You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview • Hacker News Board

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#31

Post by pj_mukh » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

mrkurt wrote: post #17

AvenueIngres wrote: post #6

Honestly, the more I read about all those "diversity initiatives", "outreach campaigns" and "pushes to increase H1B" caps - the more I wonder about the intent and motivation of the people pulling the strings and funding the groups fighting so hard to further those causes. My comment is only tangentially related to hiring practices. Maybe age has turned me into a cynic, you can never know for sure, but this seriously…

Expanding the hiring pool is valuable to these companies. Many companies also feel like they'll perform better with a more diverse group of employees. I sure felt like that about my company. They probably _also_ feel like it's right. This is one of those social problems where both the business need and moral need match up. My guess is that people who want racial diversity want class diversity, diversity of thought, c…

This is mostly empirically provable [1]. Diverse teams come up with better ideas that apply to a larger swath of markets (an immediate payoff for companies).

[1]: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#32

Post by forgottenpass » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

Technical interviews are moving in the direction of more concreteness

Herein lies the scam. (Disclaimer: It's not on purpose, they're lying to themselves too)

Just because you have a process to produce a "concrete" result, that doesn't mean it doesn't stand on a house of cards.

I'd have to sit and have a think to make a clearer explanation than by analogy, so here's an analogy. This reminds me of the way people with an insufficient anti-authoritarian streak are more willing to question a person's on the spot decision than a decision from systematic, bureaucracy or law.

Just because more time and process has gone into establishing them, doesn't necessitate that the decisions are any better founded than what some rando pulls out of their ass.

Because, at the end of the day, taking the technical portion of the interview itself too seriously is the real fraud. There is exactly one way to tell how well someone will be able to contribute to our team, with our technologies, in our environment after a few weeks of getting up to speed. And that's to hire them.

The technical portion of the interview isn't useful beyond a low-bar rule-out criteria. After that, the technical portion turns back towards the softer skills of how the interviewee handles hitting a wall at problem solving in a field where nobody knows everything.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#33

Post by euyyn » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

AvenueIngres wrote: post #6

Honestly, the more I read about all those "diversity initiatives", "outreach campaigns" and "pushes to increase H1B" caps - the more I wonder about the intent and motivation of the people pulling the strings and funding the groups fighting so hard to further those causes. My comment is only tangentially related to hiring practices. Maybe age has turned me into a cynic, you can never know for sure, but this seriously…

I think what they mean by "not diverse enough" is in comparison to the pool of candidates. Under the hypothesis that race/gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation/nationality/age are uncorrelated to performance/ability of the candidates, it implies bias in the selection process. Which isn't only an ethical concern, but also a business one: it means they're not hiring the overall best candidates.

Of course, there's also something to be said about the lack of diversity in the pool of software engineer candidates, which signals a problem for the industry in general for the same reasons. That's e.g. why tech companies are funding programs so that girls aren't turned off a software career if that's what they fancy.

Those details aside, in general my impression is that the industry isn't currently in any sort of stagnation of opportunities, with employees' salaries racing to the bottom to cling on those opportunities. On the opposite, there seems to be plenty of things still to be done, and not enough hands. If you dump a lot of new good candidates in the pool, they're going to be absorbed right away, even if they're all white American males.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#34

Post by drakenot » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #9

I've been in software tech for nearly 30 years. Never had a "technical" interview, puzzle solving, or anything like that. I would not take a job that screened candidates that way. If references and credentials and track record aren't enough, I would look elsewhere.

Flip side -- I view it as a strong negative if a company has what I consider a weak interview or vetting process.

The interview doesn't have to be all whiteboard coding but I want to at least feel like the person got some grasp of my technical ability. If the entire thing is basically a "personality interview" I start to think that it is very possible technically weak people may have been able to schmooze their way into a place in the company and I'd prefer to not work with a high ratio of bozos.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#35

Post by treehau5 » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #7

treehau5 wrote: post #4

I agree that tech interviews are terrible, and you cannot do any sort of self-reflection on them (especially if they are these q/a and or puzzle types where they don't give you answers or feedback of what you are looking for, despite being reasonably confident you answered correctly -- even after having requested the feedback -- I had this experience at GitLab) > We believe that technical interviewing is a broken pro…

I think the next couple sentences explain it well: > It takes a lot of interviews to get used to the process and the format and to understand that the stuff you do in technical interviews isn’t actually the stuff you do at work every day. And it takes people in your social circle all going through the same experience, screwing up interviews here and there, and getting back on the horse to realize that poor performanc…

But this can be literally true for anyone. I tried re-reading it again and again and I am not seeing the distinction. Different people have different reactions to things. In other fields, it's not uncommon for people to submit resumes to 10, 15, even 20 firms and go through 5 to 10 interviews before landing their first "real" job. I think we forget how good we have it in tech relative to the rest of the economy. It's either that, or work for shit wages and awful benefits. But we don't hear about the diversity problem for a position like, an "analyst" for example. This lends me to believe it really is a pipeline issue.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#36

Post by balls187 » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

Indians of Asian descent are a minority in the US, but well represented in Software Engineering. Further, there are plenty more Indian, Chinese, and Russian female engineers, than there are American (of european, aka White) female engineers.

