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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
"I have N years of experience in X!"
I've always been bothered by this phrase, since people obviously imply that having a certain number of years of experience in a given area must mean that their proficiency is proportional to said number of years. In most cases, it's practically an anti-signal for actual competence.
Golf
In my personal experience, the most egregious offenders are weekend golfers. Your typical weekend hacker with terrible mechanics and no course management is likely to say, "I've been playing this game for 20 years!" suggesting his supposed expertise at some point in the round. (Curiously, or perhaps naturally, the better players rarely make such statements) I wonder if these players actually know that they are terrible at the game (or at the very least are playing terribly at that time, and need to use their N years of playing poorly to prop themselves up in the face of embarassment.
Job Descriptions
Virtually every job description you will see from traditional companies will ask for "N years of experience". This is the case for both technical areas like engineering (5 years of Java, 3 years of Ruby on Rails, 3 years of Verilog, etc.) and non technical areas like marketing (10 years of product marketing experience, 5 years of web product management experience, etc.).
Of course, this phenomenon is a side effect of the current broken state of recruiting. When a thousand people spam your Monster.com job posting, HR departments are coerced into using automated filters on resumes, which in turn promote the use of such "N years" based requirements. The fact that there are a small but significant number of excellent candidates who don't meet the exact criteria doesn't seem to matter [1]. If the cost of getting rid of the 900 geniunely unqualified candidates is passing over 20 great ones who don't fit the bill on paper, it seems to be a cost most HR departments are willing to accept. There must be a way to fix this sad state of affairs, since as we stand today, both sides of the table lose out.
(On the other hand, requirements along the lines of "experience actually shipping web appilcations" or "experience creating go-to-market strategies for hand held consumer products" does seem reasonable to me.)
Teaching(?)
Teacher copensation and retention based on seniority is an enormous point of contention that I don't want to get into here. I'm definitely not qualified to say to what extent teaching ability improves over the years. All I know is that some teachers, are terrible, some are decent, and others are truly wonderful and can be life-changers for children and young adults.
But I do think that teaching is an area where having a great number of years under your belt can help, in that your sample size of students, teaching methods and crisis handling is bound to be greater. That, while correlated with teaching "ability" to some extent, I think is a distinct factor that does increase with the number of years served [2]. So if the absolute quantity of "knowledge" in something or a concrete number of "things" one has experienced is pertinent to a role, then "N years of experience" may actually be an acceptable metric. (Though frankly, I'm hard pressed to give other areas where years of experience automatically impart relevant information like this.)
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There are some cases (like job searches) where you really have no choice but to flaunt your 10 years of underwater snake charming experience. Sometimes you're in a position where you have to play the game, even though you know that the game is silly. If you find yourself in such a situation, go for it by all means, but try to maintain a certain cynicism about the whole charade.
If you ever hear me say "I have N years of experience" in anything, please do me a favor and call me out on it, so that I don't become "that guy".
Cheers.
[1] Of course, we can't forget about those job postings which ask for N number of years of using technology X when said technology has not existed for N years. (ex: Asking for 7 years of Rails experience when Rails had only existed for 6 years. Yes, this really did happen.)
[2] This thought was inspired by this post by aroberge on Hackernews.
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Originally posted here
  
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I have definitely noticed that good players are usually the quite ones. Of course there are the good players that talk a lot but the quite ones are usually the ones you need to watch out for.
Even when you ask them they will say, I've played a bit here and there
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I agree with you that some people shouldn't be out bragging about something if they can't actually back it up with results (walking the walk if they're already talking the talk), but I feel like you're generalizing a bit too much when you say that people who talk about the length of their experience are displaying an "anti-signal for actual competence". In fact, you essentially contradict yourself when you note that some people can be good at their job regardless of long-term experience... sometimes these things are indeed independent, but sometimes having experience in a certain field allows for you to shape your views and personal techniques a little better.
