Sugar: The Bitter Truth (UCSF lecture) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM <comment><USER2> This guy is a great presenter. The hypothesis behind the damages of fructose actually gets worse than what is presented here, as fructose is implicated in the creation of toxic AGE. For a more in depth overview of the science behind fructose that is accessible, I would recommend Good Calorie, Bad Calorie by Gary Taubes. Aside from fructose, I would actually recommend that book to anyone concerned about their health.

I think it is important to differentiate between normal (hunter-gatherer) levels of fructose consumption (< 5% of total calories, normally closer to 1%, except perhaps in the summer when fruit is more abundant) and the amount we are eating today. That is, if fructose is harmful, the dangers only seem to manifest at the high levels of intake seen today.

Pragmatically, we may not need to be concerned about fructose at all, as eating refined sugar is obviously bad for health, so it should be eliminated anyways. (You need vitamins and minerals, and refined sugar doesn't have any!). Unrefined sources of sugar are not very good nutritional resources either.

Tragically, the damages of fructose may have been multiplied by the government recommendations to replace saturated fat intake with polyunsaturated fat. [http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/12/cirrhosis-and...](http://high- fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/12/cirrhosis-and-corn-oil.html)

<comment><USER3> I have to second this recommendation. Everybody concerned about nutrition should read

* Good Calorie, Bad Calorie;

* The Omnivore's Dilemma

* The End of Overeating.

In order: the science of fat and weight, as best as can be explained today; what's in your food, and what you should be eating; and how companies influence your eating decisions and how to take control of them.

In particular, the last book summarizes research showing that, for certain people, there is a reward conditioning feedback mechanism in the brain triggered by the intake of fat, sugar, and salt. see [http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/07/end-of-overeating- th.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/07/end-of-overeating-th.html) for a longer review. In particular, if you have lots of willpower elsewhere in your life but struggle controlling your food intake, I can't recommend this book strongly enough.

In any case, I think everybody should read the above 3 books; you'll be a long way closer to being a well informed consumer of food and of it's effects on your body.

<comment><USER4> Good Calorie, Bad Calorie was great, except that 90% of it was a history lesson where he explains, in a very detailed manner, how other nutrition theories of the last 100+ years were wrong.

Anybody know of another source that describes the book's views on fat metabolism, blood sugar, etc. but is shorter and more to the point?

Not only for my own benefit to review, but I have a hard time recommending Good Calorie, Bad Calorie to friends who are only marginally interested in nutrition, but would still benefit from reading the book's core ideas in a distilled form.

<comment><USER2> I have wondered the same thing, but most people's first response is they can't believe that the government and scientists have it so wrong, and the only way to truly explain that is to talk about the history. Perhaps there is a middle ground, though, or there could be a smaller version that referenced the larger version. Taubes is working on a much shorter version of GCBC.

<comment><USER4> Awesome that he's working on a shorter version. I poked around his site after finishing the book to suggest just such a thing. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I highly recommend watching this.

<comment><USER6> The natural health community has been screaming this for decades. Few take heed.

My family has spent many years studying human health. The well-researched conclusions are so far from mainstream American beliefs that the ignorant dismiss them as absurd.

I'll get down voted, but in the interest of countering groupthink, here are some examples anyway:

\- Food basics: Avoid hydrogenated oils, sodium nitrite, MSG/yeast extract, artificial colors, high fructose corn syrup, all artificial sweeteners, all grains that aren't whole. Replace sugar with agave nectar or stevia. Know the smoke points for the cooking oils you use an don't exceed them.

\- Any multivitamin which packages B12 solely as "cyanocobalamin" is cheaply manufactured. Quality vitamins package hydroxocobalamin. You'll probably have to look online or at health food stores to find good quality vitamins. Many of the options sold at pharmacies are little better than candy.

\- As much as 60% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. The body makes it in response to skin exposure to direct sunlight (not through glass.) Sufficient vitamin D reduces risk of nearly all cancers by around 70%. Why isn't the American Cancer Society screaming this message?

\- A cup of blueberries a day is more effective at reducing cholesterol than current pharmaceuticals. Tastes better, too.

\- Eating refined carbohydrates depletes the supply of B vitamins. For women, this contributes to the discomfort of menstruation.

\- A number of plants have strong cancer prevention or anticancer properties. Examples: turmeric with black pepper, maca root, garlic.

...a few thousand more little details.

<comment><USER7> You do realize that agave nectar is basically pure fructose, right?

Also, MSG has been unfairly accused. Wikipedia says "a statistical association has not been demonstrated under controlled conditions, even in studies with people who were convinced that they were sensitive to it".

<comment><USER8> A natural form of MSG is found in one popular variety of edible seaweed: kombu.

Interestingly, some canned beans, e.g. Eden Organic (unsalted), come with kombu in the can.

All the debate over things like artificial/alternatives sweeteners and MSG seem like a severe case of not seeing the forest for the trees. The issue of which sweetener to use is not so big as _how much_ of any of the sweeteners. And for those who eat a diet of only whole foods, the answer is even easier: none.

The controversy over issues like these has the general public all worried about things they don't need to worry about so much, instead of being concerned about things they really should be, e.g. what foods make up the diet and their nutrient density. Worrying about MSG in my junk food, organic vs. conventional pizza, or HFCS vs. cane sugar soda, is not likely to have much benefit if these items make a regular appearance in my diet.

<comment><USER7> Glutamates are in Kombu, soy sauce, Parmesan, Marmite, peas...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamic_acid_(flavor)#Sources>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was struck by the allusion Lustig makes to sugar being as poisonous as alcohol. It makes ours look like a world of drug fiends.

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting anecdote from someone who claims to have cured his alcohol abuse problems by going low carb. [http://fathead- movie.com/index.php/2009/04/30/primal-body-pr...](http://fathead- movie.com/index.php/2009/04/30/primal-body-primal-mind-primal-tools/)

<comment><USER9> The paleo diet is awesome. I've lost a considerable amount of weight on it, and feel and look much better.

Also, a diet with staples like grass-fed beef, pastured butter (or any other healthy animal fat), avocado, and fish is my kind of diet. No more forcing down bitter grain or soy products in fruitless attempts to go "healthy". Plus, my meals are so substantial and high in fat that I only need to eat once or twice a day.

For anyone interested, there's a lot of good paleo sites out there, but I'd start with <http://paleonu.com> and <http://freetheanimal.com>

And if you can, pick up Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jack LaLanne tried to warn us about this 50 years ago:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJVEPB_l8FU>

</comment><comment><USER11> Someone will have to answer for sapping and impurifying our precious bodily fluids!

</comment><comment><USER12> Eat food. No too much. Mostly plants.

