[HN Gopher] Where are all the self-directed learners?
___________________________________________________________________
Where are all the self-directed learners?
Author : ChaitanyaSai
Score : 61 points
Date : 2025-03-09 09:25 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (saigaddam.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (saigaddam.medium.com)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I don't know about India, but having spent many years on
| university, first as a student, later as a research director and
| representative at all levels from the department to the
| university board, and the later as I watched my own children move
| through the process, I have seen dramatic changes in higher ed
| turning university ever more into highschool.
|
| In the 'old' days it was basically up yo you. Assignments during
| the academic year were few and far between. Each course resulted
| in an exam at the end of the year. How you passed that was up to
| you.
|
| This meant you were modtly free gor 90% of your time to attend
| classes or not. You could use the university as a knowledge
| buffet attending interesting lectures outside of your own field
| of study, get straight into the specialization topics that were
| the real reason you were attracted to field in the first place
| (AI in my case which was a very niche subject in those days)
| instead of just slogging through the generalist foundation
| courses (80% math in those days, physics, economics and some CS).
|
| These days students are bombarded with assignmments all year,
| with exams pepered throughout. This inflicts nearly full class
| attendance requirement and constant deadline pressures. Yes, it
| makes it so credit can be acquired piecemeal instead of
| pass/failing in one massive shot, but it reduces autonomy to near
| 0.
| HPsquared wrote:
| For me, personally, I don't think I'd have coped with the
| constant stress of all these obligations and assignments
| throughout the year. Much better to have a couple of weeks
| intense focus at the end of the year, I can manage that.
| dijit wrote:
| Yeah, I'm also like that.
|
| Infinitely curious and motivated when there's a vague and
| nebulous problem in the future, as long as I can sorta see my
| improvements along the way.
|
| But assignments, idk, I don't put as much of my curiosity on
| it. I was terrible at coursework and wonderful at tests
| largely for this reason.
| mattjhall wrote:
| > In the 'old' days it was basically up yo you. Assignments
| during the academic year were few and far between. Each course
| resulted in an exam at the end of the year. How you passed that
| was up to you.
|
| Interestingly I think is exactly what the article is arguing
| against and is saying India is too much like.
|
| > You could use the university as a knowledge buffet attending
| interesting lectures outside of your own field of study, get
| straight into the specialization topics that were the real
| reason you were attracted to field in the first place (AI in my
| case which was a very niche subject in those days) instead of
| just slogging through the generalist foundation courses (80%
| math in those days, physics, economics and some CS).
|
| This sounds great for making academics, but terrible for
| educating a work force. Sadly, university is now the latter due
| to it being seen as a way to get ahead. One of the worst things
| to happen UK in my lifetime is tuition fees.
| collingreen wrote:
| It is a great way for a few to excel and a terrible way to
| build a brand around the value of your diploma.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree with you. 30+ years in academia, I've
| taught all around the northern hemisphere at all kinds of
| universities and have written dozens of articles in Times
| Higher documenting the regress of higher learning institutions
| into kindergartens.
|
| It's not just that universities are no longer fit places for
| teaching, learning and research, but something bigger is at
| play, which I see as "the death of adulthood". HE institutions
| are leaders in this 'infantilisation' which is toxic to self-
| development and personal responsibility.
|
| A big factor is the aggressive intrusion of US BigTech;
| Turnitin, Grammarly etc... violating "proctoring" software,
| just a pathological and pointless quest systematise and lock-
| down absolutely everything.
|
| Another reason universities have been morally upended is
| putting vanity and appearance before substance. They care more
| about how they are _seen_ , in league tables and in social
| media, than they care about their students. Self-deluding PR
| has made universities worse than some of the most cringe
| corporations.
|
| As a recovered "academic" prof (they are not really _academies_
| any longer but holding-pens and "degree vendors") I absolutely
| would not want my own kids to waste their time or money there.
| miningape wrote:
| I had a very permissive highschool experience (nonetheless
| academically rigorous) so it was a complete system shock to
| be dropped into a university system which infantilised every
| step and process - it was like being back in middle school
| except I expected autonomy and to be held accountable for my
| (lack of) actions / knowledge / learning.
|
| And don't get me started on the administration which felt its
| need to weasel into every crevice, only to add unnecessary
| complexity and difficulty to otherwise simple processes (need
| to swap exam days with another student? - well, be prepared
| to start discussing it with admin months in advance with
| prepared letters from all stakeholders). Seemingly university
| administration only exists for the sake of having a
| university administration - and seems to be populated with
| the utter dregs of what that university put out that the
| market wouldn't hire (in other words: admin is where you go
| when you're too far up your own ass for a real business to
| get value from you).
