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

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

#361

Post by Consultant32452 » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:36 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #258

Consultant32452 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to be careful about using the phrase "less biased" because bias goes both directions. In fact almost all universities go out of their way to get women into their tech programs. I think what you're talking about is trying to find a candidate pool that is more biased towards minorities than average, which is fine, but let's use the correct language. Generally speaking I do see the lack of diversity in tech as a…

> We have to be careful about using the phrase "less biased Fine--we want more women. Research, and personal experience, shows gender-mixed teams outperform [1][2][3][4]. This is a business, not HR, decision. We also want more cultural diversity. I don't like pitching in Latin America or the Middle East with zero cultural context on the home team. If you're a B2C company, you probably want socioeconomic diversity on…

If you want to bring more women into your firm because you think they have some biological or sociological advantages over men in some areas then that's fine, do so. But look at the majority of posts in this thread, they're all about reducing gender bias. These other posts don't make sense in the context of an employer whose payroll is already proportional to the pipeline.

You're saying the opposite, that increasing gender bias will provide you with some economic benefit. At least what you're saying is rational and consistent.

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

#362

Post by mcguire » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:37 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94

I went to a non-top tier undergraduate school. I made efforts--at big companies as well as the one I founded--to recruit from my alma mater . I ended up defaulting to NYU, Harvard and Stanford. Career services at non-top tier schools are shit. Once, as a personal favor, I offered to help a company with a well-known CEO recruit from my state school. When I brought it up with a dean I knew, career services got mad. The…

Once upon a time, UT Austin CS department has its own recruiting program. They were good. They even got me my first job and I'm the worst interviewee you've ever heard of; I have the interpersonal skills of a sea cucumber.

Then the college of natural sciences took over. I'm glad I was gone; from what I hear, it sucks.

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

#363

Post by ifhd » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:40 AM UTC

samstave wrote: post #275

viewtransform wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Its like a real-life implementation of that life-score episode of Black Mirror (and what the chinese government is looking to do to their entire population. When I first interviewed with google, it took three-freaking months of panel interviews. Then they said I scored really well, and that I'd have an offer the next day. I got the call the next day and said, in fact, no offer was coming. No reason given. Then they a…

I went and did the phone screens and in person. Took 2 weeks to reject me. I don't really mind a rejection, I thought the interview was pretty meh on my part.

Decided to try again a while later. They had me start at the phone screen stage again, then wanted me to do a second. Almost did it, called it off because I decided it just wasn't worth the trouble.

I've been rejected by other places but google just really annoyed me. I think it was the overwrought, slow, unpleasant process which produces high false negative rates but that they are also seemingly extremely proud of. Only place I wen to where they told me multiple times about how common it is to interview 2-3 times before getting in. I'm sure that happens at other places but they seem to treat it more as a flaw then a feature.

Anyway, I hate jumping through hoops. I'm hoping next job I can leverage people a bit more and maybe move through things a bit more quickly.

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

#364

Post by adrianratnapala » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:43 AM UTC

Tehchops wrote: post #292

sndean wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Career services at non-top tier schools are shit. Doing my undergrad and PhD at an average large state school, I was really lucky to get an internship (and now job), essentially by word of mouth and my PhD advisor. Now that I'm doing a part-time Masters at an elite-ish (top 10) school, I'm realizing how amazing career services can be. They send out weekly emails saying: "James Dimon is coming to speak." "Dir. of En…

> I'm realizing how amazing career services can be. They send out weekly emails saying: "James Dimon is coming to speak." Interesting, and I can see it. But then again, I have to wonder if there is some degree of confirmation bias at play here? It's likely the staff in Career Services at $ivyLeague are, on average, of a higher skill than their counterparts at $stateSchool. But by how much? Sending an email isn't exac…

My guess is that it is about political will. If people in career services want a fief where "Guarding their gatekeeping function was of greater concern than doing their job." -- then it will take political capital to fight that. Depending on their incentives, university bosses might not bother.

But the Ivy League schools know that their bread is buttered by their ability to get students into elite positions, so they make sure their career services department gets things right. And have been doing so for so long that these departments do things right on their own.

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

#365

Post by ifhd » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:47 AM UTC

erichmond wrote: post #305

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…

Meh, I got into CMU SCS, and chose Tufts, because I was equally interested in comp sci and music, and Tufts had a much superior music program. Early on in my career I'd get questioned about my CS degree from Tufts, and I'd jokingly mention "I'd gotten into CMU SCS, but I preferred to be a well rounded individual. I can send you the acceptance letter if you'd like." I think people choose schools for all manner of reas…

I'd be worried about that coming off as "I'm better than you".