<comment><USER13> The whole video is about how fructose is toxic. Many, many plants are rich in fructose. It's not as simple as "eat plants." A modern variety apple or orange is a blast of fructose.

It's also perfectly healthy to eat predominantly meat, organs, and dairy if the animals are properly pastured. So the "mostly plants" claim makes little sense without a lot of qualification.

<comment><USER12> 'Mostly plants' refers to the only piece of diet world that has been proven by science. If you eat more plants you have lower risk of many severe diseases. That's all we know about diet for sure. The rest is guesswork and wishful thinking.

<comment><USER13> I assure you "mostly plants" has no scientific backing. There are plenty of randomized intervention studies introducing more fruit and vegetables into diet and they all show a null result. Well controlled studies within populations also do not show any longevity advantage to eating more vegetables.

<comment><USER12> To my knowledge there were numerous studies confirming that eating plants often lowers risk of diseases such as cancer.

Maybe you can achieve similar effect with some other precise diet but eating mostly plants is the easiest way to improving your health and lower you calories intake.

<comment><USER13> Go try and find a randomized intervention where more vegetables improved health. Many have tried, all have failed.

<comment><USER14> These studies aren't randomized interventions, but I think it's a bit of a simplification to say that all have failed.

"Dietary and lifestyle determinants of mortality among German vegetarians" found that "A longer duration of vegetarianism (> or = 20 years) was associated with a lower risk, pointing to a real protective effect of this lifestyle"

"Vegetables, fruit, and cancer prevention: a review" states that "the evidence for a protective effect of greater vegetable and fruit consumption is consistent for cancers of the stomach, esophagus, lung, oral cavity and pharynx, endometrium, pancreas, and colon. The types of vegetables or fruit that most often appear to be protective against cancer are raw vegetables, followed by allium vegetables, carrots, green vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, and tomatoes"

"Nutrients and food groups and large bowel cancer in Europe" found that "most vegetables, including pulses, were inversely associated with cancer of the colon and rectum."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I watched it a while ago but I did not understand what was the key idea that he wanted to say.

Okay, the corn syrup is just fructose, and as I understood from the lecture it's equivalent to poison so we should avoid it.

But then sugar from plants and fruit also contains fructose! For every gram of natural sugar there is half a gram of fructose. If we eat natural sugar it seems equivalently bad? I don't get it.

So what does the lecture tell? Does it say we shouldn't be consuming sugar at all? Or should we only be consuming glucose part of sugar? Or what?

Can anyone explain?

Thanks!

<comment><USER16> IIRC T-nation had an article on this. Fructose in an apple is OK because the fibre etc means it is absorbed more slowly. The body isn't designed to have a huge amount of fast-digesting carbs dumped into it in one go - even if the total calories are the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This was really very interesting. I for one was mostly ignorant to the big difference there was between glucose and fructose. Also the bit on ethanol was quite interesting in itself.

The fact that HFCS is made from normal corn syrup (almost 100% glucose), which is processed into fructose seems almost ironic.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you want the jist of this lecture, around 1:15:00 is a good place to start, he rants about Gatorade and McD's. Otherwise, it's O-Chem(?) up to that point. Very interesting stuff. Less Fructose, more Fiber. Less Frankenburgers, more Fruits.

<comment><USER18> He also mentions the paleolithic diet as a cure of type 2 diabetes. Link here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet>

<comment><USER19> Ah, yes. To live longer, eat like people who were lucky to see the far side of 30.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow. I just read a lot about sugar last night. I wanted to know if glucose was truly the only sugar the brain needed. I found that processed sugars are used almost immediately by the body; whereas, the sugars from natural sources are released at a later time in smaller quantities. I read an article that stated that these large doses of sugar cause a sudden, large increase in insulin which can actually starve the brain from getting all of the sugar it needs as the body tries to dispose of excess sugar. It was a very interesting series of articles that I might hunt down again and post on HN at some point.

</comment><comment><USER21> So this is another odd failure case for science, where researchers from many areas selectively ignored (since the 1970s, let's say) a roughly-worked-out biochemistry. Add political chilling effects and mix.

Given that there aren't particularly impervious ties in either political party to sugar/carbs (activists being health advocates on the left and anti-subsidy advocates on the right) I hope this set of research pathologies gets a kick in the pants when sugar support detonates.

<comment><USER22> The sugar lobby is the corn lobby, because that's where most refined sugar comes from. In other words, Midwest farmers, particularly in Iowa. See the problem now?

<comment><USER21> Understood -- I'm saying there are growing factions in both parties that will make these old allegiances obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you are going to see grandparents this holiday, a good discussion might be to ask them about their sugar consumption, prevalent health problems now and then, and compare those to your own. Bet there is a big difference.

<comment><USER19> If they're honest, what they'll report is that their own grandparents died about 20 years younger than they are now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I watched the whole video. I thought he was going to explain why they put salt in coke, but it seems he never did. Was he just implying that they are trying to get people to drink more?

<comment><USER24> salt is hygroscopic - it sucks water from your body making you thirsty / sets off a mechanism which makes you feel thirsty. This is why beer and coke etc have salt in them (also explains free peanuts and pretzels in bars)

<comment><USER25> Salt also tastes good, which is why people _want_ to eat/drink it (and there's probably an evolutionary reason for this - the body needs it). Try peanuts without salt, it's not quite the same.

<comment><USER11> Besides those who lived by the sea, where could our ape-man ancestors find salt?

<comment><USER25> In the blood of other animals, apparently. <http://www.salt.org.il/main.htm>

The fact that we like it so much, as with sweets, suggests that it was hard to find - a significant mental reward was required to make us make the effort to find it.

<comment><USER8> Why would the fact that we like things that taste sweet indicate that they were hard to find?

Our bodies run on sugar; sources of sugar, such as fruits and starches were not hard to find.

Availability and use of fruit in our diet long ago is hardly anything new. It certainly was not hard to find.

<http://www.health101.org/art_diet2.htm>

      Research Yields Surprises about Early Human Diets

      Teeth Show Fruit Was the Staple

      By Boyce Rensberger
      May 15, 1979 issue of the New York Times

<comment><USER25> _Why would the fact that we like things that taste sweet indicate that they were hard to find?_

Assuming that nothing in how the body works happens for no good reason:

The fact that we enjoy it means that our body rewards us for eating it, something that most likely means that it's something the body wants us to do. If it was abundant, though, that'd make us eat too much of it (which is what's happening today) unless there was something to stop us. With salt it's possible to eat too much: that makes us feel bad. That suggests that salt was abundant, otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system. The lack of a counter system for sweets suggests that it wasn't abundant, at least not to the degree that we could eat enough of it to prevent us from reproducing.

