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

blog.interviewing.io

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

#91

Post by Manishearth »

balls187 wrote: post #84

> We believe that technical interviewing is a broken process for everyone but that the flaws within the system hit underrepresented groups the hardest… Turns out, people who are bad at technical interviews, are underrepresented at companies who use technical interviews to hire employees.

This is their point exactly.

"Being good at technical interviews" is not the same thing as "being a good programmer". You can be bad at interviews but good at programming. You can be good at interviews but bad at programming. Turns out that there's a correlation between the former set and certain demographics, because of unconscious biases in the interview process.

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

#92

Post by balls187 »

Manishearth wrote: post #88
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…

This addresses a straw man; nobody is saying that there is systemic bias against _all_ minorities, just some. This in particular is the concept of a "model minority". Culture difference cannot explain why women are not well represented in tech. Culture difference can be a part of systemic bias, anyway. Let's say you have some programming job. The interviews focus on questions about frobbing linked lists (which is oft…

> This addresses a straw man; nobody is saying that there is systemic bias against _all_ minorities, just some.

What bias occurs against my [Filipino,Vietnamese,Thai,Malaysian,Pakistani...] brothers, that doesn't also apply towards me, an Indian?

> There's hard evidence against that -- take India for example, CS students in India focus a lot on solving typical interview questions and less so on other skills...it ultimately leads to cases like kids who can solve whatever they need in quiz papers but don't actually understand the topic.

What about American CS Students, who presumably don't have a "teach to the test" based education system? They are well represented in tech.

I'm going with Google here. It's a pipeline issue. Fewer folks that pursue degrees in tech, fewer applicants in the pool.

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

#93

Post by sctb »

briholt wrote: post #45

You're missing the point. The point isn't what's actually happening in the world, whether racism actually exists, or what actual solutions there might be. The point is to scream "racism" as loudly as possible so you can signal your virtue to your peers and get clicks. After all, if you don't cry "racism" every 5 minutes, how will all of your friends know you're opposed to racism?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12859390 and marked it off-topic.

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

#94

Post by pj_mukh »

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…

That's because Indian (particularly) men consider engineering to be a safe choice (source: am Indian). Anecdotally, speaking to women (esp American), they find engineering to be categorically unsafe from a career progress perspective. You may not 'see' the bias, but they definitely feel it. The effect is measurable.

I am no expert, maybe it has something to do with maternity leave regimes or the interviews (like OP mentions)?

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

#95

Post by Ar-Curunir »

divbit wrote: post #86
Scea91 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I didn't practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. Perhaps my take on things is different since my degrees are in math, so I don't have a bunch of 'canned' algorithms stored in my head, and so in a whiteboard would come up with my own technique, even for possibly basic things like trees / sorting.

I'm sure that even in math you need to know some basic things; for instance every math major knows basic theorems about groups, fields, rings, about real analysis, and so on.

It's the same for CS; basic knowledge of algorithms and data structures, and how these can be composed, is what a technical interview tests.

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

#96

Post by tzs »

jakebasile wrote: post #19
treve wrote: post #12

I'm surprised that "people of color" is the preferred term for racial diversity.

I believe it is to emphasize that they are people first, not "colored" people. I'm not big into political newspeak but that one makes sense to me.

From what I've read, it's more that "colored people" mostly only referred to black people in the United States, whereas "people of color" refers to all non-whites (except asians may or may not be included in "people of color" depending on whatever is more convenient at the time).

"People of color" has always sounded bad to me. It follows the pattern, with "people" and "color" being both nouns. It sounds to me as if it emphasizes the group, not the individual. To emphasize the person, rather than the group, I think is better.

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

#97

Post by FT_intern »

Manishearth wrote: post #88
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…

This addresses a straw man; nobody is saying that there is systemic bias against _all_ minorities, just some. This in particular is the concept of a "model minority". Culture difference cannot explain why women are not well represented in tech. Culture difference can be a part of systemic bias, anyway. Let's say you have some programming job. The interviews focus on questions about frobbing linked lists (which is oft…

It's a pipeline issue but there are ways to cater to certain groups (see affirmative action). The question is, why is there a need to cater to certain groups? Incongruity is present in every field, every job, every company, everywhere.

As long as opportunity is sufficiently available for everyone (which it is, one can learn to program, get input on their code and collaborate with other people on the internet without disclosing their gender/age/race), that's good enough.

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

#98

Post by avita1 »

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.

Without sounding condescending, how old are you? I had my head more "fundamentals of CS" when I was just leaving school and also never failed a technical interview. After spending some time in industry, I don't think about those types of problems as much. If I were to do the same technical interviews I did back then today, I'm almost certain I wouldn't do as well.

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

#99

Post by stanleydrew »

balls187 wrote: post #82
stanleydrew wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What bias exists that targets women, and minorities, but doesn't also target Indian, Chinese, and Russian woman, and Indian and Chinese men[1]? > 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. Except the article (and conversation) isn't about cultural…

> ... in this case, how the technical interview unfairly penalizes underrepresented groups.

If this was your big takeaway I think you should read the article again. It's not about unfair penalization.

People fail at technical interviews all the time, men and women alike. The article doesn't assert that there's the kind of simple bias that would cause women to unfairly receive lower marks in an interview compared to an equally-qualified man.

The article reveals that women react differently to negative signals from the technical puzzle-based interview process.

You've tried to assert that this is due to "cultural differences" (your words, not mine or the article's). And I'm saying that's too naive an explanation, and we should look further.

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

#100

Post by wpietri »

FT_intern wrote: post #83
wpietri wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. I want teams that are diverse and inclusive, because I think that's how you get both the best business results and the best society. One good historical example is labor force inclusion of women. For centuries, women were excluded from most professions. Circa 1970, women got only 10% of law and medicine degrees. They hit parity in the mid-aughts. Are doctors or lawyers making less? No. The expand…

> because I think that's how you get both the best business results I don't think this has ever been proven, especially not in a field as technical as software engineering.

Very few human practices in software engineering have been proven to any level of rigor. But still, you have to make choices. There is usually no neutral position. You have to pick a particular language, a particular platform, a particular process, a particular team.

For me, the theory's pretty clear. The hard part about software is not the typing; it's the thinking. It's my experience that thought monocultures are less effective, so I always hire for diversity along many axes. I like having somebody with ops experience. Somebody else who loves the details of front-end work. Somebody else who has wrestled with deep optimizations. Young and old, functional and OO, careful and bold, etc, etc. I take as much variety as I can get, because the more diversity you have, the more problems you can spot and solve quickly.

An especially hard part about software is thinking about users. Good developers are always imagining the effect their choices have on the people they serve. But our imagination is limited by our experiences. Our empathy comes most easily for people like the ones we know. The more diverse your team, the more likely you are to spot and solve human problems.

So sure, it's not scientifically proven to be optimum. But the default isn't either. If we only question the things that seem novel, that's just a fancy way of arguing for a sort of generic orthodoxy.

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