|
| As a result, after a while most classmates didn't or couldn't
| think for themselves about anything. It was overall an
| extremely frustrating experience and I couldn't get out fast
| enough. I actually landed in hot water because I skipped too
| many classes (in my last year I only went to uni about 5
| times, each for 1 of my 5 exams) but my grades were so much
| higher than the rest of the cohort they decided to allow me
| to graduate so as to improve their overall GPA for the class.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The infantilisation starts well before higher education. My
| dorms were filled with people who couldn't even take care of
| themselves at a basic level, such as doing laundry and
| keeping their room even moderately clean. Rich 18 year olds
| living in their own filth like pigs in a sty.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| TBH I lived like a total animal in first year (freshman)
| Have you seen "The Young Ones" [0] That show was not to far
| off reality. But there was scaffolding and support to grow
| up, separate and begin taking serious responsibility for
| every level of shit in life. I had excellent personal
| tutors who got me through some rocky patches. Exactly zero
| of my trouble came from the uiversity system itself. Today
| I see that being 100% of what harms students. The
| institution itself has become a toxic nightmare, the kids
| have to wrestle with it in _addition_ to their studies.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Ones_(TV_series)
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Tangentially, this means there's an entirely non-niche market
| for AI-based uh ... nonautonomous aids.
|
| With closed-book pen & paper exams (e.g. in India), not so
| much.
| ghaff wrote:
| That wasn't at all my experience in either undergrad or grad
| school in the US. There were midterms and finals but also
| various problem sets and projects, whether individual or group.
| xeckr wrote:
| I'm here. I'm sure a good chunk of the user base here are also
| self-taught in matters related to technology and other pursuits.
|
| As for AI, it basically allows self-learning on steroids.
| technothrasher wrote:
| What this person is advocating for sounds exactly like what Maria
| Montessori was trying to accomplish. Though what I see a lot in
| Montessori schools these days is parents wanting to get their
| children into one because they see it as prestigious, and then
| pushing the school hard to conform back to a more mainstream
| educational path.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| Are there no self directed learners? Or did none of them apply
| for your job?
|
| I'm not in a position to answer this but I would expect that self
| directed learners would demand a premium salary and look for a
| prestigious role.
|
| I would also expect them to have self learned different skills to
| the ones you might be looking for...
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Perhaps they've learned not to waste their time and energy on
| initial applications.
| Vivtek wrote:
| Lord knows there are ample opportunities to learn this lesson
| in the industry today.
| tomjuggler wrote:
| This is exactly the type of article that appeals most to me.
| Because it confirms my choice to drop out of college and learn on
| my own.
|
| I have the utmost respect, though, for those with degrees who
| actually manage to use the knowledge they gain to achieve
| something. I just don't think it's the right path for everyone.
|
| I'm not from India but will be taking the test just for fun
| zwnow wrote:
| European university would kill me. I am pretty sure I have
| undiagnosed adhd and universities aren't made for people like
| me. Having to learn things i dont care about is practically
| impossible for me. Its not like I don't want to, its because im
| physically not able to remember these things. This is also why
| I didnt succeed my drivers license or cant read books I dont
| consider interesting. So self learning is the only way for
| people like me.
| bryanhogan wrote:
| I've also believed that university is not for me until I
| found a study that I actually enjoy and which is quite
| modern.
|
| Like my study, based in Germany, combines coding, design and
| entrepreneurship. With many opportunities for projects that
| students can initiate themselves, to work on what they value
| and enjoy. Something that they might make into a real-world
| product/service. And classes were very hand-ons, focused on
| actually doing the thing and not just theory. Also helped
| that there were almost zero typical exams and each class was
| two weeks long, two weeks of just that class.
|
| So what I want to say is that there are opportunities beyond
| the concept of university of a 100 years ago. Concepts that
| might align more with your values and needs.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > I'm not from India but will be taking the test just for fun
|
| Feel free to do their work for them for free.
| stevage wrote:
| This author sees a problem (lack of quality applicants) then
| assumes, with no obvious evidence, a cause (incorrect paradigm in
| education system failing to create young people able and willing
| to teach themselves professional skills) and prescribes a
| solution.
|
| Seems there could be all kinds of possible causes here.
|
| (To be fair, of course, I don't know anything about the Indian
| education system and the author obviously does.)
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| OP here. Added this conxtext: OK, technically the absence of
| genuinely interested applicants is NOT an indication of drive.
| However, please note the context: It's a brutal job market at
| the entry level in India at the moment. That's why we are
| flooded with applications. Candidates either know this, or
| quickly figure this out. And yet, that does not translate into
| many giving their application serious and creative thought? It
| is that lack of agency that baffles me and makes me search for
| answers.
| klabb3 wrote:
| You're assuming that the reason they don't fill in your
| optional questions are lack of agency, when it is more likely
| they'd rather spend that time applying to more jobs. The
| early stages of the job market is called screening and is a
| wide net with low success rate. The incentives, especially
| with juniors, are to play a numbers game. If you are looking
| for culture fit, say that. And then have one such interview
| later in the process in a personal context.
