You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by inimino » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

avasylev wrote: post #150

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…

I'm one of the people who ask those algorithm/white board questions. I've read a lot criticism on this topic, here're my reasons to stil keep asking these questions: 1) Working on algorithm problem requires very little in common between interviewer and interviewee. I'm C++/C#, I won't be able to give Ruby dev a real world task and evaluate it properly. Algo/data structure problems are universal and looks similar in a…

Your first point suggests these questions have some value for you in identifying people's skills. Fair enough.

Your second argument admits that this is basically a hazing ritual. Of course you will have to learn some things you don't intrinsically care about in the course of your work. The difference is, that isn't part of a process that we intentionally designed to be that way. Admitting that your hiring process requires useless knowledge that people just have to learn to get through the process means you admit your process doesn't measure what matters and is just a hazing ritual. You're putting up hoops just to see who will jump through them.

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

#232

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #135

jdmichal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally, the demographic breakdown should perfectly match the candidate pool. And again, ideally, the candidate pool should perfectly match the general population. Lacking the actual candidate pool numbers, there's actually two assumptions in play: 1. That the candidate pool matches the general population. 2. That the company is discriminating against this candidate pool, leading to skewed demographics. For some reas…

Aren't you forgetting that different people, even different groups of people, have different motivations? E.g. in general, men like cars, gym and climbing; women like jewellery, yoga and dancing. These are all voluntary activities (well, you could argue that things like gym and jewellery are socially motivated), yet different sexes in average choose differently. Why wouldn't it be the same with careers?

Are you assuming that there is some genetic or evolutionary reason for men to like cars? That somehow it is hard-coded into the Y chromosome to like cars?

Or have you considered the possibility that social conditioning can make a large difference in what hobbies and preferences someone ends up having?

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

#233

Post by flukus » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:23 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #229

aantix wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive", because there is no reading of your comment which makes sense without the assumption that you believe this. Congratulations, you've exposed yourself as possessing irrational biases and allowing them to influence how you'd hire, while showing no desire to eliminate, overcome or…

> Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive"

How on earth did it imply that?

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

#234

Post by weberc2 » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:24 AM UTC

judahmeek wrote: post #183

ucarion wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be clear, there is no moral imperative to maximize diversity, only equality. We have no business pressuring 'diverse' people into careers they don't want to be in.

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

#235

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:25 AM UTC

rjbwork wrote: post #230

ubernostrum wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often, in your day job, is it a necessary job-related task for you to be pop-quizzed on the Big-O characteristics of half a dozen data structures and then have to draw out manipulations of a binary tree on a whiteboard? Somehow we decided to never test for the things we actually do at work, and instead to invent an entirely new discipline (whiteboard interviewing) and test for competence at that, in hopes it woul…

I mean, I think the whiteboard thing is pretty lame, and would prefer to give and get coding tests on my own machine and environment. But yeah, I expect someone to be able to tell me what the complexity of various algorithms when shown them is and how to manipulate common data structures. At the very least one ought to be able to walk a tree don't you think? My front end engineer has to walk a tree of JSON on a proje…

And yet... this attitude is how we get stuff like the Homebrew guy tweeting that Google is happy to be internally dependent on his software while also saying he's not qualified to write software for Google, because their tech interview excludes him.

(Google's interview process, in my experience, can be gamed heavily by just memorizing a dynamic-programming solution to the longest-common-subsequence problem; they love popping that one out in interviews, even for job descriptions which have no reasonable need to ever be able to regurgitate it onto a whiteboard on command)

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

#236

Post by flukus » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:27 AM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #200

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…

Personally I'm happy to make an argument that given a lack of evidence that gender plays a negative roll, we have a moral imperative to eliminate unfair and discriminatory barriers to entry because its the right thing to do . But lets say that isn't a compelling argument for you. Our industry has a disastrous success rate. Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On t…

> we have a moral imperative to eliminate unfair and discriminatory barriers to entry because its the right thing to do.

First you have to demonstrate that those barriers exist.

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

#237

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:28 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #233

ubernostrum wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive", because there is no reading of your comment which makes sense without the assumption that you believe this. Congratulations, you've exposed yourself as possessing irrational biases and allowing them to influence how you'd hire, while showing no desire to eliminate, overcome or…

> Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive" How on earth did it imply that?

In the context of "diversity", which is taken to imply increasing the population of currently-underrepresented groups in the industry, responding with "just hire the best" only makes sense if one believes those groups do not by definition contain "the best", since otherwise everyone who already claims to "hire the best" would have hired from those groups.

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

#238

Post by rjbwork » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:28 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #235

rjbwork wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I think the whiteboard thing is pretty lame, and would prefer to give and get coding tests on my own machine and environment. But yeah, I expect someone to be able to tell me what the complexity of various algorithms when shown them is and how to manipulate common data structures. At the very least one ought to be able to walk a tree don't you think? My front end engineer has to walk a tree of JSON on a proje…

And yet... this attitude is how we get stuff like the Homebrew guy tweeting that Google is happy to be internally dependent on his software while also saying he's not qualified to write software for Google, because their tech interview excludes him. (Google's interview process, in my experience, can be gamed heavily by just memorizing a dynamic-programming solution to the longest-common-subsequence problem; they love…

So what, we just let everyone who says they can code in? That's how fizzbuzz was born.

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

#239

Post by flukus » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:29 AM UTC

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.

None of those requires a lot of physical strength anymore, machines do most of the heavy lifting. Not that any of them required a level of strength unattainable by women anyway.

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

#240

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

rjbwork wrote: post #238

ubernostrum wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet... this attitude is how we get stuff like the Homebrew guy tweeting that Google is happy to be internally dependent on his software while also saying he's not qualified to write software for Google, because their tech interview excludes him. (Google's interview process, in my experience, can be gamed heavily by just memorizing a dynamic-programming solution to the longest-common-subsequence problem; they love…

So what, we just let everyone who says they can code in? That's how fizzbuzz was born.

Stating for the 1e100th time in discussions of this topic: whiteboard interviews do not test coding ability and do not usefully distinguish people who are able to code from people who are not. So any argument proceeding from the assumption that doing away with them equates to no longer testing for ability to code is invalid and contains a known-false assumption.