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

#381

Post by wavefunction » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 2:53 AM UTC

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #356

hueving wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the 'diversity' angle is frequently tied to things like skin color, sex, ethnicity, heritage, etc. You can have two people that match in all of those categories but one chose to go to a state school because of a family issue and then they will be ignored by Google. This is not something any diversity program I know of in the big companies is trying to address.

> but one chose to go to a state school because of a family issue and then they will be ignored by Google A person with a family issue probably still has a family issue incompatible with working for a corporation across the country. Ever think their process of selecting unencumbered elitists might be by design and super effective?

>probably still has a family issue

Probably? That seems to be an expansive assumption, to be charitable.

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

#382

Post by Bahamut » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 2:54 AM UTC

cynicalkane wrote: post #170

eropple wrote: post #65

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 for a variety of reasons (financial, family obligations, etc). Agreed--I was accepted everywhere I applied save one and I ended up going to the University of Maine. I've never hurt for work and I paid off my student loans by the age of 25. Google sniffs around now (aside: rec…

Google's interviewing process is incongruously uneven compared to the rest of the company, which is top-notch. I recommend giving it another thought. (Disclaimer: ex-Googler.)

There are plenty of other great big tech companies that don’t have as terrible of an interview process and comparable pay.

I don’t know if I’ll ever try applying to Google again, especially after landing at one of their largest competitors & the company investing heavily in the area I am working in.

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

#383

Post by Mangalor » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 2:55 AM UTC

hasenj wrote: post #377

> While enjoying a nice free meal in Harvard Square, he has the opportunity to ask these successful engineers questions about their current work. If he likes the company, all he has to do is accept the company’s standing invitation to interview on campus the next morning. What? That sounds almost comical. It seems obviously false, but just in case I will ask: Is that really what happens at Harvard? > Anthony goes to…

> Is that really what happens at Harvard?

Yes.

> If the latter, they will have absolutely no problem getting hired.

The whole point of the article is they won't.

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

#384

Post by hasenj » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 2:55 AM UTC

Mangalor wrote: post #383

hasenj wrote: post #377

> While enjoying a nice free meal in Harvard Square, he has the opportunity to ask these successful engineers questions about their current work. If he likes the company, all he has to do is accept the company’s standing invitation to interview on campus the next morning. What? That sounds almost comical. It seems obviously false, but just in case I will ask: Is that really what happens at Harvard? > Anthony goes to…

> Is that really what happens at Harvard? Yes. > If the latter, they will have absolutely no problem getting hired. The whole point of the article is they won't .

The whole point of my comment is the article is wrong.

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

#385

Post by zaptheimpaler » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 2:59 AM UTC

kobeya wrote: post #309

tomtang0514 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I graduated from a top 5 CS program, and no we don't do that.

I don’t mean explicitly. Small team group work and revision sessions with the TA might be sufficient. Non tier 1 schools don’t have this luxury.

I went to a top 5 school.. sorry to say there is no secret sauce the school gave us, no interview prep classes, and not a lot of TA sessions either - at least not with small sizes.

Definitely nothing at all targeted towards interviews - even the algo courses were very theoretical and they expected us to get comfortable with the code on our own time. In fact they are all about teaching CS and not about teaching you how to get a job or trendy technologies.

What did help me and some of my friends more than anything was just grinding interview questions - going through CTCI 3-4 times until I could solve it in my head, doing random questions off glassdoor etc..

People love to paint rosy pictures of easy lives for top 5 candidates. The truth is college was insanely hard, many people were extremely stressed/depressed, we worked our asses off and sacrificed a lot. Ultimately to learn a lot more in 4 years than someone else, you have to put in a lot more time - there is no way around it.

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

#386

Post by dionidium » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 3:01 AM UTC

jldugger wrote: post #224

dionidium wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently moved from St. Louis to New York City. The number of recruiting emails I receive has probably quadrupled (or more). In all things, it helps to be where the people you want to find you are looking. Also: protip for people in the South or Midwest who are open to relocation: change your online profiles to say you're in the new location.

> Also: protip for people in the South or Midwest who are open to relocation: change your online profiles to say you're in the new location. That'll work at getting more calls, but won't the increase in calls just mean more offers for work without relocation packages?

Yes.

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

#387

Post by jerf » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 3:14 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #366

jerf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

"Perhaps the assignments are easy, and nobody cares about the quality of the program so much as the quality of the students."

