My Thoughts: Who Should Give Salary Range in Interview? IMO Companies

Yes, I am very biased as I have only been an employee. And I want to believe that even if I were a manager, providing the salary would be in my best interest too. But until that day happens, my thoughts will always be biased.

First, there is only one reason for a company to request the interviewer's salary range. Purely a power trip to see how much fear someone has in not getting the opportunity. Sure there are plenty of blogs and articles about psychological analysis for one's ego.

Because if the ask is greater than their budget, they can cut all ties even if the candidate could potentially provide greater value than they expected. To me, that means they are not looking for the best candidate.

If the ask is within their range, then they can kind of expect a somewhat amicable interview process.

If the ask is lower than their range, this is the same as within range but now they have the option to offer less. And there are plenty of blogs and articles that suggest that this is not in the interest of the employer. Also there are comments and feedback that candidates were offered more than they expected.

Personally, I have never had an employer give me more than I expected. In most of companies, I have also learned that I was paid much less than my peers even though I did the same work if not better (yes, I know this sounds very biased... perhaps I should write a blog on why I think I was not only better but preferred).

Among all the people I have worked with, I have never heard of anyone within my circle that was offered more than they asked. I don't quite ask, but talking about salary does come up every so often typically around review season. But this is more implicitly implied since I do not ask explicitly.

Back to the point

The main reason I do not believe I should ever share my expectations is that I want to get paid for the work that I will be doing. If they are asking me to work 20 hours per day, I don't mind being paid half the normal salary. If I only have to do half the work of my peers, then I don't mind being paid half their salary.

So until I know how much work I will be doing, why would I give what my expectations are? If I give my real expectations and it greater than the offer, I will never know if they are offering easier work which I may consider.

My other point

What is the big deal with companies not providing the salary range?

Some say they want to save time in case the range is too far apart. If I can see the range, then I can save you the trouble and skip over your job post. I would save you the trouble to even calling me to ask my salary expectations.

They may miss out on some good candidates. Yea, and then you would not be able to afford them and wasted all that time anyways.

Salary expectations do not match all industries and all geographical areas. Why force the candidate to give a static number that means only something in one place and time and industry? Let me decide whether it is worth my time to do that line of work.

If you don't get enough candidates then offer more. If you get too many candidates then lower the offer. 

My conclusion

So I believe a fair negotiation between company and candidate is far greater than the ability to pay less or even the perception of paying less. Even if you were a fair company, I will never know. It will always be over my should that I could have been more aggressive.

The company has the power to replace you. I have no power to change the amount of work I will get after I get hired (except for quitting). 

I think the HR industry has a great potential to be so much better. I think there are still many opportunities for new companies to enter the market purely by hiring the right people. I also believe there are plenty of people who are willing to build a career just to be at a fair and just company for a lower wage. But because we are asked first, the general candidates fear to be paid too low which thus causes us all to fear those who fear. 

Unknown Knowns: Parsing Names (2010 list by McKenzie)

I have attempted to parse names before, so this was an interesting read. I did kind of know about complexity of input restrictions to names, so I did not spend a lot of time working on that much. I did try to create a program to detect first names, common names, family names, etc. I probably spent an entire day just reading a plethora of articles on different cultures of names. Essentially, I never got around to even starting one. For most systems that I build now, I just use a display name. User enters their own first name and last name which most of my applications don't require but is sometimes required for third parties especially for payments.

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

My Thoughts: "...people used to be called pirates. Now they're open source enthusiasts."

I found it quite entertaining reading the comments to a blog by Jeff Atwood (https://blog.codinghorror.com/we-dont-use-software-that-costs-money-here/). A large amount of them were dedicated to a single paragraph: "It's tempting to ascribe this to the 'cult of no-pay', programmers and users who simply won't pay for software no matter how good it is, or how inexpensive it may be. These people used to be called pirates. Now they're open source enthusiasts."

Why I find this so fascinating was how at-arms people were defending themselves as if the paragraph was a personal attack on them as software users. At first, I just thought it was the one or two people who always make a big deal about a small thing (the paragraph was not even the point of the blog). But as I continued to read, you see comments (paraphrasing): "long time reading, but not anymore." All over few statements (did I mention that it was not even the point of the blog?).

Still and in a more serious tone, the commenters even appeared to have missed the whole point of the paragraph. First to address the logical problem that keeps irking me. A lot of commenters were basically saying "pirates != open source enthusiasts" but the paragraph reads more like "pirates then open source enthusiasts".

