Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

blog.interviewing.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 369 posts

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#51

Post by VLM »

benkuhn wrote: post #15

I 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…

To provide a specific example, some women have severe vocal fry / creaky voice. Its a socially transmitted thing like valley girl speak from decades ago.

I can only imagine how weird that sounds autotuned in a deep bass artificial voice. Imagine the movie line "I'm Batman" with vocal fry.

(edited to note, I see three people simultaneously cited vocal fry as an obvious experimental error and one tried to derail with the standard citation needed technique, so its probably a pretty serious issue)

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#53

Post by savanaly »

Kevin_S wrote: post #38
ranko wrote: post #34

Gender blinding in orchestral auditions (which usually involves screening the performers from sight and thus is pretty-much foolproof) has been shown to improve the percentage of women who are hired. See, for example, 'Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians', Claudia Goldin, Cecilia Rouse: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

That's interesting, I would have thought being able to see actual finger movements to analyze mechanics is a part of the evaluation process. Could be totally off base though I suppose.

Why would they care how you play as long as you sound better than everyone else? You're auditioning to make music for them, not to be their student.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#54

Post by crusso »

AndreyErmakov wrote: post #41

So we all realize technical interviews serve no practical purpose and should be quietly abandoned, but instead of looking into the future and discovering better ways of identifying talent, people keep inventing stuff that makes the torturing mechanism even more sophisticated so that the suffering can be prolonged. I'd like to see the people behind this project apply their technical skills to something more useful to…

So we all realize technical interviews serve no practical purpose and should be quietly abandoned

We don't really know that at all. Technical interviews are an invaluable tool in finding people who can write software and be collaborative co-workers.

A lot of software developers on the receiving end don't like them. Part of that is because a good technical interview pushes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to show that you can think through problems. Not all developers appreciate being taken out of their comfort zone.

The other part of the problem is that some technical interviews are conducted clumsily. "Code FizzBuzz, go!" As with the rest of the interview, skill of the interviewer matters.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#55

Post by grb423 »

Is anybody studying the reasons behind the huge gender disparity in roofing, welding or kindergarten teaching? I think there is a tremendous gender bias in those and other fields that is going unstudied, because nobody cares or because those fields aren't as cool or important.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#56

Post by joncp »

benkuhn wrote: post #15

I 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…

In the clips the modulated female ended up sounding like an effeminate man, which raises a whole other set of questions about bias.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#58

Post by cortesoft »

jboy wrote: post #42
benkuhn wrote: post #15

I 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…

I think it would be amazing if they could combine this voice-modulation technology with a facial motion capture technology (like in Avatar) to display artificial/shifting faces as well as voices. You could effectively create a computer screen-based version of the "scramble suit" used in A Scanner Darkly! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/mediaviewer/rm1872861440 I think a combined face+voice system would be even mo…

Wouldn't that just increase the problem that the person you are responding to brought up? If you capture their facial movements, it might be even easier to tell if they are a man or a woman, despite any scrambling you do.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#59

Post by rglover »

grb423 wrote: post #55

Is anybody studying the reasons behind the huge gender disparity in roofing, welding or kindergarten teaching? I think there is a tremendous gender bias in those and other fields that is going unstudied, because nobody cares or because those fields aren't as cool or important .

Thank you for bringing this up.

Re: We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

#60

Post by mxfh »

Can you pick your own filter?

Would go for Laurie Anderson's Voice of Authority anytime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YajQNIAY78k&feature=youtu.be...

Used to great extent here: The Cultural Ambassador - Live https://open.spotify.com/track/3uM0L8r6lJGaU54v9RjwJK

Post reply on HN