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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

#441

Post by dozzie »

MustardTiger wrote: post #432
dozzie wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

No, that's not how it works, which is the point. As they said, men's value is judged on their current success. Not trying makes you just as valueless as trying and failing, it is the exact same outcome.

> No, that's not how it works [...]

Are you sure the people's feelings align with how your rational thinking goes?

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

#442

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #5

The big result there is this: "Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men." On the hiring side, "For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin th…

[deleted]

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

#443

Post by pj_mukh »

aantix wrote: post #418
ubernostrum wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

"Money in Silicon Valley knows no prejudice."

Most of the money is very dumb and extremely prejudiced. Listening to women talk about fundraising is horrifying.

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

#444

Post by crdoconnor »

mdorazio wrote: post #438
crdoconnor wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fair point, but in my experience the extra money is basically a wash when you factor in healthcare costs (I'm in the US), self-employment taxes, lack of employer-matched 401k, unpaid vacation, and the realistic utilization rate you can expect averaged out over several years. If you can keep your rate and utilization up you can definitely do better contracting, but a lot of people prefer the perm setup.

I'm in UK so healthcare isn't an issue.

The pension contributions and paid vacation is nice but it doesn't make up for the difference in income. Also contracting means that you can essentially decide the holiday/income ratio yourself.

One of the main benefits for me is that I usually get bored/sick of working at particular companies after an extended duration (the work can get repetitive). Contracting means you can job hop, gain a wider variety of experience and take extended holidays without stigma.

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

#445

Post by kls »

cardine wrote: post #413
kls wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

The problem is as the company in the article articulated, they thought they where filtering for the best but found out that they where not. The guy that they all agreed would be the best selection submitted a ball of code that was not cohesive and incomplete. The one who actually made it thru was the lowest on their list. IIRC their intent was to all three if they submitted good work.

The whole intent of their experiment was to show them exactly what we are talking about, you are selecting people based on their sales skills not based on their technical skills. 99% of the time people don't develop while someone is watching them over Skype or pair coding where they know they are being graded. They develop at their machine and if they get stuck they know they can turn to a close confident and ask them a question without being graded on it. The point is how well I perform under a microscope is a huge factor in your decision making process and it is not normal. Therefore it acts a a huge bias filter and one that does not amount to a hill of beans in every day development.

I am not saying that what the company in the article did is a workable or salable solution to hiring, but I am saying that it exposes what many of us, with multiple decades in the industry have been saying and that is hiring is broken and people in the industry are very bad at hiring because they let all kinds of bias in. One is salesmanship as highlighted in the article, the best salesman usually gets the job. Another big one is developer ego and sadly it is a very real thing in our industry. I will see if I can dig up the article.

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

#446

Post by MustardTiger »

dozzie wrote: post #441
MustardTiger wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not how it works, which is the point. As they said, men's value is judged on their current success. Not trying makes you just as valueless as trying and failing, it is the exact same outcome.

> No, that's not how it works [...] Are you sure the people's feelings align with how your rational thinking goes?

I am sure that assuming their behavior does not follow the obvious explanation because you simply dislike the obvious explanation is silly.

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

#447

Post by Shanea93 »

return0 wrote: post #164

Why not try unorthodox solutions: cap engineering salaries so men no longer rush to fill the jobs.

People normally only care about poor diversity in careers where the pay is good - you rarely hear people complaining about the diversity of cleaners, milk delivery personnel or train drivers.

If the pay dropped, I have a strong feeling that the calls for increased diversity in tech would cease quickly, replaced with complaints about diversity in accountancy or some other high net worth career.

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

#448

Post by MustardTiger »

morgante wrote: post #437
MustardTiger wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you have any evidence to back up that opinion The very article we're discussing? Remember, it shows 7 times as many women give up as men do. A generalization is not contradicted by one example to the contrary, it would need a majority of examples to the contrary. Obviously some men do give up. But only 1/7th as many as with women. I am simply supporting the explanation someone else offered: that this is because w…

All that is evidence of is that women give up more often than men. That doesn't provide any evidence that it's because men's value is tied to achievement. I could just as readily argue that women give up more than men because they have stronger priors of tech not being for them (fewer peers and role models, less experience, etc.) so any evidence they get confirming that hypothesis is more likely to push them into giv…

>All that is evidence of is that women give up more often than men

Yes, that's the point.

>That doesn't provide any evidence that it's because men's value is tied to achievement.

Indeed, that's what we're offering a potential explanation for.

>I could just as readily argue that women give up more than men because they have stronger priors of tech not being for them

Then do so. Saying "I could make a bunch of other arguments but won't because I know they are contradicted by evidence" is not compelling. In fact, I find it inherently dishonest, in that you are trying to rely on the assumption that any other random explanation you could put forth is just as good, but you won't put them forth because then they would be demonstrated to not be just as good.

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

#449

Post by euyyn »

taneq wrote: post #155
euyyn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That would make sense if they weren't also complaining about the fact that there are fewer [group X] applicants in the first place (and then using that to justify accusations of systemic discrimination).

Did you read my 2nd paragraph?

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

#450

Post by [deleted] »

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...

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