I think that it's important to evaluate someone by their results, rather than just the fact that they've worked at a job forever... but I think that mentioning your longevity doesn't necessarily mean you're useless. (After all, many professions would have let you go by now if you weren't working out properly.)
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Sounds right. Seniority is a measure of status, not of competence.
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In the restaurant industry experience is everything. Culinary school teaches you how to cook, not how to survive a friday night in a busy restaurant. Anybody can learn to cook, but it takes a special person to be able to handle the stress of being a chef. those who cant handle it dont last long.
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I have seen a bunch of teachers that got worse with their years of experience. They just learned how lazy they can be and still get away with it.
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On April 10 2013 16:08 omisa wrote:
In the restaurant industry experience is everything. Culinary school teaches you how to cook, not how to survive a friday night in a busy restaurant. Anybody can learn to cook, but it takes a special person to be able to handle the stress of being a chef. those who cant handle it dont last long.
However, would there be a major difference between, say, 5 years as a chef or 10 years? 5 years would be enough to easily weed out anyone who couldn't handle the stress of being a chef, after all, and render almost all of them very experienced at handling pressure.
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Completely agree. It's mostly about anything related to "I'm doing this for x years" not including how efficient time was spent. My personal favorites include Poker ("I played this game since before you were born kiddo") and Martial Arts ("I'm doing this since 10 years (3 hours per week), you seem pretty good for your 5 years (20 hours per week)") - best to smile and appreciate the help the other side is trying to give you.
Sadly that beats antagonizing everyone who puts in less time than you if you strive to use your time efficiently. People get envious over results, not over the path someone had to take to get there.
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Both experience and ability add value to anyone doing anything. This is easily demonstrable. Haji's point that N years of x type of work is well made. Nothing magical happens after 5 years of database experience that makes a certain type of job doable, where with 4.5 years (or even 3), you'd just have no idea where to start. Yet at the same time, experience is something that is quantifiable - where ability is something which has to be tested firsthand. If you were a small business, you can do your own testing and weed out the flakes. But for most large businesses, HR rep 1 has no way of testing you to see if you actually are good at what you do or not - and for whatever reason, businesses dislike the notion of giving entrance exams (the best way to actually quantify outright ability), and therefore, they use "N years of experience in x" as a proxy.
Is this a bit tragic for people who could make good employees but who don't make the cut because of this arbitrary requirement? Yes. But heck, a lot of people lie or mislead readers on their resume anyway - and continue to do so during the interview - often doing their best to answer the question "how do you want me to answer?" rather than being truthful. Having seen both sides of the application process, the end result of the resume/application/interview process is usually very poor for both sides.
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Knowing the difference between experience and ability is important, but stating one's experience rather than one's ability is far more polite and empirical. Unless you are interviewing for a job/ convincing someone of your exceptional talent it seems odd to talk about how good you are at any one thing. Everyone can understand the nature of doing something for a long time, and the experience that time provides is often evident.
As far as how it works out, then yeah experience matters little to how well you've acquired skills and can put them to use. I've been playing basketball since I was 6, and I regret to inform everyone that I am not coming out as TL's first NBA player.
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On April 10 2013 22:59 sharkeyanti wrote:
Knowing the difference between experience and ability is important, but stating one's experience rather than one's ability is far more polite and empirical. Unless you are interviewing for a job/ convincing someone of your exceptional talent it seems odd to talk about how good you are at any one thing. Everyone can understand the nature of doing something for a long time, and the experience that time provides is often evident.
As far as how it works out, then yeah experience matters little to how well you've acquired skills and can put them to use. I've been playing basketball since I was 6, and I regret to inform everyone that I am not coming out as TL's first NBA player.
Yet it's likely that, despite my length and athletic capabilities, you're a better basketball player than I am, never having really played the game.
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I have 15 years of Starcraft experience and I am totally and utterly terrible at it!
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FuDDx
United States5008 Posts
I have 15 years of fucking off with SC never real serious..... well... I did just get platinum in Korea server!!
