and weigh between 120 and 125 lbs. Hate them, can't stand them! I truly believe that they are all not only subhuman, but sub-crustacean. They should all be taken out and shot!!!!!
Death to all left-handed long-haired Puerto Rican Democrats who are between 5' 10" and 5' 11.5" and weigh between 120 and 125 lbs.
Here across the pond, we have a concept called, "Homeschooling". This says that we can and often do teach our children at home. In this case, the home and the school are the same thing. And the state can't say a thing. Well, actually they can, and often do. Homeschooling has restrictions in some states, though, thankfully not the one I live in.
Because this is true, it follows that a private school has the right to do what it likes. IMO, a private school should refund the full tuition of any student it expells for behavior which would not get that student kicked out of a public school. But that's just my opinion.
To all slashdotters who want U.N. control of the internet- behold, internationalization and diversity prove inferior to plain old fashioned American ideals yet again.
What the fuck are you on about? These are foreign corporations that want to screw all the consumers, as usual, and as pioneered by the, oh-so-democratically great US corporations. It is the corporations which are the enemy here and the UN has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. Furthermore, corporate sponsored entities, the WTO and WIPO do have everything to do with this, and yet, somehow, I do see brainwashed tools shreeking at the top of their lungs about the UN and not them.
It is a democratic duty of every citizen of any democratic nation, be it US, Canada, France, Germany or any other to oppose corporatists at every turn, because corporatism and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Foreign corporations are even more influential over foreign governments than US corporations are over the US governments. in many cases, the foreign "corporation" is OWNED by the government. Ask yourself, who owns Saudi Telecom? is it possible he might be related in some way to the King of Saudi Arabia? hmmm?
and btw, Corporatism is NOT exclusive with democracy. It is
Please enlighten us to the other numerous groups who routinely engage in suicide bombings besides Muslims. Sure there will always be the occasional assorted nutball, but the vast majority of that shit is from Muslim fanatics who live primarily in the Middle East. The reason his post was funny is becuase although it's non-PC, everyone knows its true.
True, when the Irish blow someone up, they make sure that THEY don't blow up too.
and when the Japanese kill themselves, they use a sword and don't hurt other people....
so, I guess that means that the Arabs have taken aspects from other cultures (Irish and Japanese) and put them together, Terrorism and suicide at the same time!!!
Slashdot Mirror
I find it very interesting that this is not how its always done. I've had 3 major job searches in my life and in each of them, (all small companies) I eventually interviewed with my future immediate superior and co-workers before being hired. And in any job search any company I work for has had, co-workers and supervisor did the interviews. Personally, I found it gratifying on both ends. As an interviewee, it gave me the chance to meet with the people I'd be working with and back out if they were assholes. On the interviewer side, I found I was as least as good as my bosses and way better than any HR person at determining whether person A would fit into slot B.
As an example, my current company hired a DBA a few months ago. We ended up having two interviews with potential candidates at the office. I recommended that we hire one guy, but we ended up hiring the other guy (availability and money were the reasons I was given). He was fired for not being able to perform his job to the level required. But hey, what do I know about HR, I'm only a programmer.....
Ira
yeah, once I bought a Number 2 pencil and it was actually closer to a 2.5 in hardness. then the next one in the box was actully only 1.87 !
I'm calling my lawyer.....
Ira
I was once brought back in even though my code was absolutely maintainable. I had left the company for other reasons ( Inner Mongolia ) but they brought me back because something didn't work. I spent 10 minutes figureing out that the problem was hardware, 5 minutes directing the tech on how to fix the hardware, and 2 hours and 45 minutes bullshitting with my former co-workers, all at $75 an hour.
Ira
HomeHome homeHome = (HomeHome)
the worst thing is that I wrote it and THEN realized how stupid it was.
well, actually thats only the second worst thing. The worst thing is that it is 100% valid and makes perfect sense in context.
