Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

There are too many cases where someone followed Google Maps or Apple Maps blindly and ended up somewhere they weren’t supposed to. Before Google maps was available Map My India was the most up to date option available for maps in India. I remember one time me and Gaurang were on my way to visit friends and the map kept insisting that we take a left from the top of the flyover. This was before the time when algorithms would auto update the route if you missed the turn so it kept insisting that we take a U-Turn and turn from the top of the bridge. Ended up having to restart the session before it gave us an alternative route.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I remind myself that you can’t always trust google maps.

Even with Google Maps you have to watch where it is trying to take you, I once was directed to take a road that was about six inches wider than my car, (It started a bit wider and narrowed as I drove into it) had to reverse back out of the way before I got stuck there. Apple maps is even ‘better’ in that Australian Police had to release an advisory back in 2012 warning people about its Potentially Life Threatening” Misdirection.

There is no system that is 100% up to date and accurate but it is expected that when you are you following directions, you use your own brain as well once in a while so you don’t end up in the middle of a desert, or drive into a lake or take a longer way to get where you are going.

– Suramya

There are Two kinds of people in the world…

There are Two kinds of people in the world… 1. Those that think EOD means 5:00pm 2. those that think EOD means 11:59pm

Which one do you fall under? I actually fall under neither because for me EOD is when I sign off for the day which is usually about 1am-2am depending, as when I say EOD I mean my End of Day i.e. when I log off for the day/night.

– Suramya

Interviewing people is hard and each of us has their own bag of tricks and filters we use to identify the correct candidate for the position. However, some of the ways that people use to filter out applicants just make you go ‘Wow!’ with a head shake. One such example is below:

The iPhone is so much better than any other phone it isn’t funny. I now check for phone type in interviews and automatically disqualify the Android Users

Using a phone preference as a filter is not the right way to filter out candidates, if this becomes the norm then folks will start filtering candidates on what music they like, what brands they wear or what car they drive. Unless you are working at apple rejecting people for using an Android phone (which for the record is way better then iPhone) is foolish. It is also extremely classist, it automatically filters out people who can’t afford to buy an expensive iPhone as the General cost range for an iPhone is between $500 – $1,500+ whereas an Android phone would range between $100-$1,750+. It also filters out people who care about compatibility of their phone with other users at their home as it is hard to connect an iPhone to an Android ecosystem.

Plus it tells me that you are more concerned about arbitrary markers of evaluation than actually relevant criteria. Personally, I think that if the person interviewing me is using something like this as a filtering mechanism then I am better off getting rejected as who know what insane criteria they might come up with for performance evaluation once you join and start working with them.

I do have a lot of thoughts on interview processes and how some companies do screening but that is a post for another time.

– Suramya