Horstman's Wager (Part 1 of 2)

Submitted by mauzenne on Sun, 09/16/2007 - 13:01.
in

This cast is about interview preparation, and the need for ethics and candor during the process.

We've been pleased by the demand for our interviewing product - close to 1,000 purchases so far, and the early feedback has been quite powerful. If you'd like to order, you can do that here.

One of the tenets that distinguishes the casts is its emphasis on preparation. One of the Forum posts actually suggests that folks buy before they think they need it, because many of our suggestions require time to implement (it can take months, done right).

BUT... there are those who disagree. There are interviewees who believe that the key to interviewing is to "play the game". Many of these folks will tell you that the way to prepare is learn about the company (false, and proven so in Lesson #1), so that one can "be what the company wants".

Those who have suggested that to Mark meet with his famous response: "you've never seen Horstman's Wager, have you?"

In this cast, we'll discuss Horstman's Wager: why "playing the game" is the kiss of death in interviewing.


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tomas's picture
Submitted by tomas on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 10:45.

Nice cast. Can't wait to hear part 2,

Nice cast. Can't wait to hear part 2, although I must admit I did sneak a peak at the show notes.

The discussion of interviewing as a "black box" reminds me of those studies where users who get to twiddle some knobs or tweak some parameters of a software simulation of something like stock price movements often feel like they are having an impact on the results even when the results are completely random. They build mental models of how they think the program is working to try to create some kind of correlation between their actions and the outputs they are seeing.

wendii's picture
Submitted by wendii on Tue, 09/18/2007 - 20:08.

Guys, do you think they got it yet?

Guys,

do you think they got it yet? :-)

Thank you for the name check.

Wendii