I also Have less than 4 years of ballooning experience but working towards an advanced masters program!!
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I think you are way off here.
Just like an above poster said with the chef example. Also, to add to that, having x years of experience means you know how to get things done.
In my contracting business we need an engineer that can be a project manager. So he must know the insides of what the work is about. They don't teach you that in school. They give you the concept and then you have to learn how the real world uses these concepts to achieve their targets.
Can you handle sending letters back and forth? Do you know your suppliers? Material submittable, do you know how to do them?.
I think, and I could be wrong, when they ask for a relatively high number of years of experience, they mean they want someone who can come in and do the job. "We don't want to teach someone".
So yes experience does matter, but the difference in experience from 5 years to 10 years, I'm not really sure what is the point.
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I agree with the OP and would like to quote Kurt Tucholsky:
"Erfahrung heißt gar nichts. Man kann seine Sache auch 35 Jahre schlecht machen."
Rough Translation: "Experience is meaningless. You can do you work wrong for 35 years."
It is, of course, an extreme position, but shows very nicely that experience itself is neither good nor bad. What you have experienced and how you did it / how you came to that experience are important, and what you learn of it. But noone cares about that.
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On April 11 2013 00:30 Fattah wrote:
I think you are way off here.
Just like an above poster said with the chef example. Also, to add to that, having x years of experience means you know how to get things done.
In my contracting business we need an engineer that can be a project manager. So he must know the insides of what the work is about. They don't teach you that in school. They give you the concept and then you have to learn how the real world uses these concepts to achieve their targets.
Can you handle sending letters back and forth? Do you know your suppliers? Material submittable, do you know how to do them?.
I think, and I could be wrong, when they ask for a relatively high number of years of experience, they mean they want someone who can come in and do the job. "We don't want to teach someone".
So yes experience does matter, but the difference in experience from 5 years to 10 years, I'm not really sure what is the point.
This is pretty much exactly wrong, and what's so frustrating about it.
Having x years of experience sure as hell doesn't mean you know how to get things done. I've met countless experienced people who simultaneously are completely clueless.
However, not having experience pretty much guarantees you don't know how to get things done. You might, however, be able to figure it out quickly and prove more valuable than someone who's experienced.
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On April 11 2013 00:20 U_G_L_Y wrote:
I have 15 years of Starcraft experience and I am totally and utterly terrible at it!
You just aren't trying to actively improve every single game. Just like those weekend golfers. Ofcourse there is nothing wrong with this. Some people play golf/starcraft to relax and therefore aren't trying to stress themselves to improve every time.
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United States24639 Posts
Regarding years of teaching experience, this is somewhat different from most other jobs for the following reason: it typically takes 3-5 years to become an effective teacher. Not a very good one. One that is adequate. The difference between 5 and 10 or even 5 and 30 years of experience isn't telling though for reasons such as what was already alluded to in this thread. From 5 to 30 years a teacher could burn out or could develop one of the must amazing curricula ever.
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the problem with "recruiters" is that they treat "people management" experience the same as "technical process execution" experience.
a guy looking for a role that primarily involves "people management" who is 50 years old with grandchildren... and a handful of dead relatives probably also has a bazillion years experience in his role as a "people manager"...
and he is probably a far better manager than a 23 year old looking for their 2nd full time job.
none of this applies to years of experience coding javascript ... but recruiters are too lazy or too cowardly to make the distinction.
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On April 11 2013 01:03 Passion wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2013 00:30 Fattah wrote:
I think you are way off here.
Just like an above poster said with the chef example. Also, to add to that, having x years of experience means you know how to get things done.
In my contracting business we need an engineer that can be a project manager. So he must know the insides of what the work is about. They don't teach you that in school. They give you the concept and then you have to learn how the real world uses these concepts to achieve their targets.
Can you handle sending letters back and forth? Do you know your suppliers? Material submittable, do you know how to do them?.
