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

#371

Post by dozzie » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:09 AM UTC

MustardTiger wrote: post #305

morgante wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That makes absolutely no sense. By definition, giving up is failure. So the options are "100% chance of failure" vs "less than 100% chance of failure", and you think they are more likely to pick "100% chance of failure" because failure is scary?

You miss an important aspect. You won't succeed in 100% cases you don't take an action, but you also don't fail due to your lack of skills in 100% cases you don't take an action. You can't be blamed for failing if you didn't even try. You can only be blamed for not succeeding.

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

#372

Post by clarry » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:16 AM UTC

kls wrote: post #168

Scea91 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn't practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can't get past them.

I have only failed one technical interview in my life, and to be honest I did not fail it, I took the confidence route which put off the 20 something lead I was interviewing with and mentioned that I was a keynotes speaker at IBM Impact on the coming transition to Javascript based applications. He took this as an affront and challenge (to be brighter than the IBM speaker guy to his team) and ensured that the intervie…

Stories like this make me feel very sorry for all the great people who just don't happen to have a network of great buddies like you.

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

#373

Post by ManlyBread » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:17 AM UTC

serge2k wrote: post #24

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…

> At the risk of sounding like a white supremacist (I am Vietnamese) that very much sounds like a code word for "too many white people" or "too many asians". Too many underrepresented groups would be a nicer way of putting it. > Should it follow the US racial distribution? Would that not be fairest? > Since race is only skin deep It's about institutionalized racism, so race is what we should be looking at. Besides, y…

>> Should it follow the US racial distribution?

>Would that not be fairest?

Why?

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

#374

Post by easytiger » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:25 AM UTC

tuxidomasx wrote: post #129

I think the conversation about diversity in tech often overlooks a key metric, which is the percentage of tech companies that are founded by and/or employ a majority of minorities. For example, if its accurate to say that over 88% of US tech companies are founded by white people and employ mostly white people, then a diversity issue exists in the number of tech companies founded by black people and employing mostly b…

> For example, if its accurate to say that over 88% of US tech companies are founded by white people and employ mostly white people, then a diversity issue exists in the number of tech companies founded by black people and employing mostly black people.

Well america is 12.6% black, so perhaps that is perfectly representative.

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

#375

Post by EJTH » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:29 AM UTC

So because some people are easy quitters you should just drop a very important metric from the interview process?

Sometimes i think that "diversity consultant" is code word for mentally handicapped...

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

#376

Post by facepalm » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:30 AM UTC

If interviewing was the problem, it would imply that there are a lot of unemployed female developers (thousands and thousands - if they all were hired, we would expect a huge increase in percentage of female devs, so the number of unemployed female developers has to be a huge percentage of the number of all developers). Is that the case? How many unemployed female developers are there?

The other premise, that "diverse people" get less chance to practice interviewing, also seems bogus to me. I don't think good developers go through that many interviews and/or job applications before they get hired.

It may well be that interviewing is broken, what with the unreliable outcome, but it would be broken for everybody in the same way.

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

#377

Post by facepalm » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:31 AM UTC

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?

But what else are the men going to do? Women can opt out - men can't.

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

#378

Post by facepalm » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:33 AM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #118

pj_mukh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because Indian (particularly) men consider engineering to be a safe choice (source: am Indian). Anecdotally, speaking to women (esp American), they find engineering to be categorically unsafe from a career progress perspective. You may not 'see' the bias, but they definitely feel it. The effect is measurable. I am no expert, maybe it has something to do with maternity leave regimes or the interviews (like OP m…

My wife worked as a programmer for a while. There were two aspects that drove her out. First was the cliquey nature of the guys she worked with, she just felt like she didn't fit in. Second was the rate of change, just as she felt like she mastered something the new flavor of the month would take hold and she had to start over.

What is she doing instead now?

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

#379

Post by ManlyBread » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:42 AM UTC

theoh wrote: post #151

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…

If certain activities have a huge effect on how the world operates, which is kind of the premise of Y Combinator (software is eating the world, etc.) then it's important that the people who call the shots are representative of the people who are affected. This has to happen from the bottom up, since for obvious reasons you can't parachute in "untrained diversity" at a management/strategy level.

>it's important that the people who call the shots are representative of the people who are affected

Sounds like racial segregation.

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

#380

Post by dijit » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 10:57 AM UTC

kolokolo wrote: post #256

balls187 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As asked elsewhere--what systemic bias exists that targets certain women (white, black, mexican), but not women of other races (particularly Chinese, Indian and Russian)? Perhaps instead, it's because schools (government?) in Russia, India, and China have emphasized Computer Science, and produce higher number of female grads. Anecdotally, I attended a tiny engineering school in the midwest, and pretty much all the gr…

TIL Russian women are not white.

Some are, some aren't. Russia is big.

Also, we take it to mean that he's talking about traditionally western culture, Russia doesn't have a western culture.