|
| According to another commenter you're asking for free labor
| (familiarizing themselves with your code and writing a design
| doc). If this is true, discussions of personal agency and
| creativity might be distracting from the real issues.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I looked at the form. I don't know the Indian job market and the
| typical process, but I wouldn't apply to that place. Invasive
| questions, woo woo culture vibes, and then a big multihour
| homework assignment with a warning about rejection. Looks like a
| waste of time to apply, at least for anyone who has other
| options. Maybe _that's_ where those self directed learners are.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I agree. Assuming that nobody answered the questions and did
| the assignment because they aren't independent thinkers is
| arrogant. Nobody answered the questions and did the assignment
| as they make this job far more expensive to apply to than other
| jobs, with no clear higher expected value.
| jofzar wrote:
| Completely agree, so many yucky questions
| leosanchez wrote:
| Is this an ad ?
| belter wrote:
| That is what I mentioned and got my post flagged...They are
| also trying to get their candidates to design their product for
| them:
| https://www.aiche.org/sites/default/files/styles/chenected_l...
| neilv wrote:
| A skim of the overall post has me sympathetic, but I almost
| closed the browser tab with the opening:
|
| > _Fewer than 100 filled a form with open-ended questions. About
| 15 went on to complete a reasonably simple real-world challenge.
| We are a nation with the cheapest internet and a billion internet
| users. Where are all the self-directed learners? The eclectic
| ekalavyas?_
|
| Apparently not jumping through corporate drone hoops, for a
| chance to talk with your company.
|
| > _And then to make it worse, our exam system is fundamentally
| broken. It's like forcing Serena Williams and Magnus Carlsen (and
| Gukesh) to compete in 400m hurdles to figure out if they are fit
| for their respective sports._
|
| Exactly.
| TZubiri wrote:
| The actual job posting just says "software engineering", full
| stack, ai, "to build a tool that answers all the questions".
|
| I can only see undergrads falling for this.
|
| Maybe if you narrow down the job requirements (and the company
| mission) you would get less than 2.5k applicants and you
| wouldn't need to throw challenges to filter out people who
| value their time.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| > filter out people who value their time
|
| Those who can, do. Those who can't, will spend half a day on
| your application for free.
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| OP here. We are fully aware of how this might seem like a lot
| of work for job seekers. But the practical reality is the
| Indian job market has a massive supply of talent. As with any,
| it is of variable quality. We are very clear we do not want to
| use the usual credentialing and leetcode interviews as filters.
| They suck. We want to work with people who are genuinely
| interested in the domain we work in (education) and this has
| worked reasonably well for us.
|
| I would love to find a better way to filter through 2500
| applications. What markers do we rely on. AI has made the usual
| filters even more irrelevant.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Why can't you proactively source your own candidates instead
| of thinking they'll come to you? Especially for self-directed
| learners/more independent people?
| roenxi wrote:
| You've probably misread the situation. As far as I've seen
| there are two types of job seeker:
|
| - People who will be hired immediately on applying because
| they're amazing. These people generally don't apply through
| the usual pipeline, they contact people they know and offer
| to work with them. Sometimes they get headhunted.
|
| - Everyone else. To these people it is a numbers game where
| they have maybe a 5% [0] chance of being hired on applying
| and so need to apply to maybe 20+ jobs. Any challenge is
| going to be a massive pain for them because it represents a
| big time investment for little marginal gain.
|
| [0] In the article there are 15 applicants, assuming you only
| hire 1 there is a 5% chance right there even if they are all
| obviously qualified and acceptable hires. And then there are
| a lot of "fake" jobs where the company is not actually going
| to end up hiring anyone this month.
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably simplistic but probably also not inaccurate.
|
| You have the people who will be directly hired through
| networking.
|
| Then you have everyone else who will shotgun their resumes
| and other credentials. Some will have better schools and
| portfolios than others but it's still basically a numbers
| game. (And, given it's a numbers game, they may not invest
| much in a given opportunity unless it looks particularly
| interesting or a company puts skin in the game--e.g. flies
| them out for on-site interviews.)
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| _facepalm_ here 's how you do this.
|
| - Ask people to nominate someone else they know as a good
| resource. - Reach out to the multiply independently
| recommended person - Ask they who they would recommend and
| why.
| 0xEF wrote:
| The job seekers time is more valuable than that of your
| company. I want you to drill in your skull, tonight, tattoo
| it on the back of your hand, perhaps.
|
| Time is the one resource that none of us can get more of. It
| is not saved, like money, to be spent on some future
| endeavors. It does not accumulate interest. It does not grow
| with market fluctuations. We get what we get and nothing more
| or less.
|
| When an applicant has already taken the time to develop a
| resume that illustrates their skills along with a
| portfolio/repo that proves said skills, you callously dismiss
| that work and past experience by making them jump through
| hoops in your application process. This starts the
| conversation by telling the applicant you do not value their
| efforts thus far, whether you actually do or not. It's not a
| good foot to lead with.
