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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

#101

Post by LordHumungous »

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.

Are we talking onsite loops with 4-5 interviews each? In my experience the challenge with these is it only takes one interviewer to no-hire you for reasons that may have little to do with your technical abilities.

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

#102

Post by deanCommie »

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.

You sound like a superstar. I don't mean that condescendingly, but I meant that genuinely - assuming you're telling the truth, you're the kind of candidate (based on tech skills alone) that most companies would love to interview and hire.

But there are way more jobs and positions than there are candidates like you. And you can't have every company be full of superstars.

The argument is for the rest of us, having a hiring process that optimizes for superstars doesn't select the best of the rest - it selects a random subset of the rest.

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

#103

Post by FT_intern »

wpietri wrote: post #100
FT_intern wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 l…

I agree that diversity in software perspectives/technologies/experiences is important. However I don't see how racial or gender diversity plays a role in that.

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

#104

Post by nsxwolf »

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 just sounds like an incredibly depressing process, on both sides of the table.

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

#105

Post by nsxwolf »

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 just sounds like an incredibly depressing process, on both sides of the table.

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

#106

Post by yuhong »

This is one of the reasons why I dislike anti-discrimination laws. For example, one of the methods used to enforce them (particularly in things like hiring) is statistics, most of which assumes employees are interchangeable commodities. They were designed back in the 1960s for things like manual labor jobs. I am willing to suggest a compromise to limit them to these kinds of jobs.

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

#107

Post by jaimebuelta »

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.

My main problem with this is the fact that, at certain point, your previous experience gets somehow irrelevant.

Have you been able to solve difficult technical problem in the last 5 years, which you can explain in detail? It doesn't matter unless you can code me from scratch a binary tree. Do you have domain experience about something the company work? Cool story, but tell me the proper API call to do this obscure operation.

I understand what's the point of that, I made technical interviews myself and I know is the game to play, but at some point it feel a little weird that you cannot leverage your previous experience and go talk the interesting, actually relevant parts, not the big O of quick sort algorithm...

After playing the game N times (and I don't think I'm particularly bad at it), it gets a little tiresome, I have to say...

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

#108

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#109

Post by stanleydrew »

driverdan wrote: post #61
stanleydrew wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not being sarcastic at all, but I can see how my comment could be interpreted that way.

I don't have evidence (though I'm sure I could find it) but I think IQ and SAT scores are probably very highly correlated with coding abilities. Coding is just analytical problem solving after all.

So I honestly do think IQ and SAT score have almost as much predictive power of your ability as a software engineer as a simple coding exercise.

Honestly, I'd bet the only extra predictive power comes from the fact that correctly solving fizzbuzz reveals an underlying motivation and interest in software engineering.

"Coding abilities" aren't innate. Writing a for loop in Java isn't something you're born knowing how to do. Everybody learns it at some point.

Think about it this way. Take two people with the same IQ test result. One of them can solve fizzbuzz, and one of them can't. How much would you be willing to bet that the other one won't be able to solve fizzbuzz if you or I teach them about Java for two weeks?

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

#110

Post by stanleydrew »

robotresearcher wrote: post #64
stanleydrew wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I would hope so I guess, but apparently according to OP a lot of hiring managers are duped by people who give off the appearance of software engineering aptitude but who can't solve fizzbuzz.
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