Besides the logical discrepancy, the definition of "pirate" isn't the typical use of the actual people who "steals" software. From the usage, I took the scope of the meaning of pirate to be the group of people who used paid-software for free by downloading hacked or opened software or obtaining keys illegally. Common things that I saw back in college: MS Windows, MS Office, Starcraft, etc.

To me it was felt so ironic that those defending to never have been a pirate probably has used pirated products (I am clumping in MP3 and movies here)... with or without their knowledge. At least back in the day, that was the sign of a good technical engineer... so it is very hard for me to imagine an IT/SW person to not have used pirated products.

Perhaps the confusion is due to the use of the term "open source" instead of "free" or "cost-free" software. Because some commenters were saying "free" being open-source instead of closed-source software. But the article is about costs, so I am not sure why the confusion exists.

Basically, I read the paragraph of people who were users of pirated software are now users of open source software. I have the same sentiments. With more readily available no-cost software, most people have steered more away from pirated software.

Disclaimer

I am pretty sure I've posted a blog about this (blame my fault memory). The periods outside of the quotes are intentional... it just bugs me to use periods within quotes when it is not related to the quote.

Also, I am not sure why I am easily amused by these things.

Reference

https://blog.codinghorror.com/we-dont-use-software-that-costs-money-here/
https://perlbuzz.com/2008/04/10/open_source_is_not_piracy/

My Thoughts (on results as asker): Interview question: 9 balls, find one odd with a balance scale

Disclaimer: This post does not contain the answer the question, although this may contain small hints.

I have posed this question to several people, and found it interesting the common logical point people get stuck on. The most common answer I get is three. Out of 20 or so people (rough estimate), only 1 person (math teacher) figured this out on their own.

Majority of the responses is that they put four on each side. If equal, then the one on the table. If not, take the group that is heavier. Put two on each side, then one on each side.

After they have exhausted their thoughts, I would clue them by asking why they choose four. Why not one, or two, or three?

What I found most interesting is that majority of the people still cannot come up with the answer of two. The reason I find this very interesting is because they use similar logic when they put four balls on each side. The other interesting oddity is even if they brute force the answer (by trying one on each side, then two on each side, then three on each side), some still cannot come up with the answer.

As an Interviewer

Although I enjoy asking this more like a party game, I do not think this is a very effective question for an interview. The question does not effectively get the interviewee to talk out loud, even after I tell them that they should think out loud.

Perhaps they do not want to appear unintelligent by going through wrong assumptions even though everyone does it as part of the process. Or perhaps they don't want to appear to be using brute force.

Maybe a more reasonable assumption is that it is much faster to go through it in your head than talking out loud since the samples are simple enough. Unlike more out-of-the-box questions like how many golf balls fit in a Boeing 747 or monkey with a sombrero, where the question naturally gets interviewees to talk out loud.

Since the interview already is time limited, my personal opinion is that there are better questions to ask if I am trying to test someone's ability to think through a problem. Although

Reference

Search for "interview 9 balls"

97% of quitters employed by 3% who don't (misunderstood)

There is meme that pops up every so often that goes, "97% of the people who quit too soon are employed by the 3% who never gave up." This statement does not provide any new information.

Logic Problem

A lot of people read the quote as the 97% of the people vs 3% of the people, but really the quote states 97% of quitters and 3% of never gave up. Technically speaking, there is no mention how large the population is of quitters versus those who never gave up.

What can be extrapolated from the quote (assuming you trust the numbers) is that a very low percentage of those who did not quit are employed by a large percentage of those who did quit. Which in itself is quite reflective, because that would also mean that 3% of those who quit also became bosses, and that 97% of those who did not quit became someone elses. 

So technically, the statement is not a logic issue or problem. The issue/problem lies on the people either jumping to conclusions or misreading the statement.

Math Proof

Assuming life is binomial in that all people are either quitters (A) or non-quitters (B), and also that all people are either employees (C) or employers (D).

97% of A = C, therefore 3% of A = D

3% of B = D, therefore 97% of B = C

In conclusion, this statement works for anything that can be broken into two groups which provides no new analysis whether the numbers are correct or not.

Wii U Fit Meter - Durability and Tracking, Personal Review

I have been using the Wii U Fit Meter for a few months. I did not intentionally test these "features" so most are just from my recollection.

