There are several paid SaaS apps and / or Slack bots that do this. It’s a viable niche, but has gotten somewhat crowded in the past few years. Earlyish example: https://iDoneThis.com (worked there 2014/2015)
You can repeat a generalization over and over again. It sounds right — but it doesn’t stick. You can’t translate it into your own practice. You learn the words, but not the intuition.
Telling concrete stories helps us learn the intuition, too.
This really reminds me of the concept of elaborative encoding whereas we learn by connecting facts with preexisting knowledge [0]. Abstract things do not stick because we have less touch points to connect them with. The Baker Baker paradox for instance describes the fact that we are much more likely to remember that a person is a baker than the more abstract fact that his name is Baker [1].
That was extremely interesting, thanks for the pointers.
There are really so many ways to conduct "hiring", the process of onboarding someone new into a group; and this serves as impeccable illustration that if you are willing to innovate in that regard, we can do so much more and so much better today than just 10-20 years ago (and ever before).
The process of Automattic makes you want to work with them if only because they seem to have a fantastic culture, really play the game at a higher level on the 'human' part.
I haven't met a colleague at Automattic who quit a job for the trial. And, for what it's worth, my (anecdotal) gut feeling tells me that we have quite a few people with dependents -- kids, sick parents -- apply, work, and succeed here.
Work is mostly asynchronous. Not sure if that came through properly. If you have about 90 minutes time every evening you can go through the trial within a month.
> Why go through all of that for an extra $250/wk?
You wouldn’t. If you’re interested in the job and Automattic are interested in you, you can do a trial. Because it’s a non-trivial time investment, they offer a small compensation.
If Google flies you in for a full day interview, do they pay you a full day’s salary? Or, any salary at all? They don’t.
I don’t think that companies in general have really figured out hiring. I liked the trial at Automattic much more than whiteboard coding and theoretical architectural discussions.
And it also helped me find out whether I would like to work there — it’s a trial in both directions, really. For the applicant it’s a much better way to figure out whether they like the company and its people than, say, things a recruiter tells you on the phone.
I can’t find the study right now, but there was one that evaluated predictors of job performance and found that only work samples and general cognitive ability were really usable and reliable measures.
As far as I know the hours are just a rough guideline, and then also used for billing. When I did my trial it was OK to do more or less, depending on what worked for me.
In the end, the trial’s outcome is more determined by results — what you did and how you did it.
