Conical inductors--still $10!...

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

I\'ve seen customers use that gambit to smoke technical blatherers out
as well - they\'ll agree to anything.

Oh yes! I\'ve heard them agree to do things that are
proven to be impossible, e.g. a solution to the
Byzantine Generals problem.

Yeah. My favorite is the speed of light and large distributed
systems.

Many software types think that clever software can overcome
speed-of-light delays. The way you often see this is in the implied
claim that a system 1,000 kilometers in diameter has a single state.
No it doesn\'t, and one has to deal with beliefs contrary to fact
because node 2 has not yet heard that node 1 changed its mind about
something.

Nor have they heard of servo oscillations due to transport lag -
trying harder does not work, only causing wilder oscillations.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

Today, most programmers have CS degrees and do not understand how such
things as radars work, and must be spoon-fed.

As for the HRdroid, I forgot to mention that in Mechanical
Engineering, they push square pegs into round holes all the time - all
you need is a hydraulic press.

That might be part of the manufacturing process! I hate
things that are designed to be impossible to disassemble.

Press fits are not impossible to disassemble. The same hydraulic
press is used to push the part back out.

That square peg will now have rounded corners, but never mind...

I occasionally point out that it is a known technique to
use a hammer to insert screws into wood - for all but the
last couple of turns.

Still makes for a weak joint. But screws are not all that strong in
wood anyway - mortise + tenon and box joints are far stronger.


Joe Gwinn

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

I\'ve seen customers use that gambit to smoke technical blatherers out
as well - they\'ll agree to anything.

Oh yes! I\'ve heard them agree to do things that are
proven to be impossible, e.g. a solution to the
Byzantine Generals problem.

Yeah. My favorite is the speed of light and large distributed
systems.

Many software types think that clever software can overcome
speed-of-light delays. The way you often see this is in the implied
claim that a system 1,000 kilometers in diameter has a single state.
No it doesn\'t, and one has to deal with beliefs contrary to fact
because node 2 has not yet heard that node 1 changed its mind about
something.

Nor have they heard of servo oscillations due to transport lag -
trying harder does not work, only causing wilder oscillations.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

Today, most programmers have CS degrees and do not understand how such
things as radars work, and must be spoon-fed.

As for the HRdroid, I forgot to mention that in Mechanical
Engineering, they push square pegs into round holes all the time - all
you need is a hydraulic press.

That might be part of the manufacturing process! I hate
things that are designed to be impossible to disassemble.

Press fits are not impossible to disassemble. The same hydraulic
press is used to push the part back out.

That square peg will now have rounded corners, but never mind...

I occasionally point out that it is a known technique to
use a hammer to insert screws into wood - for all but the
last couple of turns.

Still makes for a weak joint. But screws are not all that strong in
wood anyway - mortise + tenon and box joints are far stronger.


Joe Gwinn

 

[david eather]

On 18/07/2020 6:38 am, bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 11:29:18 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 6:21:00 AM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 3:46:44 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 12:06:23 -0700 (PDT),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:16:45 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has this paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/23/2006048117.full.pdf

Apparently if you spend time spelling out what exponential growth really means, even conservatives become more willing to take social distancing seriously.

It probably won\'t work on John Larkin who is really resistant to having things spelled out for him, and wouldn\'t work for Trump, who hasn\'t got a long enough attention span to let him absorb the message.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Another of your crap cites from the Sycophants. No such conclusions can be drawn from their phony research. Their phony work was based on a weak survey on MTurk, and it does not comply with any existing standards for psychological research.
Tell us about your career as a scientist.

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Some people, when equations conflict with measurement, still believe
the equations.

The epidemiologists have all but abandoned the exponential growth model for COVID-19.

Not exactly true. Any realistic model has infected people infecting other people, and that\'s an exponential process.

Using the same average number of people infected per infected person - R - for each stage of the process was always unrealistic, and as soon as you can get a handle on the way this changes as the disease progress through the population you can make the model more realistic.

It\'s since been modified by a dispersion factor to account for the fact, determined independently by clinical field work and not a dweeb sitting at a computer, that most people don\'t spread it and a small number spread it like crazy.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

“Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,”

The models are linear

Taking the k factor - the dispersion in the individual R factors - into account doesn\'t make the model linear. Any model used for short term forecasting is approximately linear over the short term - that\'s basic differential calculus.

and useful for short term forecasting to be used by policy makers to make decisions like this is getting worse, this is getting much worse, this is stabilizing, this is declining.

