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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

#461

Post by [deleted] »

shados wrote: post #404
lsc wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

you're right, people get uneasy about it, but they get really uneasy when you keep bad people. I've seen entire companies evaporate because a bad apple stuck around, people who had to work with them quit, then more quit, and eventually the whole company was just mediocre or bad people and they couldn't run with that anymore. Kind of the broken window problem applied to people.

[deleted]

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

#462

Post by geebee »

Scea91 wrote: post #57
divbit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty huge statistic, - what also pops out to me is: "stop practicing ". This seems to imply that these technical interviews are skills that you don't really gain on the job. I know that personally would 9 times out of 10 spend time on a cool / beneficial project rather than making time to practice trivia problems.

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.

Any possibility you should share some of the questions you would consider typical of your interviews? If you can't share the exact question, could you share what you would consider an equivalent question?

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

#463

Post by solipsism »

throw_away_777 wrote: post #459
solipsism wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um.... "persecuted"? HN accounts have full support for anonymity. Why do you care if an anonymous account on some board gets "persecuted"? Where "persecuted" means you might get a -4. This is about throwaway accounts (people creating accounts on the spot to say shitty things, while having their other account for non-shitty things, so they never lose points), not anonymity.

A lot of people's HN accounts, at least for the people who post a lot, are not anonymous. Alternatively if you post a lot it is possible to reconstruct who you are. If comments were being down voted you wouldn't see them at the top of threads - people use throw aways for anonymity not to prevent loss of points.

A lot of people's HN accounts, at least for the people who post a lot, are not anonymous.

So they choose not to take advantage of a feature. Doesn't mean one-time throwaways are a good thing.

If comments were being down voted you wouldn't see them at the top of threads.

This is irrelevant. It's about what kind of votes they expect to receive.

people use throw aways for anonymity not to prevent loss of points

I call complete BS on that. The most common reason given for posting with a throwaway (when a reason is given) is, "using a throwaway because I know I'll get downvoted for this".

Alternatively if you post a lot it is possible to reconstruct who you are.

Your only good point. Throwaways are the worst solution (of many) for this. Look at 4chan. Do we want to be 4chan?

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

#464

Post by [deleted] »

throw_away_777 wrote: post #459
solipsism wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um.... "persecuted"? HN accounts have full support for anonymity. Why do you care if an anonymous account on some board gets "persecuted"? Where "persecuted" means you might get a -4. This is about throwaway accounts (people creating accounts on the spot to say shitty things, while having their other account for non-shitty things, so they never lose points), not anonymity.

A lot of people's HN accounts, at least for the people who post a lot, are not anonymous. Alternatively if you post a lot it is possible to reconstruct who you are. If comments were being down voted you wouldn't see them at the top of threads - people use throw aways for anonymity not to prevent loss of points.

[deleted]

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

#465

Post by absitively »

avasylev wrote: post #150
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…

I'm one of the people who ask those algorithm/white board questions. I've read a lot criticism on this topic, here're my reasons to stil keep asking these questions: 1) Working on algorithm problem requires very little in common between interviewer and interviewee. I'm C++/C#, I won't be able to give Ruby dev a real world task and evaluate it properly. Algo/data structure problems are universal and looks similar in a…

1) If you're trying to hire a Ruby developer to write Ruby applications and that's not what you're screening in interviews, you're not proving anything relevant to the candidate's ability to do the real world job. Between not having anyone to interview and an algorithm interview, I get where you're coming from. But if there is any other choice, you shouldn't be giving the technical interview to someone whose practical skills you can't assess.

2) There are a billion things to learn as a technology professional. The time you spend practicing specifically to be able to whiteboard algorithms for interviews is time you're not spending doing something else. Something that will be more beneficial to you and to your business on a day to day basis than learning how to interview well. So choosing to do those other things instead doesn't show that you're not engaged.

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

#466

Post by mark-r »

facepalm wrote: post #378
mark-r wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

When our first child was born she decided to take a sideline sales business and make it full time, working from home. She does very well, in her peak year she made more than I did.

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

#467

Post by geebee »

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…

Interesting, but your case may really get at what may go wrong with the algorithm exam approach to interviewing. I would expect a developer with a good understanding of fundamentals to see the difference in using a hash vs an array, and I would hope that developer at one point implemented a hash as an exercise.

I haven't needed to implement my own hashing table or methods on a real world project, as far as I can remember, but yes, I've absolutely written code that would have performed miserably if I hadn't known to use a hash rather than an array. I just didn't custom roll the hash, I used the hashing methods available to me in that language.

I'm aware of what a hash is, and what a hashing function is, and how collisions are resolved, and strategies to handle them. But I'm also almost certain I've been screened out of jobs because I couldn't implement a hash with a good hashing function in 45 minutes at the whiteboard. I just don't walk around ready to do this.

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

#468

Post by moduspol »

wpietri wrote: post #458
moduspol wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, most things done well have been by a group of like-minded people banding together to do something in a way that minimizes individuality and differences between them. They focus on a single vision and unite around it to become successful. You won't find a lot of studies on this because it's not a politically correct topic. Nobody wants to do the study that confirms you're better off just hiring whoever's…

Historically, most things have been terrible. There is no historical era I would like to live in more than the one we have now. Taking recent history, America has been enormously successful and prominent, especially in technology. And America, as a nation of immigrants, has unusually high levels of diversity and inclusion. What in modern America qualifies as non-diverse would still historically be very diverse. > Nob…

> Historically, most things have been terrible. There is no historical era I would like to live in more than the one we have now.

Not even long history. I'm talking even our modern tech companies, where many were started out of a garage by a few very non-diverse people.

> Taking recent history, America has been enormously successful and prominent, especially in technology. And America, as a nation of immigrants, has unusually high levels of diversity and inclusion. What in modern America qualifies as non-diverse would still historically be very diverse.

I think you're right, although this doesn't make a strong case for diversifying our almost completely white/asian/male technology industry or any company.

> It's nice when people share their feelings. Do you feel better? If so, good.

"I also feel like it's a false equivalency" is the phrase I went with after softening down "your argument is dishonest and misleading," which is itself softened down from the original response of anyone rational watching you compare hiring both front end and back end developers to hiring "diverse" team members.

> That aside, I'm not sure why you think the feelings of J Random Commenter would be relevant to me as compared with my years of experience building and running teams.

Your comment I responded to asked for a contrary assertion. My apologies if I offended you, but I really think it's helpful for people in your position to be exposed to an alternative view. Few are going to honestly respond to things like this in person out of fear of being labeled racist / sexist, but these aren't racist or sexist views and they aren't uncommon.

> Given the throwaway account, even you don't appear to take your opinions very seriously.

I do take them seriously, but it's not prudent to say politically incorrect things on an account linked to your real identity. I apologize if the comment bothered you.

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

#469

Post by geebee »

Scea91 wrote: post #352
douche wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe, but I had to implement Hoare partition scheme which is used in Quicksort a few months ago. If I didn't know Quicksort I wouldn't probably have an idea that this algorithm existed.

I had to write my own tree traversal once. If I didn't know about trees, I wouldn't have had the basic context to do this.

But I did have to spend a few hours looking up and refreshing my knowledge of tree traversal. If I'd taken a technical interview exam on tree traversal prior to that four hours or refreshing my memory, I almost certainly would have failed. And yet I within the day I was able to write the code.

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

#470

Post by sctb »

EJTH wrote: post #375

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...

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

This is not the kind of civil discussion the guidelines ask us to have on Hacker News. Please don't post like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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