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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

#181

Post by taneq »

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…

At the start of our teens, we lose the intrinsic value that society places on us as children. For many boys, after this, their only worth is in what they can accomplish, for themselves or for others. For many girls, they learn that they are intrinsically valuable as women, as long as they're attractive.

It's not an issue of 'explaining' the odds. It's an issue of women knowing that they're worth something in and of themselves, competing against men who are motivated by a lifetime of experience telling that if they can't achieve, they are nothing.

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

#182

Post by jryan49 »

groby_b wrote: post #138
DigitalSea wrote: post #130

I consider myself a competent developer, but I have no academic background as I am self-taught. While I have had a steady supply of work, because of this, I will most likely never get to work for a big company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook because I wouldn't pass their technical interview. I lack the understanding of core computer science principles and I am okay with admitting that, I don't think it makes me a…

Yeah... FizzBuzz still works. A large percentage of phone screens fails it. It's not meant to be a signal you're a good developer if you pass, it's meant as a signal you're an atrociously bad one if you fail. Most people don't bother to even memorize it, and those who memorize are thrown by slight variations.

When's the last time you had to modulo a number? I feel like when I was first asked this question I got hung up on that more that anything.

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

#183

Post by judahmeek »

ucarion wrote: post #165
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…

However, equal opportunity does not directly lead to diversity. It's possible, even likely, that genders are biased towards certain careers even when there is no discrimination at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask, a social documentary by Norwegian comedian and sociologist Harald Eia, has a rather interesting segment on this exact issue.

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

#184

Post by Terr_ »

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…

> mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries

Given that we're talking about "tech", I think your argument would be stronger if you used examples where physical strength is seldom an important factor in job-performance.

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

#185

Post by douche »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #158
divbit wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it is worth pushing 'pause' on my list of project ideas and just spend a month or so memorizing all the different sort algorithms etc.

There's just three sorting algorithms anyone cares about, and they're not particularly complex. Someone with a math background should be able to pick them up in a few hours at most.

And outside of interviews, you will, with high probability, never, ever, have to code one yourself. You'll just call sort(), or OrderBy(), and rely on the battle-tested and bullet-proof standard library implementation.

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

#186

Post by InclinedPlane »

exstudent2 wrote: post #56

There's nothing to "fix" here. If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success. If that's not happening, then it's a supply issue. And really it's no issue at all since people have free will and certain demographics just aren't choosing to be engineers. There's nothing wrong with that, we should stop trying to force them into our line of work.

> "If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success."

BS, that's a dodge. I've seen plenty of people (regardless of their background, ethnicity, or gender) who've been screwed by the system and have spent way too long in crappy jobs where they were unable to make much of a difference. Some people get lucky and early on they find jobs where their talent can shine through and they get on a train that just keeps going up. Other folks may have things line up for them that way only much later in their career, yet others maybe not at all. And if the less lucky decide to switch careers instead of continue struggling and getting frustrated with their ambitions being constantly thwarted then you may never know the potential that was lost from that change of careers. I've also known many extremely talented developers who happened to stumble into the career by accident, and if even some small thing had been different along the way they would have been doing something else.

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

#187

Post by tw04 »

Terr_ wrote: post #184
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…

> mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries Given that we're talking about "tech", I think your argument would be stronger if you used examples where physical strength is seldom an important factor in job-performance.

Physical strength tends to be an extremely important part of being a nurse. There's no shortage of women being represented there.

As for the above: my garbage "man" is a woman, so it has nothing to do with physical strength. The truck picks up the can and has for at least 5 years in even the most Podunk town.

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

#188

Post by shados »

Let. us. fire. people.

The current environment in tech is as follow: Someone goes through an interview process. Depending on the result, they get brought in or not. If they are brought in, they accept an offer. Usually it will contain some kind of language about blah blah trial period 3 months blah blah, sometimes in precise terminology, sometimes vaguely.

If someone is absolutely useless right off the bat, immediately everyone's like "but but we need to coach them, they just started, they'll get better". If after 3 months they're still useless, then it's "Blah blah it's the company's responsibility to keep them around and coach them because we hired them and we failed at interview".

That can only happen so many times (and can ruin teams or entire companies) before you start getting downright paranoid when interviewing. Maybe you have a lot of false positive and false negative, but if your interview process is Google-like enough, on average you'll turn out okay-ish (source: Google/Facebook/Netflix/whatever other company with such an interview process. They have some pretty strong teams in there). But since it's so hard to get rid of a bad apple, you can't take risks (Im being told Netflix is good at getting rid of people).

Change the game a bit: make it easy to get rid of bad apples early on. You know the interview process is bad anyway. Give people a chance. If they're actually competent, they have nothing to worry about. They'll get hired, prove their worth, and stick around. If they're bad, well, bye bye. Then we no longer have to rely on excruciatingly stupid interview processes.

A lot of people think this is inhumane/heartless. That big evil corporations MUST provide people with jobs and must keep them no matter how bad they are because they have bills to pay. I say its heartless to not give people a chance to prove themselves (or to fail while at least trying).

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

#189

Post by ndesaulniers »

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…

I like your imagery of a downward spiral.

Other industries have higher costs for employment and pay less.

For example, teachers often have to spend thousands of dollars out of pocket to take tests to get various levels of certification just to start teaching.

I'm afraid our industry is moving in the same direction.

It will start becoming more and more expensive just to get the damn job. It's already hard enough.

Soon all costs of training an employee will be pushed off onto the employee themselves. "You must be able to jump this high (and spent $$$) to work here."

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

#190

Post by InclinedPlane »

aplomb wrote: post #111

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.

The culture around software development is unfortunately very misogynistic and/or off-putting and exclusionary toward women, so they find themselves pushed away from the dev education/career track from an early age and onward. It wasn't always this way, it used to be that women made up a larger percentage of software engineers, but the culture changed over time. Not that dudes in tech are willing to accept this, for them everything about the culture is part of its charm, and the industry is a perfect meritocracy.
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