Oh gosh, the good old army and it's effective measurements techniques. I remember wanting to be a military officer after undergrad and getting disqualified at MEPS for a nonsense issue (which I'll omit for privacy) and the guy next to be getting green lit to continue processing with the Marines with a ...wait for it... 11/100 on the ASVAB.
And it isn't "x/100," i.e., got x questions right and everything else wrong. It's xth percentile, i.e., better than x% of graduating high school seniors.
"better than x% of graduating high school seniors."
A very easy standard. I think I got a 96 or something like that and I missed a question about what was written on a light bulb (I said lumen which they largely do have, but they wanted watts). Stupid mistake still bugs me even though the score was meaningless.
MEPS stands for "Military Entrance Processing Station" and it's where you go to do a bunch of checks to see if you're fit to serve. It's also often where things like the ASVAB (Armed Service Vocational Aptitude Battery) and DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery), basically aptitude tests are held.
It's where you do testing, select your contract, swear in, leave for basic combat training or boot camp, and also do physical examinations, including some kind of odd ones, like duck walking across a room in your underwear with a bunch of other men.
MEPS = Military Entrance Processing Station
ASVAB = Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
MEPS is an initial processing station where the military makes a final determination that you are physically, morally, mentally, and legally able to serve in the military. The process includes things like physical exams, drug tests, and reviewing your records.
ASVAB is a standardized test developed by the military that helps determine what jobs you're eligible to do.
It's not really like the SAT at all. The SAT is pure academics.
>Appropriate for evaluating military recruits
Again, not clear if you're trying to be condescending. The ASVAB has logical reasoning portions (order the shapes based on labels of points), mechanical questions, I remember getting asked questions about force distribution of pulleys and tackle, but also questions like volume of a cone, basic trig, knights and knaves questions, what is the name of this screwdriver orientation, what's this engine piece called? ( Camshaft), and now there's even a computer science focused addition the Air Force uses.
It's a test that actually tells you about what you know and can understand, and is far more useful than an SAT or ACT exam.
> It's not really like the SAT at all. The SAT is pure academics.
I mean, it's a test that takes less than an afternoon where you answer questions by filling in bubbles and such. That's quite a lot like the SAT.
>The ASVAB has logical reasoning portions (order the shapes based on labels of points), mechanical questions, I remember getting asked questions about force distribution of pulleys and tackle, but also questions like volume of a cone, basic trig, knights and knaves questions, what is the name of this screwdriver orientation, what's this engine piece called? ( Camshaft), and now there's even a computer science focused addition the Air Force uses.
Is this not all "subject matter appropriate for evaluating military recruits" ?
You may be reading a bit much into what I wrote. My high school had everyone take it to fulfill a state requirement that we take so many standardized tests which gave schools the option of which ones to give.
>It's a test that actually tells you about what you know and can understand, and is far more useful than an SAT or ACT exam.
Being a bit condescending yourself here.
It's a standardized test appropriate for military recruits. For somebody who doesn't know was ASVAB means at all... this would seem a pretty good concise description.
They care about those scores primarily because the army trains people for various jobs and it takes longer to train dumb people for extremely complex jobs especially when you include the possibility of failure.
However, even people scoring 1/100 is still someone that graduated high school so it’s not as incompetent as you might think. They just aren’t sending someone like that to flight school.
I got a score of 96 on my ASVAB and made the decision to pursue a career in Infantry as an MOS 11-B after completing OSUT. As a highlight, I had the opportunity to attend Airborne School, which was an incredible experience. At that time, when I was 20 years old, the Army offered a substantial $60,000 signing bonus, the highest among all branches (save the Navy). Although I did explore the possibility of joining the Navy, they turned me down due to my GED qualification.
Fast forward to today, at 39 years old, I can honestly say that despite some challenges with my lower back, I have absolutely no regrets about the path I chose.
99 ASVAB, 132 GT score. Went 0311(rifleman), and eventually 0313(LAV Crewman). High ASVAB scores in the infantry are more common than people think. My recruiter tried to push me to computer networking, but I had already done that in real life, and wanted to try something I couldn't do in the real world.
