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Being good at programming competitions correlates negatively with being good on the job
A few days ago I watched How Computers Learn talk by Peter Norvig. In this talk, Peter talked about how Google did machine learning and at one point he mentioned that at Google they also applied machine learning to hiring. He said that one thing that was surprising to him was that being a winner at programming contests was a negative factor for performing well on the job. Peter added that programming contest winners are used to cranking solutions out fast and that you performed better at the job if you were more reflective and went slowly and made sure things were right.
Watch the relevant video fragment from the lecture:
Peter Norvig says that being good at programming competitions correlates negatively with being good on the job at Google.
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdmyUZCl75s.
You can watch the full lecture here:
How Computers Learn - Vienna Gödel Lecture 2015 by Peter Norvig.
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1O3ikmTEdA.
I extracted the fragment from the QA session at 1h 11m 50s.
Comments
Doesn't come as much of a surprise, honestly. Programming contests teach you about working under time pressure, which is good, but they encourage short-term thinking... you do whatever it takes to solve your problem, because you don't need to worry about the code debt you're building up, the ongoing cost of maintaining the horrible hack you've put in place.
It's fine to go for the short-term hack when you're being called at 3am and that'll be enough to get your client's business running again. But at the same time, you've got to be thinking about how you fix it properly - and that's the bit that contests effectively discourage.
Someone should sponsor a programming contest where, for full points, you have to go back and modify your code 6 months later to meet new requirements.
I love the idea :) Let's start a crowdfunding campaign? :)
@pkrumis thanks for the extract - now I have a legitimate reason not to participate in these :)
Or, a modified version that doesn't require the six month wait. One half of the team has to write the code, and then immediately the other half of the team has to implement the changes.
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