This is problematic and discriminatory. I hope this doesn't become a trend.
What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college. Is smart and motivated and could be a great asset to your company but never had the exposure to great ideas.
You can argue that she can just say 'Going to college was my most significant achievement' but are you in a position to rationally consider that as a 'significant achievement ' ?
In a age if great socio economic inequality very few people at the top of the society get to have ' significant accomplishment', it is more of an indicator of you socio economic status than your actual capabilities.
What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college?
That is exactly the sort of achievement that impresses us, actually. For example, Qasar Younis started life in a house with dirt floors in a village in Pakistan. His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7. He appears to have worked his ass off from the moment they landed. We funded his startup, Talkbin, in Winter 2011, mainly because we were so impressed with him. Talkbin was acquired by Google soon after Demo Day, and he is now a part time partner at YC.
(Why do so many people assume that after 9 years of picking founders, we still have huge blind spots that are obvious to them but not to us?)
Qasar's story is amazing and inspirational. Was he able to convey his story in his application to YC and is that the reason you selected him in? Or did someone at YC already know him to be able to truly appreciate his achievement?
I have always found the YC application strange in that sense. So much emphasis is given to the question of the "most impressive achievement", but in order to convey any achievement with context, one needs to be quite verbose with their replies. Given that an application only has few seconds to impress, conveying anything is a challenge. Has YC given much thought to an essay type application?
I am proud of where I am today. I grew up in Mumbai, India (not quite a village). We weren't rich. I still have scars on my right foot from an abscess caused from a piece of glass that had pierced my foot while playing soccer bare feet on concrete. We couldn't afford shoes. Luckily my father's business started picking up around the time I entered engineering school. The plan was for me to graduate with a bachelor's in structural engineering and then we could work together to grow the business further. At 20, I earned my bachelor's in structural engineering. Unfortunately my father had died in an accident at work when I was in my penultimate year of engineering. I managed to get enough resources together to be able to attend grad school in the US. I met my wife there. BTW, she has an amazing story too. We now have a startup (https://magtag.me) that received angel investment recently. We feel like outsiders in the tech scene but our spirits are high and when we look back at our lives we feel nothing but pride.
My life is an ongoing achievement. Would you have time to hear me out?
Many people who do things professionally for many years have terrible blind spots endemic to their profession. It's obvious to those who pay attention that you are not like that, but it doesn't surprise me that many miss it.
> His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7.
This is not an example of someone who is from the third world or from a ghetto. Immigrant parents have strong work ethic which they instill in their kids ( I belong to the club, so I know).
I am talking about girls from southside Chicago whose idea of 'achievement' is not getting pregnant by 15.
For the record people "from the ghetto" can have a strong work ethic. My grandmotheer had her first kid at 15,h ad five more, raised them all by herself while putting herself thought nursing school. All of them want to college and live nice middle to upper middle class lives. She retired at 65 as a well respected head nurse. If that isn't "work ethic" I don't know what is.
Too many negatives. I think you mean, "Anyone who thinks excelling in that environment isn't a highly significant achievement is sadly mistaken." Even then, I'd go for something clearer like, "Excelling in that environment is a high achievement."
At some point I had 17 upvotes to my comment. Now I have zero.
How is this possible?
You could say yeah you had 17 ppl upvote you and 17 people downvote you, but the population who can downvote is a tiny minority compared to ppl who can upvote.
I am not assuming that this is blind spot in YC selection process. After all YC is just another organization trying to reap the benefits our society's disproportionate investment in a minority of population at the top of socio economic ladder. (I might be totally off target on this but my impression of typical winning applicant was of a top 20 school graduate [1].)
I am merely suggesting( and hoping) that this not something that shouldn't be emulated by everyone.
Can we play G.H Hardy once in while and discover Ramanujams from social and economic ghettos?
You're missing the point entirely. It's not that first question that gives you the information. That question is just setting the stage for all of the questions that follow.
The main point, which is key to hiring, is that you need to ensure that people are answering questions based on actual experiences, not hypotheticals.
When you ask someone "how WOULD you handle xyz", they feel free to answer with ideal behavior. When you ask "how did you handle the situation you just told me about," they tell you what they actually did.
You should not be judging the significance of the person's achievement, in most cases -- you should be probing on WHY they think it was significant, what made it significant, how they worked with others to realize the achievement, where they stumbled, etc.
Agreed. In GP's scenario, telling the story of how they were able to balance working a night job with going to the public library to do their homework, say, or how they dealt with a rough situation at home, or whatever else it was, could be quite impressive.
