
Startup Recruiting and the Stanford Prison Experiment - dalton
http://daltoncaldwell.tumblr.com/post/18648113677/startup-recruiting-and-the-stanford-prison-experiment
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disgruntledphd2
Just to note, while the Stanford experiment was a pretty horrific abuse of
scientific power (for which the perpetrator was rewarded with a chair at
stanford), its not the reason why all experiments require ethical approval.
That honour (?) goes to the Milgram studies on obedience
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_study>

Also, that particular anecdote appears not to have a tremendous amount of
relevance to the point, but on a completely tangential point, the stanford
study was replicated by the BBC
ncpsychology.weebly.com/uploads/4/7/8/4/4784501/reicher__haslam_original_study.pdf

The results are extremely interesting, and somewhat counter to the
interpretations put forward by Zimbardo.

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dalton
The Milgram experiment is the other member of the "top two" that I refer to in
the post.

I could be mistaken about the ethical approval being brought forward, but that
is what I recall being taught while an undergrad at Stanford. The Milgram
experiment occurred years before the SEP, and I seem to recall that the fact
Zimbardo was able to get approval for this experiment (including getting the
local police to help) led to a huge crackdown at universities.

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fooandbarify
I doubt there is any objective metric for choosing "the two most famous and
influential psychological experiments ever conducted" but I immediately
assumed you meant Pavlov's dogs as the other.

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SomeCallMeTim
When I was an indie game developer (distinct from a start-up in that I wasn't
externally funded, though at the time we were quite profitable), I gave
programming tests that I could have passed with flying colors.

If I remember correctly, I only had two people every really pass my test. One
I hired and he worked with me for years and went on to be the VP of
Engineering at a Fortune 500 company. One wanted $80/hour as a contractor and
I couldn't afford to hire him.

I did hire someone who had a positively mediocre performance (keep in mind
most people failed outright, many answering NO questions correctly) on the
test once, because I thought maybe my test was too hard. He washed out after a
few weeks.

What's my point? Don't set your bar too low, or you'll regret it. On the other
hand, if you feel you need programmers better than you are, you may already be
in trouble.

If you need programmers at the same level but with different domain knowledge,
that's not a problem, but it's hard to "look up" at a skill higher than you
and be sure of what you're seeing. Even if you think you understand what the
candidate is saying, it's hard to distinguish between someone smarter than you
mapping out a realistic approach and a smooth-talker very effectively blowing
smoke out of their nether regions.

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StandardBub
I believe puzzle questions, made famous by microsoft, and then copied by
google, are the exemplar here. The standard back-story is that it is not about
getting the right answer, but explaining your thought process. Unfortunately,
the act of explaining totally wrecks any deep or involved thought process,
because you are constantly engaging the speech parts of your brain, which
upsets your working memory. Your interviewer never had to go through this
process while talking out loud, so has no idea what the question is like on
the receiving end.

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EzGraphs
I am a bit suspicious in this regard of algorithm questions for which the
interviewer already has an answer. The interviewer may have a solution in hand
that they never solved themselves, or solved at their leisure in a different
context (e.g. not in front of several people using a marker board with dried
up markers).

That said, an interview in isolation is sometimes an attempt to get a sense of
how a person reacts under pressure or constraints. It is doubtful that this
really matches with the type of pressure that comes with most jobs.

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philwelch
Interesting question, but to me, were I a founder, I would want to hire
engineers who were smarter than me anyway, so I would have no problem giving
an interview I myself couldn't pass. In fact, even as a regular employee I
want to work with people smarter than I am. But it's still worthwhile to do
exercises like this specifically to trigger one's empathy.

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ktizo
If you give an interview you cannot pass, how do you distinguish between the
quality of different correct responses?

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Swizec
Because the candidate is able to explain their answer at your level.

 _That_ 's how you know they actually know what they're talking about - the
ability to explain it to their grandmother.

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matwood
So basically you hire the best bull shitter?

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philwelch
You can't make too big a gap--I certainly wouldn't recommend non-technical
people trying to hire engineers this or any other way--but maybe it's still
possible for a reasonably smart engineer to identify an even smarter engineer.

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chwahoo
Perhaps psychology experts could chime in here: I've always been a little
skeptical of the Stanford Prison Experiment's findings. It was such a complex
experiment whose results might have been drastically affected by each
participant knowing that they are the objects of study, the experimenter
playing the "warden", people playing along with the game, etc.

I guess I suspect some of the conclusions may be true, but I've never really
bought that the experiment itself provided good evidence for them.

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fooandbarify
You're not alone:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Crit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Criticisms)