The decisions are based on what the data means, which is also what gets plugged into any mathematical model.

Every little thing they do on the grand scale potentially costs a gazillion bucks, so the post processed modeling as it \"informs\" the decision making is very useful.

It\'s a pity that you don\'t have clue about what\'s actually going on, and waste our time with verbiage that illustrates this.

Don\'t even try to read the book to me, mental midget. You\'re so far lost by every and anything related to the pandemic, you\'ve become a national embarrassment to Australia.

No one gives damm about your crap exponential growth model. They do give a damm about techniques to make forecasting linear and therefore usable. The main thing they\'re after now is the infection rate which they are attempting to infer from the random testing data. That one tells them how cautious they need to be with allowing the public freedom to congregate.

The thing that is changing the shape of the curve is that governments
and individuals are taking actions to protect people. That the rate of
infection is still going up PROVES without any doubt that the total
effort is currently INSUFFICIENT to slow the spread.

More than 9/11 avoidable deaths every day, without that raising alarm
all over the country is a pretty piss poor effort from those in charge.

From the sanitized Swedish data, yes Covid kills the vulnerable at a
rate of 4 to 1. That doesn\'t mean the economic impact will be one fifth
of the raw data at all.

How would you like to see your parents or wife or even kids die to this
pandemic when they probably would not even have been infected? That\'s a
cost too.

There are no certainties in a probabilistic model, but the data does
show that hospital care makes a difference. An overwhelmed hospital does
not.

Slowing the rate of infection means more people get proper care and
live, less highly trained and valuable hospital staff don\'t get infected
and it buys time for a vaccine.

Doing nothing is simply stupid on so many levels. Anti mask protests and
pandemic deniers are even worse and might as well be murderers.

 

[david eather]

On 18/07/2020 6:38 am, bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 11:29:18 PM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
On Friday, July 17, 2020 at 6:21:00 AM UTC+10, bloggs.fre...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 3:46:44 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 12:06:23 -0700 (PDT),
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:16:45 AM UTC-4, Bill Sloman wrote:
Today\'s Proceedings of the (US) National Academy of Sciences has this paper

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/23/2006048117.full.pdf

Apparently if you spend time spelling out what exponential growth really means, even conservatives become more willing to take social distancing seriously.

It probably won\'t work on John Larkin who is really resistant to having things spelled out for him, and wouldn\'t work for Trump, who hasn\'t got a long enough attention span to let him absorb the message.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Another of your crap cites from the Sycophants. No such conclusions can be drawn from their phony research. Their phony work was based on a weak survey on MTurk, and it does not comply with any existing standards for psychological research.
Tell us about your career as a scientist.

That paper is hilarious. They declare that the public is so ignorant
that they look at a linear slope and don\'t appreciate that it\'s
actually exponential. What\'s worse, some of those ignorant rednecks
think they actually see a peak and a decline.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Some people, when equations conflict with measurement, still believe
the equations.

The epidemiologists have all but abandoned the exponential growth model for COVID-19.

Not exactly true. Any realistic model has infected people infecting other people, and that\'s an exponential process.

Using the same average number of people infected per infected person - R - for each stage of the process was always unrealistic, and as soon as you can get a handle on the way this changes as the disease progress through the population you can make the model more realistic.

It\'s since been modified by a dispersion factor to account for the fact, determined independently by clinical field work and not a dweeb sitting at a computer, that most people don\'t spread it and a small number spread it like crazy.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

“Probably about 10% of cases lead to 80% of the spread,”

The models are linear

Taking the k factor - the dispersion in the individual R factors - into account doesn\'t make the model linear. Any model used for short term forecasting is approximately linear over the short term - that\'s basic differential calculus.

and useful for short term forecasting to be used by policy makers to make decisions like this is getting worse, this is getting much worse, this is stabilizing, this is declining.

The decisions are based on what the data means, which is also what gets plugged into any mathematical model.

Every little thing they do on the grand scale potentially costs a gazillion bucks, so the post processed modeling as it \"informs\" the decision making is very useful.

It\'s a pity that you don\'t have clue about what\'s actually going on, and waste our time with verbiage that illustrates this.

Don\'t even try to read the book to me, mental midget. You\'re so far lost by every and anything related to the pandemic, you\'ve become a national embarrassment to Australia.

