obesity becomes the new norm. everyone gets so fat they can't walk around, global production grinds to a halt. Nobody can remember how to hunt or farm since its so long since our sedentary society has engaged in such primitive practices.
the irony is that we all die of starvation in the aftermath of our obesity. slow acting doomsday.
Insightful! I guess I happen to be the very rare counterexample in that at some point in every interview process I've been through, I've been asked questions like the ones the author says won't get me hired.
And I've never been asked "can you do this job?" (not so bluntly anyways, though obviously you are evaluated on that to some degree)
Those questions don't mean you are not getting hired at all. They are (for better or for worse) standard practice by HR personnel. They might not tell you anything about a candidates capacity to do a job, but a lot of times personality fit is just as important. And I can tell a lot about a person by their answers to really stupid questions (even if they are canned, planned out, rehearsed responses).
I want to work with cool people and have the pleasure of doing so. If competency was the only factor my firm asked for when hiring, I'd probably be working somewhere else.
Ability is a necessary, but insufficient condition for employment, in my opinion.
THATS why the employers ask you the questions that "Mean You're Not Getting Hired"
The real question is not can you do this job but are you useful aka worth the time and money it's going to take to employ you. Which is the point of the other questions.
Basically, they want to know how useful you are for this job and if this project tanks are we going to need to fire you or can you be used to do some other task.
Wow, that is one of the worst articles I have ever read by Gladwell.
I generally think Gladwell is overrated, but at least provides interesting anecdotes. I was sorely tempted to quit reading it about 2/3 through, but then I thought "maybe he'll tie together the 'football quarterback selection' story with the 'teacher selection' story in a meaningful way." But no. This would have been more interesting as a piece about either just college football quarterback selection or just the question of incentivising a high level of primary/secondary school education. In the context of the article, they're really not the same question
I'm not against open ended questions and unresolved endings, but the analogy was strained, lacked interesting content. And I am interested in both college football and the "quality of US secondary school education" debate...
The Gladwell love-fest is getting out of hand. I've enjoyed his writing to date for the most part, despite thinking that it was not quite as groundbreaking as some people seem to insinuate. But now, anyone will publish him just because he's Gladwell.
It wasn't really about teaching or football. It was about how being unable to measure performance causes a poor allocation of human resources. Top programmers not getting paid for the value they produce is the exact same problem.
it amazes me that people can deconstruct organic life as being just mechanical robots built with organic parts, then try to make their own organic robots that "live" (have biological processes, reproduce, etc.)
its not really fair to say that the burden rests on hackers and startup founders to promote/use small providers. small providers also have a responsibility to innovate and compete to provide superior products. It is the responsibility of end users to choose the application that suits their needs best.
If small providers aren't competitive with gMail, then gMail will maintain its large marketshare and continue to receive attention from its users.
Choosing a service because it fits your needs is fine, but in the case of Gmail every trivial detail is posted as a new story.
I'm running my own innovative, superior, competitive, streamlined combination of qmail+mutt, so forgive me if I find posts about free Gmail stickers slightly obtuse.
started playing it recently when i got a new job and the guys at my new firm play it. fun as hell.