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

#61

Post by driverdan » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #47

drakenot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Wouldn't simply taking an IQ test, or submitting your SAT score along with your resume serve the same purpose then? If the goal is to reveal "technical ability" this would save a lot of time.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. IQ and SAT score show nothing about your coding abilities.

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

#62

Post by driverdan » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

drakenot wrote: post #34

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 i…

I agree with you completely. I would not want to work at a tech company that doesn't test technical skills in a work relevant way prior to hiring.

Just because you look good on paper doesn't mean you're actually good.

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

#63

Post by pklausler » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

white-flame wrote: post #29

treve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you that the market is so good, you can be insulted and walk away from an interview and still find a different job that doesn't do an extremely standard thing: basic technical screening. Your credentials might speak for themselves. After all, you've been working for 30 years. 80% of the people I've hired have between 0 and 5 years work experience and without a technical screening I might as well just give th…

I think most experienced people would agree that a technical interview could be appropriate for someone with 0-5 years of work experience. For somebody with 10+ years of experience, who you can find that talks the talk during a real interview, CS101-level quizzes are insulting and inappropriate.

IME it's not about asking easy questions, it's about asking questions about "programming in the small" that are relevant to day-to-day work. I conduct lots of technical interviews and I've found that it's just as important to ask the 10+ year veterans about the fundamentals as it is to ask the new grads. It's just way too easy to talk about programming while actually being incompetent at it. Only by having a candidate write real code can an interviewer detect the difference.

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

#64

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #59

btilly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in software tech for nearly 20. Only once did I take a job which didn't require coding in the interview process. I quickly regretted it. It is amazingly easy for BS artists to look good on references, credentials, and their presented track record. And yet fail fizzbuzz.

> It is amazingly easy for BS artists to look good on references, credentials, and their presented track record. And yet fail fizzbuzz. So what? Just fire them quickly. Or put people who aren't so naive in charge of the hiring process. Most of the time the actual problem is that "hiring managers" aren't practicing their trade anymore, and even in a simple conversation aren't sufficiently able to sniff out extremely o…

Can't you just find out if your hiring manager is good in a simple conversation?

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

#65

Post by Declanomous » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

Scea91 wrote: post #60

wpietri wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

> Second round was kicking around a feature and its implementation with the team. I suppose it was a toy feature. Isn't it detrimental to the teams performance if all of them have to be present at the interview?

Wouldn't it be more detrimental to a team's performance to hire someone who isn't a cultural/productive fit? I think that would make the temporary performance hit when hiring worthwhile.

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

#66

Post by wpietri » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

treehau5 wrote: post #35

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…

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…

> But this can be literally true for anyone.

It can be, but marginalized people are much more often given signals that they don't belong, that they're not as good. They also tend to have less to fall back on when breaks don't go their way because of historical and current marginalization.

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

#67

Post by elgenie » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #40

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…

The reason this comment is getting downvoted is not because it's (necessarily) incorrect, but because saying only "You just don't get it" in fancier words contributes neither to understanding nor to the discussion.

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

#68

Post by klodolph » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC

Scea91 wrote: post #57

divbit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn't practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can't get past them.

That's a pretty narrow view of the problem. Like you, I've never had a technical interview that didn't turn into an offer. However, I have some strong doubts about their sensitivity (as opposed to specificity, which is fairly good).

On the other side of things, I can say that most of the criticism of interviews I hear are from people who passed the interviews, possibly a long time ago, and are complaining that the technical interview process is inappropriate for hiring people onto their team, but they have to do it anyway. It's a common sentiment that the correlation between technical interview performance and job performance is weak.

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

#69

Post by pzh » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:48 PM UTC

soham wrote: post #2

[Disclaimer: I run http://Interviewkickstart.com ] Thanks Aline. Excellent article, as always. Not that any interview process is perfect, but another reason why the current process is not going away, is sheer convenience , especially for the fast growing core tech companies that don't have a pipeline problem. When you have hundreds of people applying for any open role, and you're under pressure to deliver products qu…

Actually, I remember reading that Google and Amazon engineers have an average time on the job of about 1 year. It seems most people just want to work there so they can put it on their resume, or maybe once they pass the interview process, they are confronted with the reality that not all jobs there are so glamorous--e.g. people probably imagine they'd be working side by side with Jeff Dean and his likes, but then they actually end up maintaining some internal system that keeps track of the stock in the Google cafeterias. I wonder if after ten years or so, a short stint at Google or one of the other big five would become a requirement to be taken seriously in the field...

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

#70

Post by yarou » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 9:48 PM UTC

Kephael wrote: post #18

leeny wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. When you have a revolving door of people who want to work for you (often, despite your interview process), you're probably gonna be fine no matter what. That said, folks at Google are putting a ton of effort and resources into diversity initiatives. But not at the expense of revamping the current process.

I can't think of a single reputable company that I would be interested in working at in a SDE role where they do not conduct data structure and algorithm intensive interviews. If you want to work at a brand name company as a developer today, you must be able to solve these interview questions.

I tend to agree with this sentiment. As my colleague aptly put, algorithms/data structure questions aren't really about whether a potential candidate can perform the job.

It's more about whether or not they are "one of us". I mean, if you couldn't be bothered to brush up on CS fundamentals, how can I trust you with the responsibilities that the job entails? That looks like a red flag to me.

FWIW, when I interview people, I ask actual problems I've run into, i.e. design and implement a sane concurrency system that's easy to reason about on an embedded platform with limited resources.