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

#366

Post by thaumasiotes » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:49 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #76

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company that hires primarily from Podunk State - your…

"there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent." I find myself wondering at your definition of "2nd tier school". If you mean community colleges or something, I'd understand. But there's plenty of "tier 1 schools" for learning computer science outside of the "same five schools"…

> or all the sound and fury of the industry, it has visibly not shifted all that much in curriculum in the 20 years since I took it. I know, I look over the intern's shoulders sometimes when they do homework here and I could almost hand them my own homework solutions from 1998 as a cheat sheet.

> The very elitism the article is deploring is on full display when people seem to assume it's these top five schools, then a country full of drooling morons. That is not in fact how it works.

The fact that assignments are similar isn't evidence that "it's these top five schools, then a country full of drooling morons" is inaccurate. Perhaps the assignments are easy, and nobody cares about the quality of the program so much as the quality of the students.

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

#367

Post by toast0 » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:50 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #157

This article is about first jobs out of school (interesting to me b/c my kid just started university). How much does it matter after that first job? I couldn't tell you were any of my co-workers went to school -- in hiring the work a candidate did previously and what people I know say about their work matters. However I am quite conscious that people give me the benefit of the doubt based on where I went to school (I…

For those company where school names open the door, it's still going to open the door for later jobs. Your previous employer names may also open the door. But many companies that hire only from top schools also hire only from top companies, or at least well known companies.

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

#368

Post by exelius » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:51 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #344

walshemj wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that I have worked for a big multi national tech company and unless you had passed a 3 day course you where not allowed to interview candidates. I would have thought that googles Hr would have a better proccess

My theory: Google started by hiring only new grads from Stanford and then a few other top schools. 1. They're only interested in new grads, so experienced people are treated funny; they're outliers. 2. They're only interested in top schools, which act as a pre-filter. Anyone interviewed is probably a good hire anyway, so it doesn't matter whether your process is goofy. 3. We are talking Google. Anyone under the age o…

Yeah, that ride is over. Google's rep is fucked with a lot of top schools anymore. Don't get me wrong; it's still a good company to work for, but getting a job at Google in 2017 is like getting a job at Microsoft in 2007. And the recruiting process is so stupid that the best candidates don't bother.

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

#369

Post by jaggederest » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:56 AM UTC

home_boi wrote: post #342

jaggederest wrote: post #16

I would bet significant amounts of money that if you looked at people based on their in-job performance blinded to background you'd find insignificant contributions from education. Not interviewing, I would bet that people from top-tier schools interview very well, as I think Triplebyte discussed the other day. I'm talking about actual bottom-line performance in the job, which in my experience shows little correlatio…

I can see this being true if the people work at the same company (and already passed the same filter). I doubt it would be true over the entire university CS populations. If the only thing you know about two applicants is their university, then the student from a top tier university will on average perform much better than the student from a low tier university.

If the only thing you know about two applicants is their university, you literally don't know anything about them and need to start over.

I'm like 99% sure it's zero information. Most hiring processes don't falsify the null hypothesis :P

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

#370

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 1:58 AM UTC

twentythree wrote: post #227

Bartweiss wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point - referral schemes are almost always cheaper than using professional recruiters, but they're particularly well-tailored to picking up candidates who are hard to find by resume alone. They'll miss a lot of clusters who never get that first Googler in the door, but past that point they're a highly efficient fix.

> they're particularly well-tailored to picking up candidates who are hard to find by resume alone Interesting -- can you explain more what you mean here? Referral programs are often criticized for reinforcing biases, since people refer other people with similar backgrounds to them (and, likely, similar resumes). I've held a negative view of referral programs for that reason; do you have data or anecdata about referr…

Yes, certainly - I think the thing I mean doesn't conflict with the thing you mean.

Referral programs will pretty obviously bring your hires similar to the hires you already have, with all the attendant problems. College insularity, but also demographics and even specializations. What I was thinking about was more specifically finding strong candidates from populations that don't look great.

Maybe State University has a weak CS program, but a handful of really good candidates. (This is probably the case for any weak program of sufficient size.) Those candidates probably won't be obvious on paper unless they're hyper-motivated, because weak programs lead to limited opportunities and uninformative grades.

But if Jess from State University does Google Summer of Code and makes something awesome, maybe she gets a job. At that point, Google hands her the referral form and she can pick out her strongest classmates better than any recruiter could, even if they haven't done anything flashy. (My experience, at least, was that the top students are at a minimum aware of one another.)

So it's not going to solve a demography problem; if your direct hires are 50% Stanford, your referrals will be too. But a lot of those Stanford referrals might be people you'd reach anyway, so referrals are valuable in inverse proportion to the ease of other recruiting. The harder it is to spot which candidates are good, the more benefit you gain from asking their peers.