 _Our bodies run on sugar; sources of sugar, such as fruits and starches were not hard to find._

Eveything we digest is converted to sugar, be it fruits, bread or meat.

Regarding the link:

That some of our ancestors two million years ago might have, or might not have, eaten mostly fruits doesn't say much of anything about how Homo Sapiens work. In the article they say that even the Homo Erectus were omnivores, and that was 1.5M years ago. Things have happened since then...

<comment><USER8> First you speculate that salt was not easy to find:

      > The fact that we like it so much, as with sweets,
      > suggests that it was hard to find.

Then you claim salt was abundant:

      > With salt it's possible to eat too much: that makes us
      > feel bad. That suggests that salt was abundant,
      > otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system.

Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or not?

Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than (poor) speculation. The link I provided above is just one example showing that fruit WAS abundant, as regardless of what those creatures were, fruit was easily accessible.

It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about just about anything to reach just about any conclusion.

<comment><USER25> _Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or not?_

I revised it to abundant, but not as abundant as say air or water.

 _Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than (poor) speculation._

Of course it is. However, you also need to take into account that (most) natural fruit is far from the sweetness of the cultivated fruits we can buy in the stores today. Compare wild apples to shop apples, for example.

 _The link I provided above is just one example showing that fruit WAS abundant_

It _might_ have been abundant 2M years ago, where those ancestors lived. That says nothing about what happened the next 2M years, which is a significant period of time in evolutionary terms (at least 100k generations). If something changed, e.g. there was less fruit, the ancestors might have started eating other things - maybe become omnivores (like the next step in the chain towards Sapiens, the Erectus). Sounds like something that fits pretty well with what's known about our ancestry.

Going back to an arbitrary point in our history and saying that that's when Things Were Right(tm) and ignoring what's happened since then is no better than my speculations. At least choose at time nearer to now if you're going to do that, maybe 10k years ago when the latest major change in our diet occurred? Even that is 500 or so generations ago, so we should have had at least some chance to adapt to a farmer's diet. And by the way, the farmer's diet is what's allowed us to get where we are today in terms of civilization.

 _It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about just about anything to reach just about any conclusion._

It's fun! Doesn't actually say a whole lot without actual research though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview - <AUTHOR> https://fs.blog/2020/07/job-interviews/ <comment><USER3> If you want a really big competitive advantage, figure out how to hire great people who don't interview well.

<comment><USER4> I use a gig to hire process for this. It works very well. I've been meaning to write more about it but I also get income for helping with hiring around this model so im a bit conflicted. The whole answer is long and complex. Basically: give candidate a proper task on your project and evaluate them based on that work - the "interview" is less than an hour, the "work" is longer (many hours (and you pay for it)) - provides a solid evaluation across their skill-set

<comment><USER5> That will work for some people but not everyone. At my current job I can't monetize work I do outside the company without approval. That means I can't go through you application process unless I quit first. Even if I was allowed to do this I don't think I'd want to. The time commitment of an extra project on top of my normal workload is not something I want.

<comment><USER6> Well, then you can just work out a deal to not monetize it.

Your objection is of course valid - extra workload on top of a normal job probably has its limits. But the fact one is willing to pay those who are willing to be paid for such an interview doesn't suddenly make it a strict requirement ha.

I must say though, I also view the interview standard I've faced - quick phone screen, 1h tech screen, 4-6h onsite (probably online now) - as adding up to a lot of time very quickly, especially as the "onsite" time is of course awkward when it means you take PTO to go to an interview. In this sense, I'd probably rather have an ~8-12h coding task than a 4-6h onsite. Maybe even a higher factor

<comment><USER7> It's one day for the tech screen and one day for the on-site. Of course it's more of you have to travel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a growing rift in software between employers saying "there's a talent shortage" and a rapidly growing population of devs who feel like they're locked out due to the technical interview process.

Many of the engineers not being hired are recent bootcamp grads but there are also tons of CS majors that can't seem to "crack" the interview process.

Part of my job is helping companies "fix" their hiring and one of the ideas that I've been putting forth for years that's slowly gaining steam is developing a "technical apprentice" role. This role would be responsible for tasks that are frequently de-prioritized like documentation, testing, QA, bug fixes, note taking, etc. and would be a foot in the door for entry-level engineers. The role is designed to focus on communication and soft-skills while also giving the person a chance to prove their "grit" on the technical side. Even a few months in an apprenticeship role is generally enough for companies to "take a chance" on someone as an entry-level engineer.

This has been a great way to shift interviews away from algorithms and more towards finding people can add immense value to technical teams even without having on-the-job programming experience.

I'm curious what the HN crowd thinks about that role as a way to bridge the hiring gap.

<comment><USER9> This sounds like what most internships are intended to be?

How much does it cost to employ one of these apprentices?

<comment><USER8> Internships are generally thought of as something you do during college (summers or otherwise). Most CS grads would scoff at getting an "internship" after graduating. Internships are also very structured and generally involve working on a specific project within a technical team (I know they're all different).

The apprentice role, the way I've been pitching it at least, is different. This is a role where you join an engineering org and learn the product by QAing it, join technical discussions and help out by taking notes for the team, show off your communication skills by documenting new features and, big picture, you find ways to add value to the team in whatever ways they need. Over time, the bugs fixed get bigger and the person can bite off small features, etc.

The problem is that companies _want_ to hire new grads (even bootcamp grads) but don't feel comfortable paying SWE rates for someone who hasn't worked as a SWE (often rightfully so). The comp for this is equivalent to a QA eng but has a clear path towards being an entry-level SWE (3-6 months maximum). If after 3-6 months it's not clear if the person can add value as an engineer then it's clearly not a good fit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related message for students / new-grads: Find an internship. Internship interviews tend to be much easier as the stakes are lower. If you perform well during your internship (arguably easier / more accurate indicator of success), the company will likely extend an offer. At big companies I've seen internship to offer rates exceed 30%.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately, this has two sides.

I've noticed that in banking - and I'm not talking about investment banking, or high-finance in general, but regular consumer banking - there's been a trend to basically hire woefully overqualified people for the lowest positions around - I'm talking about bank greeters, customer support, and what not, and then train them from there.

This could very well be a local thing, but there are so many people today qualifying for these jobs - lots of BBA and MBA candidates out there, willing to do pretty much anything to get a foot inside.

When I was interning for a bank, even the greeters (basically the person that just greets the clients, and forwards them to the right people within the bank - a receptionist, really) had a Bachelors degree, many were working on their Masters.

