In many parts of the country, heating plays a large role as well. Heating 100 units in an apartment building is going to be more efficient than heating 100 single family houses.
Exactly. I work in automotive and it's important to understand why traditional automakers have dealers and why Tesla doesn't.
The first mass market Tesla (Model S) came to market in post app store world. By that I mean, not only is it possible but it's obvious that vehicles can and should be diagnosed and firmware should be updated over the air. The only reason they were able to throw away the dealer model is because they could collect analytics, perform diagnostics and firmware flashes over the air. Without this advancement, Tesla would need significantly more physical presence akin to dealerships (and in fact, they kind of are building a light showroom/repair network as they grow so the dealer model isn't all that crazy in some respects).
Traditional automakers have been around since before OTA was possible or practical or anyone had even thought of it, so dealers were at least necessary at one point in time to perform these tasks. Now that it is possible, and many new vehicles even have wireless internet, very few traditional automakers actually perform remote diagnostics and even fewer update more than a couple ECUs (Electronic Control Units) over the air.
There are a number of reasons for and against this, but at the end of the day they were forced into a situation where they needed dealers and for that reason they also have the luxury of offloading many of these tasks onto the dealers. This luxury is actually very important because a major OEM has hundreds of models of vehicles that they need to support. Tesla obviously has far fewer so they can afford to take on some of those diagnostic tasks and of course they have to because they don't have franchises with technicians in them.
As for success, I believe Tesla is very successful for a variety of reasons (too many to list, but I'll mention some of the major ones):
1. They care about design. They're not the flashiest or most radical designs, but the designs are very thoughtful, tasteful, elegant and minimalistic -- all of these are qualities that are fashionable at the moment.
2. The cars are technology first... they come with a lot of useful technology that people want because it seems obvious to have these things in contemporary cars. Most other vehicles in the Model 3 price range are technology last -- the technology that seems obvious is a paid upgrade.
3. They are optimistic and progressive. Even when someone knows that some model 3s are built outside in a tent and there are mounting quality and repairability concerns, they don't care because they want to support the flier that just might make a difference in the world.
I tried this but found the shift between desktops far more jarring, people would definitely know you were up to sow thing if all of a sudden multiple monitors jump to a whole different set of windows, compared to just hiding one or two small ones.
Finally, but then none of these new test takers will know what it feels like to get near perfect scores on the other sections of the test but then completely bomb the written portion and ruin your overall score.
You joke, but I've seen several applications where I've been asked questions like "What achievement are you proudest of?" and "How would you contribute to the diversity of our team?".
Also cover letters cover some of this.
Actually, I wouldn't mind a standardized test like the GRE, where a good score might actually keep your resume from getting thrown out immediately.
Maybe I stand alone in feeling this, but I don't see those questions are absurd during an interview. Especially at smaller startups, where early hires are going to be interfacing heavily with the majority of other employees. Maybe this should be filed under things that comprise "culture fit", but I also think it's different than that.
I think it's a little odd to ask directly. If you are evaluating an interviewee for "culture fit" as in your example, would you directly ask them "how would you fit into our culture?" or try to evaluate their thought processes, demeanor, etc to determine it for yourself?
Perhaps it's just the context from which this conversation arises and it wouldn't strike me this way otherwise, but asking these questions directly feels a bit too much like college application boilerplate to me.
If a team wants to prioritize a diversity of perspectives, I feel the team should spend the interview trying to understand my perspective, analyze how that compares to their own perspectives, then synthesize the answer to the question themselves rather than just adding a "How will you contribute to a diversity of perspectives?" question.
If there were a standardized Programming GRE, it will end up increasing the competition for jobs thanks to the future Kaplan/Princeton/local training centers. What would companies do then? Start another layer of programming interview on top of this programming GRE. Eventually, we will reach a point where companies don't trust such GRE scores.