No one gives damm about your crap exponential growth model. They do give a damm about techniques to make forecasting linear and therefore usable. The main thing they\'re after now is the infection rate which they are attempting to infer from the random testing data. That one tells them how cautious they need to be with allowing the public freedom to congregate.

The thing that is changing the shape of the curve is that governments
and individuals are taking actions to protect people. That the rate of
infection is still going up PROVES without any doubt that the total
effort is currently INSUFFICIENT to slow the spread.

More than 9/11 avoidable deaths every day, without that raising alarm
all over the country is a pretty piss poor effort from those in charge.

From the sanitized Swedish data, yes Covid kills the vulnerable at a
rate of 4 to 1. That doesn\'t mean the economic impact will be one fifth
of the raw data at all.

How would you like to see your parents or wife or even kids die to this
pandemic when they probably would not even have been infected? That\'s a
cost too.

There are no certainties in a probabilistic model, but the data does
show that hospital care makes a difference. An overwhelmed hospital does
not.

Slowing the rate of infection means more people get proper care and
live, less highly trained and valuable hospital staff don\'t get infected
and it buys time for a vaccine.

Doing nothing is simply stupid on so many levels. Anti mask protests and
pandemic deniers are even worse and might as well be murderers.

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

I\'ve seen customers use that gambit to smoke technical blatherers out
as well - they\'ll agree to anything.

Oh yes! I\'ve heard them agree to do things that are
proven to be impossible, e.g. a solution to the
Byzantine Generals problem.

Yeah. My favorite is the speed of light and large distributed
systems.

Many software types think that clever software can overcome
speed-of-light delays. The way you often see this is in the implied
claim that a system 1,000 kilometers in diameter has a single state.
No it doesn\'t, and one has to deal with beliefs contrary to fact
because node 2 has not yet heard that node 1 changed its mind about
something.

Nor have they heard of servo oscillations due to transport lag -
trying harder does not work, only causing wilder oscillations.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

Today, most programmers have CS degrees and do not understand how such
things as radars work, and must be spoon-fed.

As for the HRdroid, I forgot to mention that in Mechanical
Engineering, they push square pegs into round holes all the time - all
you need is a hydraulic press.

That might be part of the manufacturing process! I hate
things that are designed to be impossible to disassemble.

Press fits are not impossible to disassemble. The same hydraulic
press is used to push the part back out.

That square peg will now have rounded corners, but never mind...

I occasionally point out that it is a known technique to
use a hammer to insert screws into wood - for all but the
last couple of turns.

Still makes for a weak joint. But screws are not all that strong in
wood anyway - mortise + tenon and box joints are far stronger.


Joe Gwinn

 

[server]

On Sun, 19 Jul 2020 22:57:41 +0100, \"Commander Kinsey\"
<CFKinsey@military.org.jp> wrote:

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 22:57:22 +0100, John Doe <always.look@message.header> wrote:

\"Commander Kinsey\" <CFKinsey@military.org.jp> wrote:

John Doe <always.look@message.header> wrote:

Some CPUs have integrated graphics. Applications that require
massive video cards need no more than the latest CPU.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I can max out any CPU and/or GPU easily. Folding at home. Rosetta
at home. Einstein at home.....

Few people care about those applications. Most people who run those
applications are wild-eyed third worlders who can\'t afford \"any CPU
or GPU\" anyway. Whatever gets you through the day...

You continue to make no sense at all. Millions run those applications, some on a little smartphone, some (like a guy I know who works for NASA) with SEVEN graphics cards, watercooled, stacked onto one motherboard. It\'s cooled by a radiator. A central heating radiator. Why would a 3rd worlder spend money running those programs?

Are you sure these are used as graphic cards to drive some display
unit ?

At least some (radio)astronomers use GPU cards (without video
interface) as massively parallel processors. Unfortunately the GPU
instruction set is not well suited for scientific calculations, so the
GPU programming is quite awkward.

 

[server]

On Sun, 19 Jul 2020 22:57:41 +0100, \"Commander Kinsey\"
<CFKinsey@military.org.jp> wrote:

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 22:57:22 +0100, John Doe <always.look@message.header> wrote:

\"Commander Kinsey\" <CFKinsey@military.org.jp> wrote:

John Doe <always.look@message.header> wrote:

Some CPUs have integrated graphics. Applications that require
massive video cards need no more than the latest CPU.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I can max out any CPU and/or GPU easily. Folding at home. Rosetta
at home. Einstein at home.....