I think, and I could be wrong, when they ask for a relatively high number of years of experience, they mean they want someone who can come in and do the job. "We don't want to teach someone".
So yes experience does matter, but the difference in experience from 5 years to 10 years, I'm not really sure what is the point. This is pretty much exactly wrong, and what's so frustrating about it. Having x years of experience sure as hell doesn't mean you know how to get things done. I've met countless experienced people who simultaneously are completely clueless. However, not having experience pretty much guarantees you don't know how to get things done. You might, however, be able to figure it out quickly and prove more valuable than someone who's experienced.
Suppose you are starting a company, you don't have any staff, you need an accountant. Would you hire a fresh grad, or someone who might know how to file your taxes from experience?
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On April 11 2013 03:38 Fattah wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2013 01:03 Passion wrote:On April 11 2013 00:30 Fattah wrote:
I think you are way off here.
Just like an above poster said with the chef example. Also, to add to that, having x years of experience means you know how to get things done.
In my contracting business we need an engineer that can be a project manager. So he must know the insides of what the work is about. They don't teach you that in school. They give you the concept and then you have to learn how the real world uses these concepts to achieve their targets.
Can you handle sending letters back and forth? Do you know your suppliers? Material submittable, do you know how to do them?.
I think, and I could be wrong, when they ask for a relatively high number of years of experience, they mean they want someone who can come in and do the job. "We don't want to teach someone".
So yes experience does matter, but the difference in experience from 5 years to 10 years, I'm not really sure what is the point. This is pretty much exactly wrong, and what's so frustrating about it. Having x years of experience sure as hell doesn't mean you know how to get things done. I've met countless experienced people who simultaneously are completely clueless. However, not having experience pretty much guarantees you don't know how to get things done. You might, however, be able to figure it out quickly and prove more valuable than someone who's experienced. Suppose you are starting a company, you don't have any staff, you need an accountant. Would you hire a fresh grad, or someone who might know how to file your taxes from experience?
I know what you're trying to say, but many times you'll hire the one with no experience, because you can get away with paying them crap, and you don't have to deal with retraining any old habits of theirs you don't like out of them. Using an accountant as an example is a bit misleading, because you can't magically become a CPA upon graduating from college; there's more training involved. I think most companies look for value in their employees over ability OR experience.
This whole blog is a nice idea, but reading through some of the posts, all I see is "Anecdote -> generalization!" "Contrary anecdote -> opposing generalization!". Competency is what actually makes you hireable (binary-valued) -- you gain this by having some baseline knowledge, being reliable, and that sort of thing. Ability in a field is a good characteristic for anyone to have -- it literally means you'll be doing your job better. Sadly, it's almost completely non-quantifiable -- hence the usefulness of bringing portfolios of prior work to interviews. Experience is also important, and has the upside of being quantifiable, but it really runs off in a different direction than ability. It's not a matter of being better at any particular group of things, it's about having learned how to handle the minutiae of more situation.
Competence: You learned how to bake a cake, and can do so without burning down the house or poisoning anyone.
Ability: You can bake a handful of different kinds of cake, all of which taste fucking awesome.
Experience: You understand how baking works well enough to improvise, and can turn almost any food into an edible cake.
Of the three of them, (1) is necessary, and both (2) and (3) are desirable, but having more ability is not a substitute for experience, and having more experience is not a substitute for ability.
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Experince does not mean you can bake a cake though, no less you can turn any food into edible cake, it means you have attempted to make a cake before, you could of failed everytime and still suck at it. In almost any profession there are people who are just downright awful at it with some level of experince
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28085 Posts
I'm really into Golf as well during our Canadian summers. So 5-6 months of the year I play basically everyday, and the place I have my membership at has unlimited driving range usage. So I'm there almost all day usually, and I completely agree with you on your analysis of the average weekend golfer. I don't have any friends who Golf, so if I can't find a solo spot my club usually puts me with 2-3 people I don't know. 99% of the people I play with are horribly informed about the game, and really have no idea how to properly play regardless of their "x years of experience". It's so hilarious hearing the different tips and philosophies here on a daily basis. And just the general arrogance(ignorance actually) of their abilities. You know the guy who says "I'm a 300 yard hitter", but hits it 260 max with a 50km backwind downhill, while the rest are shanks.
