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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

#311

Post by MustardTiger »

sjburt wrote: post #224
foolfoolz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the biggest catch 22 for me is when you work with someone for years at a job. at this job you have a strong interview process. you reject the same 80%+ of candidates. then you move somewhere else. you refer your friend. they get rejected. were they a bad employee? did they sneak in the door at the last place? Is there a problem with how we do interviews?

Speaking as someone who has taken on a lot of hiring responsibility: the cost for rejecting a good applicant is 4-5 hours of my teams time while they interview someone else. The cost for accepting a bad applicant is several months of salary, reduced productivity for my team, risk of a discrimination suit if I don't put them on a PIP, etc. So as a hiring manager I am pretty OK with rejecting a lot of good applicants j…

>the cost for rejecting a good applicant is 4-5 hours of my teams time while they interview someone else

The cost seems much higher to me. I have to interview dozens of people to find a single good applicant. Rejecting one good applicant costs me dozens of interviews, not one.

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

#312

Post by flukus »

shados wrote: post #188

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, immediate…

It already happens, it's called contracting. And the results are terrible because no one gives a fuck about quality at a job the might not have in 3 months.

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

#313

Post by InclinedPlane »

exstudent2 wrote: post #308
InclinedPlane wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not understand that these are not comparable things? Your position is that no one in tech is generally ill-served by the system, which is backed up by your own personal experience. I've shared with you the fact that I've seen many examples of people ill-served by the system. That is a direct counter-example against your position, and as such invalidates your claim. The only way it doesn't is if I'm lying. Are…

> By what basis do you make that claim? What basis do you have? We're both just throwing around observations. Mine aren't the same as yours.

Read it again, they are not the same. You are claiming that my observations don't exist. I'm not claiming that your observations aren't true, I'm saying that my observations are still true. If we combine our observations together they are consistent much more with my hypothesis (that iniquity in the industry is common) than with yours (that it almost doesn't exist at all).

By what basis do you claim that my observations are so extremely unrepresentative of the industry that they should be dismissed? I'm not dismissing your observations, you're dismissing mine. Why?

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

#314

Post by MustardTiger »

kasey_junk wrote: post #303
MustardTiger wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That would be true if we could mention a single factor that we agreed was correlated to successful software projects. Given that is the biggest open question in the industry, who knows? What we do know is that current hiring practices aren't inclusive & they aren't successful. Are those things related? No idea, but I'm more willing to try inclusion than I am riddles for finding my next candidates.

>What we do know is that current hiring practices aren't inclusive & they aren't successful.

We don't know either of those things, they are baseless claims. Software gets made, it gets shipped, it kinda works. Given the overwhelmingly horrifying incompetence of the vast majority of programmers, I would suggest we're actually going very well at interviewing and finding the rare competent candidates.

>No idea, but I'm more willing to try inclusion than I am riddles for finding my next candidates.

And I am more willing to put thought into it rather than do something likely to produce the opposite effect and justify it with a terrible strawman.

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

#315

Post by GIFtheory »

I believe that the problem with a lot of these tech interviews is that they reflect a deep-seated belief on the part of the interviewer, that there exists such a thing as absolute intelligence, that it is immutable, and it is the most important factor in hiring. When you think in these terms, racism seems almost inevitable: after all, if intelligence is a measurable, absolute, and immutable quantity, akin to height or skin color, then shouldn't it also be hereditable?

Instead of administering thinly-veiled intelligence tests, interviewers should hire based on two factors: technical skill, and more importantly, the ability to acquire it (i.e., learn). You don't want to hire (or be) a person who believes in the fiction of genius. You want to be and hire the kind of person who believes and demonstrates that ability is a deterministic function of practice, not genes.

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

#316

Post by Klockan »

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.

At least I am more scared of not having a job to go to tomorrow than the job interview today.

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

#317

Post by krakensden »

wpietri wrote: post #53
mrkurt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding the hiring pool is valuable to these companies. Many companies also feel like they'll perform better with a more diverse group of employees. I sure felt like that about my company. They probably _also_ feel like it's right. This is one of those social problems where both the business need and moral need match up. My guess is that people who want racial diversity want class diversity, diversity of thought, c…

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…

Doctors in the US capped the supply, so it isn't a great comparison. Law currently has an oversupply problem, with low wages for most lawyers.

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

#318

Post by Klockan »

kls wrote: post #153
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 postulate that false negatives are far more expensive, in a constricted talent pool. We keep seeing the adage that false positives are expensive but honestly if one cannot spot a false positive within 30 days of engagement with that person, then the hiring person should really contemplate their expertise in the field. I saw a really good write up (I think on here) where they basically did a initial "are you an idio…

Imagine that you passed your dream job interview, you pack you things and move to another state! 30 days into the new job you get the news, you are fired for being a low performer! You go online and post about your experiences, how horrible this company is for not looking out for their employees. You get a lot of responses saying that they have experiences the same, a large part of new hires are fired within the first month at this company!

Now tell me, do you think that said company will get many quality applicants in the future? At least I prefer harsh interviews and then being relatively safe compared to the reverse.

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

#319

Post by exstudent2 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #313
exstudent2 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By what basis do you make that claim? What basis do you have? We're both just throwing around observations. Mine aren't the same as yours.

Read it again, they are not the same. You are claiming that my observations don't exist. I'm not claiming that your observations aren't true, I'm saying that my observations are still true. If we combine our observations together they are consistent much more with my hypothesis (that iniquity in the industry is common) than with yours (that it almost doesn't exist at all). By what basis do you claim that my observati…

My basis is that it's extremely difficult to hire good developers. They can pick and choose where they work. I've literally never seen a good developer struggle to succeed in 15+ years in the industry. Successful devs come from all backgrounds as well.

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

#320

Post by nostrademons »

morgante wrote: post #204
taneq wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Wouldn't the message of "you are your accomplishments" make men more likely to give up after a failure rather than less?

It's likely that it does make men more likely to give up after a failure than less - male labor force participation rates are at a historic low, and there are plenty of underemployed men who were shut out of a high-paying job. But these men drop out of the sample set, and so they aren't talked about when discussing industries with diversity problems.

Paul Graham once wrote [1] 'As a kid there's a magic button you can press by saying "I'm just a kid" that will get you out of most difficult situations. Whereas adults, by definition, are not allowed to flake. They still do, of course, but when they do they're ruthlessly pruned', which to my college mind seemed incredibly draconian, but that is largely the way the world works.

I think a better sense of intrinsic worth and the knowledge that our accomplishments are what we do and not who we are would benefit both sexes.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html

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