Rio closed and the ledger is mythological: Usain Bolt completed the triple-triple, 100m, 200m, 4x100m gold, at three consecutive Olympics. Nine finals, nine golds, zero doubt, all charisma. Phelps retires (again) at twenty-three career golds, more than most countries. Biles owns four golds and the sport’s future. I watched a human run 100 meters in 9.81 seconds while grinning sideways at the field, and I understand now why my non-tech friends tolerate my AlphaGo monologues: excellence in any domain is legible to every domain.
The startup world’s late-August dispatch: Apple is bracing for the EU’s state-aid ruling on its Irish taxes, due within days (the whisper number has a “b” in it, and the multinational tax stack is getting a compliance refactor whether it likes it or not), and our tech center won the expansion mandate it’s been chasing all year, so engineering here is doubling. I found out as a senior this time: two weeks early, in the room where the hiring plan got drawn. The room is smaller than I imagined and the whiteboard math is scarier. My Q4 is apparently interviews.
TIL: designing an interview loop from scratch, what we measure, what we think we measure, and the chasm between. Whiteboard algorithms predict whiteboard algorithm performance. We’re trying work-sample tests. Radical concept: audition the job.