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We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews

blog.interviewing.io

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

#81

Post by vegabook »

So the point here, hopefully, is to allow truly talented female coders to overcome the bias against women generally, which exists because of the fallacy of averages.

Hopefully, the idea is not to push the erroneous view that women are on average equally good at coding than men. That is objectively untrue.

I can, with enthusiasm, support a technology which helps the (smaller number of) women who are genuinely good coders to shine through the bias. I cannot accept any technology which seeks to mask the reality that in this particular domain of modern life (coding), men are usually better performers than women. Because that would be regressive.

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

#82

Post by jdmichal »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #63
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 actually don't think you should put the question on the interview feedback form. That invites bias into the question. "Oh, this candidate did well, must be a man." In fact, having interviewers consciously guess at the gender may even skew their perception of the interview performance post-hoc. I would, however, be interested in a separate experiment to gauge the effectiveness of the voice modulation.

Ask after the normal survey is complete and submitted.

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

#83

Post by yummyfajitas »

smokeyj wrote: post #49

I'd be more interested in quantifying productivity and seeing if there's a systematic discrepancy between productivity and gender. Either the market is accurately pricing talent or there's a delta to be exploited. I think if a paper was released tomorrow that said "female programmers 30% undervalued as observed by double blind coding challenge" head hunters would fix that problem overnight.

This was studied among lawyers. Female lawyers were significantly less productive.

https://www.upf.edu/rs/_pdf/jornadesGenere/GenderGaps_Ferrer...

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

#84

Post by hyperpape »

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 .

Two things come to mind

1) I have seen quite a few things about the smaller numbers of men moving into traditionally female fields (nursing being a big example). That may fit with your point about cool/important jobs.

2) But regarding importance, I do think it matters a lot when the field is as socially prominent and well paid as tech jobs.

3) When you suggest that construction work might have a lot of sexism, you don't get a lot of pushback--it's just not a contested topic in the same way. Hence less discussion.

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

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

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 .

> Is anybody studying the reasons behind the huge gender disparity in roofing, welding or kindergarten teaching?

Yes, in at least the latter case (or, at least the more general case of primary/secondary teaching.)

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

#86

Post by DanBC »

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 .

Yes they are. You don't read about them because I guess you don't spend any time on the welding equivalent of HN.

Here's a few for welding (and these have already been posted to HN).

http://www.witc.edu/pgmpages/welding/women.htm

http://www.womeninwelding.com/

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/careers/hey-women-want-hot-c...

Generally these are easy to find. You just put "women in " and the industry into any search engine.

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

#87

Post by yummyfajitas »

It would be great if the author posted the raw numbers, so we could check the statistical analysis for ourselves. I'm concerned by the low number of females in the sample - was it high enough for the study to have significant statistical power?

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

#88

Post by Bartweiss »

rcpt wrote: post #76
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 .

Surgery has a large gap to but I rarely hear it brought up in these discussions. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/medical-specialtie...

That's a particularly interesting one, because it's not susceptible to the usual charges of "no one cares because it's low pay/status". If you look to radiology rather than surgery, the gender imbalance is enormous.

Suddenly we're looking at gender skew in two highly technical, prestigious, lucrative fields, and seeing that they prompt totally different types and amounts of discussion.

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

#90

Post by stale2002 »

smokeyj wrote: post #49

I'd be more interested in quantifying productivity and seeing if there's a systematic discrepancy between productivity and gender. Either the market is accurately pricing talent or there's a delta to be exploited. I think if a paper was released tomorrow that said "female programmers 30% undervalued as observed by double blind coding challenge" head hunters would fix that problem overnight.

If I were to start a company today, I'd definitely be tempted to only hire women, and pay my entire workforce 80 cents on the dollar, instead of 70 cents on the dollar.

I couldn't be sued for pay discrimination if ALL of my underpaid engineers are women, since there is no benchmark for a lawsuit to compare the discrimination too!

I jest, but it really does surprise me that more companies aren't trying to aggressively poach underpaid women from other companies.

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