

Startup Aims to Make Silicon Valley an Actual Meritocracy - carlchenet
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/gradberry-tara-ai/

======
stillsut
How does the "AI" interpret this repo:

[https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...](https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition)

It's near perfect idiomatic java. But does the dev solve any actual problem?
More generally, how can you really evaluate a code project by parsing it line
by line for syntax and style best practices? I think this algo would select
the essays with the best handwriting, not the best ideas.

------
mbesto
> _Once a candidate links their online portfolios and projects—usually Github
> repositories—to Gradberry, the platform analyzes whether or not a candidate
> has written good-quality code._

Tell me one human being that can read someone else's code and determine
whether it's "written good-quality code" and I'll have you a queue of
companies that want to use you as a recruiter. AI instructions are created by
humans. If a human can't determine the rules for "quality", then how is an AI
going to do it?

~~~
kefka
The rules are inherently there; we humans just don't understand them other
than as a case by case basis.

What needs to be done is a way to distill the logic behind "written good-
quality code" and feed that to a machine to analyze. Machine learning seems
like a good fit for this kind of exploratory problem.

~~~
vonmoltke
The rules _aren 't_ inherently there because there is no one standard for good
code. Code quality cannot be separated completely from the context in which it
is written.

~~~
Karunamon
Not as a whole, but there are rules that can be evaluated against. Think
consistent styling, usage of comments, etc. Things that the average linting
tool tells you about.

Granted this doesn't prove correctness, or lack of bugs, but style is a major
factor of readability and hence quality.

~~~
jstandard
I agree style can be a useful input to evaluate. Most of the critics, myself
included, take issue with the broad brush Gradberry uses to paint their
ability to measure quality. It's masquerading subjectivity as objectivity.

------
jaimebuelta
Not sure about the approach to take a look in public code.

Students and graduates may still not developed good coding skills, assuming
they have the time and energy to contribute to open source (they probably
should as a pure marketing tool, though) People with experience may not have
their code available. Not every company works with open source.

It seems to be quite biased to certain kind of developer. I agree is a good
kind of developer, but if the objective is to find "the best", it could be a
relatively small talent pool.

------
nraynaud
Their number one tip is "Good profile pictures matter", so welcome back to
prejudice land (I'm registering anyways, I'm a white dude, it shouldn't hurt
me).

[https://gradberry.com/getting-started-
candidates/](https://gradberry.com/getting-started-candidates/)

~~~
sparaker
Hiring isn't just about how people code. Alot of times you run into other
disconnected problems, like team members not getting along, people working in
opposite directions, and so on.

~~~
x1798DE
How does that relate to profile pictures, though?

~~~
sparaker
It highlights a similar unrelated idea.

------
dataker
A a Latino programmer, I must say it's never been easier to get a job. From
this angle, there's something even beyond a meritocracy.

However, if one wants to raise money(some VCs) or get a finance job, most are
biased towards a certain stereotype(skills not as blatant) and that's where
the real prejudice exists.

------
sokoloff
5% of first year's salary seems an extremely (and unnecessarily) low
commission.

~~~
TheBeardKing
I'm sorry, low?

~~~
sokoloff
Yes, we pay ~30% of first year comp for traditional agency hires. Granted,
they're doing more than simply flagging candidates of interest, but if this
product is successful, I'm just as willing to pay 10% or 15% as I am 5%.

~~~
analog31
Maybe this is intended to be "disruptive." A lot of what is called disruptive,
seems to do with replacing a labor intensive middleman with automation, at a
lower but still profitable price.

~~~
sokoloff
I agree and was mostly observing that 10% also meets your last criterion.

Sell goods and services based on the value to the consumer (minus a consumer
surplus), not on a cost-plus-markup model. The cost-plus model only needs to
set the floor (so you don't run unprofitably forever.)

------
fecak
This company may be missing an opportunity to market this product to the
industry that may benefit the most - agency recruiting (aka headhunters).

Most recruiters don't have the ability to evaluate code, so when they are
representing candidates to their clients they are relying on a host of other
indicators and data in order to try and gauge the coding ability of their
candidates.

This product is a way for recruiters to vet the code of their candidates, and
could then pass along those results ("Gradberry score of n") to their client
as a value-add that other recruiters not using the system can't provide. A
somewhat similar concept to recruiters years ago who asked candidates to take
skills tests from places like Brainbench.

For the right price, I imagine recruiters would be interested in this as a
differentiator between themselves and other firms. Gradberry would also still
benefit from the feedback data if recruiters reported their results.

------
valdiorn
> According to Reuters, an overwhelming majority of the startups it looked at
> were founded by people who had held a senior position at a big technology
> firm, worked at a well-connected smaller one, started a successful company,
> or attended one of three universities—Stanford, Harvard, and Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology

Did they ever stop to think that maybe people who are talented and interested
in starting their own tech startup business might seek out these schools and
positions, disproportionately to other options?

You can't point at facts like these and claim they are proof for a lack of
diversity. It might turn out that, given the chance to evaluate and interview
every possible candidate in the world, that the top 1% of talent might be 80%
drawn from those backgrounds, irrespective of all other traits.