The more sought after positions had been re-labeled "graduate programs" or "trainee programs", and were aimed at the top-shelf students. While the rest pretty much had to get a foot inside by working their way up from the bottom.

So you suddenly have a ton of highly educated candidates applying for jobs that only 15 years ago required a HS diploma, if that even.

Then when they're first inside, they tend to get moved around internally - <USER2> a lot of positions only get posted internally.

It's almost the same way with internships. Internships are there to practically train and select future company workers. If you do well, you get a return offer - if not, well, at least you have some experience.

With the rising number of graduates, I can foresee a future where candidates are being divided into the regulars and the elites. The regulars will, no mater how qualified they are, will have to start at the rock bottom, proving themselves for $8.5/hr, while the elites are trained for leadership/management-track positions.

<comment><USER12> That should be a signal that's there's an oversupply for whatever Bachelors degrees these employees were holding.

It's the same thing in law, the best advice to give to an aspiring lawyer is to go have a chat with a practicing lawyer at a non-elite firm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, that headline is a stick in the mud on a nuanced topic.

> What's your biggest weakness? Where do you see yourself in five years? Why > do you want this job? Why are you leaving your current job?

I do a lot of tech & business interviews, and I don't ask those questions (unless they've recently left A LOT of jobs). I ask situational questions to understand how they think, who they talk to, what research they did to understand the problem, and the solution (was it simple?). If they tell me they built a Rube Goldberg machine, I ask if they would have done anything different with hindsight. If they don't realize they built a Rube Goldberg machine, well, perhaps they won't be a good fit.

I look for people who can solve problems, do their own research, ask for help when they get stuck, aren't afraid to attempt solutions (many that will knowingly fail) and have the introspection to identify failures and admit it are generally people you want to hire for senior positions.

Now I admit that it's a lot harder to hire this way for junior positions, when they have less examples, less job history, etc. Educational projects are a substitute, as well as working on personal projects.

<comment><USER14> Ok, we'll replace it with some of the mud in the headline above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is true, and not that I am trying to be dishonest myself but I am not the same person while taking an interview. It's a sad that we can't be honest or humble but in this system we have to sell ourselves, fake enthusiasm for the hiring company is a must, do whatever it takes to pass the interview then think later if we take the position or not. If not, somebody else with the same capability or or less will snatch that job. Plus that interviews like tests are gameable.

In an ideal world a trial period would ensure both the employees and employers are a fit. But that could be abused as well if it becomes the norm.

<comment><USER16> Someone always suggests this. The issue is that if you did this, 95% of the candidates that would agree to this kind of setup would be the kind you didn't want.

If I'm sitting on 2 offers, one is a hire and one is a "Let's see how this works out after 2 weeks of work", I'm going to take the first one. And that says nothing for the necessary benefits question in the states, where changing jobs often involves expensive (in money or time) changes to health care insurance.

<comment><USER15> We don't know for sure and it's hard to know how this works. What's obvious is that the current system is broken and we need a replacement of some sort. Being able to try a company and see whether they like me and whether I like them and the type of projects I am supposed to work would be a major factor in finding the right marriage. We take jobs for the salary tag and quite often we do whatever we have to do to continue getting that nice paycheck but we're not happy with the work we do.

<comment><USER16> For sure, it's an empirical question what %age of people who would accept this kind of offer are "I have no other choice, so I accept your offer" or "I want to make sure I will _actually_ want to work at your company".

I'm just saying that I would 100% not do this unless I had no other choice, or was independently wealthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm wondering if much of the discussion here is even about the article, which advocates for things we long know work better:

* Structured interviews

* Blind auditions

* Competency-related evaluations

The title "Job interviews don't work" is rather bait-clicky when clearly they advocate that _some_ form of job interviews work. Or are at least better.

As a technical hiring manager for over a decade, here's where I'm at:

\- The best interview is an internship. We can't always do that and often we need senior talent _now_.

\- The next best interview would be a portfolio. I am _so envious_ of artists with their public portfolios. If there's one thing I wish we as an industry could figure out, it would be some way of stopping to test and retests ourselves as if we have to constantly reprove what we've already done and instead find a way to better showcase our work.

\- The next best technical interview would be a "homework" project, but I've come around to the mentality that this just isn't fair to candidates. As a hiring manager I love it, but most folks just don't have the time to do a bunch of unpaid work. Even if you compensate them, it's unrealistic for many.

So we're mostly back to the suggestions in the article. They're good. A good hiring process is _not easy_ but it's worth it.

And finally, a bit of anecdotal evidence: yes, there are folks out there you probably shouldn't hire. They aren't a good fit for the role. You want to set them and yourself up for success. That said, there are probably more people who can excel than you realize. A major factor in their success is the maturity of the team and leadership that's already in your company. Sometimes you'll get lucky and hire some rare talent, but if all you're doing is looking for "rare" talent, then you're likely poorly calibrated and relying too much on outside talent to come in an fix the mess already on your hands.

<comment><USER18> > The next best interview would be a portfolio.

I tried using my (limited) open source hobby project portfolio as a substitute for coding interviews. Companies either didn't take me up on it, or still also required me to do their regular take-home. Twice now, I have had two companies ask for the same take-home, although in the first case they asked me to re-do the work in their preferred language.

<comment><USER19> FWIW, as a hiring manager, if someone has a portfolio I definitely judge them on it, and if it's good it allows me to bypass huge swaths of technical/coding interview stuff and dig much deeper into where/what I want. I always take it as a positive, even if it's old stuff.

<comment><USER18> What do you find makes a portfolio better or worse for these purposes?

Not so much "more likely to get them the job", more... I felt like my projects weren't actually suitable to take the place of coding interviews, largely because I couldn't actually drop in and work on them in the way that coding interviews show me actually doing work.

<comment><USER19> Literally anything. If I see someone with a lot of relevant forked repos, even if they're old, I take that as interest and something I can bring up.

If I see a repo of rcfiles I know they care about working efficiently. If I see abandoned stuff with more than 1 commit that's OK, that's something that was cared about at one point. These are just two super generic examples. Almost everything is a positive.

The _only_ thing I don't like to see is repos with 1 commit, and nothing other than a README with the repo title in it. Not really negative, more of a 'cmon gimme more.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > What's the best way to test if someone can do a particular job well? Get > them to carry out tasks that are part of the job. See if they can do what > they say they can do. It's much harder for someone to lie and mislead an > interviewer during actual work than during an interview. Using competency > tests for a blinded interview process is also possible—interviewers could > look at depersonalized test results to make unbiased judgments.

Why would a practical test be more effective than a discussion about prior work experience? Short coding tests under pressure are extremely unrepresentative of real work and I'm not sure homework-style interviews are much better. I personally don't want to spend an entire weekend on your test and I've dropped opportunities for that reason in the past.