One guy was bragging about his sick power fade(aka he swings way over the top and slices like a mofo), and I facepalmed so hard. And he was trying to give me tips the whole round on my long iron shots(I'm a scratch player who thrives on driving/long irons), and I'm thinking he's hit 0 greens in regulation, I've hit every green in regulation, and I need the tips?
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United States24639 Posts
I don't usually find these ridiculous golfers you guys seem to...
Occasionally I get paired up with a really good golfer, and they are usually reserved as mentioned in the OP. However, the 'bad' golfers I am paired with (not that I can talk) are rarely bragging about their ability or trying to shove advice down anyone else's throat. The only thing I ever see occasionally is an old man who can't play for shit trying to give advice to anyone who will listen but even that is rare.
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28085 Posts
On April 11 2013 08:45 micronesia wrote:
I don't usually find these ridiculous golfers you guys seem to...
Occasionally I get paired up with a really good golfer, and they are usually reserved as mentioned in the OP. However, the 'bad' golfers I am paired with (not that I can talk) are rarely bragging about their ability or trying to shove advice down anyone else's throat. The only thing I ever see occasionally is an old man who can't play for shit trying to give advice to anyone who will listen but even that is rare.
In general, you're right. Most of the time people are really casual and nice, but not at the club I went to last year. This really expensive club has an insane student deal so I was able to afford it, and the majority of players there are 35-60 year old businessmen. And usually they play 1-2 times a week, and sport top of the line everything, but can't break a score of 100 
And for someone like me who plays literally everyday, sometimes 27-36 holes in a day as well, you tend run into these guys quite often. Luckily, because of the student deals, there are a ton of guys/girls my age who play here that actually play well. And obviously there is a ridiculous amount of old men who play here, and they are all really cool. Some of them hit half as long as me and still shoot better scores 
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I agree that this is generalizing a bit too far. As someone else said, aptitude is harder to judge up front than experience. A person can't say "I am X amount of good at what I do." Years spent in a trade may not guarantee competence, but calling it an anti-signal of competence is pretty strange. I must say though that I have very little experience with the "I have X years of experience" line, so I can't picture the people being referred to and disparaged.
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The best at anything are almost always the ones that say very little about how good they are and never bad mouth their competition.
IMO, the better you are at something the more you realize the less you truly know about it.
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I think this article holds some truth in it. Having said that, I think it depends on the task, if something innovative has to be done on the job then experience may not necessarily help, but if the job is mostly routine, with the key being details and good execution, then experience does help significantly.
Also I play basketball, and experienced players do play a lot better than newbies; they know when to pass and when to take a shot, the importance of defense etc etc.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
"having" N years of experience is neutral or even positive.
However, "saying" (often unprompted) that they have N years of experience in something as their way of demonstrating aptitude instead of giving concrete examples of how they've demonstrated skill, what they've built, projects they've lead, etc., is often an anti-signal.
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If it's not a job, then years of experience is very misleading. For example someone might say 'I've played guitar for 15 years', but it would be much more useful to know how many hours they've played. Someone who has played 1000 hours of guitar in 3 years will be much better than someone who has played that in 15 years. I expect the same is true of most skills, like sports, languages, etc.
For jobs it depends a lot on the environment. If you taught for 2 years at a private school with high demands and a policy on firing anyone who wasn't up to scratch, then odds are you are an ok teacher. If you taught for 2 years at an unaccountable state school, then you could be good or you could be getting set in bad habits.
