Imagine you’re a 32-year old software engineer with a decade of quality work experience and a Bachelor’s in CS. You apply for a job at Microsoft, and they tell you that since their tech stack is very unusual, you have to do a six-month unpaid internship as part of the application process, and there is no guarantee that you get the job afterwards.
This is not how things work. You hire smart people, then you train them. It can take months before new employees are generating value, and they can always leave before their training is complete. This risk is absorbed by the employer.
If you have an unusual tech stack then the question of how to train people in that tech stack is fairly trivial. In a pre-pragmatic field, the question of how to train people to effectively work in the field is nontrivial.
Wait, is the workshop 6 months? I assumed it was more like a week or two.
This is not how things work. You hire smart people, then you train them
Sometimes that is how things work. Sometimes you do train them first while not paying them, then you hire them. And for most 32-year old software engineers, they have to go through a 4-8 year training credentialing process that you have to pay year’s worth of salary to go to. I don’t see that as a good thing, and indeed the most successful places are famous for not doing that, but still.
To reiterate, I of course definitely agree that they should try using money more. But this is all roughly in the same universe of annoying hoop-jumping as typical jobs, and not roughly in the same universe as the Branch Davidians, and I object to that ridiculous hyperbole.
they have to go through a 4-8 year training process that you have to pay year’s worth of salary to go to
They go through a 4-8 year credentialing process that is a costly and hard-to-Goodhart signal of intelligence, conscientiousness, and obedience. The actual learning is incidental.
The traditional way has its costs and benefits (one insanely wasteful and expensive path that opens up lots of opportunities), as does the MIRI way (a somewhat time-consuming path that opens up a single opportunity). It seems like there’s room for improvement in both, but both are obviously much closer to each other than either one is to Scientology, and that was the absurd comparison I was arguing against in my original comment. And that comparison doesn’t get any less absurd just because getting a computer science degree is a qualification for a lot of things.
Sure it does. I was saying that the traditional pathway is pretty ridiculous and onerous. (And I was saying that to argue that MIRI’s onerous application requirements are more like the traditional pathway and less like Scientology; I am objecting to the hyperbole in calling it the latter.) The response was that the traditional pathway is even more ridiculous and wasteful than I was giving it credit for. So yeah, I’d say that slightly strengthens my argument.
Imagine you’re a 32-year old software engineer with a decade of quality work experience and a Bachelor’s in CS. You apply for a job at Microsoft, and they tell you that since their tech stack is very unusual, you have to do a six-month unpaid internship as part of the application process, and there is no guarantee that you get the job afterwards.
This is not how things work. You hire smart people, then you train them. It can take months before new employees are generating value, and they can always leave before their training is complete. This risk is absorbed by the employer.
If you have an unusual tech stack then the question of how to train people in that tech stack is fairly trivial. In a pre-pragmatic field, the question of how to train people to effectively work in the field is nontrivial.
Wait, is the workshop 6 months? I assumed it was more like a week or two.
Sometimes that is how things work. Sometimes you do train them first while not paying them, then you hire them. And for most 32-year old software engineers, they have to go through a 4-8 year
trainingcredentialing process that you have to pay year’s worth of salary to go to. I don’t see that as a good thing, and indeed the most successful places are famous for not doing that, but still.To reiterate, I of course definitely agree that they should try using money more. But this is all roughly in the same universe of annoying hoop-jumping as typical jobs, and not roughly in the same universe as the Branch Davidians, and I object to that ridiculous hyperbole.
They go through a 4-8 year credentialing process that is a costly and hard-to-Goodhart signal of intelligence, conscientiousness, and obedience. The actual learning is incidental.
Okay, edited. If anything, that strengthens my point.
See this comment.
… And? What point do you think I’m arguing?
The traditional way has its costs and benefits (one insanely wasteful and expensive path that opens up lots of opportunities), as does the MIRI way (a somewhat time-consuming path that opens up a single opportunity). It seems like there’s room for improvement in both, but both are obviously much closer to each other than either one is to Scientology, and that was the absurd comparison I was arguing against in my original comment. And that comparison doesn’t get any less absurd just because getting a computer science degree is a qualification for a lot of things.
No, it doesn’t.
Sure it does. I was saying that the traditional pathway is pretty ridiculous and onerous. (And I was saying that to argue that MIRI’s onerous application requirements are more like the traditional pathway and less like Scientology; I am objecting to the hyperbole in calling it the latter.) The response was that the traditional pathway is even more ridiculous and wasteful than I was giving it credit for. So yeah, I’d say that slightly strengthens my argument.