Ira
I think the one thing we overlook as geeks is how UN-geeky the rest of the people out there are. All I have to do is look at my parents, inlaws, and parents of friends, etc. These are people who's computers I generally have to fix. They might not use AOL for a browser or an internet service (though that's often because of mine or my wife's advice) but they represent what people in the rest of the world use the internet for. Its not for the games. Its not for developing software, or investigating new computers or talking about operating systems or technology or geeky stuff that we talk about.
They use it to talk about their fish, or home improvement, or sports, or porn or crafting or dogs or cats or politics or all those other things that most of us either don't care about or don't want to admit we care about. The battle for those users, because there are SO many of them, is always going to be intense. AOL is a well entrenched name in the internet. Most geeks and long time users hate it, many new users pan it, but everyone KNOWS it. (of course they know Microsoft and Google too.)
If Microsoft buys AOL, most people will yawn and move on. But if Google buys them, especially after published reports of Microsoft wanting it, then Google not only buys a bunch of new users, it makes a HUGE statement that Microsoft is NOT invincible. I think we all want that.
Ira
Here's the 10 cent easy answer. Because to 200 million americans who all have cash to spend, AOL means more to them than WWW. Now, before you all flame me, understand that I know that a) Americans are not the world, and b) the 60 million tech savvy Americans all know that AOL has no cred. But there's still alot of money in those 200 million Americans who see AOL as their ticket to perhaps getting online. To me, there's no question who I want to win this fight. There's also no question how important it is for Microsoft NOT to lose this fight....
Ira
What's to stop Apple from simply releasing copies of OSX to the general public AND to vendors while setting a price so high that its not cost effective NOT to buy Apple Hardware. Like for example, $750 for a retail OS and $500 for vendors. Then your Dell Apple costs as much or more than your Apple Apple. Maybe except for the ultra-high end high performance graphics workstations that Dell can't sell anyway.
Ira
You remember all those left over copies of Windows ME?
Ira
If you are referring to the current involvment of US Forces in Iraq, then the issue there isn't fighting for oil, its simply removing a dictator who a) invaded his neighbors, b) killed his own citizens by the thousands, c) aided and harbored terrorists, including the ones who killed thousands of americans in New York and committed an ACT OF WAR by attacking the Pentagon, and d) Bragged about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction that they planned to use on the United States.
Notice how the "lets kill all the americans" chanting has died off since the US invaded Iraq. even in Iran, where they hate americans like no others, the people are shouting, "lets kill all the Israelies". Why? because the Israelis don't have Marines next door.
Ira
the world just called and told me to tell you to shut the fuck up, it doesn't want you to save it.
(fucking tree-huggers) Look. People fight for what they believe in, and they fight for survival, whether its against aggressive neighbors or their environment. I guarentee you that if every country in the world destroyed every weapon that they had, some yahoo in Arkansas with a hidden cache of AK's will take over the world.
And the analogy can be extended. Maybe I'll just ask to mod you flamebait and ignore you otherwise.
Ira
I'd pay $2500 to have Jeri Ryan come deliver Voyager to me. and she doesn't even need to bring the dvd's.... or clothes....
I tried this last week. I had a machine which had Windows XP Pro installed and I wanted to put WIN 98 on it from my old MSDN. worse yet, it was a laptop on which I had to chose whether I wanted to use a floppy or a CD rom but not both.
I did accomplish my task, but it took reformatting the hard drive, 57,000 reboots, a couple of third party apps (one of which allowed me to setup a cd as a boot-floppy). It also took two evenings (about 10 hours!)
Ira
because those pesky users like to have access to their server. If you take the server out of the client-server equation the client is NEVER happy. Often, companies are only paid when their server is up. Even if they aren't, companies who host servers don't stay in business very long if their servers go down all the time.
I think you might be trying to be funny, but if not, understand that there are two issues with this. 1) rebooting a server alot means less uptime, and that's bad for the reasons I said earlier. 2) rebooting a server should be superfast so as to minimize any downtime associated with that reboot.
