There are a bunch of places where one human has to guage whether another human is "good" or "bad". EG airport security spotting terrorist or customs officials looking for smugglers or juries hearing witness evidence (or police) or employers interviewing candidates.
All the research I've seen shows that people are lousy at these.
To me her comments are a bit worrying: it sounds about as bad as any other stupid interview technique and it seems like it leaves a big risk for subconcious biases.
Take something as simple as a suit jacket. In one country you leave it on while you're working. Taking it off is sloppy and unprofessional. In another country you take it off and roll your sleeves up. You're working hard, you get hot. Keeping your jacket on means you're having an easy day. These are mostly uncociois and if you're not aware of ot and correct for it you risk calling someone sloppy or lazy eventhough neither is true.
HN frequently talks about bad interview practice; HN sees this as either an example of bad practice or of good practice poorly explained, and so they talk about it.
These are pretty contrived situations being used to draw sweeping conclusions about human nature.
YCombinator partners get to interact with founders in a variety of situations, over a long period of time. It's not like airport security trying to pick who's a terrorist or a jury evaluating a witness based on formal testimony. It's watching people as they behave and interact with each other, often when they don't know that they're being observed. Hundreds of different people a year, for close to a decade now. The YC partners are in a unique position to develop views that are far more nuanced than "this person is sloppy because he's not wearing a jacket".
Every professional has subconscious biases, from doctors to engineers to investors. What makes them professionals is that their biases are usually correct, and they have sufficient experience to know when to question them. For whatever reason, we react negatively when someone evaluates their own abilities. But it doesn't make sense for everyone to refuse to self-evaluate, or to always speak poorly of their own abilities. When you get to a certain age and level of confidence you know what you're good at and what you aren't good at. People should be able to state the truth as they see it about their own weaknesses AND strengths. And we should be evaluating the validity of those statements, not that their choice to state them.
> What makes them professionals is that their biases are usually correct, and they have sufficient experience to know when to question them.
This is so wrong. Doctors have biases - "this treatment works; I know it works because I see the effect it has on my patients". Doctors have access to evidence bases that tell them about the actual effectiveness of that treatment yet we still find real medical doctors using homeopathy (and not just as a placebo but because they think it works).
All the research I've seen shows that people are lousy at these.
I don't doubt that most people suck at it. One of the four people who co-founded YC is hardly "most people." Your general skepticism fails to be a good argument in this specific instance.
How about this: I'm skeptical of YC and PG; I think much of the touted philosophies lead to success "in spite of" instead of "because of", and I think people naturally want to feel superior which in the case of this community means special insight or cold hard truths, when really most of the time it's just pretty pedestrian ways of operating that are echoed in thousands of companies. The concept of the guru is ancient; this is the latest iteration.
All the research I've seen shows that people are lousy at these.
To me her comments are a bit worrying: it sounds about as bad as any other stupid interview technique and it seems like it leaves a big risk for subconcious biases.
Take something as simple as a suit jacket. In one country you leave it on while you're working. Taking it off is sloppy and unprofessional. In another country you take it off and roll your sleeves up. You're working hard, you get hot. Keeping your jacket on means you're having an easy day. These are mostly uncociois and if you're not aware of ot and correct for it you risk calling someone sloppy or lazy eventhough neither is true.
HN frequently talks about bad interview practice; HN sees this as either an example of bad practice or of good practice poorly explained, and so they talk about it.