Author Archives: kevin

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Interviews

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Are interviews a good way of sorting the wheat from the chaff? Interviews reward those people who are good at telling short vignettes, who know what they want to do 5 years from now, those who are good at looking comfortable, those who can think on their feet, and those who can articulate the qualities about themselves that are desirable to an employer (and those who look comfortable). Maybe these qualities correlate to job success but I am not sure; as Schmidt and Hunter find, work sample tests are the most accurate predictor of job success. Two types of people do well in interviews; the good candidates who will practice interviewing and prepare answers and those who are natural speakers. Should taking some time to think of an answer help or hurt your image in the interviewer's eyes? Responding quickly signals confidence, and intelligence. While I expect the interviewers at most firms to attempt to overcome this quick-response bias they might not do so. Responding quickly means you might not have thought the answer all the way through, especially to a difficult question. On the other hand if the applicant pool is large and the number of acceptances small, the best candidates will be able to respond to the question at hand accurately and quickly. You are not expected to be honest in interviews. "I want this job because it pays very well" or "I want this job because it will give me high status" are not acceptable answers.

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Beer pong is dumb

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Beer pong tableSome people call it beirut, but either way it’s a terrible drinking game, unless there are exactly 2 or 4 people hanging out. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to finish an average game with people who don’t play very often. The beer gets warm by the time you’re done drinking it. The ball flies into bushes, bounces on the floor, and then into your cup, and you have to drink all of the beer it touches. You might get to shoot only once every minute so it’s hard to become more accurate quickly. Furthermore unless you’re drinking on the side, you are not likely to increase your level of inebriation. I won’t discuss bouncing for 2 cups, or blowing the ball out of a cup, both of which are stupid. The game’s main reward for hitting many cups is “On Fire” which means you get one extra shot – not a great reward when the shooting percentage is in the 15% range.

Amazingly the alternatives to beer pong are either not very exciting games or involve drinking so quickly that people don’t like them very much. There’s got to be a better team game where one side wins, and that can be played in faster than 15 minutes (and involve more people). There should be much more experimentation on the drinking game front.

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Theory of racial identification

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On every internship application, you are given the option to identify your gender and race or to decline identification. What’s the optimal choice?

While it might go unquestioned by the hiring firm, to avoid a lawsuit, lying about yoru race is probably not the smartest idea, so we’ll rule it out.

I would assume that most African-Americans, Latino-Americans and Pacific Islanders, as under-represented races within most tech and finance companies, would mark down their race on the form. This means that pretty much everyone who declines to identify a race is white or Asian-American, like most people who choose not to upload a photo on a dating website don’t think too highly of their looks.

Your type is probably still showing through even though you hit “Decline,” and in addition, now the company knows that you are the sort of person who would choose to try and conceal their race. Companies are explicitly not supposed to take this information into account, but I highly doubt that they are able to stay impartial.

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Streamlining dorm visitor check-in

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One college I visited recently has a great visitor check-in system. At the front desk there's a binder filled with baseball card sleeves, and each dorm resident has their own sleeve. To check in, the visitor hands over their driver's license, which is placed in the sleeve. The visitor gets it back when he/she checks out. So easy! No dumb paperwork, and the college knows who's in the dorm at all times.

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Social Status as an institution

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Here's my final paper from my Game Theory class last semester. First paragraph:
Social status is the prestige or reputation afforded a member of society by the other members of the society. High status people have their pick of partners, lots of power and desirable friends; low status people must suffice with whatever the high status people do not want. Despite the inequalities inherent in the status system, it facilitates economic cooperation and, if the members pursue status games that enhance welfare, it can lead to a society’s economic prosperity. [...] But the framework of justice does not provide good guidance in situations where the circumstances don’t discriminate well between the competitors. Consider a situation where there are 5 women in a bar and ten men, or ten women in the marriage market, some of whom are prettier than others, or a box of donuts on the table to be shared amongst members of a team, some of which are glazed and big, and some of which are small. If players are aware of each other’s social status, then we can expect that in these types of competitions for scarce resources, the higher status player will always claim first. As Myerson showed, this is a stable set of events; as long as everyone expects the higher status player to claim first, then the lower status players are better off taking the second pick. This is not cooperation in the traditional sense, but from an economic perspective, the players are cooperating because they agree on the outcome and they are both happy with the payoff.

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Not good news

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haiti From Haiti:
Every day, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane spends 5 hours flying over Haiti broadcasting a recorded message, no doubt made at the urging of Washington officials, from Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador in Washington, stating: “Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country. If you do this, we’ll all have even worse problems. Because, I’ll be honest with you: If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.”
One thing that will help Haitians more than anything else is allowing them to immigrate to areas that actually have functioning economies. We are only willing to go so far to save a human life. Update: From the Aid Watch blog: "Start here: What has done the most, to date, to lift Haitians out of poverty? That answer is easy. Leaving Haiti brought more Haitians out of poverty than anything else that has ever been tried: any aid project in Haiti, or any trade preference for Haiti. See my note and video posted the day before Haiti’s catastrophe."