All these "competency tests" are good for is catching blatant lying. Is this a serious problem? In my view job interviews are mostly about finding a match between skills/interests and project needs.

Communications skills are a very big advantage in interviewing and that feels unfair but I'm not sure that true. Communication and persuasion skills are extremely useful and important to all office jobs, even the most technical.

I'd bet that people who interview well also write beautiful code comments and commit messages.

<comment><USER21> > All these "competency tests" are good for is catching blatant lying. Is this > a serious problem?

Of the people I interview that claim they have years of experience, mastery over multiple languages, and expertise in various frameworks, a solid 80% or more can't pass fizz-buzz in any language they choose.

<comment><USER22> Claims made on resume or in person? On the seeking side, I've felt pressure to put every technology I've used even in passing on my resume, to satisfy "buzzword bingo" and get through the initial screen, but in an interview I would give a (truthful) answer along the lines of "I don't have a _ton_ of experience, but I know the basics; enough to be confident that I can quickly pick up whatever else I need to learn on the job."

<comment><USER21> > Claims made on resume or in person?

Both. And it's not "putting every technology I've used even in passing on the resume" that bothers me. It's "I don't know how to write a loop or a function in any programming language."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I interview a lot of people and found much to complain about in this essay. This is the main thing:

> The key is to decide in advance on a list of questions, specifically > designed to test job-specific skills, then ask them to all the candidates. > In a structured interview, everyone gets the same questions with the same > wording, and the interviewer doesn't improvise.

This is good advice, _if and only if_ you're interviewing an undifferentiated group of applicants, as in the cited examples (college entrance and army recruits). If you're hiring a QA III and you have three different applicants, it's terrible advice. You need to ask about the candidate's specific experience, and ask follow-ups.

More generally, I don't think the stated goal of an interview according to this essay (peering in to the candidate's soul to suss out traits like "responsibility" or "sociability") is possible or reasonable. My goal is more modest - I just want to figure out whether you were good at your last job or not. If you say you're responsible, I can't prove you right or wrong in a one hour conversation. But if you say you're a whiz at Selenium UI automation, and you're lying, I will figure it out pretty easily.

</comment><comment><USER24> My boss tasked me with hiring my assistant. HR filtered most of them and I was left with three applicants. So I ran it the way I'd like to be hired which was skip the useless small talk and other painful BS and just bring the applicants around the shop and show them what I did.

The first applicant seemed like his mother dressed him and reminded him to breath that morning. The second guy was pretty sharp but disinterested during the walk and talk. The third applicant immediatly stood out. He was excited and fascinated by our systems and kept asking technical questions - winner. Excellent co-worker until he moved on to greener pastures.

All that wear your best suit and where do you see yourself in 5 years (best answer: prison) nonsense sounds like it was lifted from one of those cheesy 1950's self help shorts the MST3K crew routinely riffed.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a great article. An undiscussed issue I've personally seen when conducting interviews and being parts of roundups is a lack of self understanding. lots of people who conduct interviews think they are way smarter than they are (me included!). They hold up candidates to very high standards and then dismiss them at the slightest mistake, however many of these people also make many mistakes on the job. When I give interviews I always just ask the easiest and clearest questions I possibly can that still try to be relevant to the job to minimize this bias.

</comment><comment> kube-system > A job interview is meant to be a quick snapshot to tell a company how a > candidate would be at a job.

> Unstructured interviews can make sense for certain roles. The ability to > give a good first impression and be charming matters for a salesperson. But > not all roles need charm, and just because you don't want to hang out with > someone after an interview doesn't mean they won't be an amazing software > engineer.

If that's the attitude someone has towards interviews, then no wonder they draw the conclusion that they don't work.

The real issue is that most teams either don't give much attention to interviewing (because they have their primary job to attend to), or too much of the process is delegated/outsourced elsewhere (where people only tangentially understand the work area, and/or have no deep knowledge of the job role).

Lean on interviews for measuring soft skills, and lean on demonstrations (portfolios, code tests, pseudo-code, problem solving, etc) for measuring hard skills. Every job requires _some_ balance of hard and soft skills. If you use the wrong tool for the evaluation, or if the person using the tool doesn't know how to use it, you get the wrong result. Interviews have their place, but technical evaluation is not it.

</comment><comment><USER26> This hits home too hard. My job search is going so poorly, that I have started to doubt my technical value at all.

Confusingly, personal one-on-one interactions with companies or hiring agencies almost invariably result in positive feedback and comments, "you are exetremely hirable," "you have a strong technical background," etc. However, none of these interactions has gone anywhere. Either they "move forward with someone else" or simply evaporate into thin air. A few have even evaporated after extensive interviews and claiming that they wish to hire.

Is positive-sounding feedback just a polite way of avoiding some "elephant in the room" problem? Am I inadvertantly projecting an image of ineptitude or hostility?

I have over 20 years of experience on Linux, tinker and program as a hobby, and also lightly contribute to open source projects. I believe I have what it takes, but geez, sometimes this job search is just soul crushing. I just want to offer my skills and talents---to be a valuable member on a good team.

</vulnerable-rant>

<comment><USER27> Hang in there. I have a friend who's in a similar position, she's interviewed and been ghosted a few times and it has really gotten her down. It can take time but eventually a company will come to their senses and realise your value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In the summer before my senior year at college, I did a 3 month internship at a software development company. The interview for the internship was very soft, partly because it was only an internship, and also because I knew someone at the company who helped me get the position.

After I graduated, I applied for a full-time position there and have been there for 10 years. The interview process for the full-time position was also fairly soft and non-technical because I was hiring into a team that I worked with during my internship. I like to describe it as a 3-month long interview process. Not only did the company get to know me and what I was capable of, but I got to know the company and its people (in order to make a decision about if it was some place that I would like to work).

Surely this isn't scalable (internship are fairly rare, and generally are not available to anyone except students or recent grads), but the whole internship process worked out very well for me. It allowed me to bypass the traditional tech interview, which is something I feel very fortunate about.

</comment><comment><USER29> Finding good people to work with is hard. Nothing you do will find 100% of the good people (finding 50% of them is extremely good) and filter out 100% of the bad people. Nothing you do will be effective for everyone. Trying to develop a hiring strategy based on what you want interviews or hiring processes to be like will be biased.

Accept that you will make mistakes. Accept that many of the good ones will get away or be undiscovered. Accept that you will make hiring mistakes and have to fix those.