|
| Filtering through thousands of applicants is tough, no doubt,
| but if your company is successful enough to be receiving that
| many applicants for a position, then it is successful enough
| to hire and develop a robust HR or recruiting department that
| can vet these applications with actual human contact. Yes,
| this costs money, but if you want to make the omelette, you
| need to crack some eggs. If you cannot afford to take that
| path, then you cannot afford to grow, making it tougher to
| find quality applicants.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| > The job seekers time is more valuable than that of your
| company.
|
| As with anything of value this is also a supply and demand
| thing. Perhaps in India, junior candidates' time is simply
| worth less. The author mentions they got 2.5K applications,
| so obviously this will affect how picky the company can
| (and should) be.
| koliber wrote:
| > When an applicant has already taken the time to develop a
| resume that illustrates their skills along with a
| portfolio/repo that proves said skills, you callously
| dismiss that work and past experience by making them jump
| through hoops in your application process.
|
| Yes. Because there are lots of people with nice looking
| resumes who code poorly and have at best superficial
| knowledge of technology.
| yimby2001 wrote:
| - Completely ignoring the portfolio side of his comment
| igleria wrote:
| Agreed, but then you have the problem of asserting that
| the person really wrote it.
|
| Nevertheless, every take home I accept I assume the
| default action of the receiver is to forget the effort
| and time that went into in, rejecting with no feedback.
| Horrible, but based on reality.
|
| It is what it is, but I'm on a mission (getting the job)
| and unfortunately I do not hold all the cards.
|
| If only there was a way to prove one's worth without
| having to spin plates while reciting 1000 digits of Pi
| EVERY TIME.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Portfolios also take time. It also takes time to evaluate
| portfolios. Not to mention that portfolios can be faked
| like everything else.
| nouripenny wrote:
| Generally, societies value human time far less than we
| might wish they should.
| postsantum wrote:
| You are filtering for the most desperate candidates, not the
| most suitable ones
|
| A candidate who had applied for jobs before knows that his
| chances for getting a reply are in the low single digits. Now
| you are offering them to waste some time for probably the
| same. Only the most desperate will go through with this
| klabb3 wrote:
| This feels like bingo to me. The optional "creative
| questions" will be filled by those who have more free time
| (ie not currently employed), and those who can use LLMs. If
| you want genuinely mission-passionate applicants you'll
| need to talk to them, which means spending _your_ time too,
| not just theirs.
| linsomniac wrote:
| >You are filtering for the most desperate candidates, not
| the most suitable ones
|
| Maybe. I'd say "motivated" rather than desperate.
| Desperation might motivate, but another motivation might be
| that this is a job that is a really good fit for me, or is
| a company I really want to work with. As opposed to a job I
| could do but isn't a good fit.
| neilv wrote:
| Is one of your messages that industry hiring is broken, but
| if the right candidates will trust your company enough to
| invest in its hiring process, then that trust will be
| rewarded?
|
| I don't know about India, but, in the US, companies have a
| credibility problem. I would guess that most of the job-
| seekers don't trust companies, and think the hiring processes
| are incompetent.
|
| And we see numerous examples of companies saying they're
| doing something different with hiring, but these have also
| generally not left favorable impressions.
|
| US people play along, to varying degrees, with hiring
| processes they don't trust or respect. But I suspect that
| their feelings are consequently mercenary and transactional.
| noosphr wrote:
| How about you ask for a personal repo with open source
| projects that solve real problems?
|
| Instead of inventing a bullshit pre-job you can make the
| world a better place. You also get a strong signal on who can
| deal with real world problems when they take more than 4
| hours to solve.
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| That's one of the questions in the form.
| noosphr wrote:
| Then why on gods green Earth do you also have:
|
| > HIRING CHALLENGE: Find our recenter browser plugin (it
| is open-source). Understand what it is for and suggest an
| interesting and personally useful feature you can add to
| it. Go through the code and share a brief note on how you
| would go about building this feature, and why. Note: Send
| us an email once you have thought this through, have put
| together the design doc, and are ready to start coding.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Because worst case scenario they can get their candidate
| to do some free labor?
| robofanatic wrote:
| > About 15 went on to complete a reasonably simple real-world
| challenge
|
| I am not sure what you mean by better way of filtering. You
| already got only 15 candidates from 2500 applicants. Next
| step is to just check what they have done in the challenge
| which will further reduce the number of candidates. The
| problem would be if lets say 1000 applicants submit the
| challenge.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is based on the US market and culture and may be off
| base in India, but for me starting with a form with open-
| ended questions is a huge red flag of being a massive waste
| of my time. When I left school I swore off of essay
| questions, and any company that is going to force me to
| answer essay questions to even get a chance to talk to a
| human is not one that appeals to me.
|
| If the culture is at all similar there, then that first step
| in your process is instantly filtering for people who are
| extremely compliant with arbitrary processes and bureaucracy.