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Fall 2009: Semester in Review

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Better late than never:
  • I started off the semester by ruthlessly pruning and declining activities. I stopped playing and refereeing intramural sports and I also stopped working out. This gave me lots of time every day; I went to the Athenaeum about twice a week, went to sports games, and read books for pleasure. Later in the semester, when I felt more comfortable, I added writing for the CMC Forum and coaching youth basketball.
  • I took a trip to Scotland for a week and still did well in every class. I overestimate the necessity of being on campus during the semester. I need to take more weekend and week-long trips. Especially because travel stimulates the brain; I was productive the whole time I was in Scotland and after I got back.
  • The decision I made that led to the most productivity was deciding to blog once a day for over a month. Blogging once a day got me in the habit of writing and thinking about things in terms of writing posts. I soon started submitting posts to CMC Forum, and landed a paid position. Within about four or five weeks I had more posts up than any other writer.
  • When I set my own hours for sleeping, I tend to sleep for at least nine hours, and/or take naps during the day. The optimal amount of sleep is between six and eight hours; not only am I awake for an extra hour but I don't feel as tired during the day. When I am sleeping in a room by myself I sleep longer; when I'm sleeping in a room with other people I get closer to the optimal amount of sleep. For optimal productivity I should probably live with a room-mate.
  • In my long and illustrious academic career, the grade I'm most proud of is an A- in Algorithms this semester. That class was really hard, and I skipped most of the prerequisites, and I was the only CMC student in the class. Furthermore, the teacher held office hours right after class, instead of before it, so if the assignment was coming due and you had questions, you could be stuck. I solved this problem by working on the problem sets for two to three hours immediately after class finished. This way I could ask the teacher when I got stuck. I also learned how to use LaTeX, the formatting language.
  • I used a binder for each class to stay ruthlessly organized, with sections in each binder for Notes, Homework, Handouts, Tests/Quizzes and blank paper. I filed every sheet of paper that was handed out. This saved a lot of time when it was time for exams.
  • The best purchase I made this semester was a pair of plaid Chuck Taylors, which drew a bunch of compliments and which are probably now my favorite pair of shoes. I made a lot of non-purchases that were also good, see below.
  • I'm finding that it's extremely difficult to deliver on everything I promise to do. Many people promise to do things because they want to signal reliability. The people they promise to may expect them to follow through, and then again they may not, because of the planning fallacy and because many people promise many things. I have cut down on the number of promises I make in the hopes of following through on all of them, signaling be damned (then again, writing this on my blog is also a form of signaling. My words are not reliable; hopefully my actions will soon begin speaking for themselves).
  • I started drinking coffee this semester. I only really noticed a difference in my energy level on two occasions. Maybe it prevented me from being sleepy but on most occasions it did not make me feel particularly energetic.
  • Probably my favorite two parts of my week were going to breakfasts with the same group of friends every day and going bowling on Wednesday nights. Scheduled activities with friends are excellent for my happiness. I should ensure that I have scheduled activities with friends wherever I am.
  • I took a tennis PE class. I'm much better at tennis. I also can bowl with spin now, and my scores are soon going to be higher than they were when I was bowling straight on.
  • I skipped only one class all semester. I missed three breakfasts. I completed every single homework assignment.
  • For the second semester in a row I did not buy any textbooks. I politely asked each teacher at the beginning of the semester to put the textbook on reserve at the library. Others I borrowed or checked out through Link+. When you are not sure how much you are actually going to use the book, don't buy it.
  • My biggest enemy continues to be my own head, which tries to seize on any awkward moment, missed call, Internet criticism or forgotten invitation and construct an elaborate scenario, ignoring the vast majority of data points and focusing only on a few. Most nights are good and then some nights it's hard to open the dorm room door and talk to anyone. This semester was probably my best yet in terms of mental health.
  • I wasn't very successful in my goal of finishing every paper, and studying for every test, at least one day in advance. I did push out planning and work ahead of my usual schedule, which is do it all at the last minute. Next semester hopefully I will be able to move up deadlines. Betting people money, or putting money on the line is still the most successful policy for getting work done. If I could automate the process of making the bets, so that every time I have a paper or test, my friend knows that I have to finish a day early or pay up, I would probably be much more productive. I don't stress much.
  • I had two large projects at the end of the semester that I did not manage very well. These projects were more or less the first time I had a month-long exercise that I had to complete myself. I am now aware that I need to work on time management for projects.
  • If you had to graph my effort for the semester it would look like this: A all the way through Monte Carlo/the day my controversial Forum article comes out, then about D from Monte Carlo until the Wednesday of Finals Week, then A+ for two straight days until I finished finals. This is good; I now know that I can work hard for exactly twelve weeks, which is up from previous semesters. With practice, in the future I will be able to push this number higher.
  • Cold calling is an excellent way to make sure students are prepared and following along. I have never prepared for a class more thoroughly than I prepared for Professor Meulbroek's case studies, because if I got called on to begin the case, I needed to be prepared.
  • Teachers should be much tougher. For the second straight semester, I was positively surprised by the grades I received. I know people are drawn to teaching because they love students and watching kids learn, but students would be better off if they received a message that told them they weren't working hard enough, than a message that says, "Your current work rate is acceptable." I know that us students should be responsible for monitoring ourselves, but outside motivation never hurts.