That sounds like a rationalization to justify arrogance rather than a claim you have any sort of evidence for. I'd say I've got abundant evidence to the contrary.

The Silicon Valley arrogance sure is on full display today. In another thread on the homepage we have people expressing shock and surprise that yes, there are in fact ways to put a roof over your head in Topeka for $100K.

This may sound weird to you, but I don't live in Silicon Valley because I don't want to. I didn't go to one of the elite colleges (which I most likely could have qualified for) because I didn't want to. My house is bigger, my yard is bigger, my commute is better, I like the people better, my student loans were paid off years ago and I have a realistic prospect of owning my house before I'm 40 without having had to go to Money Mustache levels of frugality, and in some ways it's easier to hire here than in the Valley. I know, I've been to the Valley many times.

But I suppose the net effect of the number of people currently getting out of SV is evaporative cooling, so SV will be left with an ever-increasing portion of the population who Truly Believe that just outside of the comforting mountains is a horde of barbarians with sloped foreheads who can't quite seem to figure out this "fire" thing. For your own sake and sanity, you might want to escape that massive filter bubble and have a look around at your options, which you may discover are nowhere near as monolithic as you think. It's always good to have an escape route, as evidenced by the many people availing themselves of it.

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

#388

Post by kxyvr » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 3:14 AM UTC

jroseattle wrote: post #123

When we find a candidate we're interested in pursuing, we ask our recruiting operation to do two things prior to sending us the candidate's resume. 1) Remove the candidate's name/address. Replace with local-to-office = yes|no. Leave phone for screening call. 2) Replace the candidate's education credentials with yes|no on post-HS attendance, and the focus of study. No other information necessary. It's made a huge diff…

I appreciate that you and your company is doing this. Many years back, I sat on the graduate school acceptance board for my department at a tier-1 research university. Before we were given the applications, we were given a spreadsheet with the applicants name, GPA, GRE, and last university. This led the members on the committee to immediately pull the applications from the known universities and given them preferential treatment. This made it difficult for students who came from underrepresented groups to have their application appropriately considered. They may have had good research and work experience, taken the appropriate classes, but they went to local state schools, not tier-1 universities. Literally, I was told one student was a B-student at Columbia, which is like an A-student anywhere else. Anyway, I lobbied to have all of this information stripped in the future, but my request was denied. I'm glad someone is doing it. In my belief, if the majority of workplaces used this process, a large amount of implicit bias and discrimination during hiring would be eliminated.

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

#389

Post by nitrogen » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 3:23 AM UTC

GauntletWizard wrote: post #323

throwaway76543 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn't. They also used to ask for high school transcripts if you didn't graduate college -- even for senior folks with decades of experience. Google's interviewing process used to be extremely absurd. They have reformed it somewhat since around 2013.

I never gave my high school transcripts to my Google recruiter. I worked there for four years as an SRE (2010-2014), without having graduated college. I'll admit I was an outlier - Most people around me had fantastic college resumes (And I was very lucky to have them to learn from to shore up places where I had weaknesses). There may also have been a different hiring track and bar for SREs. I didn't find it a problem…

...our best recruiter was forced out because she spent too much time hanging out with engineers outside after-hours...

What might be the rationale for that? At every company I've worked at, the best results came when people worked across divisions between boundaries. I once asked a VC what grassroots indicators they looked at inside of companies, and they said a collaborative environment without a lot of silos. I'd never heard of companies actively punishing this kind of thing, but I totally believe you that it happens. Why would they do that?

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

#390

Post by tomtang0514 » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 3:24 AM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #352

tomtang0514 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this, but most google recruiters are pretty terrible. Some are so disrespectful that I have to tell someone to put my profile into google blacklist so they don't bother me anymore.

Would you be able to offer some examples? I don't know what the deal is with some recruiters--I mean, in general. I attended a recruiting event from the US gov near graduation, approached one booth and introduced myself. A friend came over and inquired about a job to which she said "oh, well that's for the creme de la creme" and turned away without asking him anything about himself!? I found that incredibly rude. Gee…

In the first year after graduation, I get emails from (different) google recruiters pretty much every month. One thing I see multiple times is they include a "best work place ranking" link and google is ranked #1. One time, after I said I'm not interested, the recruiter replied something like "why don't you give this a try? Best case scenario you work at the best company in the world. Worst case scenario you stuck at your current position." I remember she did use the word "stuck" and that just triggers me.