In general though, the time people are likely to be worst at their jobs is right at the start, where they have so much to juggle and think about. I don't really see a huge difference between people with 2 and 3 years of experience, but between no experience and 1 year is huge.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
^
Right, and so imo, people who've had substantial ownership/responsibility/execution during their "experience" will usually use anecdotes or concrete skills or abilities to describe their aptitude (which is more concrete), not "number of years" (which can really mean anything).
I guess one example would be a photographer or artist. You're not going to say "I have 10 years of experience doing photography / painting", but instead just have a portfolio to demonstrate your competence.
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On April 11 2013 07:53 jamesr12 wrote:
Experince does not mean you can bake a cake though, no less you can turn any food into edible cake, it means you have attempted to make a cake before, you could of failed everytime and still suck at it. In almost any profession there are people who are just downright awful at it with some level of experince
I agree there are idiots everywhere. But, as far as the restaurant industry goes, you would usually get fired very quickly if you couldnt do your job. The fact that you wasted product and labor and now they cant serve cake means you better get your act together quickly. Consistency is key, its why fast food is so successful, and if you cant put out consistent food then someone will be found that can. Long hours and shit pay mean most people are there because thats what they love to do and they strive to get better so one day they can earn that chef title. But it takes years to earn that and if you are not passionate about it, or you simply suck ass at your job then you wont make it.
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I would agree that 'N number of years' is a stupid measurement, as it could be 8 hours a day or once a week. The somewhat over-used (but still applicable) 10 000 hours would make more sense. In terms of music (I'm a musician with 10 years of experience :D) I feel there is a pretty straight-forward relation between technical proficiency and amount of time spent. Though admittedly the speed at which people learn can be VASTLY different.
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Asking for 7 years of Rails experience when Rails had only existed for 6 years. Yes, this really did happen.
A manager creates a generic template for HR to use for hiring a new employee. Neither is completely sure of the requirements of the new candidates but they know ruby on rails is needed. 7 years sounds like a good amount of time.
I've heard someone say something similar, as an applicant, on reddit but I don't remember if they were rewarded for calling out the company.
It's hard to disagree with the premise of the blog. Competence is competence and it's hard to measure competence within your company without putting people on trials, hiring them for a week or two and seeing if they are capable. If not firing them. But even this is difficult as it makes you look like a mean boss and people can put on a charade for 2 weeks. So we work through proxies.
To all you golfers: how much does it cost to golf? I always picture golfers as business people with too much money and time on their hands and not enough desire to benefit society.
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I fucking love that you wrote this. I have been trying to explain this to people for so god damn long, and no one understands.
Experience is one thing, but understanding that experience is another. You can look at all the words you want, but until you understand what they mean, you are just looking at words.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
I hope that my next job is through a referral of someone I worked with directly rather than having to put up with all the crap of traditional job hunting. It's definitely difficult to quantify someone's skill level but not as difficult to identify their attitude towards work and where their passions lie.
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United States24639 Posts
On April 12 2013 01:13 obesechicken13 wrote:
To all you golfers: how much does it cost to golf? I always picture golfers as business people with too much money and time on their hands and not enough desire to benefit society.
Well that is quite the narrow/uninformed view you have. To address the original question, golf varies a great deal. If you don't want to join the fancy club or play at the world-famous course and shop around (courses, times, seasons, etc), you can play rounds for $20-40 dollars without any problem. A bucket of balls at the range is like $5 and short game practice is basically free if you know where to go.
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On April 12 2013 08:01 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2013 01:13 obesechicken13 wrote:
To all you golfers: how much does it cost to golf? I always picture golfers as business people with too much money and time on their hands and not enough desire to benefit society. Well that is quite the narrow/uninformed view you have. To address the original question, golf varies a great deal. If you don't want to join the fancy club or play at the world-famous course and shop around (courses, times, seasons, etc), you can play rounds for $20-40 dollars without any problem. A bucket of balls at the range is like $5 and short game practice is basically free if you know where to go.
