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

Post by Moshe_Silnorin » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:08 AM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #33

AvenueIngres wrote: post #6

Honestly, the more I read about all those "diversity initiatives", "outreach campaigns" and "pushes to increase H1B" caps - the more I wonder about the intent and motivation of the people pulling the strings and funding the groups fighting so hard to further those causes. My comment is only tangentially related to hiring practices. Maybe age has turned me into a cynic, you can never know for sure, but this seriously…

I think what they mean by "not diverse enough" is in comparison to the pool of candidates. Under the hypothesis that race/gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation/nationality/age are uncorrelated to performance/ability of the candidates, it implies bias in the selection process. Which isn't only an ethical concern, but also a business one: it means they're not hiring the overall best candidates. Of course, there's also so…

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

MustardTiger wrote: post #299

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.

It could be much worse. Simply making random changes and hoping it is an improvement rather than making things worse is not sensible.

Post by MustardTiger » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #255

taneq wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subtle(ish) distinction: You aren't your past accomplishments, you are your capability to generate future accomplishments. Who is more likely to persevere; someone who believes they have to keep achieving things or they are worthless, or someone to whom achievements are a nice bonus to the intrinsic value that they already have?

I'm pretty sure the psychological research would say the latter. Failure is a lot less scary when your ego isn't tied up in it.

Post by flukus » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:18 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…

Post by ryhamz » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #255

taneq wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subtle(ish) distinction: You aren't your past accomplishments, you are your capability to generate future accomplishments. Who is more likely to persevere; someone who believes they have to keep achieving things or they are worthless, or someone to whom achievements are a nice bonus to the intrinsic value that they already have?

I'm pretty sure the psychological research would say the latter. Failure is a lot less scary when your ego isn't tied up in it.