Thank you. It's the kind of thing I fantasize about as a very bored mid-late 20s dev who likes fitness and the outdoors, so datapoints like yours are always interesting.
Would you recommend it to a young man, given the state of the military today? I'm old for the military (31) but was seriously considering it around 24-26. But I just couldn't get past report after report of the military happily doing obviously stupid/harmful stuff to its own, like burn pits.
It's complicated. When I joined, I was single, dirt poor, and it was an obvious way to climb out of poverty.
I'm not sure what your situation is, have you considered the National Guard? It's still a massive commitment, but it might just scratch that itch you have there. If you love it, its very easy to go active duty
Joining is a young man's game. I saw many 25-35 year olds at Basic Training suffer broken bones and dislocated joints. Many more than the 18 year olds.
As to recommending it, I do not. There can be greatly positive outcomes, but the risk of injury or death is too high for me to recommend to anyone. Unless it is your way of escaping poverty, which is the story for many veterans, the risk/reward isn't there.
I'll leave you with what I tell everyone who asks me in real life: Do I regret it? Sometimes. Would I do it again? Absolutely not. I saw too many of my friends die in a bankers oil war, or a politicians re-election strategy. Take your pick, they're all equally valid.
That sounds like a really amazing early life experience. I definitely do not side with people who denigrate military enlistment as beneath intelligent, skilled individuals, a set of people which included my parents at the time (early 1990s).
TIL, then. I know abilities have a range, and some people have a bad day, but my personal impression of that test was that it would be impossible to fail it, as such.
Anyways, if my anecdotal experience interacting with the military is accurate, the main requirement for being an Officer is enjoying LOTR/super hero/Sparta movies. Being able to do pull-ups or string together coherent sentences are less important.
If you want to know what's actually valued in the military, look at the names of recent defense contract startups. That tells you everything you need to know.
3-4 years ago I had such a bad experience interviewing with this company. The recruiter actively told me he was waiting to hear a response from someone else before extending me an offer, that eventually came in 40-60% below my expectation. Would love to work in this satellite communications field though if anyone has any other recommendations...
Early in my career, I wanted to try one of SF's sales bootcamps because my idiot uncle was making > 400k in BD @microsoft. I was in my early twenties and all I saw was him wining & dining and making a lot of money doing it. Well for some reason, the sales bootcamp camp called a BD rep from a startup I was working at, and it turned out this guy and I didn't see eye to eye so he tanks my reputation to the bootcamp and I didn't get to move forward. I ended up having a nice career in tech over the last 15 years, I'm currently a staff engineer and interviewing for roles from senior staff to CTO level of startups but some part of me always wonders what if I was able to successfully pivot into sales...
I married someone from an IIT/IIM background and I think the public should really meet them and reduce this hype. My wife, while relatively smart and working at a FAANG - is not that smart (I'm trying to use my words respectfully). I've met many of her friends from a similar background from IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, and IIM-A. Infact the IIT-JEET exam is not even "that" competitive, I think a lot of people get caught up in their own smoke and believe millions of indians take it every year - the fact is that less people take the IIT-JEET (a couple of hundred thousand), than some of our exams here - like for law school and medical school. Overall, while I think my wife is a wonderful person, I would peg her and many of her classmates at the equilance of a UC Davis graduate - (Cal/Stanford alum myself, but going off reference points off my high school cohort).
As someone from an IIT, an average student in IIT would possibly pass for an average student in aUS state college (UT Austin, UCSD etc), but the geniuses in the Indian student population are over represented in IIT’s. The top student in my batch, decided to do independent research from his home, published a blog post that Ian Goodfellow praised in a tweet and now switched fields and is pursuing a PhD in mathematics from Stanford.
> I would peg her and many of her classmates at the equivalence of a UC Davis graduate
Wouldn't you say the same about most MIT and Stanford grads as well? A lot of eminent people in Tech industry graduated from MIT and Stanford. But, in my experience, the reverse isn't true: graduating from those schools is usually not an indicator of eminence.