I am less inclined to believe there is systemic bias against women, and minorities, and instead a culture difference between groups who are well represented in engineering, and groups which are not.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#37

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #14

burkaman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the next couple sentences explain it well: > It takes a lot of interviews to get used to the process and the format and to understand that the stuff you do in technical interviews isn’t actually the stuff you do at work every day. And it takes people in your social circle all going through the same experience, screwing up interviews here and there, and getting back on the horse to realize that poor performanc…

I think this was one of the biggest take-aways I got from attending a coding bootcamp, honestly. Basically everybody failed their first on-site interview, even the strongest candidates from the cohort who went on to get the best overall results.

[deleted]

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#38

Post by wpietri » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

divbit wrote: post #13

Animats wrote: post #5

The big result there is this: "Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men." On the hiring side, "For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin th…

That is a pretty huge statistic, - what also pops out to me is: "stop practicing ". This seems to imply that these technical interviews are skills that you don't really gain on the job. I know that personally would 9 times out of 10 spend time on a cool / beneficial project rather than making time to practice trivia problems.

> these technical interviews are skills that you don't really gain on the job

I believe that's definitely the case. That's why I shifted my interviews to be as much like the work as possible. First round was a pair programming interview plus a bit of technical discussion. Second round was kicking around a feature and its implementation with the team.

My goal was also to see people at their best, so I did as much as possible to make them comfortable. E.g., for the programming portion they were welcome to use their own device, their favorite editor, and their strongest language.

I was very happy with the results, and aim to keep moving in that "make it real" direction. I wrote more about my approach here: http://williampietri.com/writing/2015/slightly-less-awful-hi...

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#39

Post by gjulianm » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

AvenueIngres wrote: post #6

Honestly, the more I read about all those "diversity initiatives", "outreach campaigns" and "pushes to increase H1B" caps - the more I wonder about the intent and motivation of the people pulling the strings and funding the groups fighting so hard to further those causes. My comment is only tangentially related to hiring practices. Maybe age has turned me into a cynic, you can never know for sure, but this seriously…

I think that 'non diversity' (or at least how I interpret is) is an indicator of possible unfairness, and not necessarily bad per se. If a company has too few people of a given group in comparison to the hiring pool availability, it may be something that the company is doing, maybe unconsciously, to keep them out. If the difference is with respect to the country's distribution of that group (which I suspect is the case in tech), there might be something either with the companies and/or the education-motivation given to access that knowledge.

In any case, I think it's worth to look at it and try to solve it, because maybe you end up improving the actual/future employees' life and the company itself.

And possibly race is not the only division to look at, as you say. Class is probably more interesting, but also age, family responsibilities or sexual orientation can reveal practices/attitudes that can be improved.

I agree with you in the cynical thinking and in the motivations of some of the groups pushing for it, but I think that in the long run thinking about the diversity problem and trying to fix it can lead to better outcomes for everybody.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#40

Post by stanleydrew » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #36

Indians of Asian descent are a minority in the US, but well represented in Software Engineering. Further, there are plenty more Indian, Chinese, and Russian female engineers, than there are American (of european, aka White) female engineers. I am less inclined to believe there is systemic bias against women, and minorities, and instead a culture difference between groups who are well represented in engineering, and g…

> I am less inclined to believe there is systemic bias against women, and minorities, and instead a culture difference between groups who are well represented in engineering, and groups which are not.

This reveals a complete misunderstanding of how "systemic bias" occurs and persists.

[Edited with further thoughts]

"Cultural differences" don't just appear out of nowhere. Culture itself is an amalgamation of different human experiences that have combined and recombined over tens of thousands of years. It's not static. The things you deem "cultural differences" have many causes, and "differences" can and do change all the time.

When we throw up our hands and say "cultural differences", it implies that we don't need to ask why such differences might exist and whether we should actively seek to change them. That's an important conversation.

"Systemic bias" may or may not exist in this case, but if you think cultural differences themselves can't lead to systemic bias then you are mistaken.