cool but it's sad to know that this is required to maintain gender equality
We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
21–30 of 369 posts
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#22Amazing how the author believes they have proved that there is 'no systematic bias' with This One Simple Trick! Edit: sorry for the tone, but I just find this whole article bait. The headline is bait. The writer acknowledges the limitations of their study (basically that it doesn't prove much) but then makes a whole bunch of extrapolations anyway, and makes those guesses the meat of the article rather than investigat…
Yes, that's exactly what they say: > On the subject of sample size, we have no delusions that this is the be-all and end-all of pronouncements on the subject of gender and interview performance. But let's ignore science to fit our pre-existing biases!
That comment was snarky, dismissive, and inaccurate, but please don't respond with snark of your own.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#23I always felt they should do something like this for politicians during a race. No names, age, gender, political leanings, etc. Just interviews and debate.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#24I want applicant-side voice modulation to mask my insecurity and non-native language skills.
Both maturity and strong communication are important for any professional position.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#25I would really have liked to see them check whether the gender-blinding actually worked. Even if someone's voice is modulated, they may have gendered behavior patterns that could influence someone's performance ratings. I wouldn't be surprised if I could guess the gender of a voice-modulated person pretty accurately from other cues. To combat this, they could have asked the interviewer during the performance assessme…
This would be a fantastic additional thing to monitor for. It was my first thought after hearing the voice modulation clips-- even in a manly voice, someone saying, "Oh I totally sound like a dude" sounded quite feminine since most guys wouldn't say "totally."
Two things I noticed from the clip on the FastCompany article-- it's modulated, but I can hear A.) Vocal Fry B.) Statements that sound like they're ending with a question (the voice goes up at the end.). These are both more common speaking patterns with women. The question thing in particular is common with people who are not as confident.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#26> Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance The main issue with gender and hiring is unconscious bias on the interviewer's end , which voice modulation does make sense as a tool to avoid bias. Per the grading criteria, they are judging on skill, problem solving, and communication. I'm not sure how voice modulation would af…
The interviewer is the one grading the interviewee.
Right, which highlights another problem: interview.io's interviewers are presumably trained to be more objective and stringent on the criteria. This may introduce a selection bias.
Untrained interviewers, like the ones at startups randomly pulled into interviews and also hiring for culture fit, may have a bias that is more conscious.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes everyone sound the same. Changing only women's voices is a tell-tale sign. If you get a guy who sounds "computery", or "off", it's a girl.
They didn't only change women's voices. They also changed some men to sound like women. And they made some voices sound processed without pitch changes.
That could be a fun thing to break out at a party. I wonder what me sounding like a woman, sounds like.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#28> Maybe tying coding to sex is a bit tenuous, but, as they say, programming is like sex — one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.
Hilarious! But I wonder if it is true.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#29Why not just use text? There are many speech characteristics of gender that will never be found and masked by modulation. Simple placements of words, parts of speech referring to the self, and other things are all much better clues to gender then voice frequency and pitch. For example, when speaking to some people who I know who are either naturally very high or low pitch, or are trans-gendered, there is a lot more i…
Because your actual interview will not be text-based and if their goal is to simulate an actual interview scenario where you will be speaking out loud an expected to form coherent thoughts to questions on the fly this comes closer to doing so than text based.
Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews
#30Planet Money did a great podcast on this recently [1]. It's pretty cool how it works.
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/22/475339930/episo...