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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

#261

Post by kasey_junk »

tnones wrote: post #257
kasey_junk wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is we could hardly be worse. I'm not convinced we know what qualified even looks like. We certainly can't tell in any objective way. Given that a purely random inclusion of more applicants is likely to improve the situation. Thats before arguing for the merits of a diverse work force or relying on moral imperatives.

"Diversity" and "inclusiveness" isn't about adding more randomness to a selection, it's about introducing an explicit and deliberate bias. Special outreach programs favor candidates with lower _distribution_ in the available populace. Not only is it discrimination by itself, against the current majority, but it's self-defeating measure, in that every diversity hire skews the remaining pool of candidates more towards…

Women have a lower distribution in the populace?

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

#262

Post by BlackAura »

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…

> Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here

Have you tried looking, before just assuming that such things don't already exist?

I mean, a simple Google search will find plenty of industry groups, in multiple countries, dedicated to supporting women in all of those industries. They encourage women to pursue careers in those industries, do advocacy and education, and work with the industry to try to fix the problems that cause the lack of women in those industries. This is true for pretty much every industry that was traditionally male-dominated.

Same goes for men in traditionally female-dominated industries.

None of these efforts are as high profile as business or tech. Doesn't mean they don't exist.

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

#263

Post by douche »

weberc2 wrote: post #252
douche wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about when things break down, and you're out there in the mud turning wrenches and pounding on things to tear the machine apart, fix it, and put it back together? It's not an infrequent occurrence.

This isn't characteristic of U.S. factories; the costs associated with workplace injury are so high that employers are obsessed with near misses (i.e., non-injuries) and ergonomics (lever too high? We'll lower it. Reaching across your chest? We'll change your work station. Standing on concrete too long? We'll install ergonomic floor mats.). These companies employ men through their 60s. Women certainly can (and do!) w…

That's kind of moving the goal-posts; we were discussing construction, which, at least in my experience, has a lot less OSHA oversight. Probably it is different in more unionized sectors as well; my experience is decidedly not - smaller logging, construction and power generation companies, where you often don't have the equipment to really do things correctly, for whatever reason, but it has to get done, and so brute strength and ignorance are resorted to.

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

#264

Post by weberc2 »

acdha wrote: post #250
dethswatch wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not certain I see how C++ and SQL would be all that different if designed by women. Nor, for that matter, browsers, or perhaps word processors.

What about e.g. social apps where some communities face a much higher risk of receiving abuse? Looking more broadly, it wasn't that long ago that you could easily find American software developers treating internationalisation as a frill or people talking about accessibility as a niche concern. (Now a growing percentage of people recognize that in addition to being the right thing to do, it also benefits more people…

> Looking more broadly, it wasn't that long ago that you could easily find American software developers treating internationalisation as a frill or people talking about accessibility as a niche concern. (Now a growing percentage of people recognize that in addition to being the right thing to do, it also benefits more people than they thought due to temporary limits due to environment - ever see how many people use subtitles on the subway/bus?, illness/injury, distraction, etc.)

Is there any evidence that better support for internationalization and accessibility was driven by a more diverse workforce? It seems more likely that these were driven by market forces (increased demand as well as lower costs as i8n/accessibility tools/practices evolved).

> how well the standards community works or how the language is designed will charge based on who's involved.

There's even some evidence that some diversity helps groups make better decisions, but there's no reason to believe that the effect is large nor that the optimal diversity is above the current level. In other words, there's no reason to believe that more diversity will be beneficial.

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

#265

Post by throwaway729 »

flukus wrote: post #236
kasey_junk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the article:

"After drawing on data from thousands of technical interviews, it’s become clear to us that technical interviewing is a process whose results are nondeterministic and often arbitrary. We believe that technical interviewing is a broken process for everyone but that the flaws within the system hit underrepresented groups the hardest… because they haven’t had the chance to internalize just how much of technical interviewing is a numbers game"

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

#266

Post by chongli »

BlackAura wrote: post #262
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…

> Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here Have you tried looking, before just assuming that such things don't already exist? I mean, a simple Google search will find plenty of industry groups, in multiple countries, dedicated to supporting women in all of those industries. They encourage women to pursue careers in those industries, do advocacy and education, and work with the industry to try to fix the pro…

Sure, but if those efforts are directed towards a goal of 50/50 equality of outcome then they are doomed to fail barring a totalitarian takeover of our society. A cursory perusal of western countries reveals that the more egalitarian a society is -- with Scandinavia at the top -- the more lopsided the gender differences are across many industries.

Look, I'm not saying that many industries don't feature heavy discrimination against minority populations. We definitely do need to address that in a variety of ways. I just don't think it can be accomplished by fiat. Forcing people to do things against their will does not make them more tolerant; if anything, it makes them bitterly resentful.

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

#267

Post by flukus »

ubernostrum wrote: post #237
flukus wrote: post #233

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" 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.

It's in the context of hiring though, "the best" means "the best available".

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

#268

Post by acdha »

nitrogen wrote: post #71
wpietri wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. I want teams that are diverse and inclusive, because I think that's how you get both the best business results and the best society. One good historical example is labor force inclusion of women. For centuries, women were excluded from most professions. Circa 1970, women got only 10% of law and medicine degrees. They hit parity in the mid-aughts. Are doctors or lawyers making less? No. The expand…

It's important to remember that doctors and lawyers have professional organizations that try to ensure competence and limit supply.

Or enforce preconceived views about who belonged in the field and discourage others — you don't have to go back very far to find those groups setting quotas on the number of Jewish doctors, for example:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26quot.html

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

#269

Post by BlackAura »

protomyth wrote: post #260
ubernostrum wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have an argument that's A) deeper then a copy/paste soundbite, B) doesn't contain an informal fallacy ("how dare you try to fix this one instance of a problem until you've fixed every other instance of it first, and I'll use this no matter which instance you go after first"), and C) doesn't require you to look like a 1990s $la$hdot u$er talking about Micro$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$oft, maybe we could have a constru…

As to B, I would say the biggest problem tech faces is the education specifically daycare and elementary school do not have equal gender representation or qualified, enthusiastic STEM instructors. We need to fix that and not only demonstrate in classrooms professionals working together regardless of sex and make STEM something to dream with instead of being dreaded. Until we fix the classroom that forms early childho…

It's part of the problem, but not all of the problem.

There are plenty of women who want to be in STEM fields, and have pushed for that in spite of everything. It's hard to actually get into a STEM job as a woman, regardless of education or experience, because of various biases in hiring. Once in, there are so many ways that the workplace is hostile to women, and the industry even more so. That leads to a high rate of just giving up, and changing career. There's only so much bullshit you can take before just deciding that, even though you love the work, it just isn't worth your sanity.

Working in a technical role in a non-tech company is often orders of magnitude better. Just like it is in many other respects, because tech companies are just horrifically broken in so many ways.

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

#270

Post by flukus »

kasey_junk wrote: post #261
tnones wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Diversity" and "inclusiveness" isn't about adding more randomness to a selection, it's about introducing an explicit and deliberate bias. Special outreach programs favor candidates with lower _distribution_ in the available populace. Not only is it discrimination by itself, against the current majority, but it's self-defeating measure, in that every diversity hire skews the remaining pool of candidates more towards…

Women have a lower distribution in the populace?

No one is hiring from the population at large, they're hiring from the population of software developers.
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