I don't look at academic success too hard when I hire, but if someone really worked their tail off to beat obstacles and get that 4.0, I'll find those stories to be a great indicator.
The question is "what would you consider your most significant achievement?". This is an opportunity for the interviewee to tell the story of the achievement; you don't want a one-liner answer from them, you want them to explain the significance. You're not ranking the achievements but the interviewee.
Answered well, and if you listen to the answer properly, this question will tell you how someone overcomes obstacles and handles adversity.
> Answered well, and if you listen to the answer properly, this question will tell you how someone overcomes obstacles and handles adversity.
Only in the specific (and almost certainly relatively narrow) context of the time and place in which the achievement occurred. The question is, at best, a vague and inaccurate heuristic measure of the thing you note. The answer to it, and follow-on questions, may have little or no bearing on the position the candidate is interviewing for.
This is the problem I am trying to address. The culture of achievement is a privilege reserved for upper strata of society.
This question belongs on a country club application not on tech job application. Tech industry is one of last few places in america where one can hope to turn things around in life. Become great by getting exposure to new ideas and new memes.
>The culture of achievement is a privilege reserved for upper strata of society.
How classist of you. There are plenty of people from working class backgrounds who achieved great things. Just because you started in poverty doesn't mean that you've never achieved something worth talking about in response to an interview question like this.
Honestly, I think disadvantaged people are in some ways at an advantage here--we have so many more limitations, that we have to become quite creative in our attempts to get around them. The more advantaged people can take a more convergent path because there are fewer obstacles in their way necessitating an annoying (but ultimately educational) detour.
'Significant accomplishment' is extremely personal and subjective. Judging whether something is actually a 'significant accomplishment' when compared to random thing you've done or heard about is missing the point. That a person would choose to pick a particular event as 'significant' leads into a slew of other questions that the candidate should be able to answer in depth (see the article for examples).
That's certainly not true. "Significant achievement" doesn't have to be ending war in Rwanda or discovering a new elementary particle. It has to be significant in the life of the person doing it. And it is hard to imagine for me a person that has never done anything ever that is significant to them. One would then be forced to ask - why? You don't have to be a billionaire to make something that makes sense to you.
>>> but are you in a position to rationally consider that as a 'significant achievement ' ?
That sounds pretty bad. You're basically saying "it was easy to me to have this thought right after reading about it, but for you such thought is probably out of the question". Why would you assume such thing?
> In a age if great socio economic inequality very few people at the top of the society get to have ' significant accomplishment', it is more of an indicator of you socio economic status than your actual capabilities.
The "significant accomplishment" that the interviewer is looking for is one that the interviewee had to work relentlessly towards achieving. Not one that the interviewee "[got] to have" as if it were placed under his christmas tree with a red bow on top.
How does the interviewer know that the interviewee REALLY struggled with the issue? By having the interviewee go into great detail. The author of the article suggested discussing the accomplishment for 15-20 minutes, and he outlined over twenty questions that the interviewer should ask with respect to the accomplishment.
There's a short clip where Elon Musk outlines a similar approach to interviewing applicants:
"...I ask them to tell me about the problems they worked on and how they solved them. If someone was really the person that solved it, they'll be able to answer multiple levels, they'll be able to go down to the brass-tax. And if they weren't, they'll get stuck and you can say 'Oh this person was not really the person who solved it'. Because anyone who really struggled hard with a problem never forgets it."[1]
So, in this sense, I don't believe that the quality of the interviewee's answer hinges on "socio economic status". In fact -in my opinion- the less you have handed to you, the BETTER equipped you are to answer this question in a satisfactory manor.
A lot of success in life requires being able to tell a story. Not lie, but telling others your accomplishments in an interesting way.
You can say, my greatest accomplishment this year was maintaining a large rails app, or you can say, I lead a team of 3 developers to architect and deliver a custom commerce app that helped a startup quadruple their revenues over the next quarter.
Both are the same story, one of them is far more interesting. I would expect your hypothetical character to explain why going to college was his most significant achievement in an interesting way (not "I went to college" but "I overcame all $these_obstacles to achieve my dream of a college degree"), and then I don't see why a company wouldn't be excited by his accomplishment.
What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college. Is smart and motivated and could be a great asset to your company but never had the exposure to great ideas.
You can argue that she can just say 'Going to college was my most significant achievement' but are you in a position to rationally consider that as a 'significant achievement ' ?
In a age if great socio economic inequality very few people at the top of the society get to have ' significant accomplishment', it is more of an indicator of you socio economic status than your actual capabilities.