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Subsidize measurable benefits

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You can grow your prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for willpower. However growing this part of the brain is pretty painful; imagine waking up every morning and running sprints, or resisting a candy bar in front of you. For most people growing the prefrontal cortex is clearly not worth it. However, maybe if the benefits of exercising willpower were more visible, the reward matrix would change, and people could get excited by the growth in their cortex, they might be more willing to grow their willpower, which would allow them to focus and work hard for long periods of time, with a clear gain to society.

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The value of shortcuts

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In business, "There's got to be a better way to do this" often has a profitable answer. Electricity is a shortcut for people who are used to burning oil lamps all the time. Laundry machines are shortcuts for people who previously hand washed their clothes. Facebook allows you to get to know people well without actually talking to them very much. These innovations have helped cut down the amount of time spent on household chores. Academia does not encourage taking shortcuts, indeed, teachers frown upon taking shortcuts. Teachers don't like it when students use Cliff Notes or brag about their grades even though they did none of the reading. Does doing all of the required work for a course correlate with receiving a good grade? Yes, but if there's a way to earn the same grade (and learn the same amount of material) while spending half as much time on it, I would probably do that. One example is fixed-time programming - you say "I'll try to find a solution within 30 minutes" to a programming problem and if you don't find it, you let the problem go, or try an easier approach. My CS teachers don't talk too much about how to code more efficiently, even though our time as students is valuable. The academic disdain for shortcuts probably springs from the fact that acquiring a credential like a masters or a Ph.D requires a fixed investment of time, which enhances the quality of the signal provided by higher education. Naturally teachers want their students to do the same, "put in the hours" so to speak. But ask people like Cal Newport and they'll tell you to ditch the workaholic approach to school, because there's an easier way that gets better results. This is not to be confused with doing half-assed work or turning in a first draft of a paper. H/t to Josh Siegel.

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CMC Silicon Valley Trip: Friday

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Applied Materials
  • Everyone knows Moore's Law, that semiprocessor power doubles every 18 months. I asked if there was a similar law for solar panel efficiency. George Davis said no, mainly because his product is dependent on outside conditions like the weather. Solar panels are more effective in California than in Germany.
KKR
  • Some speakers are very good and know how to be interesting. They will take whatever question you ask and run with it. With these speakers, you want to ask a general question and let them run with it. These types of speakers are also good at ignoring the question you asked and answering the question you probably should have asked, or the question they want to answer.
  • Other speakers will stick to generalities, like "We worked hard and we had a lot of success." Faced with this type of speaker it's best to get very specific about what you want to hear about. "Could you tell us about the single biggest mistake you've made during your time here?" George Roberts, while brilliant, falls into the second category of speaker.
  • The BusinessWeek article about their plan to emulate Berkshire Hathaway was based off of one comment they made; while it would be great to be Berkshire, that's not really their plan.
  • KKR is going public because the only way to grow their business is through growing the amount of assets they control. They can get more money if they go public. They've tried to go public four different times but failed; if your idea makes sense, be persistent.
  • One of their biggest mistakes was not changing management quickly enough. It's hard to fire someone.
  • I asked Mr. Roberts if it was true that he used to spend lots of time proposing acquisitions while he was in school. He said yes; he would look up companies in an industry magazine and then write proposals. If the company didn't write him back, it only cost a postage stamp. That's a great attitude. Now it's even cheaper, because of email. While striking a deal or getting someone important to write back is low, the cost of sending email or a letter is lower.
  • Another student asked his opinion on the financial crisis. Roberts in turn asked the student what he thought. The student said he didn't know, so Roberts asked him what his gut told him. I thought that was interesting, because a lot of times your gut reaction is misleading. Consider most people's gut reaction to a minimum wage, to a bubble or to free trade.
  • Roberts told us to go work for a company that sells a product, so that we can learn how businesses work. You can't really learn about that on Wall Street.
  • I asked Roberts how he negotiates. He said most of all people do business with people that they like and trust. And that you need to be able to listen to what other people want. Good advice, I guess.
Chair Rankings It's important to have good chairs. Without further ado: 1. KKR 2. Microsoft 3. Applied Materials 4. EMC 5. Meebo (excellent chairs, but lose points for only having six) 6. Atlassian 7. Google/Youtube 8. Lockheed Martin 9. EA

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