That's just your opinion man!
I checked prices after posting the question. Also realized it was a bait as it puts golfers in a defensive position. It's definitely on the more expensive side of hobbies but 5-10$ per game and a few more for balls and a cart (sometimes) isn't going to break the bank.
I had always imagined it was over 100 for a single game and something like ornate furniture, or fruit bowls, or fancy watches, clothes, or polo, or etiquette. I was taught in my intro to sociology class that many of these things persisted largely to divide the rich and the poor and to form groups so that the wealthy could band together, identify outsiders, and maintain power.
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On April 12 2013 10:09 obesechicken13 wrote:
I had always imagined it was over 100 for a single game and something like ornate furniture, or fruit bowls, or fancy watches, clothes, or polo, or etiquette. I was taught in my intro to sociology class that many of these things persisted largely to divide the rich and the poor and to form groups so that the wealthy could band together, identify outsiders, and maintain power.
I don't know if this is true of all schools, but Sociology was the most BS class I had to take in liberal arts by far. Propaganda masquerading as a science.
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On April 10 2013 13:40 thedeadhaji wrote:
"I have N years of experience in X!"
I've always been bothered by this phrase, since people obviously imply that having a certain number of years of experience in a given area must mean that their proficiency is proportional to said number of years. In most cases, it's practically an anti-signal for actual competence.
If it weren't for your last sentence, I would actually agree with you. Basically what you're saying is that as you gain more experience (say from 5 to 10 years), you have a lot more chances to get dumber than to improve which is plain wrong .
Indeed, sometimes experience can be misleading - having 10 years of engineering experience doesn't necessarily make you better than an engineer with only 5 years experience. However, there are things which only come in time, with experience. A good 5-year-experience engineer will never be as good as a 10-year-experience one.
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On April 12 2013 10:09 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2013 08:01 micronesia wrote:On April 12 2013 01:13 obesechicken13 wrote:
To all you golfers: how much does it cost to golf? I always picture golfers as business people with too much money and time on their hands and not enough desire to benefit society. Well that is quite the narrow/uninformed view you have. To address the original question, golf varies a great deal. If you don't want to join the fancy club or play at the world-famous course and shop around (courses, times, seasons, etc), you can play rounds for $20-40 dollars without any problem. A bucket of balls at the range is like $5 and short game practice is basically free if you know where to go. That's just your opinion man! I checked prices after posting the question. Also realized it was a bait as it puts golfers in a defensive position. It's definitely on the more expensive side of hobbies but 5-10$ per game and a few more for balls and a cart (sometimes) isn't going to break the bank. I had always imagined it was over 100 for a single game and something like ornate furniture, or fruit bowls, or fancy watches, clothes, or polo, or etiquette. I was taught in my intro to sociology class that many of these things persisted largely to divide the rich and the poor and to form groups so that the wealthy could band together, identify outsiders, and maintain power.
Well, you've definately shown the problem with sociology and its insistence on dividing society in groups. Golf is being played by either 'group', simply playing the game is no basis to form an opinion on rich or poor. Nor is fancy watches, clothes, etc. It may be a minor indicator, but that's all it can be.
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On April 12 2013 23:50 Shival wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2013 10:09 obesechicken13 wrote:On April 12 2013 08:01 micronesia wrote:On April 12 2013 01:13 obesechicken13 wrote:
To all you golfers: how much does it cost to golf? I always picture golfers as business people with too much money and time on their hands and not enough desire to benefit society. Well that is quite the narrow/uninformed view you have. To address the original question, golf varies a great deal. If you don't want to join the fancy club or play at the world-famous course and shop around (courses, times, seasons, etc), you can play rounds for $20-40 dollars without any problem. A bucket of balls at the range is like $5 and short game practice is basically free if you know where to go. That's just your opinion man! I checked prices after posting the question. Also realized it was a bait as it puts golfers in a defensive position. It's definitely on the more expensive side of hobbies but 5-10$ per game and a few more for balls and a cart (sometimes) isn't going to break the bank. I had always imagined it was over 100 for a single game and something like ornate furniture, or fruit bowls, or fancy watches, clothes, or polo, or etiquette. I was taught in my intro to sociology class that many of these things persisted largely to divide the rich and the poor and to form groups so that the wealthy could band together, identify outsiders, and maintain power. Well, you've definately shown the problem with sociology and its insistence on dividing society in groups. Golf is being played by either 'group', simply playing the game is no basis to form an opinion on rich or poor. Nor is fancy watches, clothes, etc. It may be a minor indicator, but that's all it can be.