If you are interviewing, do you really want to spend a few years of your life at a place that does the bare minimum to vet you? They do that for everyone and guess what kind of coworkers you are going to get. Sure taking PTO and spending a day in an interview process is a lot of time. What is the alternative? Not really being vetted and working with horrible people.

Finding the person or the right company to work with it hard. Take the time to be comfortable that it can work for both sides.

</comment><comment><USER30> Silicon Valley interviews are worthless. The algorithm pop-quiz is just a way for the interviewer to beat his chest about some obscure facts and demonstrate his superior knowledge to the interviewee.

Has anyone found a better process than casual conversation? I've found it effective as long as engineers and non-engineers get a chance to participate. Usually I talk about what they want, talk about what you need, talk about expectations from both parties, talk about needs, and talk about past experiences both good and bad. Once expectations are set, there's literally no opportunity for a "bad hire", because if they don't live up, it's a simple conversation to refer back to the expectations that are set and help them achieve , or worst-case, offer them severance.

<comment><USER31> > because if they don't live up, it's a simple conversation to refer back to > the expectations that are set and help them achieve , or worst-case, offer > them severance.

That is a bad hire. You are describing a PIP and then firing someone that you wasted time and resources recruiting, on-boarding, and training.

<comment><USER30> That's not what I said... If a person doesn't feel they can meet the discussed expectations, you wouldn't hire them in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This was potentially interesting but then:

> They are in no way the most effective means of deciding who to hire because > they maximize the role of bias and minimize the role of evaluating > competency.

I can believe that _badly_ planned and executed job interviews do the above but I've overseen or been directly involved in the interviewing of hundreds of candidates over the years, for dozens of roles, and the hit rate has been pretty good. Two probation failures, and that's about it.

We're looking to assess skill and character in our interview process. We are interested in whether you can do the job, and whether you're a reasonable human being, and that's it. We have strong structures and guidelines in place in terms of questions, answers, and evaluation. And inasmuch as it's possible we strive to make our hiring process a pleasant experience, regardless of whether a candidate is successful or not (obviously there's some level of stress inherent in going through a selection process). We also give feedback that we hope will help unsuccessful candidates in future (I realise this is unusual and even frowned upon in some circles but our experience has been that most people appreciate it enough that it's worthwhile to deal with the headaches caused by the odd person who wants to argue about it).

I get it. There's a cohort of people on HN who don't like job interviews. Honestly, I'm one of them. But done well, they work well.

Our process isn't perfect, and we're always looking for ways to improve it - there was quite a lot of tweaking early on, for sure - but for us it's worked well. We've spent a lot of time on it because - although my role is as a CTO in a mid-sized firm, and this might not fit with everybody's expectations of that role - literally my most important job has been and continues to be hiring, building, and maintaining a strong, effective team.

And I am very happy with the people we've hired. Just as important, I'm also happy with the decisions we've made about people we've chosen not to hire.

</comment><comment><USER33> The first time I ever heard the expression "social filter" was from Barrack Obama.

There are many things that a democracy can give to its citizens. But apparently, it seems civilization doesn't want to give up social filters.

I can understand social filters when it comes to friendships, sex and intimate relationship, but for jobs, I will never understand why they exist.

<comment><USER34> > I can understand social filters when it comes to friendships, sex and > intimate relationship, but for jobs, I will never understand why they exist.

Because jobs are just as social as intimate relationships, if not more so. Up to about the 2010s, the majority of marriages came from getting to know someone at work.

Even if nothing intimate does come from work, it's still people you have to see 8 hours a day for years on end. If someone is repulsive/annoying/toxic, it WILL make you miserable at work, and people are very wary of disrupting a well-oiled collective.

<comment><USER33> > Because jobs are just as social as intimate relationships, if not more so.

For very small or family companies, maybe. In small communities, maybe, but small communities could also include people from any horizon.

But in other cases, I disagree. Work and production is the blood of human civilization. Generally, the free market ideology says that if you're competent, it's the only relevant parameter. Social filters are arbitrary, unnecessary and backwards.

> If someone is repulsive/annoying/toxic

The nazis sent people who were not desired to death camps. Today, those same people are being excluded from society through social filters. You cannot have a healthy society if you keep segregating people like this, even if it's not race, but other traits like education, politics or behavior. You're advocating social darwinism through a detour.

<comment><USER31> If you don't exclude socially toxic people from your company, talented people who don't want to work with that type of person will leave. I know multiple people who have left or transferred because of difficult coworkers, and more who have left because of difficult managers. If one toxic person can't outperform all the talented people who will leave, it is in the company's best interests not to hire that person.

Yes, you can technically call this social darwinism. If you are an irritating person that no one wants to be around, you will be socially excluded. I don't know of any movement that is going to champion your cause. There is a difference between preventing profiling / prejudice and avoiding manipulative, mean people.

<comment><USER33> > There is a difference between preventing profiling / prejudice and avoiding > manipulative, mean people.

I see your point, and yes, there's a difference. I still believe those people can be worked with, in some way or another. Being too selective at the workplace isn't a healthy way to run society.

It's true that there's a difference between discriminating them and avoiding them, but the result and the intention are the same, in my view. Avoiding them is just politically correct and acceptable, but the truth is, it's the same process.

The nazis lost the war, but they won the battle of social darwinism.

> If you are an irritating person that no one wants to be around, you will be > socially excluded.

What's not really what I'm talking about. And that's a nature fallacy. The role of civilization has always been to fix the problems of nature. There are many ways to interpret some socials signs as being "irritating". They're often normative or arbitrary.

> I don't know of any movement that is going to champion your cause.

Socialism, would it be democratic, or any form of progressivism, attempts to aim at that cause. Europe is more progressive about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is very true. Sometimes it's hard to know about hiring someone after a 10 Week internship. Crazy to think a 30 minute interview is better.

</comment><comment><USER36> A rather click-baity headline. The article doesn't claim that job interviews don't work so much as it claims that subjective job interviews are more subject to bias than structured job-interviews. I'd say that's true, but the caveat is that structured job interviews are more subject to people studying and honing skills specific to the job interview process. Grinding leetcode definitely makes you a better at solving algorithms problems on a whiteboard in 60 minutes but doesn't do much to improve working effectiveness.

I think there are 3 core trade-offs for the job interview process: logistical feasibility, consistency, and resemblance to the actual work experience.

Doing 2 rounds of coding interviews, and one round of systems design from a set list of questions with explicit rubrics is easy to implement and is very consistent. But you can leetcode your way to knowing most coding question archetypes. Systems design question archetypes are even smaller in problem space. These questions have moderate to low resemblance to the actual work experience. Sure, it can identify people who can't code or aren't experienced in systems design. But does it show how well someone takes feedback, or reviews other people's code? Not really.

