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    <title>Jeremy Shute</title>
    <link>http://www.jeremyshute.com/</link>
    <description>Recent content on Jeremy Shute</description>
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    <lastBuildDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:00:00 UTC</lastBuildDate>
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    <item>
      <title>On Hiring</title>
      <link>http://www.jeremyshute.com/post/on-hiring/</link>
      <pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:00:00 UTC</pubDate>
      
      <guid>http://www.jeremyshute.com/post/on-hiring/</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;I learned how to hire while I worked for Google, a company that has an enviable
number of great engineers.  They frequently rank in the &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.greatplacetowork.com/best-companies/100-best-companies-to-work-for&#34;&gt;top places to
work&lt;/a&gt;,
but when I left the thing I missed the most was not the free food or the
generous vacation.  I missed the people.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;How did Google get so many great engineers?  I&amp;rsquo;ve heard it said that great
problems attract great people.  I&amp;rsquo;ve also heard it said that great people
attract great people.  I actually think they just hire great people.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to emulate their success, what should you do?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Whenever you measure a population, the &lt;a href=&#34;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution&#34;&gt;bell
curve&lt;/a&gt; is bound to come up.
The bell curve is used to measure underlying processes that have an outcome
that&amp;rsquo;s the sum of many small random events.  You can probably safely assume
that your measure of &amp;ldquo;employee quality&amp;rdquo; will look like a bell curve.  You can
also probably safely assume your applicant&amp;rsquo;s interview scores will also look
like a bell curve.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;By changing policies and processes, you can increase the accuracy of the hiring
decision.  The name of the game here is increasing the correlation between
&amp;ldquo;employee quality&amp;rdquo; and applicant interview score.  They&amp;rsquo;ll both still look like
a bell curve when viewed independently, but when plotted against one another
the relationship becomes obvious.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;img src=&#34;/images/correlation.png&#34; alt=&#34;&#34; class=&#34;pure-img&#34; &gt;

&lt;p&gt;By changing the number of applicants you reject, you bias the result toward the
ones that are of &amp;ldquo;employee quality.&amp;rdquo;  Notice that in the &lt;em&gt;p=0&lt;/em&gt; graph above, the
right side of the graph looks like it has the same mean on the &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt; axis as the
left side of the graph.  However, if you divide the &lt;em&gt;p=1&lt;/em&gt; graph, the right side
will have a much higher mean than the left side.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;How do these factors relate to each other?  I put together a quick random
simulation to determine exactly that.  Unfortunately at a sample size of 100 it
was too difficult to read, so the following represents what happens when hiring
1,000 employees.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;img src=&#34;/images/quality.png&#34; alt=&#34;&#34; class=&#34;pure-img&#34; &gt;

&lt;p&gt;Two things stand out to me immediately.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you want a chance of hiring an organization that performs in the 90th+
percentile, you need an accuracy of at least 50%.  Your interview questions
need to be topical to the job function, demonstrable skills need to be
demonstrated, and you should try to get information from multiple interviewers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But, you also need a bias of at least 75%!  In other words, you have to say
&amp;ldquo;no&amp;rdquo; to at least 3 out of 4 candidates, regardless of how accurate you think
your process is.  Looking at the slope, it&amp;rsquo;s clear that bias becomes even more
important than accuracy as you try to exceed the 90th+ percentile of
performance.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Applicants should understand that great organizations are built by having high
precision but low recall.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I don&amp;rsquo;t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a
 member. &amp;ndash; Groucho Marx&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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    <item>
      <title>Cross-compiling Go on drone.io</title>
      <link>http://www.jeremyshute.com/post/cross-compiling-go-on-drone-io/</link>
      <pubDate>Sun, 07 Dec 2014 00:00:00 UTC</pubDate>
      
      <guid>http://www.jeremyshute.com/post/cross-compiling-go-on-drone-io/</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;The folks over at &lt;a href=&#34;https://drone.io&#34;&gt;drone.io&lt;/a&gt; offer free builds for open
source projects.  However, currently they only support Go 1.2.  This method
allows you to to cross-compile artifacts with a more recent version of Go.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Copy &lt;strong&gt;commands.sh&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;environment-variables.sh&lt;/strong&gt; into the &lt;strong&gt;Settings / Build &amp;amp;
Test&lt;/strong&gt; tab and copy &lt;strong&gt;artifacts.sh&lt;/strong&gt; into the &lt;strong&gt;Settings / Artifacts&lt;/strong&gt; tab.  Then,
adjust the &lt;strong&gt;GOX_OSARCH&lt;/strong&gt; environment variable to your liking.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;script src=&#34;https://gist.github.com/shutej/ff2610b1b692c7726f7c.js&#34;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;


&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I specified that my project is &lt;strong&gt;C / C++&lt;/strong&gt; for the simple reason
that gox recompiles the build toolchain.&lt;/p&gt;
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    <item>
      <title>Who am I?</title>
      <link>http://www.jeremyshute.com/post/who-am-i/</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:00:00 UTC</pubDate>
      
      <guid>http://www.jeremyshute.com/post/who-am-i/</guid>
      <description>&lt;img src=&#34;/images/me.jpg&#34; alt=&#34;&#34; class=&#34;pure-img&#34; &gt;

&lt;p&gt;In my &lt;a href=&#34;http://lnkd.in/dpcE8SZ&#34;&gt;professional life&lt;/a&gt;, I&amp;rsquo;m a Director of
Infrastructure for &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.altschool.com&#34;&gt;AltSchool&lt;/a&gt;.  In non-manager
speak that means I lead complex projects that are important and impactful to
our whole engineering team.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I also pinch hit as an individual contributor, though perhaps the most
important thing I can do for our success is recognize and support other great
individual contributors.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Did I mention that &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.altschool.com/jobs&#34;&gt;AltSchool is hiring&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I used to work at &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.google.com&#34;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt;, another great company.
When I got there in 2005, it was a few thousand people, and when I left it had
grown over 10x.  I loved it there, but I left to try to innovate a $T+
addressable market that doesn&amp;rsquo;t look much different
&lt;a href=&#34;https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&amp;amp;q=classroom+2010&#34;&gt;now&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&amp;amp;q=classroom+1910&#34;&gt;100 years
ago&lt;/a&gt; with a really
excellent team.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I live in &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fort+Greene,+Brooklyn,+NY/&#34;&gt;Fort
Greene&lt;/a&gt; with my
wife Sarah and our dog Oscar.  I like taking pictures and have lately tried my
hand at homebrewing.&lt;/p&gt;
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