~~~
nraynaud
Actually I don't see how being a manager at bigco or being a wealthy student
in an expensive school with lots of means helps you bootstrap a company on a
shoestring.

On a side note I'm more and more weary about the "lack of diversity"
narrative, Indians and eastern Asians are over-represented, this is not a
white world, there is a lack of Blacks, Hispanic and women, but remember that
the Indians and eastern Asians will be the most suffering minority in
rebalancing. Also, I think the issue of white women might not call for the
same changes as the issue of minorities, because they are not a minority. I
still don't know what to do (but I don't work, so you're free to take my job,
I was a manager in IT), but I think a more nuanced analysis and a finer
picture than "it's a bunch of white rapists" might help finding leverage
points.

~~~
S4M
> Actually I don't see how being a manager at bigco or being a wealthy student
> in an expensive school with lots of means helps you bootstrap a company on a
> shoestring.

I don't know either about the wealthy students, but being a manager at a bigco
surely must help you to get customers with the network they have, especially
if their startups are in a related field.

~~~
nraynaud
In my experience, it doesn't. They just go after blue chips again directly,
but blue chips have a 18 months decision time on a purchase and don't like new
technology. They lack the humility/will to go after many small companies to
hone the product, business model and the funnel against many customers before
hunting the whales again.

------
whoiskevin
So I'll only be considered a good programmer if I work on github? Way to
replace one broken method with another equally limited view of candidates.

------
collyw
Coding is only a small part of the equation.

Better architecture / data modeling (often) leads to less code.

Working out the problem that actually needs to be solved will likely lead to a
better architecture.

------
geebee
Is anyone else driven nuts by how hard it is to get at the data behind so many
articles?

For instance, the bit about how it's important to have attended one of three
universities - "Stanford, MIT, or Harvard", made me wonder what kind of
disadvantage you are at if you attend a very strong but public CS program
(Berkeley, University of Washington, Illinois).

The article has a link to the reuter's analysis here:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/12/us-usa-startup-
con...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/12/us-usa-startup-connections-
insight-idUSBRE98B15U20130912)

Which includes a link to a graph (I'm thinking, ok, great, here's the data!)

[http://www.reuters.com/subjects/series-a](http://www.reuters.com/subjects/series-a)

If you hover over some of the dots on the "unconnected" companies, you can see
a few of the other universities attended. So it does appear that yes,
attending Berkeley or other top public CS programs does put you at a
significant disadvantage where it comes to getting series A funding [1],
though this was as far as I could get. Maybe I'm bad at web searching, but I
just couldn't find the raw data.

You know, as an aside… ycombinator set up an amazing series of talks from
founders and CEOs for a truly exceptional class at stanford
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8325479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8325479)).
There was a posting about it on HN a while back, and they did make the videos
available… but there's nothing like actually being there, possibly with the
opportunity to meet a high up in person.

There were a few objections, some down-modded (for a variety of reasons),
about possible class issues here. I would say this: there's a reasonably good
CS program across the bay at a university that enrolls more low income
students than the entire ivy league combined. If middle and low income
students appear to be having more trouble becoming founders and getting
funding (as opposed to becoming high value employees for those who get series
A funding), this might also be a great location for another round of this
course.

[1] this is highly relevant, since students from top public CS programs don't
appear to have significantly lower mid-career salaries as _workers_ (in fact,
worker bee salaries may be slightly higher out of Berkeley).

Also I may have made a correlation causation error. Could be that the
university itself has little to do with this.

------
michaelochurch
_Silicon Valley really, really wants to be a meritocracy._

Nope. It really doesn't. It wants to be _perceived as_ a meritocracy. That's a
different goal entirely. It's the same privileged, well-connected "MBA
culture", but in the 21st century, MBA stands for "Meritocracy By Assertion".

VC doesn't want _not_ to be a clubby, relationship-based business, because
who-you-know cultures are great at giving the well-connected an extortive
power that they wouldn't otherwise have. ("Those who question the meritocracy
will be de-meritized.") Sure, there are Silicon Valley _engineers_ who want to
live in (and believe in) meritocracy, but they're not the people with the
power. You can get an employee position on merit, but if you want to ascend to
the founder or investor ranks and get real equity in the Valley... you still
have to be a child of the old empire.

It was hard to read the rest of this article after this critical miss.