One of my co-workers used to conduct 90 interviews that started with one question: "how would you build a text editor?" He didn't specify whether this text editor was WYSIWYG like Word, a web-based editor, a code editor, etc. It expanded and touched on a whole variety of questions. It could be traditional data structures, or UI design, or systems (e.g. implementing auto-saving text fields on the web). This was low consistency, since the interview was mostly unique to each candidate. It had moderate logistical feasibility since it was hard to train interviewers on these open ended questions. But I think it had better resemblance to the actual work experience, since it didn't just test coding ability. It tested thinking through the problem and what the desired end behavior for the user really was and navigating how those expectations influence implementation.

An idea of an interview process that I have is to do it asynchronously through github or another version control system. Give the candidate a task to open a PR on a mock codebase. See how they implement the task and justify their design decisions. How thoroughly the test. Respond to the PR with comments and see how the candidate responds. And next, have the candidate review another person's PR and see what they look for in a review. This potentially has even better logistical feasibility since it's not dependent on the candidate and employee being active at the same time. I think it would have the most direct resemblance to actual work experience, since it's emulating the workflow most developers actually use in their day to day work. Consistency may be difficult to achieve, but if evaluation was broken up into multiple segments for separate evaluation it may be able to be made consistent.

<comment><USER17> Nice analysis.

In my hiring process, we use a number of filters to gather the _data_ we're looking for to make a decision. That requires a bunch of different steps. By the time we're done, we've spent at least 8-10 hours talking with this person.

From a technical perspective, we do the following:

\- A short screen to go over the resume and ensure we've got a rough fit to the right role.

\- A _simple_ consistent coding exercise using coderpad. (surprisingly some fail)

\- A series of consistent open-ended questions we ask everyone about their tech background, such as, what was one of the most difficult bugs you ever fixed?

\- A set of consistent design/architecture problems: "given this design, what problems do you see? How would you fix them?"

\- Another consistent, more involved coding exercise with an existing code base that is VERY much related to the work they'll be doing.

\- A Q&A session on a wide range of technical topics. Goal is NOT for someone to know everything, it's to get a bit of map of their strengths and weaknesses. We found we make assumptions of what someone knows based on our background and their resume. We try to make this fun.

\- Another set of behavioral and situational questions with a shared scoring rubric on values such as teamwork, collaboration, communication and leadership.

And then we have to take all of that data and look at it holistically and across a wide range of candidates. And even then we'll make mistakes, but we keep trying to optimize it, reduce bias, and make it better for candidates and us alike.

One last note: I like to finish my first interview with the question:

"Is there anything about yourself that you really want me to know that we haven't discussed?"

Because I know I've only had ~40 minutes to get to know this person. I have my agenda of what I want to know, but I could easily miss a lot. So I want to give them a chance to represent themselves in the broadest way possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Never say no, but don't say yes unless you're sure about it.

You won't believe how often that will be good enough.

"Can you code in X?"

"I can program in many languages!"

Didn't answer the question, but was often enough for the interviewer.

<comment><USER38> Yikes, I don't know about that. If somebody asked me if I could program in, say, Perl, I'd say I knew what it was but that was about it. That's like somebody asking if I can speak Chinese: I know what it sounds like, but no, I can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does your interview process perform better than a coin flip? (50% chance of making the correct decision). If the answer is yes, you have a useful process.</comment>


Academia or industry? - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2014/09/15/academia-or-industry/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daniel-lemire%2Fatom+%28Daniel+Lemire%27s+blog%29 <comment><USER2> One more thing this guy might want to consider adding to his list if he's intent on exploring that landscape: working in a research-y position at a large (> few thousand employees) company.

I was in academia for a bit, and eventually dropped out of my PhD because it didn't feel right. I was in startups (both as founder and early employee) for a while, and while I learned a lot I was mostly miserable. I also did some freelance work, and worked for a small web agency/consultancy.

I am now working in a R&D-like group at a very large company. In many ways, it combines the best of all worlds: large corporation, academic research, startups. I like reading papers and thinking about the future. I like the scrappy hard working startup attitude. I like working in a team with people that have been there for more than two decades. I like not having to worry about my job because the company is large and printing money. I like having a HR department I can go to if I encounter unethical behavior (I did not have that luxury in startups). I like having an office of my own without people talking about their life while I'm trying to work or my boss breathing down my neck every 30 minutes (open floor plans have scarred me). The list goes on and on; the gist of it is that I find it to be the best career move I've made so far.

<comment><USER3> MSR per-chance?

<comment><USER4> "Best of both worlds" isn't the best description of academic work at MSR right now...

<comment><USER5> What's wrong with MSR right now, out of curiosity?

<comment><USER6> They just closed down the Mountain View office last week. Most of the ~75 people were laid off, I believe.

<comment><USER7> Out of "more than 1,000 scientists and engineers" employed in total at MSR.

<comment><USER8> 5<x<7.5% is pretty large when talking about employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Overall, freedom is something you earn._

 _A real test of freedom is to look at what people do when they retire._

 _it is often more satisfying to serve others than to cultivate your own egotistical freedom._

 _Being useful is hard. It means accepting people's requirements._

 _Tenure is overrated._

</comment><comment><USER10> I personally haven't found the paycut from Industry to Academia to be as minimal as he implies, at least in Computer Science. I am making easily twice as much working for Google as I could have hoped for landing a tenure-track position. That's a significant difference.

<comment><USER11> Google have a reputation for paying above market rates, do they not?

<comment><USER12> Analyze the overproduction of PHDs vs open tenure track jobs. Comparing a tenure job to working at google would be a fair apples to apples comparison.

The situation is not as bad as the liberal arts where being one of the thousands of resumes picked for a tenure track job would be like getting one of the few Nobel prizes in a hard science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Academic and government positions require you to work in a bureaucratic setting, maybe for the rest of your life. In industry, you can be a lone wolf if you want. In this sense, there is greater freedom in industry."

Can someone please elaborate on the industry part of this quote?

<comment><USER14> Bureaucracy is directly dependent on the size of the business. Universities are amongst the largest businesses around, hence the nonsense you have to go through to get anything done. On the other hand, you do have backup if something goes wrong which you may not be afforded in a smaller company. It's the kind of thing you'll despise until you actually need to exercise your rights.

My experience, as a PhD student with industrial sponsorship.

Big company:

\- stable job

\- stable pay

\- lots of bureaucracy

\- some freedom, but if you're a small cog in a big machine your efforts may go unseen

\- potential to become a drone

\- likely to be standard 9-5 hours

\- usually good benefits e.g. insurance, pension.

