Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

blog.interviewing.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 496 posts

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#241

Post by rodgerd »

gonehome wrote: post #112
drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

I agree - and this is even more true at state schools than the slightly more selective schools (like RPI that I went to). State schools have people that got into MIT, but didn't go for financial reasons or family reasons. Nobody at RPI got into MIT because if they did they would have gone to MIT (maybe some rare exception exists, but this is generally true). School admission is obviously not a perfect indicator of ab…

> This is even ignoring the 'diversity' angle - a lot of really great people are missed because it's hard to break in without knowing someone or having the right credentials.

That is literally the diversity angle.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#242

Post by dogruck »

s73ver_ wrote: post #221
dogruck wrote: post #60

In my experience, major companies are aware of this problem, and would love to find a solution. Frankly, the problem is that, ultimately, they want to hire the best people. Most of the time, the best people are sourced from the top-tier schools. On the other hand, in my experience, they pride themselves on finding great people from outside of that small circle. When they do find such a person, it's not uncommon for h…

Define "best".

What's your definition?

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#243

Post by eropple »

skybrian wrote: post #231
TallGuyShort wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a different one contact me repeatedly every 6 months like clockwork for the last 5 years. Of the ~10 I've had one that listened to WHY I wasn't immediately interested and factored that into his future communications. The rest of them came off exactly as the parent comment to yours described. edit: to clarify what happens, every 6 months it's a new recruiter, and they always ping me multiple times until I res…

To clarify, I meant that the person doing the tech interview shouldn't care what school you went to and definitely shouldn't be throwing shade since that just distorts the evaluation. The early part of the recruitment process is basically a process to get possibly qualified candidates to interview. What it's good for: if you ever want try interviewing at Google again, you can get an interview. I wouldn't expect anyth…

> To clarify, I meant that the person doing the tech interview shouldn't care what school you went to and definitely shouldn't be throwing shade since that just distorts the evaluation.

Of course they shouldn't. (I know plenty of people at Google, I've gone through the process a few times, I have an idea.) But...that doesn't mean it doesn't happen and that it isn't cultural.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#244

Post by nerpderp83 »

wpietri wrote: post #235
jldugger wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just don't understand that some people like me, who can get into the (mostly private) elite schools choose to go to a "long tail" school Can you really expect any different from a company founded from within the halls of Stanford, and then staffed primarily from there? On the other hand, I bet if you sat down and ran the numbers, recruiting from state schools isn't productive. For better or worse, school selec…

> Can you really expect any different from a company founded from within the halls of Stanford, and then staffed primarily from there? Yes, I can. The whole point of education is to rise above your biases and intuitions.

If I can't reinforce my bias to show, no prove I am amazing, then what do I have to live for? I cannot afford to be objective, I be normal or even worse, normal.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#245

Post by nether »

viewtransform wrote: post #225
drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

When a recruiter contacted me for a position at Google in 2012, I happened to be also taking Daphne Koller's Coursera class on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM). I was puzzled why the recruiter wanted to know my SAT score. He also wanted to know the college and high school I went to and my GRE score and my undergrad GPA ... Keep in mind that I have a BS, MS, Phd in three different engineering fields and over a dec…

Then we've got this 2013 article saying that Google doesn't care about GPA and test scores: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-hires-people-2013-.... Maybe things have changed since your experience.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#246

Post by _raoulcousins »

whipoodle wrote: post #117
gonehome wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - and this is even more true at state schools than the slightly more selective schools (like RPI that I went to). State schools have people that got into MIT, but didn't go for financial reasons or family reasons. Nobody at RPI got into MIT because if they did they would have gone to MIT (maybe some rare exception exists, but this is generally true). School admission is obviously not a perfect indicator of ab…

I didn't even understand the whole world of prestige and specialization among colleges when I was 16 or 17 and trying to pick a school. I didn't know that some schools were where the "good" people go. I just knew I was supposed to go to college, so I visited the local Penn State campus and people said "don't come here". Then I visited another state school and people seemed to like it, so that's where I went. I wonder…

Yep! I chose a local state school over my top choice.

State school was free with financial, extrapolating my financial aid package I would have graduated from the top choice with ~$60,000 debt.