The same can be said for Cal/Stanford students. (An alum from both) I’ve met some really smart people and some really mediocre people out of these schools. Same is probably true for IITs and IIMs. Testing well shouldn’t be taken as a proxy for being a genius, but at the same time, concluding that all of them are average, is a bit of a stretch.
That being said, we had students transfer over from UC Davis to Cal, and I think comparing your wife to a UC Davis graduate, is not as big of a put down as you think. Most UC Davis grads would perform almost the same as an average UC Berkeley grad if they had the same opportunity.
> the fact is that less people take the IIT-JEET (a couple of hundred thousand)
This is factually incorrect, or maybe you are referring to JEE-Advanced. The top of the funnel (i.e., JEE Mains), is over 1MM out of which about 25% qualify for JEE-Advanced.
Echo this. While there are smart people. Entry into IITs is based on pure rote learning and discipline. Kids who memorize tomes of math and science and go through rote practice exams over and over again over their peers who are experiencing life normally usually are the ones who get in.
I have met much smarter and successful people who went into regular technical schools and are much more creative than IIT types.
Sure and certain things are impossible to do unless you’re extremely strong. So what? Pure intelligence, like strength, is generally not the limiting factor
Yep, in many situations intelligence beyond a certain threshold isn't the limiting factor. That's the qualifier missing from the first comment that I addressed. In some situations (that HN members may be disproportionately interested in), it is and it matters.
> the fact is that less people take the IIT-JEET (a couple of hundred thousand), than some of our exams here - like for law school and medical school
Do you have some source backing this up? A cursory search reveals that more than 850,000 applicants attempted the IIT-JEE exam in 2023. Total available college vacancies slightly more than 16,000. This number would be around 5000 for the OG IITs.
For US medical colleges, for 2022-2023 admission cycle, 22,712 of the 55,188 students who applied to medical school matriculated. Perhaps these numbers belongs to a specific US region?
I would say that attempting JEE is now more or less a cultural thing. 90% of the applicants (pardon the number out of thin air) sit the exam because that's just something you do after finishing school.
the problem is most standardized tests aren't good at really finding the extremes of the spectrum. There are some proposed solutions to this, whatever government actually implements them will reap the rewards of finding and recruiting the best talent available and nurturing them to reach their potential.
basically what you are talking about is the difference between someone who is very smart, one in a thousand, that can score well with lots of studying compared to a one in a million type genius capable of winning math Olympiads. Most standardized tests lump these people in the same category
That's probably way too high of a threshold. Many standardized tests lump everyone who is in the top 5-10% of ability, as long as they prepare sufficiently well.
IITs signal a combination of high IQ and great work ethic. People with that combination, as a general rule of thumb, do well in the professional world. But they should not be confused with Einsteins.
It has a lot to do with your personality and the way you developed early in your life.
There is a lot going on in your brain before the age of 3. A kid that is left alone in front of a TV or in a tiny space with plastic toys all the time or lives in a toxic home will develop differently to one that grows playing with other kids, pets, has space to move around, that can go outside and experience nature and has an overall richer childhood experience.
Good nutrition, a healthy childhood, low exposure to pollution (lead, PFAS, phthalates, etc), genetics, etc. have significant impact.
You can train hard but if you had early life experiences that turned you into a neurotic person, your "equilibrium" will always take you back to being a neurotic.
It's extremely brutal. I'm a staff engineer and a tech lead of ~12 engineers, I've either been getting low ball offers, or ending the last round of interviews to get no offer. I've employed but have been looking for a job for ~6 months with terrible results. I graduated from a T5 school, have worked at a "unicorn" startup, and have an average of 3 years at every role. My conversion rate is a little better - 3 interviews for every 40-50 apps, but I've gotten 2 offers for 6 months of searching.