| Which in turn will be very likely to instantly filter out the
| self-directed learners you claim to want.
| satisfice wrote:
| Randomly choose ten and hire one of those. Hire them on a
| temporary basis at first. Coach them.
|
| Stop trying to find the perfect person and find instead
| someone willing to work and improve themselves. Grow the
| staff you need.
|
| BTW, I wrote a book on self-directed learning, and at one
| time was the youngest manager in Apple R&D, when I was 20.
| linsomniac wrote:
| >Apparently not jumping through corporate drone hoops, for a
| chance to talk with your company.
|
| Ok, you're right that the article is contradicting itself.
| However, the article is correct as well, our last hiring round
| had the challenge: "tell us your favorite color in your
| application". Out of hundreds of applications, we had maybe 5
| who said anything about a color.
|
| Job seekers are weaponizing applications, and are lamenting
| that the application process is being weaponized against them.
| It sucks on both sides of the table.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| Other way around. Job seekers are attempting to survive, job
| boards aren't doing enough to make matchmaking easier.
| linsomniac wrote:
| >job boards aren't doing enough to make matchmaking easier
|
| Concrete suggestions?
| ghaff wrote:
| Companies often rely on referrals/personal
| recommendations. But that sort of puts the finger on the
| scale against applicants who don't have an in. Random
| applications whether online or otherwise have always been
| pretty much of a crap shoot. To the degree you put
| substantial barriers in place I'm probably not going to
| bother if I know it's a numbers game with odds stacked
| against me.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Yep, personal recommendations are huge, but not just
| because random applicants aren't given a chance...
|
| Our last hiring round we got probably 200 applicants. At
| least 95% seemed to just be automated submissions, no
| cover letter just a resume, despite our application
| asking specifically for a cover saying why you were a
| great fit. We had 3 of our most senior people reviewing
| these applications (our of a company of 8).
|
| Most of the time we were digging through dense resumes
| trying to pick out the 1 or 2 things that matched our
| technology stack. We figure the cover is the place you
| tell us why we should talk to you if you only have 1-2
| technology overlap, so most resumes we spent 30-60
| seconds on and then ditched.
|
| We interviewed 3 people out of that, and they were both
| really super junior. We were considering hiring one of
| them as a "maybe she could learn the position". Then I
| sent out one more round of "if you know anyone" to my
| personal network (which I had previously done a few
| months earlier), and got one personal reference to a guy
| we ended up hiring.
| ghaff wrote:
| Don't really disagree. A lot of people probably conclude
| that a cold call is a numbers game and they're not wholly
| wrong--so they, ahem, phone it in making it sort of a
| self-fulfilling prophecy.
| ghaff wrote:
| "Everyone" these days tells me that the situation with
| relatively undifferentiated junior devs is a real mess.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Self directed learner is not the same as someone willing to spend
| several hours on a lottery ticket for an interview. The cost of
| applying for this role is 100x higher than most other jobs.
|
| So the independent thinkers did some thinking and realized that
| their expected return from this process wasn't that high.
| zwnow wrote:
| Also corps fail to realize that most people arent interested in
| the actual corp work but rather niche stuff that isn't as
| marketable. Why would people go out of their way to apply to
| some corp job?
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| OP here. What we hope the independent thinks will realize is
| that when the cost of applying drops down to a single
| automatable click, their cursory click application is lost in a
| sea of spam. This allows them to stand apart. Recruiting and
| dating have a tone of parallels. They are time-intensive for
| both parties. And that time spent does not always result in a
| positive outcome. And yet that high time-cost (for both sides)
| is what makes the relationship meaningful.
|
| Here's a question. In a difficult job market with a deluge of
| candidates, how should a candidate try and stand apart? And we
| have to answer that for the new AI age where output for many
| tests can generated very cheaply.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Do the type of project you specified, but unprompted for
| companies that did not request it, meaning a higher delta
| between you and other candidates. Because you are defining
| the project rather than them, you can also heavily recycle it
| within the same industry, so it still stands out as
| impressive but also scales reasonably well. You can also do
| it with ChatGPT quickly and it is not noticeably messy AI
| work because there is nothing to compare your work with. Your
| work stands out to for its quality, but for existing.
|
| I did this back when I was an intern for an innovation role
| and got it.
|
| Did a bit of consulting for others on this years ago as well.
| A remnant of that time:
|
| https://simbi.com/matthew-gaiser/pre-interview-project-help
|
| The project idea is fine, but if everyone does the project,
| you are still stuck competing against many others on the same
| field.
|
| When I do this kind of project, I stuff it in with my resume
| as a single file.
|
| On the employer side, I am not sure what you could do that
| doesn't deter a lot of people.
| Chaosvex wrote:
| Had a look at the questions they ask applicants to answer in the
| hopes of even receiving a response and I'm not terribly surprised
| that people might not want to fill it out. Aside from the
| invasive questions...
|
| > Here's a fun question: Someone who eats meat often has an
| allergic reaction. What are some likely reasons for this?
|
| > Please take 2 minutes to read our work culture and principles
| and answer this question: What do you think is the most
| intriguing aspect, and why?
|
| Really?
