peterbessman
Not to say that cultural rituals are a bad thing. Manners and etiquette keep the machinery of society well lubricated and running smoothly, so I'm not a fan of tossing them out and starting anew, tabula rasa.
At the same time, it wouldn't surprise me if the way America does hiring could be improved. In particular, my experience of hiring in tech has been that it's pretty tough to do much better than having 60%-70% of your hires work out. But not only do companies have a tough time with hiring, there's this weird phenomenon where large swathes of seemingly qualified people also have a hard time getting hired. So I'm all for innovation in hiring to the extent that it can fix these problems.
But are these problems really addressable by changes in hiring? It seems like that would be pretty low hanging fruit, so I would expect businesses to have figured this out already. The fact that they haven't makes me wonder if there are other systemic explanations for the problems we're seeing.
For instance, in tech, relatively little filtering is done up front by education and credentialing institutions. Sure, it helps to have a degree from MIT, but there are substantial numbers of successful high-performers in this field without a college education. By contrast, only around 40% of the people who apply to medical school get in, but my understanding is that >99% of all physician and surgeon hires work out. So perhaps tech businesses would experience a similar rate of successful hires if there was something like the medical school filter in the tech world.
As for the tech workers who have trouble getting hired, there are numerous possible explanations. One could be the Dunning-Kruger effect, where low-competence workers are unable to recognize their own skills gaps. Vivek Wadhwa has previously argued that ageism is to blame here, and that tech is really an up-or-out industry. Norm Matloff makes the case -- and granted it's quite controversial and potentially inflammatory -- that abuses of the H1B visa system are too blame.
Clear as mud.
Still, although I don't think the solution lies in this particular hiring innovation -- which wasn't for tech, I'll grant, but the spirit of the preceeding applies to the larger US economy, struggling as it is -- the solution can only emerge from many different actors trying many different things. In that regard, the guy gets my respect. I'm reminded of something Linus Torvalds once said:
"I'm deadly serious: we humans have never been able to replicate something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it without even thinking. Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest. And don't ever make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit. Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their engineering practices or their coding style."
Blazing ignorance of the most basic verisimilitudes of the human condition is one of the more annoying characteristics of hacker culture.
Bottom line: here in the US of A, your average doc (most certainly NOT an outlier) is making between $150k and $350k. Put that in your VC-backed pipe and smoke it.
(Debt? Between $150k-$200k for 4 years of med school. Post med school training, in the form of residency and fellowship, runs anywhere from 3-12 years and pays around the $50k mark. Basically, nobody went broke by becoming a doctor.)
Which means, of course, that the outliers can do very well. I have a friend who's Dad is an oral surgeon in the Eastern Shore of MD (what might be considered the "boonies" by some). He clears about $750k/year for a 35 hour work week. llimllib's wife above is probably around the $250k mark in the ER/ICU. If that ain't coin...
Anybody who thinks that somebody left medicine for the money knows very little about medicine.
After medical school comes residency, which lasts from 3-6 years depending on speciality. Compensation during residency is $40k-$60k.
After residency, you can get a job. At that level of training, the salary will be $150k-$250k.
Optionally, you can get a fellowship after residency. This will be another 3-6 years of training, with compensation around $50k-$70k.
After fellowship, jobs pay in the $250k-$500k range.
In the digital age, I use a simple "stuff.txt" file in my dropbox folder, which I manipulate with droptext on my iphone when I'm on the go. It's my notebook in the cloud, and, for me, it sucks least.
"Simplicity" is a relative term, and perhaps inapt; try "convenience", which has more useful connotations.
The lifestyle he describes and the programming style you describe are both, in the final analysis, maximally convenient (ceteris paribus). While not as catchy as "minimalism," I think convenience maximization (or time-debt minimization, as Patrick McKenzie might say) is a worthy objective. Perhaps call it "enlightened laziness" for that added sparkle.
"Art has a purpose, which is to interest its audience. Good art (like good anything) is art that achieves its purpose particularly well. The meaning of 'interest' can vary."
http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html
As to restroom graffiti in a dive bar... what's the problem? If it was in the vatican lavatories, sure, you'd have a case. Where I'm from? Not so much. A lot of joints herebouts have sharpies in the head, should the muse visit you whilst micturating. I guess we're sufficiently horrible. Or awesome.
Reiterated and refined: that comment is neither in poor taste, nor indicative of an attitude particular to the tech industry. It is not in poor taste because (I take this a priori) TechCrunch does not target an audience offended by remarks like that. And it is not indicative of an attitude particular to the tech industry because there are many other industries where that attitude will, on average, resonate more strongly (again, a priori).
And to the poster who called that "mysogyny"...really? Hatred of women? All women? Not just the ugly ones who screw up your attempts to get with the hot ones? And hate? A little strong.
This article is about how yahoo is pitiable, and something you don't want to associate with. Kinda like ugly girls at dances.
Reality is cruel. Mea culpa.
i dont kmow about posting up my current status. i dont see myself ever doing that, so naturally, i presume no one else would (and i could obviously be wrong there). but im telling you, if you could make the kayak.com of finding out whats up in your hood, you would have a hit. maybe start it off localized to one major city like dc or bmore and take it from there?
hell if you dont do that i just might! "whatsupbmore.com" <- id buy that for a dollar.
not to yank your idea in a different direction, this is just what popped into my head, apply salt, etc.