Durability

I had accidentally left the Fit Meter in the pocket of my pants that went through wash and dry cycle. Surprisingly, it has survived and appears to still be functioning accurately. Unfortunately, it did track a bunch of steps and elevation during that time. I did not find a way to cancel these steps. 

Treadmill

The Fit Meter appears to track my runs on a treadmill. I am not exactly sure how accurate it is though but it seems roughly correct. Usually, I have other steps in the day so that kind of complicates how far I actually traveled. I typically run around 3.5 miles and I end up with around 5 miles on the Wii U for the day. 1.5 miles seem to be the typical distance for the usual daily steps when I'm not at the gym.

It also does a pretty good job of determine if I am walking or running on the treadmill. I am quite stumped on how it determines this. Since I am not displacing any relative distance it would make it difficult to determine how far I walk/run. It would have to somehow calculate from just the 'bounce' from my steps (guessing). It would have to estimate my gait from my height and weight if that were the case.

Update (1/8/2015): My guess is that it estimates by the steps. Now that I am in more shape to run a bit faster, I noticed that the distance is not accurate in that the Fit Meter calculates a shorter distance. I think this is due to my sprinting form having a larger gait than walking/jogging so the frequency of my steps decrease.

Flight

Interestingly, the Fit Meter tracks the elevation even on an airplane. It does not track it for the elevation walked, but you can see in the graph that the meter was at a certain elevation while flying.

Elevation

The Wii U sits on the second floor, so most of the elevation at the gym is at a negative elevation as the instructions does mention that it zeroes where the Wii U console unit is. There is a way to reset this but I have not found this to be a problem yet so have not bothered to set the ground level to be 0.

I have also traveled to other places that have a much higher elevation. The Fit Meter tracks this similar to the flight elevation. I'm not sure if you are walking while climbing these elevations that it would record that data. I have not put in any steps during these artificial elevation changes.

Car/Train

The bumps in the car or train does not seem to impact the Fit Meter. I have not walked around the train while it was moving so I cannot say what happens for that. My guess is that the Wii Fit somehow considers the current velocity and uses the accelerometer to determine steps inside a moving vehicle.

Tricking Fit Meter, Distance and Step Compensation

Similar to losing my meter in the washer and dryer, I can shake the meter up and down to add artificial steps to the meter. Steps are also counted while walking or running in place. Jumping will also be considered a step. The distance is still calculated for these "steps" even though I do not move.

Current Status

I am quite impressed with the Fit Meter. I cannot theoretically guess how it calculates all its numbers but it seems to be accurate enough for a leisure level exercise. There are quite some limitations to viewing specific data so I would not recommend this for more hardcore 'steppers' or runners. It is great just for trends that I am steadily improving or seeing holiday splurge of added weight (sigh). 

Coding: Name Distributions for 12k Semi-random Names

I wanted to create a table of people's names so that I have a set of data for testing purposes. I wanted the names to be somewhat more random than people I know and needed to find possible exceptions to my assumptions on names. As noted in my previous post, I have ran into quite a few exceptions and some were quite difficult to workaround (ie Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi or Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon).

Before I get to some of the problems, I wanted to just post some data since it is just one of those things that I just like to do with my free time even though there may be no value to it. This is for my set of 12k names which I pulled from any lists of names that I could find (US presidents, popular scientists, soccer team members, veterans, etc.) with some diversity.

The top 10 first names are:

1. John - 40
2. James - 29
3. William - 21
4. Thomas - 17
5. Robert - 17
6. Michael - 15
7. David - 14
8. George - 12
9. Mark - 12
10. Richard - 12

The top 4 last names are:

1. Brown - 9
2. Johnson - 8
3. Smith - 5
4. Stewart -5

My random data search is quite dominated by males. The top female name is Susan (8). Just off the top of my head, I think at least 95% of the names are male. I will try to focus on more female dominated industries. I stop at 4 for last names because there were too few overlaps in last names.

I also did a direct aggregate of names, so names with different spellings or abbreviations would have a lower count. I have thought about creating some sort of normalized table for names (ie John, Jonathan, Johnny, Johny, etc.).

As for unique spellings:

First names - 655

Last names - 1055

Another small issue with the names are the use of accent marks. On the traditional US keyboards, accents are not easily accessible so accents may be left out (ie Zoe vs Zoë). These are counted separately in the SQL aggregates.