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| OP here. It's a question to easily detect for people who use
| chatgpt to fill the form. Anyone who enters alpha-gal syndrome
| has probably used chatgpt. That isn't an automatic reject
| though (very generic template answers are). Guess we'll have to
| find another question soon now this is out here for LLMs to
| slurp up!
|
| The reason for this questionnaire is culture fit. It's also the
| very practical matter of weeding through 2500 applications when
| AI has made all straightforward code-based questions very
| pointless
| Chaosvex wrote:
| It's not about a single question, it's about all of them that
| don't do anything to further the process. They're a waste of
| time for people who have options - in other words, the people
| you want to hire.
|
| If a company wants me to jump through hoops just for the shot
| at an interview, I'm not doing it because I can go afford to
| go elsewhere. I'm sure I'm far from alone in that.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Anyone who has done a Google search of "meat allergy" will
| also put alpha-gal syndrome. For a question like this to
| work, there should be a much wider variety of possible
| answers.
| mystraline wrote:
| Simply put, you can complain about "nobody wants to apply to
| my jobs".
|
| But you ask terribly invasive questions, questions that are
| just frankly garbage, and your AI landmine questions. And
| this is 100x worse applications than other jobs.
|
| And you admit that if you happen to know about alpha-gal
| (tick related disease prevalent in the USA) then you
| _probably_ are using an LLM?! Seriously?
|
| If this is how you treat candidates, how do you treat
| employees? How many garbage 'tests' do you put them through?
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| Here's the problem we are trying to solve for. Filter from
| 2500+ applicants. What would you suggest. And we do not
| want to rely on credentialing and leetcode filters. What
| non-garbage tests would you suggest? Please note that we
| are talking about an initial test that's generous enough in
| error, but not so much so that we end up with 1000 people
| to seriously interview.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| I honestly suggest YOU put in the work to filter the
| applications instead of trying to get the applicants to
| do it.
|
| You will lose confident candidates otherwise. I sure as
| hell would quit halfway through and find other options.
|
| IMHO you risk getting more "desperate" candidates by
| requiring them to answer all these questions.
|
| I understand your motivation 100%. My company also gets
| at least 10x as many applications now compared to before
| ChatGPT, and by far most are garbage. This is OUR problem
| though, not the applicants'!
| mystraline wrote:
| There is an answer, but I 100% believe you wont like it,
| nor implement.
|
| Do video interviews, or better yet, in-person interviews.
| Ask questions there. Request sharing desktop, and share
| if you ask LLMs and your strategy in doing so.
|
| Academics are dealing with the same problem, with "do
| they know the material or is it an LLM?". Universities
| also have access to a potent tool: oral examination. Its
| also the hardest to implement due to time and 1:1 labor.
| The answer's right there.
| dogleash wrote:
| > What would you suggest.
|
| Hard work. From you.
| tw19837 wrote:
| The first Google result for "Someone who eats meat often has
| an allergic reaction" is alpha-gal syndrome.
|
| There are two kinds of people who would know this without
| searching: Medical professionals or people who obsessively
| follow every health scare in the press, often the yellow
| press.
|
| This question is useless, unless you want to hear "I googled
| the question" or "I don't know". Anyway, most people don't
| care what you want to hear, hence the low application
| numbers.
| linsomniac wrote:
| > Here's a fun question: Someone who eats meat often has an
| allergic reaction. What are some likely reasons for this?
|
| My answer would be: "You're asking the wrong Linux SysAdmin."
| I've taken to this answer whenever I get asked a question
| that's way outside my area of expertise.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| That isn't even some kind of annoying brain teaser estimation
| problem.
|
| It's literally a question for doctors.
|
| It would make me think you're so bad at your interview
| process you lazily copied and pasted questions from another
| source without even looking at them.
|
| Either that, or a crazy person wrote the questions.
|
| In either case, gigantic red warning flags about this
| company.
| jnwatson wrote:
| In the grand tradition of sysadmins having to diagnose
| everything from a misconfigured router to a plugged toilet, I
| think diagnosing medical problems might as well be in the
| skill set.
|
| First, I'd check the cooking oil and seasonings for common
| allergens. Then, if they had visited the US recently, check
| for Alpha-gal Syndrome.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| I'm still thinking about it, but two things stand out to me:
|
| 1. Self-directed learning requires intrinsic motivation. Seems
| obvious, but I think it's really easy to lose that once you have
| extrinsic motivation (like a salary, or kids, making rent, a
| mortgage, etc). In these cases it may still be there, but
| redirected into things like hobbies, parenting, health, financial
| management, etc.
