I run into this a lot, but why is there still a 255 character path limit in Windows? What a fucking joke. Things like that make me want to move back to Linux where such issues do not occur.

Some of this is really scary and will be used incorrectly as people in general use data and stats to reinforce their own biases, but I’ve complained a lot lately so I’ll point out these interesting bits that is actually pretty obvious if you are, like, awake ever.

Max Simkoff, Evolv’s co-founder and CEO, told me that his company’s big-data crunching had revealed a stream of intriguing, contrarian results. For example, “people with a criminal background stay longer on the job and perform better at entry-level hourly jobs,” he said. Having “relevant experience” for a job didn’t track with later productivity. Indeed, the relative quality of a manager or supervisor was more important in influencing worker attrition and productivity than the background of the individual workers. Other useful insights — as reported by the Atlantic’s Don Peck in a comprehensive recent feature story, “They’re Watching You At Work” – include the nugget that educational attainment is not as big a factor in job success as the conventional wisdom believes.

Anyone who is not beset and afflicted by an MBA would know this already. I’ve found that in the workplace (and I’ve hired a lot of people) that education means almost nothing, and in some areas within IT at least it is actively harmful. Experience does matter, but intelligence matters more. After the first 3-6 months of experience benefit, smarter people always always always do better without exception.

How to measure intelligence, though, and personality suitability? It’s very hard. I’ve not found any way to do it successfully. No one has, I guess, or we wouldn’t keep reading articles ad infinitum that discuss it.