We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by jules » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #211

Tyr42 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence to the contrary, where they have run this experiment in the real world. This is for Orchestras. As late as 1970, the top five orchestras in the U.S. had fewer than 5% women. It wasn’t until 1980 that any of these top orchestras had 10% female musicians. But by 1997, they were up to 25% and today some of them are well into the 30s. In the 1970s and 1980s, orchestras began using blind auditions. Candi…

The supply of women with related degrees from uni is too low. If only 20% of the candidates qualified on paper are women, then a perfectly blind hiring process would result in 20% women. Expecting something else implies some fundamental misunderstanding of math.

That's not what the people of this article found though:

> men were getting advanced to the next round 1.4 times more often than women. Interviewee technical score wasn’t faring that well either — men on the platform had an average technical score of 3 out of 4, as compared to a 2.5 out of 4 for women.

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

#232

Post by bduerst » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #170

bduerst wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> men and women have some fundamental differences in psychology This was largely debunked from a biological perspective [1]. Any psychological perceptions you may be referring to are largely cultural and subject to the biases that this product is trying to combat. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.full

That paper has little, if anything, to do with aphextron's point. It's a study of brain anatomy. Here's some directly-relevant literature, which points to a systematic preference for occupations in men vs women: [0] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

Hence saying it was largely debunked from a biological perspective.

aphextron didn't elaborate on the source of the psychological differences. I was pointing out that it wasn't biological and most likely cultural.

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

#233

Post by lotharbot » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #213

lotharbot wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not downvote your above comments, but I can see why others might. Your argument, while perhaps not intended to, parallels a standard trolling technique of asking for evidence and then dismissing any information presented. You complain about one study not being broad enough, about others for being behind a paywall, and still others for being on twitter. Ultimately, the standard you ask for ("this pattern has onl…

You seem to be confirming my guess (perceiving a "standard trolling technique" === "preconception"), but I am not looking for supporters or detractors, only justification for the original claim: >These are both more common speaking patterns with women. It is incorrect to ask for "only observed" data in this instance, but I also was clear to state that it was only an example of data that could be presented. >parallels…

>> "(perceiving a "standard trolling technique" === "preconception")"

You claimed preconception about the topic. Perceiving trolling is a preconception about your rhetorical technique. Don't overlook that important nuance.

>> [SNIP -- attempts to justify]

I don't care whether you are or aren't justified in rejecting the data (I have no dog in this fight.) I'm simply noting that you seem to give off the impression that you're not genuinely interested, or open to being persuaded. This is more than just whether or not you accept the studies; it's in the phraseology you choose. Just as an example, you found the time to be snarky about downvotes, but not to express gratitude toward any of the people who have tried to provide you with data (even if the data is insufficient.)

> "I don't think I am asking for extraordinary proof."

The line I quoted ("this pattern has only been observed with women") was an unreasonable, extraordinary standard of proof. In a vacuum I would have ignored it. But in combination with the snark and dismissiveness, the sum total does fit a pattern that is common to people trolling on all sorts of topics.

Again: I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm just trying to help you understand what about your behavior might be causing people to perceive you as worthy of downvotes. I'm trying to give you insight as to how, if you are interested in genuine dialog, you can make that clear to others. Because your posts thus far create a very different perception than that.

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

#234

Post by azinman2 » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

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…

While not scientific, I heard a pre-recorded interview done with interview.io's gender masking where both sounded like men (in reality one was a man and one was a woman). I got the genders wrong when prompted to guess, so it was pretty damn convincing from my POV.

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

#235

Post by balls187 » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

killface wrote: post #222

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert, but isn't "let's just hire only women for a while to balance out the numbers" going to violate a whole bunch of employment regulations?

No. If you're a white male, that's bad. Anything else is diversity. They'll come up with some bullshit like "since women aren't the majority of hiring managers, this doesn't count as discrimination" or something. Like they have with racism (where black people in America literally can't be racist).

I'll just point out that white males are very well represented in Tech.

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

#236

Post by killface » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #90

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…

It's because we all know the 70c number is a lie when you actually compare experience, education, job role, and more stuff like that. I mean, don't try to bring it up with an SJW, but we all know the flaws of the study. the 70/77c number only compares all men to all women -- this includes part-time workers, moms who work easier jobs for more time flexibility (with accompanying pay decrease/stagnation), etc. Given the societal norm of women staying at home with kids, and being the ones to sacrifice for family life, this shouldn't be surprising.

If we want to fix that number, we need to give Dads more leeway, more flexibility, and importantly, no gruff, about taking care of their families. This will likely result in a net productivity drop of men as a whole across all industries. But it'll probably fix the perceived pay gap.

If women were universally paid 20-30% less than men for the exact same job, and possess exactly the same qualifications, quality of work, time put in, education, experience, etc., there would literally be swaths of companies only hiring women. It's a no-brainer decision. The fact that we don't see these companies is proof that the gap is a myth.

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

#237

Post by hasenj » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

alansmitheebk wrote: post #219

This is ridiculous. At some point we need to face up to the reality that most women in the US are just not interested in working in technology. There is no evil conspiracy to keep women out of tech. Maybe high school guidance counselors and parents don't encourage women to go into tech. Maybe there is someone to blame, but it's not the tech industry's fault.

or D. A female who is not in the top 30% in terms of facial attractiveness (or is socially impaired for other reasons).

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

#238

Post by Moshe_Silnorin » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

jean_claude wrote: post #186

aphextron wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if men and women have some fundamental differences in psychology that affect their preferred choice of career.

Or perhaps many children are raised to conform to particular gender roles that affects their social development, and possibly, just possibly, this might also affect their job opportunities not just by self-selection, but by biases in the interviewer/hiring manager. It seems like a very complicated issue that doesn't have a simplistic answer.

Gender roles exist because they are adaptive. They are inseparable from actual average differences in characteristics.

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

#239

Post by azinman2 » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

artpepper wrote: post #216

hueving wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply of women with related degrees from uni is too low. If only 20% of the candidates qualified on paper are women, then a perfectly blind hiring process would result in 20% women. Expecting something else implies some fundamental misunderstanding of math.

But something is driving women out of CS programs (unless you buy the argument that women just aren't interested in programming). Steps that make the profession as a whole less biased against women, might also help to encourage more women to major in CS.

It's hard to break through a crowd where any feature is a near monopoly... when _all_ your colleagues are men then it's hard for a woman to feel completely comfortable and like they belong. Some will, many won't -- you can't definitively negate feeling of being an 'other.'

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

#240

Post by killface » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #18

Why 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…

Lol, if we switch the tech industry to text-only interviews, get ready for the full-day programming problems to come back.

You get so much from speech cues, filler words, etc. To try to completely eliminate that and still make rational hiring decisions is a fool's errand.