After all, if uptime wasn't an issue why would companies spend so much on UPS's?
Ira
There are many ways to express emotion using voice. There are many ways of expressing loss, expressing feelings, expressing anguish. Screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" is just one of those ways. Many people feel that it was either unnecessary, contrived, or just plain stupid. Personally, I just thought it was inadequate. But then again, I should have expected as much from the characterization of Anakin, which was, well, sucky. (no better word for it)
Ira
Except what they were doing was setting High prices for one type of ram, that being the Rambus type of ram. As someone who actually has some sticks of Rambus type RDRAM, I will say that I paid at least twice as much for them as I would have for any other type of ram. Obviously price fixing was at work here...
Ira
The problem with hebrew is that even if the characters are identical to what they were 2000 years ago, the meanings can easily change. Just because we see the same word in hebrew doesn't mean it still translates the same, or even means the same in modern hebrew.....
Its kinda like reading Beowulf in the original Middle English and then wondering if Beowulf was human or a monster.
Ira
wasn't that what NetZero was all about? but that didn't go too far.....
Ira
Not to drift the topic here too much, but I just had this thought. I think it might be time for NASA to be split into two different organization. One could be a simple Space Agency which could handle the more mundane business aspects of space, (Satellite insertions, orbital construction, habitat construction, colonization, etc...) and the other which would focus on the Scientific and Exploratory aspects of space. Maybe the second agency could be placed under the auspices of the NSF or something.
It seems to me that most of the whining about different types of research could be lessened if it were obvious that the Mars Rovers are there to explore mars, and not look for something in particular.
Ira
Agreed. Small towns do have their problems. but they are peaceful. The one I live in has the advantage of being close enough to a major city that my commute is not too outrageous. But boredom in kids can be ameliorated using the web. It also allows for independent research on their part which 20 years ago would have been impossible.
I also agree with your other two points.
Ira
try moving out of the city and into a small town. Small town america has those feelings and many more. No locks on your door? sure, why not. After all, if someone were to come into my house and try and take something, the neighbors would stop them and ask them who they were. Park your car on the street, no problem. Would someone take it? hell no. Power outage? the electic guy comes and fixes it. In a disaster, everyone works together to fix things, instead of looting and stealing....
Which is also why communism works very well in small communities in Israel (called Kibbutz's).
Ira
Ira
Me, personally, I really despise left-handed long-haired Puerto Rican Democrats who are between 5' 10" and 5' 11.5" and weigh between 120 and 125 lbs. Hate them, can't stand them! I truly believe that they are all not only subhuman, but sub-crustacean. They should all be taken out and shot!!!!!
Death to all left-handed long-haired Puerto Rican Democrats who are between 5' 10" and 5' 11.5" and weigh between 120 and 125 lbs.
Here across the pond, we have a concept called, "Homeschooling". This says that we can and often do teach our children at home. In this case, the home and the school are the same thing. And the state can't say a thing. Well, actually they can, and often do. Homeschooling has restrictions in some states, though, thankfully not the one I live in.
Because this is true, it follows that a private school has the right to do what it likes. IMO, a private school should refund the full tuition of any student it expells for behavior which would not get that student kicked out of a public school. But that's just my opinion.
Ira
expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Foreign corporations are even more influential over foreign governments than US corporations are over the US governments. in many cases, the foreign "corporation" is OWNED by the government. Ask yourself, who owns Saudi Telecom? is it possible he might be related in some way to the King of Saudi Arabia? hmmm?
and btw, Corporatism is NOT exclusive with democracy. It is
Ira
True, when the Irish blow someone up, they make sure that THEY don't blow up too.
and when the Japanese kill themselves, they use a sword and don't hurt other people....
so, I guess that means that the Arabs have taken aspects from other cultures (Irish and Japanese) and put them together, Terrorism and suicide at the same time!!!
Well Done!
Ira