It's more than fixing the technical interview process. Bottom line is western culture does not raise daughters to succeed in tech. From my own experiences 80% of the chemists I've worked with (including leadership) are female - so it's not a total failure in STEM education.
You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
111–120 of 504 posts
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#112They have a big figure labelled "People Can't Gauge Their Own Interview Perfomance", which shows that when the interviewer and interviee rated the perfomance on a 1-4 scale, 46% of candidates guessed their exact score, and another 45% were off by one.
That seems pretty good to me. Can you really expect any more agreement than that?
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-...
Maybe the larger the body of employees, this becomes more and more the case.
But if you're hiring your second engineer on the team? Hire the absolute most productive engineer. Even if that turns out to be a white male.
And don't feel guilty.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#114Indians 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…
Are you saying that cultural differences can't be explained by systemic biases? Systemic bias may be the cultural difference, and in this context appears redundant.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#115Indians 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…
I agree with 98% percent but I just can't see everyone designing all of their systems on top of unfounded biases against "just some" minorities and that demographics are blameless. They do have nasty effects on each other though; demographics shortcomings confirm bias and bias prevents demographics from alleviating shortcomings.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#116They have a big figure labelled "People Can't Gauge Their Own Interview Perfomance", which shows that when the interviewer and interviee rated the perfomance on a 1-4 scale, 46% of candidates guessed their exact score, and another 45% were off by one. That seems pretty good to me. Can you really expect any more agreement than that?
1 and 4 are probably reserved for people who lied on their resume and the rare stellar candidate, so either 2 or 3 would be a very safe guess.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ok. I believe you don't see it. Many people don't. How can I help you with that?
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#118Indians 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 m…
My wife worked as a programmer for a while. There were two aspects that drove her out. First was the cliquey nature of the guys she worked with, she just felt like she didn't fit in. Second was the rate of change, just as she felt like she mastered something the new flavor of the month would take hold and she had to start over.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#119Earlier 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.
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.
I'm 29, and I'd say I'm much better at CS fundamentals today than I was when I was just graduating school.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#120Why diversity is needed to be fixed in the first place? Pizza business is dominated by italians and kebap by turkish, and nobody tries to fix diversity issues in those industries. Somehow every industry finds its own best people and the balance, I don't understand the need of fixing it. Nursery is dominated by women and men are underpresented there, should we also fix it?