I didn't understand the prestige differential because literally everyone I knew at best went to that state school. One of my high school teachers even told our class that we should not aim higher than the state school, because everyone who ended up going somewhere better flunked out and at best eventually graduating from the state school. At least he was telling us a state school was achievable?

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#247

Post by wpietri »

fareesh wrote: post #203

As an outsider in another country, my impression seems to be that the quest for diversity seems to have turned into something of a religion in several cultures. In principle, as a solution to the problem I am principally all in favor of anonymous, faceless, no alma mater preference etc. interviews and application processes, and/or whatever other measures are suggested to remove the possibility of bias or unconscious…

I think perhaps you aren't looking at this through a long enough lens.

You can tell America's history in terms of decreasing inequality of opportunity. We started with only well-off white men having the vote; black people were chattel and women were pretty close. We have sporadically worked ever since to repair that. One civil war, assorted constitutional amendments, and 8 civil rights acts so far. We try something, see if that's enough, and then try again when it isn't.

Each time people hope that we've done the last thing. The post-Civil War period, the Reconstruction, was supposed to fix things. But then we had the Lilly White Movement. And Jim Crow. And the Nadir, which involved violent ethnic cleansing across the US (mostly but not entirely anti-black).

We certainly aren't there yet. Marital rape wasn't fully outlawed in the US until 1992. Redlining wasn't illegal until the 70s, and the effects on wealth distribution persist to this day. Men and women reached parity in law and medicine degrees a decade ago, but as far as people practicing it's still 2:1. Employment discrimination, as documented by a number of studies, still persists.

So yeah, if some particular solution doesn't fix the problem, then people will definitely keep pushing. Because that's our 200-year history of fighting discrimination: it keeps not getting fixed.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#248

Post by yongjik »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #151
skybrian wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Google interviewer definitely shouldn't be doing that. Sounds like you got a bad one.

Based on the other comments here, it sounds like he got a thoroughly average one.

There's selection bias. Many good developers who met good recruiters/interviewers would have been hired, so they won't be complaining here.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#249

Post by TuringNYC »

vilmosi wrote: post #20
TuringNYC wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, but as another commenter suggested it is difficult to measure socioeconomic status. I think the bigger issue is -- why are negative points applied to Asian applications on my affirmative action schemes, rather than negative points evenly distributed against the entire non-preferred pool? Is anyone seriously arguing that Asian applicants have it easier than caucasians? Having grown up quite poor in NYC,…

>>> Is anyone seriously arguing that Asian applicants have it easier than caucasians? Statistically speaking, don't they? Isn't that the reasoning for these "penalties"?

I imagine this is a huge can of worms, there is no one answer, and any answer I give will be a broad and imperfect generalization. That said, i'll provide my viewpoint as an Asian-American born and raised in NYC. I'm comparing to others in NYC (obviously there is the broader USA where poverty abounds and knows no color.)

No, most asians of my generation did not have it easier. We rarely had an uncle at a hedge fund or lawfirm suddenly drop an internship in the middle of Junior year high school to beef up our college applications. Few had legacy connections or friends at the investment bank who could write a great recommendation. I went to a top-3 science high school in NYC and by and large, the Asians I saw succeed did it through sheer, soul-crushing hard work. In many cases we had slave masters (our mothers usually, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_mother) ensuring success at any cost.

Sure, most of my friends and I got into ivy league schools in droves, but in many cases it was almost a pyrrhic victory. I honestly wish I could have normal fun and social development in high school. Instead I was forced to maximize one and only one objective function -- getting into an Ivy League school.

So to answer your question: No, we Asian-Americans dont have it easier, most of us simply overcompensated at great personal cost.

These are all gross generalizations circa 1994-1997 based on my highly diverse high school graduating class of ~800 and another thousand people I know from my neighborhood, civic organizations, summer jobs, etc. I'd value other perspectives.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#250

Post by wildmusings »

Universities are allowed to base their entrance on intelligence tests[1], while companies face a strong legal presumption that using such tests is illegal discrimination. The easy way to get around that problem is to hire out of the highest ranked universities.

[1] Tests like the SAT correlate very strongly with IQ, and are designed to minimize the value of preparation.

Post reply on HN