With regards to the sociological comments earlier it is true that sociology is more open ended then a lot of sciences or history based fields but this is something that is recognized. There are many ways to interpret most of the data.
While sociology has in the past created many groups, most people have been aware I hope, and we learned about, how there are continuums in all beliefs, not just hard divisions. Not all Christians believe the same thing just like not all conflict theorists identify with conflict theory's beliefs. To put it simply, no one thinks that every person who wears designer handbags is a fag, but as you pointed out it is an indicator.
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Ah years of experiences, my favorite part of job descriptions as I sit home, fresh graduate from an engineering masters and still unemployed for a good 7 months now
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That video is, uhm...mostly wrong, I guess would be the polite way to put it.
He spends a long while discussing the conflict between talent and practice, while his only actual data is that the world elite tends to have spent a lot of time practicing. This does not mean that talent is not a (or the most) significant factor, it just means that there are no people so vastly more talented than even other hightly talented people that they can outperform them without significant practice.
Furthermore, we have the vague term deliberate practice, which is of course impossible to define, allowing you a post hoc cop out by defining the practice of people who do not achieve expertise as non-deliberate. Also, I would love to see him explaining away, for instance, some autistic savants' penchant for factorizing absurdly large numbers as practice and not innate talent.
He goes on to cook up an absurd explanation for why a group of jews excelled as lawyers, ignoring the fact that jews excel at every single intellectual pursuit known to man, making them disproportionately highly represented among screenwriters, professors, Nobel price winners, chess grandmasters, (...). It is well proven that jews perform significantly better at IQ tests that other westerners, which I assume he also wants to chalk up to a culture of practice and being slighted in their youth.
He rambles on on a similar note about an Asian rice culture. He somehow claims that a genetic predisposition for mathematics is disproved. Apparently, the fifteen hundred years of rice agriculture has had no genetic consequences. Again, he of course ignores the evidence that adopted Asian children raised in western homes in western societies have the exact same advantage on ethnic westerners in IQ tests, which are moderately correlated to mathematical prowess.
With that much nonsense crammed into fifteen minutes, I would not lend the rest of his claims much credibility either.
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On April 12 2013 01:13 obesechicken13 wrote:Show nested quote +Asking for 7 years of Rails experience when Rails had only existed for 6 years. Yes, this really did happen. A manager creates a generic template for HR to use for hiring a new employee. Neither is completely sure of the requirements of the new candidates but they know ruby on rails is needed. 7 years sounds like a good amount of time. I've heard someone say something similar, as an applicant, on reddit but I don't remember if they were rewarded for calling out the company. It's hard to disagree with the premise of the blog. Competence is competence and it's hard to measure competence within your company without putting people on trials, hiring them for a week or two and seeing if they are capable. If not firing them. But even this is difficult as it makes you look like a mean boss and people can put on a charade for 2 weeks. So we work through proxies.
I have quite a bit of experience - let's say four years - of getting people started at the job and mentoring, with a dash of hiring/interviewing on top lately. Charade for 2 weeks? Not going to happen. The questions people ask, and the questions they are not asking are very telling.
There is this special kind of 'smart' question that is a dead giveaway. And don't get me started on people that have no reading comprehension whatsoever.
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EPT