Few people care about those applications. Most people who run those
applications are wild-eyed third worlders who can\'t afford \"any CPU
or GPU\" anyway. Whatever gets you through the day...

You continue to make no sense at all. Millions run those applications, some on a little smartphone, some (like a guy I know who works for NASA) with SEVEN graphics cards, watercooled, stacked onto one motherboard. It\'s cooled by a radiator. A central heating radiator. Why would a 3rd worlder spend money running those programs?

Are you sure these are used as graphic cards to drive some display
unit ?

At least some (radio)astronomers use GPU cards (without video
interface) as massively parallel processors. Unfortunately the GPU
instruction set is not well suited for scientific calculations, so the
GPU programming is quite awkward.

 

[server]

On Sun, 19 Jul 2020 22:57:41 +0100, \"Commander Kinsey\"
<CFKinsey@military.org.jp> wrote:

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 22:57:22 +0100, John Doe <always.look@message.header> wrote:

\"Commander Kinsey\" <CFKinsey@military.org.jp> wrote:

John Doe <always.look@message.header> wrote:

Some CPUs have integrated graphics. Applications that require
massive video cards need no more than the latest CPU.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I can max out any CPU and/or GPU easily. Folding at home. Rosetta
at home. Einstein at home.....

Few people care about those applications. Most people who run those
applications are wild-eyed third worlders who can\'t afford \"any CPU
or GPU\" anyway. Whatever gets you through the day...

You continue to make no sense at all. Millions run those applications, some on a little smartphone, some (like a guy I know who works for NASA) with SEVEN graphics cards, watercooled, stacked onto one motherboard. It\'s cooled by a radiator. A central heating radiator. Why would a 3rd worlder spend money running those programs?

Are you sure these are used as graphic cards to drive some display
unit ?

At least some (radio)astronomers use GPU cards (without video
interface) as massively parallel processors. Unfortunately the GPU
instruction set is not well suited for scientific calculations, so the
GPU programming is quite awkward.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I then pose them a simple open-ended design question, and
watch their thought processes. One I\'ve used is \"a toy
manufacturer makes printed roads that young kids push
their toy cars around. They want to add some traffic
lights. What do you do\". I also tell them there\'s no
right/wrong answers.

Once upon a time I would have expected them to include
using a microprocessor, but to reject it in favour of
simpler alternatives. Now an MCU is probably the best
way

I\'ve seen customers use that gambit to smoke technical blatherers out
as well - they\'ll agree to anything.

Oh yes! I\'ve heard them agree to do things that are
proven to be impossible, e.g. a solution to the
Byzantine Generals problem.

Yeah. My favorite is the speed of light and large distributed
systems.

Many software types think that clever software can overcome
speed-of-light delays. The way you often see this is in the implied
claim that a system 1,000 kilometers in diameter has a single state.
No it doesn\'t, and one has to deal with beliefs contrary to fact
because node 2 has not yet heard that node 1 changed its mind about
something.

Oh, I\'ve had arguments about that too They tend to persist
in the notion that there is a single universal time.

Nor have they heard of servo oscillations due to transport lag -
trying harder does not work, only causing wilder oscillations.

Not many people have done control theory, so that surprises
me less.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

Today, most programmers have CS degrees and do not understand how such
things as radars work, and must be spoon-fed.

As for the HRdroid, I forgot to mention that in Mechanical
Engineering, they push square pegs into round holes all the time - all
you need is a hydraulic press.

That might be part of the manufacturing process! I hate
things that are designed to be impossible to disassemble.

Press fits are not impossible to disassemble. The same hydraulic
press is used to push the part back out.

That square peg will now have rounded corners, but never mind...

I occasionally point out that it is a known technique to
use a hammer to insert screws into wood - for all but the
last couple of turns.

Still makes for a weak joint. But screws are not all that strong in
wood anyway - mortise + tenon and box joints are far stronger.

Oh yes indeed. It is only used for crude things.

Another example is how roof-trusses are held together.
A steel plate punched/bent to make many \"nails\" which
is then hammered or press fitted across the
(unjoined) timbers.
https://www.ukfixings.net/images/P/knuckle%20nail%20plate.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofK-WjqBREk

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I then pose them a simple open-ended design question, and
watch their thought processes. One I\'ve used is \"a toy
manufacturer makes printed roads that young kids push
their toy cars around. They want to add some traffic
lights. What do you do\". I also tell them there\'s no
right/wrong answers.