|
| 2. Self-directed learning is far more likely in a system where
| there is no (accessible) "existing pipeline" for externally-
| directed learning.
|
| This was kind of how it was for us 20 years ago - first year
| university was the natural age you'd be exposed to programming,
| unless you did it yourself earlier than that because you wanted
| to, and if you did, there was no easy playbook, you had to RTFM,
| if there was one, experiment, fail, etc. And "computing" was
| niche enough that librarians or other non-academic figures
| couldn't really even tell you what you might want to consider.
|
| These days, coding schools accessible to anyone are not even a
| dime a dozen, they're free. While I think this is a Good
| Thing(tm), it also falls into the trap described by the author
| where you're no longer creating an environment where students
| have to learn for themselves, you're creating an environment
| where they're taught.
|
| Again, I think more teaching is a Good Thing(tm), but the kind of
| problem solving the author seems to be describing is not actually
| related to any of the learned content, whatever that content may
| be.
|
| It's not about learning how to consume a resource, it's learning
| how to be resourceful.
| trod1234 wrote:
| Have you considered that the reason there are fewer self-
| directed learners today is because the framework for basic
| rational thought and critical thinking was never taught, and as
| a result of the friction in such cases needed to "play" and by
| extension "learn" anything, the friction exceeds the benefit
| they can possibly receive so they get stuck and don't do it.
|
| This presents a problem both in terms of the learner being
| tested, and the test maker (who may have formed the questions
| irrationally and non-deterministically in the first place).
|
| The Greeks knew how to do this best. Information transfer today
| makes no differentiation between true and false information.
| Its completely by rote.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| In all fairness, as a JavaScript developer, self directed
| learning is negatively rewarded by the hiring process. Instead
| the primary target is a laundry list of tool nonsense that mostly
| just contributes to tech debt. That is why I won't write
| JavaScript professionally anymore.
| csomar wrote:
| So for the people who didn't read the article, here are some of
| the form questions
|
| > What is your age?
|
| > HIRING CHALLENGE: Find our recenter browser plugin (it is open-
| source). Understand what it is for and suggest an interesting and
| personally useful feature you can add to it. Go through the code
| and share a brief note on how you would go about building this
| feature, and why. Note: Send us an email once you have thought
| this through, have put together the design doc, and are ready to
| start coding.
|
| > We don't measure how many hours you are at the office. What
| matters is whether the work gets done. We are reasonably flexible
| with hours. Currently, we operate around a 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM
| work cycle. Some things you work on will require more hours and
| effort, sometimes intense, and some won't. There may be a fair
| bit to pick up in your early days. You will likely need to put in
| more time, and that will pay dividends later.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Also:
|
| The "everyone will lie question"
|
| > Do you understand that being authentic and true to yourself
| in your answers here will help you in the long run?
|
| the "embrace the suck" question
|
| > What do the words gratitude and humility mean to you?
|
| the one stolen from 'Google interviews':
|
| > Here's a fun question: Someone who eats meat often has an
| allergic reaction. What are some likely reasons for this?
|
| and obviously
|
| > What do you think your annual salary should be?
|
| So they can lowball you.
|
| This is about the most toxic interview process I've seen. No
| wonder good candidates go elsewhere.
| jmholla wrote:
| > We don't measure how many hours you are at the office. What
| matters is whether the work gets done. We are reasonably
| flexible with hours. Currently, we operate around a 10:00 AM -
| 6:00 PM work cycle. Some things you work on will require more
| hours and effort, sometimes intense, and some won't. There may
| be a fair bit to pick up in your early days. You will likely
| need to put in more time, and that will pay dividends later.
|
| Translated: "We don't count how many hours you work beyond this
| pretty standard bucket of hours that you better be here for."
| steele wrote:
| Filtered out by Occidental culture and language specific word
| puzzles concealing discrete math and linear algebra
| _def wrote:
| I'll never understand how employers can expect to rent my
| passion. If you want dedicated people, you have to start with
| dedication yourself.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _We received over 2,500 job applications. Fewer than 100 filled
| a form with open-ended questions. About 15 went on to complete a
| reasonably simple real-world challenge... Where are all the self-
| directed learners?_
|
| How does the author jump from low participation rates to a lack
| of "self-directed learners"?
|
| This is a total non-sequitur. You're running an interview
| process, not a MOOC or something.
|
| The more I read the post, the more it looks like an ad for trying
| to get employees via HN.