My most memorable was this tier 3 hedge fund trying to convince me to take a junior IC role for a new team that had also hired a manager and director from outside the company for a new endeavor/initiative, and the manager had been at his last 3 jobs for roughly over a year each, get out of here lol.
I interviewed from Jan-Feb pretty much as a full time job. Lots of applications out, maybe 5-10 well-researched applications a day which yielded one or two interviews a day for that time period. Three went to offers and I'm pretty sure I could have closed a few more if I hadn't taken the job I did.
I've done everything from UI to cloud to embedded stuff, but I was mostly focusing on embedded roles thinking that a) I like that sort of work and b) the competition wouldn't be as bad, though Amazon did layoff a lot of device folk in my geographic area.
Salary expectations seemed to be a big thing at companies, and I'd expect that FAANG folks looking to find that sort of compensation at smaller companies are likely to be disappointed or possibly even weeded out at the start.
That said, some companies are definitely low-balling but most seem willing to pay around 'market rate' for folks. I took a slight step-down in pay, but I like what I'm working on and the people and the companies that we offering more money we're offering enough more to overcome that.
It means that when companies would ask me what my salary expectations were, I'd tell them I was looking for something "market rate". Exactly those words. I'd often follow up by asking "Do you have a range in mind for this position?" and go from there.
At that point I've answered their salary question and probably not scared them off and if they really want to put a number on it, it's up to them. At this stage, if they don't have a range or just won't say, it tells you a bit about them.
non-FAANG - I'm familiar with Disney's salary levels, and would say I'm getting offers at a level below what I would expect (or 40k-60k below on base).
Sorry for the confusion, I'm trying to interview for only staff/senior staff level roles. This company just had a job listing for "Software Engineer" to build out a new initiative so I decided check it out. And yeah, not getting the 20% pay bump between job hops that I'm looking for.
There's no confusion... I'm asking is your definition of lowball something like "offering Junior-like pay when I wanted Senior/Staff-like pay"
> And yeah, not getting the 20% pay bump between job hops that I'm looking for.
That kind of answers my question lol. This isn't the environment where I'd consider not getting a pay bump a low ball.
And ironically that mentality is what I infer when I hear stories like OP's: These companies assume that people from certain backgrounds have expectations forged in a much more favorable market, and they'd rather not waste their time interviewing someone looking for a 20% pay bump in a down market...
I’m a principal software engineer. If it takes me more than a month to get up to speed with an organization (I usually work with small-mid sized companies), I consider that a failure. Six months to first contribution is insane.
First contribution is not the same as up-to-speed. I'll also note that a manager often needs a broader view of the company than an engineer, though at principal level I'd expect the gap to be less (but it isn't always).
First Contribution and Up to full speed ramp up are completely different things.
Expectations at FAANGS is that it might take a month or two for the contribution to start (one week, if you count bootcamp tasks at Meta), but it takes about 6+ months to full ramp up at the Senior+ level.
Regardless of how good you are, you're ramp up time is very dependent on the place.
If you're walking into a place with very little in the way of documentation and process, it could take a while to learn enough to be effective (ex: 50 different microservices and 5 different stacks, nuanced environments, etc.)
On the other hand, if everything is very standardized and well documented, you can jump right in.
Oof. Are you going out for L6? Is the goal a big company, or a startup?
Reading all the comments in this thread, I wonder if there's some correlation to specific areas of the tech industry. e.g., Are people working in the AI space (or even something like ML infra) just inundated with job offers right now?
fwiw I'm a backend engineer - primarily building out services in Java/Scala/Go. I would say the market probably isn't as good as someone with a Masters/PhD looking for ML engineering roles, but that would be anecdotal after chatting with friends.
Congrats on the launch! I actually considered launching something tangential - though I never figured out who the customers would really be nor how I would pitch this to companies. Excited to see where this takes you!
Thanks! Yup, private retrieval is interesting as a product because it's a fundamentally new capability; there aren't really competitors we can show incremental improvements against. If you're still interested in the space, we'd be happy to compare notes! Feel free to email us: founders AT blyss.dev