\- freedom is having a life outside the office

\- routine can be rewarding and many people really require it

Academia:

\- stable job after 10-20 years

\- pay is meh until you get tenure. £30k nominal, up to £60k for a professorship

\- lots of bureaucracy (LOTS)

\- potential for institutionalisation

\- limited freedom in choosing where your research goes, provided you're in a position of power in your group (otherwise forget it)

\- hours are flexible within reason, potential for travel if your research is hot.

\- researchers are petty as hell

\- scientifically rewarding. You probably won't change the world in your lifetime, but that's OK because you love what you do

Note that while it looks like I've made academia sound arduous, that last fact makes up for it for many, many people.

Small company:

\- stable job if the company is low risk

\- little bureaucracy

\- pay strongly linked to company performance

\- high responsibility

\- working hours depends on who you work for (tech industry is normally good here)

\- benefits can be amazing

\- freedom is the potential to really affect the company's direction

\- can be very rewarding because of the responsibility

Industry can provide the ultimate freedom - working for yourself.

<comment><USER15> _pay is meh until you get tenure._

More like _if_ you get tenure, which is increasingly rare nowadays. I think it's a poor gamble.

<comment><USER14> I think that's often overlooked. Simply going by the numbers, it's impossible for all PhD students to eventually get tenure. Plenty of people end up being fairly well paid research scientists until jobs become available. Tenure is definitely a job of dead man's shoes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a slightly different view of what freedom is. It doesn't mean freedom from responsibilities. It means freedom to choose the direction of your research, but whatever direction you choose, you still have to work at it.

<comment><USER17> His point is that if you have freedom to work at whatever research direction you choose, then it doesn't mean freedom from the other 60% or 80% of your workload (as shown by surveys of tenure track researcher time allocation) that is not really related to research as such, much less your chosen direction of it.

Teaching, administrative duties, grad student supervision, grant proposals, committee work etc make up the majority of the workload; primary research was (IIRC) something like 20% of total working time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> one of the biggest differences between academia and industry, in the context of salary, isn't just the salary per se but the increment in salary that is possible. in academia your salary is very much fixed. no such thing as a bonus. you bring in a 3 million dollar research grant with an additional 2 million dollars in indirects (that go right into the University's pocket)? "thank you!" but your salary doesn't go up. no bonus for you.

<comment><USER19> It's actually quite common for people in academia to get a large raise if they bring in big grants in competitive areas, at least in the U.S. (in Europe it varies a lot by country).

One mechanism is that you can pay yourself summer salary: official university salaries in the U.S. are 9-month salaries, and if you have a big grant, you can give yourself effectively a 33% bonus by becoming a full-time employee on the grant during the summer. (Many grants not only allow this, but require it.)

The other mechanism is the same as in industry: get a raise by getting outside offers. A professor with a big new grant in a hot area, but a low-ish salary, is an attractive target for other universities to poach. The person can then either let themselves be poached, or present the offer to their university and ask for a retention counter-offer. Either way, a raise around ~$20-40k/yr is common in that case, although there is a bit of a soft cap on salaries, so raises are easier from lower starting points. A raise from $90k to $120k is easy-ish to negotiate, and a raise from $120k to $140-150k is fairly common for people with a high profile, but one pushing you much above $150k is difficult (and only a handful of superstars at top universities can get offers over $200k).

If you do really need more than that, though, tenured professor in a science/engineering area is also a reasonably good platform to develop additional income streams (consulting, speaking gigs, etc.), if that's your thing, since the employment contracts are typically much more liberal on allowing that than is the norm in industry. Though imo that's not _really_ the best use of the platform.

<comment><USER18> that's a good summary, the figures you quote are accurate

the question is, then, what are the salary possibilities for a person with similar experience, stature in their chosen field of work, in the private sector?

my guess is there is a large range but I wouldn't be surprised (from what I've heard from friends and colleagues) if the answer is, integer multiples of academic salaries (if not 10x)

for example in Law, the equivalent of a tenured Full Professor at a large research-based university, might be a partner in a top law firm in the city they live in (a large city).

or in medicine, a specialist at a major hospital

or in engineering, a principle at a large engineering firm

etc.

<comment><USER19> In areas like medicine and law I can believe that's true. However I don't think it's that common in CS or engineering. I know quite a few people who've moved from academia to industry and vice versa, and the pay difference is definitely not 10x multiples. When a professor making low six figures jumps to Google, he or she gets a pay raise, but more like 20-50%, not 10x: Google isn't making $1m+ salary offers. For engineers afaict it varies by line of work. I don't know a lot about areas where being a principal is a thing (civil engineering?), but I can imagine those are lucrative. In areas like aerospace, if you compare full-professor salaries at research institutions, to senior engineering staff salaries at places like Lockheed, they're pretty comparable. If anything it's easier to make more in academia, because you can consult on the side, whereas big engineering companies typically disallow that in their employment contracts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > It is not difficult to get some kind of honorary position with a research > institute when you work in industry.

I think this statement is uh... a tad misleading. This depends _a lot_ on your particular field of interest/research and companies you work for. Also, notoriety.

</comment><comment><USER21> my 3rd job in industry paid 109k per year, imo you would be foolish to pass up industry now.

</comment><comment><USER22> Theory or practice? Both!)</comment>


GitHub exposes public ssh keys for its users - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/github-exposes-public-ssh-keys-for-its-users/ <comment><USER2> So, i'm a little confused. Whats the downside of this: curl -O [https://github.com/<username>.keys](https://github.com/<username>.keys)

Does Github just want us to use the API Method? [http://developer.github.com/v3/users/keys/#list-public- keys-...](http://developer.github.com/v3/users/keys/#list-public-keys-for-a- user)

<comment><USER3> But...but...the second way is so much more programatic!

ruby -e 'require "json"; require "open-uri"; JSON.parse(open("[https://api.github.com/users/<username>/keys](https://api.github.com/users/<username>/keys)).read).each{|x|puts x["key"]}'

Maybe there's something about the .keys URL possibly going away or moving, while the API is pretty much guaranteed to be there for as long as that version of the API works.

<comment><USER2> Ah, now I see the light :) Thats a good point, sounds like Github is semi guaranteeing the API access but the url could get canned at any time.</comment></comment></comment>


Please, don't commit commented out code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kentcdodds/please-don-t-commit-commented-out-code-53d0b5b26d5f <comment><USER2> This is a pet peeve of mine as well. There's no need to commit commented out code to source control and if you aren't using source control, use source control. If you still feel the need to do it, it is often the sign that maybe you should spend some time to learn your source control tools better (particularly history exploration and annotation tools) or find one that is easier for you to use and/or that you can better trust to do its job.</comment>