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| OP here. Yes, that is a jump, which I bridged now.
|
| OK, technically the absence of genuinely interested applicants
| is NOT an indication of drive. However, please note the
| context: It's a brutal job market at the entry level in India
| at the moment. That's why we are flooded with applications.
| Candidates either know this, or quickly figure this out. And
| yet, that does not translate into many giving their application
| serious and creative thought?
|
| It is a problem they have never been asked to solve for: How to
| stand apart and demonstrate ability without relying on the
| usual credentials. It needs creativity and independent thinking
| and some agency. It is the lack of these that baffles me and
| makes me search for answers.
|
| Learning is not just the know-how and knowledge you acquire for
| doing a job. It is everything else you need to navigate life
| and also, in this narrow sense, the skills you need to apply
| for a job, make your case that you are the right candidate, or
| at least that demonstrate that your candidature deserves
| attention. It is a very learnable skill. Especially now. And
| given the market, a skill anyone with initiative should try to
| acquire.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _And yet, that does not translate into many giving their
| application serious and creative thought?_
|
| > _It is the lack of these that baffles me and makes me
| search for answers._
|
| I think you are making a fundamental mistake about how things
| work in a bad job market.
|
| In a good job market, let's suppose you have a 10% chance of
| getting a job you apply for, and you're applying to 10 in
| this month. Then it's genuinely worth it to spend time and
| effort chasing those jobs, with "creativity" and "agency" as
| you put it. Because it's not a numbers game, you're genuinely
| looking for a good fit.
|
| In a bad job market, let's suppose you have a 0.1% chance of
| getting a job you apply for. Therefore you apply to 1,000
| this month, literally 30 a day. It is not rational to put
| "creativity" and "agency" into those applications, because it
| is almost guaranteed to be wasted effort. Because the bad job
| market makes it a numbers game.
|
| You are making a judgment on people's character, when the
| reality is a simple question of economics or game theory. I
| hope you can gain some perspective and start seeing these job
| applicants with positive empathy rather than negative
| judgment. It's not about them not being self-directed -- it's
| about you having unrealistic expectations.
|
| I see that you've gotten a lot of responses like this in the
| comments. I hope you're able to take it as an opportunity for
| learning and self-reflection -- there's some valuable stuff
| here for you, despite your post being flagged.
| trod1234 wrote:
| There can potentially be a number of issues here.
|
| In cellular networks, you have this very real effect called
| RNA interference. Its where an area is flooded with a
| fragment that binds to targets blocking them from binding
| with specific receptor sites. This is being done at scale
| through ghost jobs, and fake postings. A candidate has a
| finite set amount of time they can spend. If you aren't
| getting applications, either you have a very bad reputation,
| or they are being blocked before you ever see them.
|
| Independent action and learning depends upon rational
| frameworks of mind. The prussian model of schooling has
| always been about eliminating this in exchange for a
| unthinking, loyal worker.
| joduplessis wrote:
| > Where are all the self-directed learners?
|
| Doing something other than filling out some esoteric BS form.
| These are possibly the worst kind of job applications in my
| opinion (coming from someone who has filled some out in my time).
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Has India ever had independent thinkers?
| mk_chan wrote:
| The article is nice and the intention seems to be good, but it's
| not backed up by the fundamentals. The salary range posted in the
| job listing is low enough that anyone who would answer the
| questions to my satisfaction (personal opinion) and is an
| autodidact would instantly ignore the entire listing or leave a
| year after joining once they realized how valuable the skill they
| have actually is. Having conducted 50+ interviews with Indian and
| international candidates, including those from FAANG, you can't
| just discount these skills by 50-75% of their value and then post
| an article asking where they are in good faith.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| I think... The problem definitely isn't your applicants. It's
| your job posting being out of touch, full stop.
| karmakaze wrote:
| This is an example of Goodhart's Law, where qualification of
| entrance (whether to a college or company) is measured, and thus
| becomes the target for applicants rather than being good at what
| is being assessed.
|
| I for one never really cared about grades and would just sit in
| class and try to understand what it was really about so that it
| made sense and could be internalized. I don't think this works
| anymore where the bar is set artificial high using proxy checks
| (e.g. leetcode) or having to get past recruiting screeners who
| have no idea what the job entails.
| trod1234 wrote:
| Yes there is a growing problem, but the author as many others
| before him neglect the type of problem being faced.
|
| It assumes the problem is that we don't know how to teach better,
| and that's just wrong. We do know how to teach people, we've done
| it in the past.
|
| The actual problem is one of subversion of the processes
| involved. There is no accountability for teachers that harm their
| students in a specific way (i.e. teaching maladaptive behaviors
| through torture).
|
| The prussian model of education has from the beginning been about
| creating loyal unthinking workers. That history has never
| changed, and the groups involved support that history through the
| shadows.
|
| Its subtle, but its been happening for almost a hundred years to
| eliminate rational thought. Torture promotes this outcome, as the
| experts from the 50s can attest in their written works
| (Lifton/Meerloo).
|
| There is a classical approach to education where you are taught
| to be independent and think. It came from the greeks, and stood
| the test of time. If you see a problem with the existing system
| that is cascading, you need to go back to what worked. A known
| working state. Its just that simple.
|
| Doing so would ruffle a lot of feathers because there are a lot
| of malevolent people out there in the world today, and part of
| evil and malevolence is a wilful blindness to the consequences of
| their actions.
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