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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

#361

Post by palunon »

ubernostrum wrote: post #248
AvenueIngres wrote: post #245

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" No >Congratulations, you've exposed yourself as possessing irrational biases That's rich coming from someone who just made a completely biased reading of the parent comment to fuel their narrative.

So provide me with an interpretation of "just hire the best" -- as a response to critiques of the lack of diversity in tech -- which does not imply or require an assumption that currently-underrepresented groups are, by the nature of the people in those groups, less qualified and thus less likely to be "the best". Because you can't provide that. "Just hire the best" is an excuse for biased interviewing and hiring pro…

There are less of them in tech, so if you hire the best, you've got more chances to hire a white male. It's a numbers game really.

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

#362

Post by lsc »

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…

the counter-argument is that when you fire someone, their co-workers, generally speaking, become at least a little uneasy (usually the level of unease is directly proportional to the level of agreement that the person getting fired wasn't good enough or otherwise had it coming, but there is still some unease even when it's obvious that it's the only way forward.)

Now, you can try to get around this by a real trial period (either contract-to-hire, or being super clear that the trial period is actually a trial period) - if you fire an employee of a obviously lower class, employees of the higher classes won't be as disturbed as if you fired one of their peers, but then you have the contract-to-hire problem, which is that people will usually choose a job perceived to be long-term with a low risk of being fired over any sort of 'trial period' - a large portion of your top applicants will turn the job down if they have to spend time as a lower-tier of employee first.

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

#363

Post by clarry »

tonyarkles wrote: post #214
user5994461 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call 4 interviews a superstar. It's really doable, a bit of skill + a bit of luck for the first interviews + a hiring bar set at 'junior' cuz he's young :D

I suspect that they're not calling you a superstar because you've passed four tech interviews, but because your foundations of CS aren't decaying. I work with a lot of teams as a contractor/consultant/whatever you want to call it. I often have to bite my tongue when team members that work for my clients forget what I believe are really simple things. For example, doing lookups in a hash vs an array. That was literall…

Do you have any online resource that could tell me what these foundations of CS are?

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

#364

Post by clarry »

douche wrote: post #185
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if you had to, the algorithms are so darn well documented there's no need to keep the details in your head. If you really need to implement one, you look up the details.

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

#365

Post by hogrammer »

Tech is very diverse. Silicon Valley companies have fewer white people than the general population of the US.

I scared of what will be mandated when we get a President who believes the 'women only make 73 cents' lie. Will we be forced to hire women with 'gender studies' degrees for engineering teams? The opposite of quality is equality.

BTW: I am a woman with a Ph.D. in EE, of mid-eastern ethnicity. I don't want people to think I had to have a softer interview because I don't have a penis.

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

#366

Post by hogrammer »

balls187 wrote: post #82
stanleydrew wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am less inclined to believe there is systemic bias against women, and minorities, and instead a culture difference between groups who are well represented in engineering, and groups which are not. This reveals a complete misunderstanding of how "systemic bias" occurs and persists. [Edited with further thoughts] "Cultural differences" don't just appear out of nowhere. Culture itself is an amalgamation of different…

What bias exists that targets women, and minorities, but doesn't also target Indian, Chinese, and Russian woman, and Indian and Chinese men[1]? > When we throw up our hands and say "cultural differences", it implies that we don't need to ask why such differences might exist and whether we should actively seek to change them. That's an important conversation. Except the article (and conversation) isn't about cultural…

Russia is in Asia.

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

#367

Post by heisenbit »

There is a significant pipeline problem. Recently there was an article on HN that women are doing reasonably well these days except in the top suite. Again a pipeline issue. Some countries are further ahead like e.g. Scandinavia and India.

Pipeline issues are solved in kindergarten, school by teachers and parents. Role-models and incentives can help. Interviewing is too late. Actually considering that almost all CS grads are employed it is totally ridiculous to assume interviewing will fix anything. A woman can only be hired once.

Making the hiring process 100% objective is dangerous and I'm looking at these instrumented technical interviews as a step in the wrong direction. Of course we can reduce all observations to a single measure and then line everyone up against it. Any yes, that is happening in the end somehow in any case. But there is a huge difference in letting machine (or rigid scheme) do it.

Letting algorithms decide is convenient. It avoids taking responsibility. It allows avoidance of accountability. And more often than not it allows unaccountable manipulation of the process - as particularly the unscrupulous will know and not stop putting a thumb on the scale.

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

#369

Post by crdoconnor »

mdorazio wrote: post #327
flukus wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Small caveat - I'd say contract-to-hire is what many places are implementing if they actually want the headcount instead of just a budget expenditure. The problem is that you end up with worse candidates because most people who are really good don't want the uncertainty and stigma of a contract position if they can get a full-time one elsewhere.

I've found the supposed certainty of perm work to be something of an illusion whereas the extra money in contracting is pretty real.

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

#370

Post by sargun »

golemotron wrote: post #359
morgante wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No one likes to go here but in addition to the cultural reinforcements, young men have 17x serum testosterone compared to women of the same age [1]. Avg. Adult Male 270-1,070 Avg. Adult Female 15-70 Hormones affect behavior and in this case competitiveness. [1] http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testostero...

Time for performance enhancing drugs for interviews?
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