Once upon a time I would have expected them to include
using a microprocessor, but to reject it in favour of
simpler alternatives. Now an MCU is probably the best
way

I\'ve seen customers use that gambit to smoke technical blatherers out
as well - they\'ll agree to anything.

Oh yes! I\'ve heard them agree to do things that are
proven to be impossible, e.g. a solution to the
Byzantine Generals problem.

Yeah. My favorite is the speed of light and large distributed
systems.

Many software types think that clever software can overcome
speed-of-light delays. The way you often see this is in the implied
claim that a system 1,000 kilometers in diameter has a single state.
No it doesn\'t, and one has to deal with beliefs contrary to fact
because node 2 has not yet heard that node 1 changed its mind about
something.

Oh, I\'ve had arguments about that too They tend to persist
in the notion that there is a single universal time.

Nor have they heard of servo oscillations due to transport lag -
trying harder does not work, only causing wilder oscillations.

Not many people have done control theory, so that surprises
me less.

I did get the job, worked there for seven years, leaving only when I
decided to move back to the Boston area.

I was an embedded realtime programmer, writing in assembly code on the
metal in those days. All the embedded realtime programmers at that
company had hardware degrees, which was necessary to do much of
anything.

My experiences, in companies other than GEC, were
broadly similar.

Today, most programmers have CS degrees and do not understand how such
things as radars work, and must be spoon-fed.

As for the HRdroid, I forgot to mention that in Mechanical
Engineering, they push square pegs into round holes all the time - all
you need is a hydraulic press.

That might be part of the manufacturing process! I hate
things that are designed to be impossible to disassemble.

Press fits are not impossible to disassemble. The same hydraulic
press is used to push the part back out.

That square peg will now have rounded corners, but never mind...

I occasionally point out that it is a known technique to
use a hammer to insert screws into wood - for all but the
last couple of turns.

Still makes for a weak joint. But screws are not all that strong in
wood anyway - mortise + tenon and box joints are far stronger.

Oh yes indeed. It is only used for crude things.

Another example is how roof-trusses are held together.
A steel plate punched/bent to make many \"nails\" which
is then hammered or press fitted across the
(unjoined) timbers.
https://www.ukfixings.net/images/P/knuckle%20nail%20plate.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofK-WjqBREk

 

[server]

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/07/20 14:52, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.

So do I, either directly or indirectly. That will be
something that is adjacent to their experience, and/or
something that illustrates how the company thinks/works.

The key word is \"with\"; interviews aren\'t (or at least
shouldn\'t be) willy waving competitions.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/07/20 14:52, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.

So do I, either directly or indirectly. That will be
something that is adjacent to their experience, and/or
something that illustrates how the company thinks/works.

The key word is \"with\"; interviews aren\'t (or at least
shouldn\'t be) willy waving competitions.

 

[server]

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 15:29:29 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 14:52, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.

So do I, either directly or indirectly. That will be
something that is adjacent to their experience, and/or
something that illustrates how the company thinks/works.

The key word is \"with\"; interviews aren\'t (or at least
shouldn\'t be) willy waving competitions.

One thing you can\'t tell from a resume, or the usual interview, is if
they understand electricity. Lots of presumed engineers don\'t. Most
recent EE grads don\'t.

Wanna make a kid panic? Show him a 2-resistor voltage divider. Even
worse, a batery and a resistor charging a cap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ve23i5K334





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 15:29:29 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 14:52, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.

So do I, either directly or indirectly. That will be
something that is adjacent to their experience, and/or
something that illustrates how the company thinks/works.

The key word is \"with\"; interviews aren\'t (or at least
shouldn\'t be) willy waving competitions.

One thing you can\'t tell from a resume, or the usual interview, is if
they understand electricity. Lots of presumed engineers don\'t. Most
recent EE grads don\'t.

Wanna make a kid panic? Show him a 2-resistor voltage divider. Even
worse, a batery and a resistor charging a cap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ve23i5K334





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/07/20 16:22, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 15:29:29 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 14:52, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.

So do I, either directly or indirectly. That will be
something that is adjacent to their experience, and/or
something that illustrates how the company thinks/works.

