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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

#161

Post by douche »

throwaway420 wrote: post #148

I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…

There are efforts to try to get more men into teaching and nursing. Unfortunately, teaching pays shit and requires a four year degree and student teaching to get a teaching certificate, so it's not the most attractive option.

Those other blue-collar traditionally masculine jobs have a hard dependency on brute strength that most women can't satisfy. Physiology is almost as cruel a mistress as physics.

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

#162

Post by finid »

xorgar831 wrote: post #154
theoh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If certain activities have a huge effect on how the world operates, which is kind of the premise of Y Combinator (software is eating the world, etc.) then it's important that the people who call the shots are representative of the people who are affected. This has to happen from the bottom up, since for obvious reasons you can't parachute in "untrained diversity" at a management/strategy level.

Exactly this, if you don't have that level of representation it leads to social problems down the line. The bloodshed in Iran and Iraq are shining examples of the extremes of what can happen. Democracy only works as much as it can provide an outlet for friction from different groups by allowing them an equal share of the system.

The bloodshed in Iran and Iraq are shining examples of the extremes of what can happen.

That leaves me scratching my head. I know that Iraq is a mess, but how is that because of diversity, or lack of it?

And about Iran. There's bloodshed there?

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

#163

Post by avasylev »

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 have the same conclusion. The pipeline problem cited in the article is real problem, imho all the diversity efforts have to be directed at schools and parents. This is were the decision is made for college. After that you can't do much. My team is mostly male, we'd be happy to hire female developer, I think being a female would actually help to pass interview. But the resumes we see are all male, with very rare exceptions. My analogy for the situation are as with seeds, if you only planted "potatos" in spring, there's not much you can do in autumn to get more "tomatos". (hope this is not offensive analogy in anyway, English is not my native language)

Situation with lack of female developers is not US-specific. I went to college in Ukraine, of ~100 sudents on computer science faculty, less than 10 were woman.

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

#165

Post by ucarion »

throwaway420 wrote: post #148

I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there. Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's somethi…

It's not just political correctness. The socially optimal future is one in which anyone, regardless of race and gender, can become a software engineer. Someday, we're going to put in effort to move from our current world to this better future. Software engineering is a highly-desirable, well-paying, forward-looking job and it's still early days. Why not give it a shot?

There are of course many PC-police types who can't give a clear reason why we should pay attention to diversity, but there are good reasons nonetheless.

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

#166

Post by rjbwork »

bit_logic wrote: post #146

This is because the technical interview has completely degenerated into an arms race. It started with good intentions. It used to be just, here's a problem, try to solve it and let's discuss. And at first it was fine. But then knowing Big-O, algorithm, data structure, etc. became a way to "show off" and impress the interviewer. So everyone started to focus on those to impress the interviewer. Then the interviewers no…

> But then knowing Big-O, algorithm, data structure, etc. became a way to "show off" and impress the interviewer

How is knowing the very basics of CS a way to show-off? It should be requisite shouldn't it?

That said, I agree with the degeneration to arms race. I'm awaiting an interview question on Shor's algorithm. "We like to be ready for whatever the future may bring here at LolCorp."

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

#167

Post by cloudjacker »

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…

> women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men

For reference, what is this saying about how many of those that stop practicing are men?

7 times more likely than what? I haven't read the article yet. Any given individual is how likely to 'stop practicing' after a rejection? 10% if man, 70% if woman? 1% if man, 7% if woman?

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

#168

Post by kls »

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.

I have only failed one technical interview in my life, and to be honest I did not fail it, I took the confidence route which put off the 20 something lead I was interviewing with and mentioned that I was a keynotes speaker at IBM Impact on the coming transition to Javascript based applications. He took this as an affront and challenge (to be brighter than the IBM speaker guy to his team) and ensured that the interview was a miserable experience, but that is neither here nor there The only reason I toot my own horn is to relay the following observation.

The point I want to get to is: I have a buddy who I have dragged along with me (many times staking my reputation on his abilities), to every engagement I go on and this guy could not pass a how to use Microsoft Word interview. He has Aspergers and locks up and fails miserably in the interviewing process, but the honest, reality is, he is 10 times the developer I am, the guy sees patterns instantly and has a knack for code organization. He can master a new technology in a week and is hands down the best developer I have ever met.

That being said, over the years watching him has lead me to the conclusion that it is indeed the ones they hold faith in the technical interview are actually the ones that are the most stove piped and only see the world thru their limited experiences. It should be classified as a form of confirmation bias.

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

#169

Post by sidlls »

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.

On my team there are two people with CS backgrounds (one PhD, the other MS). There are a couple of PhDs from the physical sciences and one from a more Software Engineering academic background. Without exception the guy with the SE background produces generally better quality code. The CS guys are not arrogant, they know their CS stuff, but their ability to develop software is... underwhelming.

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

#170

Post by mooman219 »

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.

I agree that the fundamentals are important. In my opinion, half of the coding interview is having strong foundations in CS, and the other is being able to clearly convey that.

I'm still in university, but have managed to intern at a few a places so far and found the critical parts of each interview to be nearly identical. Microsoft and Google asked questions that boiled down to basic data structure problems, and Dropbox asked a simple backtracking problem. The problems weren't ones I had specifically prepared for, but were ones that I could break down because of my foundations in CS.

The only interview I've failed was my first one. The interviewer asked me to implement a Gaussian blur on a small whiteboard; between not knowing the algorithm and not having enough room, I flopped pretty hard. There wasn't a realistic way to prepare for this question, it was just one of those things you had to know at the time.

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