One of the biggest problems to this count is Asian names especially Chinese ones. Most Asian names are family names first. Although almost all Chinese family names are a single characters, there are rare exceptions to this rule. Unfortunately, I cannot read the names. Even if I assume that whatever I find are single characters, I am not exactly sure how to manage surname first whether I should enter them into the last name field because that is traditionally the family names for Americans (which most systems are based off of) and because names are split so that formalities can be added to American traditions or keep the literal that it is the first part of the name then.

This does make a difference if I were to create metrics similar to what I have above. It will be more important to keep the list as first names as opposed to given names and last names as opposed to family names. This becomes even more complicated as I read that some places like Iceland and India have other traditions to their names where there is no "family" names similar to American or Asian cultures. There are some that include the location, parent's, or parents' names. 

Or even ancient times where people only had a single name. How would I enter Alexander the Great? Given that I keep 'von' and 'de' in the last names, the most logical method is to have 'the Great' as the last name.

Also some people changed their names or inherits new names. I did not have a method for this except to just keep the first name that they had (or at least I think it was the first one). In the future, I will likely have to create an alias table to track people with multiple names.

So there came to be a lot of work to dealing with names than I had originally planned. And this shows how software planning could easily be thrown out the window. What most would probably estimate to be only a couple hours could turn into days because the architecture may change thus rippling other changes.

Review: Tassu Shervani (First Impression)

I participated in a virtual summit with Tassu Shervani, PhD as the speaker. He used rather simple analysis of global census and historical patterns to make some very interesting conclusions that do not seem to be the current popular views. The analysis he focuses on is population and demographics.

He starts with how impacts of population growth is to market demands, resources, and GDP. His magic number of 2.1 is the number of children each parents need to produce to maintain a stable population. 2 is obvious because you need two kids who will eventually replace the two parents. Of course there are accidents, health issues, and other events that prevents reproduction, so the number should be greater than 2. Tassu jokingly states that 0.1 is for risk management.

He then goes into how this impacts different countries when the average number of children is greater than 2.1, around 2.1, and less than 2.1. US is around 1.9 (maybe 1.95) indicating that we would have a decreasing population. For us, this has different impacts for our generation today than it was 70 years ago when the number of children was 5-7. One of the examples of impacts to our society is social security. Today, there are one person to support each senior citizen. Compare this to the past, 5-7 people support each senior citizen. Not only that, people are living longer so each person today has to support longer than before.

This has an impact on the workforce and consumers as we move from a growing population to a decreasing population within a couple generations. For a period of time during the process of decreasing population, we'll have an increasing workforce (as children grows into the work force and elderly staying longer in the market) but a decreasing consumers (as people die, children are always consuming). We do not have this impact yet, primarily because of immigration. Immigration maintains the US population to be increasing.

I just find it interesting as to all the oppositions I see on the news to immigration. Immigrants seem to be very helpful to our economy which would impact our job market.

Tassu does bring up a lot of other discussions. Unfortunately, I cannot share it as it is hosted behind a firewall. I did find one video of Tassu on YouTube which discusses a small portion of the summit talk. It was very nice to hear him use actual numbers to reach the conclusions. You may not believe all the conclusions, but at least there is something concrete to accept or refute instead of basing our reactions to our very limited form of information (ie the news for me which really is just showing other people's opinions or fake numbers like polls of other people's opinions).

Reference

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYqp0gJT_J4
2 - http://www.tianow.org/videos/its-not-just-connectivity-its-business/13806/  - Another talk but not related to population

Review: Google AdSense (@2000 page views)

Earnings

I reached 2000+ page views a couple days ago but wanted to wait till the end of the month to see how this will change my balance. So far no change to my balance even thought my estimated earnings for last month was $0.01, so I am still at $0.37.

So it appears, I do not earn anything just by having ads on my page when no one clicks on it. I thought that I would at least get something for having ads. I plan to try this for one more month, then switch to the wider ads.

Note

Please do not click on the ads unless you are intentionally interested in the ad (per Google's terms of use/service). I am not blogging for income. I am just analyzing the service. TIA

Reference

http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2014/01/review-google-adsense-1000-page-views.html

Review: Google AdSense (@1000 page views)

Earnings

I finally reached 1000 page views and see my very first payable earnings, a whole $0.37.

I am still trying to figure what all the metrics mean. It appears that the earning comes from the RPM (revenue per page views / factor) where factor is 1000 at the time of this post. At the time of the 1000 mark, my RPM is at $0.37.

