Remove names, gender, race from admissions. Have a selection board base their decisions solely on a combination of transcripts and essays.
I think standardized testing is gaming the system, what you cannot game are transcripts of life long learners who value their education. If you remove all gendered language, names, mentions of race from essays you will hopefully be able to make your group decisions with less bias. The group should be diverse enough on multiple metrics.
Will it be perfect, no. But I think it's a better start than what we currently have.
I just want to say, and I hate that saying this makes me come off as racist because I don't want to speak about a whole country.
I go to a pretty good American school which has a lot of foreigners going on visas, the majority being Indian and Chinese students. The group of Indian students in my under grad got caught cheating all together. They were just hanging out in discord giving each other answers.
In a lot of other countries it's seen as an "Us vs The Man" mentality. So if you are cheating or figure out how to take advantage of a system you are seen as beating "The Man or The System" and you are smarter than it. In a lot of Western counties, that is not the case.
That is a good question. I think the university should decide on the "why" and base candidates off of that. And you are are right, much like picking a hire, a best friend, your spouse, there is a lot that isn't quantifiable.
4.0 student who you interview and they come off as a Jerk, they are smart as hell or a 3.93 student who is passionate about learning, wants to be there, and is a humble person. Which do you want affecting your school's culture?
You are right, it is not. I totally get that and I think we should work to remove bias out of the process.
Maybe removing names and genders from the essays or similar entry requirements. There are ways to reduce bias without resorting to some kind of standardized test which only shows that they can pass a test.
Elite Universities are looking for people of character, that could be anyone from any walk of life. But it is self-serving, they are looking for people who will end up bringing money, recognition, and fame back to the school. They are looking for people who want to go there, who will go far in life and talk about how X university is where it all started.
I get that this is a difficult topic, and I want everyone in the world to be a lifelong learner, reader, and more.
But not everyone is built the same, that doesn't mean they won't go far in life. And I don't think recognizing that difference is racist or discriminatory. Not everyone will become a Harvard grad, the president, CEO of a company, etc. Some people are dealt a shittier hands in life and get less draws from the deck, we should work to fix that, but we shouldn't lump everyone into one basket.
Training someone to pass a test to get in is not the same as finding the right person to go there. Does this open up the possibility of discrimination? Yes.
Tell me about how many people I know who went to a CISSP bootcamp, passed the test, and walk around not knowing shit? It's the same in a lot of universities too. Elite universities are looking for people who fit their image and who they believe are going somewhere in life. Universities, especially universities are looking for people that are going places. They are looking for people who will bring recognition, money, and fame back to the university.
While you might be right on some of this. I think the colleges are looking for people not based on standardized tests alone. Most standardized tests are just rote learning and memorization.
I would challenge that these schools are looking for people who think better than most people. Yes they need to be smart when it comes to doing school work, but they need to be more than that to attend an elite university.
The people that go to these schools go on to be the upper-crust of society. They can think outside of the box and push the envelope of human knowledge.
Can other people do that without going to these schools? Sure. But these schools are looking for those people.
Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America
I liked these two books together because they are two sides to the same coin and offers something I feel a lot of political books don't, a hope for a better America. Both books offer perspectives on this history of the political parties and how we have gotten to this point.
World
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How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future
Vaclav Smil is an amazing author, his latest book really covers a range of topics from energy to food and how solving these problems are not as simple as people think. If you like these types of books, his other book (more dense) Energy and Civilization: A History is something I would highly recommend.
Leadership
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To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Leadership has been a big topic for me recently to explore and out of the books I have read these three have opened my mind. I was in the Navy for severals years and so To Risk It All and Extreme Ownership really resonated with me. Execution is a great book as well and the three of them really cover the core of leadership, making hard choices, ownership, and execution based in reality.
Some of these books are new and a few of them are older, but these and several others are books I have read this year and have found them very enjoyable. I will also put out there if you like business an honorable mention of "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" which also was a pretty good read about how some businesses have done well and beaten the market while other industry giants have not.
I just bought a new smart phone after 4 years. My old phone was running Android 9 and stopped receiving security updates in May, 2021. The battery was also shot and I had about 30-45 minutes of phone use before it would just shutdown. Did it feel snappy while using it, yes. If it had Android 12 and kept getting security updates would I have probably continued to use it? yes.
People have been saying time and time again for years that the race to have the slimmest X was stupid. There is no reason why phone companies cannot do a plastic phone back that pops on and off and lets the user upgrade their battery like the phones use to have. There is also no reason why we cannot have longer phone support, other than time and money.
There are some big upgrades that happen every 4-5 years or so that would probably make some people upgrade like 5G, AMOLED screens, 120hz, or 4k resolution.
I do find it personally funny that most people shell out money for the latest iPhone year after year for the most part, but will have some shitty macbook air from 5 years ago. But that is because we have attached status to phones and not computers.
In the end, it is up to the companies to make these changes, but having a longer lasting phone goes against the idea of selling more phones per year for more money. They would rather ditch chargers and the plastic wrappers and virtue signal they are environmentally friendly so people feed good instead of actually saving the environment by making a phone last 5+ years.
I cannot read the whole article because of the paywall, but I do find it ironic that "tech" consists of Meta, Twitter, Salesforce, Stripe, and some other companies while there are hundreds of smaller tech companies that seem to be doing ok.
Some of the above companies have become huge monoliths and this is the market adjusting itself. The companies growth has slowed and smaller, leaner, more agile companies are out maneuvering them.
It sucks to see people losing their jobs and getting laid off, but the recession and closing market space has triggered off more wartime CEO actions instead of peacetime CEO. Instead of expanding, these leaders realized their expansion is or has come to an end and instead they are cutting all the excess they can to stay afloat.
And while I do not like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, I think they are reading the market correctly on what is coming and what they can do to put their businesses in the right place for the future.
> CEO, he basically acknowledged it's a problem and put it on me to bring it up with the CTO however I see fit.
This is the problem, I wouldn't call myself an expert in leadership, but if your CEO doesn't have the emotional fortitude to bring this up with the CTO it is a leadership fail. If your leadership team cannot have candid feedback with each other is it not going to work out well.
I have no idea how big your startup is besides the engineering staff you said and where exactly you fit into the org chart (VP of Engineering -> P of Engineering -> CTO?), but being a leader means holding other leaders accountable.
How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil - It is an interesting book because the author does not paint a rosy picture of what needs to get done to solve our energy and food problems in the coming decades. I really enjoyed it.
The Afghanistan Papers - A book similar to the Pentagon Papers and goes over the 20+ year War on Terror in Afghanistan and how much it failed.
I read a lot, but these were the some of the last couple of books I've read in 2022 that I found interesting.
I am curious how this effort will pay off because I feel the speaker and music app category is pretty crowded.
The app claims five ad-free channels and it looks to be more of a something you play in the background. Which is nice, but the speakers from a design perspective are loud and noticeable which goes against "background music"
I will be honest, I might not be the targeted audience for this product at all, but I do hope Polaroid succeeds in this new product/service portfolio.
I don't know, maybe talk to her more, therapist, something?