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

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

#411

Post by pbhjpbhj »

weberc2 wrote: post #281
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…

Google offers 18 weeks of maternity leave, and (according to the article at least) they still aren't doing any better than the industry as a whole. I also wonder how much of this perception is the result of a society that tells some groups that everyone is out to get them. Related: https://www.reddit.com/r/TiADiscussion/comments/5arevk/new_t...

Could you qualify the particular geographic area you're referring to. Google are a multinational, only giving 18 weeks maternity leave would be illegal in the UK, for example (https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave/leave).

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

#413

Post by cardine »

kls wrote: post #388
Klockan wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 firs…

I did not go into deep detail about the article because I did not want to misquote it but my understanding was that they sent the prospects a VM with the entire dev environment running. Gave them a simple but real task that they needed accomplished and remote contracted them to complete that task (with compensation). They (the prospective developer) were given a full software spec, and access to the development team.…

People keep talking about doing these "trial" periods but the people I want to hire are the type of people who have enough options that they wouldn't agree to do some two week trial period when they have four other companies offering them a full time job with no strings attached.

I wish I could do paid trial periods for everyone, I just think this will filter out far more people than having a restrictive interview process that works specifically to filter out false positives.

So with a paid trial you will generally filter out the best people who have other options while a more restrictive interview process would generally filter out the worst people who couldn't make it past a difficult Skype interview and a difficult onsite two hour pair coding session.

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

#414

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

I don't think that first diagram really supports the OP's point. If you look at the top performing interviewees, the ones with a mean of 4, you can see that the majority seems to have scored no less than 3, even in their sub-par interviews. There's a steep drop in standard deviation at that end of the curve. It seems that the people who do best at interviews do so pretty consistently indeed.

The OP makes this point: they say that the tech interview is a game that can be learned, and that the problem is that people may drop out before they have the chance to learn it. That certainly rings true, but I don't see that their (scarce) data shows that employers want to reform their practice.

For one thing, employers may conclude that if consistency is higher for the best performers that's a sign that the tech interview is indeed a good proxy of skill. And if it causes lots of people to drop out, well that's probably a bonus: fewer applications to sift through, fewer people hired that shouldn't be and overall less uncertainty and churn [1].

______________

[1] Managerese for not having a clue how to manage.

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

#415

Post by moduspwnens14 »

DigitalSea wrote: post #130

I consider myself a competent developer, but I have no academic background as I am self-taught. While I have had a steady supply of work, because of this, I will most likely never get to work for a big company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook because I wouldn't pass their technical interview. I lack the understanding of core computer science principles and I am okay with admitting that, I don't think it makes me a…

> While I have had a steady supply of work, because of this, I will most likely never get to work for a big company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook because I wouldn't pass their technical interview.

The stuff people complain about (big O, data structures, algorithms in theory) are stuff even us with degrees have to study and relearn before job interviews. I think you might be underselling yourself. Those big companies use questions like this (often instead of hard checks for degrees) specifically to allow self-taught coders who are good an opportunity to get in.

To some extent, as other have posted, it is kind of silly, but you might be able to look at it as a leveling of the playing field.

> I never understood how this was a valid metric for determining suitability of a candidate, when candidates have come to expect a FizzBuzz test coming up.

It's not--it's a metric for determining unsuitability.

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

#416

Post by exstudent2 »

acdha wrote: post #396
exstudent2 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is their experience more valid than mine? I'll go with my own observations before that of an HN commenter. Yes, I know that's what I am too.

Reread what I said and note that I didn't say you were definitely wrong, only that it's inconsistent to treat two anecdotal accounts in completely opposite ways. I'm entirely comfortable accepting that what you wrote is what you honestly believe but you're trying to argue that your limited personal experience represents an entire field so completely that everyone who says otherwise is either confused or lying. If you…

> it's inconsistent to treat two anecdotal accounts in completely opposite ways.

I can either believe a random person on the internet peddling a rather trendy political opinion or my own extensive industry experience. I'd expect outsiders to treat both our claims with a grain of salt and instead use their own observations.

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

#417

Post by taneq »

belorn wrote: post #401
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…

Jumping directly to discrimination in society seems a bit hasted as an explanation for the data, since men entering the teaching profession also show the exact same data. When hitting a roadblock, men a several times more likely to quit the teaching profession than a woman hitting the same roadblock. Surely it not an issue of men knowing that they're worth something in and of themselves, competing against women in th…

Very interesting, I'd never heard that about male teachers quitting more often than females. I wonder if that holds true across different cultures? Here, at least, teaching is often seen as a bit of a fallback plan if you don't succeed at your chosen profession or you hit mid-20s and still don't know what you want to do.

I like the diverging behaviour angle too. That actually sounds like it could have a serious impact, and doesn't rely so heavily on stereotyping one particular teen experience across each gender.

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

#418

Post by aantix »

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.

Money in Silicon Valley knows no prejudice. One of the companies that I consulted for offered 10K placement bonuses if you could recommend an engineer that stayed for just three months.

This idea that there's a group of hidden engineers just waiting to discovered and included, that they just haven't been shown a company that cares, that somehow if we just went to the right unrepresented areas or schools or groups they would be there they'd be waiting to add millions to the bottom line... Just isn't true.

If you're not showing off your skills, putting yourself out there with code, meetups, conferences, then no, you're not one of the best. Engineers can self-delude themselves all day in their cubicle with how clever their code is, but if you're not sharing it with the world then you're not doing enough to be included in the best.

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

#419

Post by moduspwnens14 »

elgenie wrote: post #49
pj_mukh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly empirically provable [1]. Diverse teams come up with better ideas that apply to a larger swath of markets (an immediate payoff for companies). [1]: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...

The results on this are quite wishy-washy. And the applicability of studies of the value of diversity in an executive team attempting to strategically position themselves in a market to a team building a compiler is questionable to say the least.

Even making your product appeal to a wide market often isn't recommended for small companies. We often see posts here about focusing on a specific winnable market and going from there.

In a vacuum, I'd imagine that having likeness between the customer and the developers to be far more effective than general cultural diversity. A team making a compiler is programmers making a tool for programmers, so it's an excellent fit. I could see cultural diversity becoming more effective once you're trying to reach the general public or niche markets.

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

#420

Post by acdha »

exstudent2 wrote: post #416
acdha wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reread what I said and note that I didn't say you were definitely wrong, only that it's inconsistent to treat two anecdotal accounts in completely opposite ways. I'm entirely comfortable accepting that what you wrote is what you honestly believe but you're trying to argue that your limited personal experience represents an entire field so completely that everyone who says otherwise is either confused or lying. If you…

> it's inconsistent to treat two anecdotal accounts in completely opposite ways. I can either believe a random person on the internet peddling a rather trendy political opinion or my own extensive industry experience. I'd expect outsiders to treat both our claims with a grain of salt and instead use their own observations.

To anyone other than yourself, you are the “random person on the internet peddling a rather trendy political opinion”, especially since it's easy to find people with just as much industry experience who both disagree with your portrayal and have reasonable explanations for why you might not be aware of their experience.
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