The key word is \"with\"; interviews aren\'t (or at least
shouldn\'t be) willy waving competitions.


One thing you can\'t tell from a resume, or the usual interview, is if
they understand electricity. Lots of presumed engineers don\'t. Most
recent EE grads don\'t.

Wanna make a kid panic? Show him a 2-resistor voltage divider. Even
worse, a batery and a resistor charging a cap.

That\'s one reason why I like to see evidence on their
CV that they have done things on their own, without
it being any part of any course.

Doesn\'t matter what it is, so long as they can describe
what, why, and what they would do differently next time.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 20/07/20 16:22, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 15:29:29 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 14:52, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:42:36 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 20/07/20 01:52, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jul 2020 08:29:35 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/07/20 00:23, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 01:32:33 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 21:42, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:54:54 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 15:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.

Not if you were in HP!


HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

Snap!

I had an interview at a GEC site in ~1981. After explaining
the hardware and software and systems I had designed, the
HRdroid asked me whether I was \"really a hardware of software
engineer\".

Somewhat surprisingly, I managed not to give him an earful.
I suspect the expression on my face and my answers becoming
terser might have alerted him to his faux pas. The idiot still
offered me a job.

I have a similar story from the 1970s, but it turned out rather
better.

I was applying to a middle size defense contractor in the Baltimore
suburbs, and the hiring manager looked over my resume, and asked which
I preferred, hardware or software. I replied that it was very useful
to be bilingual, to be able to speak hardware to software and vice
versa.

A very sensible response of course.

\"My\" GEC HRdroid couldn\'t comprehend anything beyond
square holes, and all round candidates has to be
force fitted into one of the square holes.

If the interviewer asks questions but listens to the
answers and avoids such destructive idiocies, that\'s
just fine.

One technique I developed was to ask ever wilder
questions, with the objective of getting them to
(sensibly) say \"no\". That gave me good insight into
the validity of their \"yes\" responses.

This would be for interviewing, versus being interviewed?

I was thinking of being interviewed. After starting my
second job (at a contract design and consultancy company)
they told me that I asked far more questions than most
candidates. I haven\'t stopped since

I haven\'t found it necessary when I\'m the technical
interviewer; there are other more fun and fruitful way
of smoking out blatherers.

What would that be?

Nothing magic.

I get them to describe what they have done in the past,
listen (unlike a few interviewers!), ask them why they
made their choices, and what they would do differently
next time.

I take them to a whiteboard and design something with them.

So do I, either directly or indirectly. That will be
something that is adjacent to their experience, and/or
something that illustrates how the company thinks/works.

The key word is \"with\"; interviews aren\'t (or at least
shouldn\'t be) willy waving competitions.


One thing you can\'t tell from a resume, or the usual interview, is if
they understand electricity. Lots of presumed engineers don\'t. Most
recent EE grads don\'t.

Wanna make a kid panic? Show him a 2-resistor voltage divider. Even
worse, a batery and a resistor charging a cap.

That\'s one reason why I like to see evidence on their
CV that they have done things on their own, without
it being any part of any course.

Doesn\'t matter what it is, so long as they can describe
what, why, and what they would do differently next time.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 23:31:45 +0100, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 7/12/2020 8:10 AM, Commander Kinsey wrote:
Why are CPUs only about 80W TDP? Can\'t they make ones with three times
as many cores that have 250W TDP like graphics cards?

Because while power dissipation is proportional to number of cores and
clock speed, for the vast majority of applications CPU clock is no
longer a bottleneck.

If you really need more general-purpose CPU power you can get a system
that supports multiple physical processors, or cluster them.

The trend is to make CPUs more power-efficient, not less!

When a big powerful CPU is idling it isn\'t power hungry. TDP is a maximum measurement.

 

[Commander Kinsey]

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020 23:31:45 +0100, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 7/12/2020 8:10 AM, Commander Kinsey wrote:
Why are CPUs only about 80W TDP? Can\'t they make ones with three times
as many cores that have 250W TDP like graphics cards?

Because while power dissipation is proportional to number of cores and
clock speed, for the vast majority of applications CPU clock is no
longer a bottleneck.

If you really need more general-purpose CPU power you can get a system
that supports multiple physical processors, or cluster them.

The trend is to make CPUs more power-efficient, not less!

When a big powerful CPU is idling it isn\'t power hungry. TDP is a maximum measurement.