What is confusing is because I actually have CPC with $0.38.

The cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad. In your reports, CPC is calculated by dividing the estimated earnings by the number of clicks received.

Somehow the RPM for that day is $16.34. I cannot figure which number is the source value. I thought CPC was the amount that I actually received because someone clicked on an ad. This is clearly not the case because I received less than that amount.

The other odd thing is the summary of the reports. In the total amount for CPC, I have 0.38 while I only have one record of 0.37. I do have 0.01 in the estimated earnings which carries over to the CPC? That does not make a lot of sense to me yet, but that's the only field that has a penny.

Well at the rate that I am going, I will hopefully reach the next thousand in 5-6 weeks to compare more numbers with.

Navigation

Since I developed a habit of going into the reports, I had trouble finding the page the earnings was on. It is on the home page of AdSense under "View payments".

Note

Please do not click on the ads unless you are intentionally interested in the ad (per Google's terms of use/service). I am not blogging for income. I am just analyzing the service. TIA

Review: Dr. Phil's Test (but not Dr. Phil)

1. When do you feel your best? A: Late at night, although early morning has become more common recently. [c] [a]
2. You usually walk... A: less fast, head down. [d]
3. When talking to people, you... A: stand with your arms folded, maybe have one or both your hands on your hips or in pockets. [a] [c]
4. When relaxing, you sit with... A: your legs stretched out or straight, but I think I switch between all of them. [a]
5. When something really amuses you, you react with... A: a sheepish smile [d]
6. When you go to a party or social gathering, you... A: make a quiet entrance, looking around for someone you know [b] [c]
7. When you're working or concetrating very hard, and you're interrupted, you... A: feel extremely irritated, although I wouldn't say extremely. I feel more indifferent but definitely not a welcome break. [a]
8. Which of the following colors do you like most? A: light blue, black, gray, white, dark blue, green, orange, brown, purple... although couldn't there be a large influence from just school colors(?) [c] [b] [g] [f] [e] [d] [a] [g] [e]
9. When you are in bed at night, in those last few moments before going to sleep, you lie.. A: stretched out on your back... I can sleep in any position [a]
10. You often dream that you are... your dreams are always pleasant [f]

1. 2 or 6 points
2. 2
3. 4 or 5
4. 4
5. 5
6. 4
7. 6
8. 5, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 1, 3
9. 7
10. 1

31-40 Points: Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful and practical. They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest. Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who's extremely loyal to friends you do make and who expect the same loyalty in return. Those who really get to know you realize it takes a lot to shake your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to get over it if that trust is ever broken.

41-50 Points: Others see you as fresh, lively, charming, amusing, practical and always interesting; someone who's constantly in the center of attention, but sufficiently well-balanced not to let it go to their head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone who'll always cheer them up and help them up.

Analysis

Range

The lowest you can score is 15 (5 questions have 1, 5 questions have 2). The most points you can score is 64 (4 questions with 7, and 6 questions with 6).

Average

1. 4
2. 5
3. 4.8
4. 4.25
5. 4
6. 4
7. 4
8. 4
9. 4
10. 3.5
Total Average: 4.155 (average of averages); 4.232 (average of responses)

Conclusion

If we assume that none of the answers have no relationship to the questions, answers are all guesses. Assuming that we guess on a normal distribution (we do not have bias to certain letters or numbers), the averages above can be used. Thus we should be scoring around 41-42. Very unlikely someone will be 60+ because you can only score a max of 64; same as 21 points with minimum of 15 points. 30-40 and 50-60 should have a lower distribution than 30-50.

Looking at the different descriptions, most people will fit 30-50 score. My scores are not sufficient to prove or disprove this test (see snopes). A strong indication will be to see if the outliers fit the description provided.

I think there may be small correlation between personality and the answers, but the scores can be manipulated to fit the main bell curve making it more popular and believable. Also, there is an error with question 5. It has 5 possible answers in the point list but the question only had 4 options.

My interest in this was primarily to see why so many people find these kind of things interesting and believable, and to see if someone could scientifically use that information to misinform the public. For most of these tests, they seem to be thrown together and see which ones survive the email chains. When there is sufficient chain mails, a hypothesis could be drawn to purposely create tests that are believable and popular but have absolutely no correlation between responses and the results.

Reference

http://www.slideshare.net/javachai/dr-phil-test-1
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/trivia/philtest.asp