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

391–400 of 496 posts

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

#391

Post by eradicatethots »

eropple wrote: post #222
cynicalkane wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Google can't offer me anything I want anymore. They could have when I was less experienced, but I have enough in my toolbox that ending up stuck in a Google ecosystem for years and losing my edge would be a net negative. (I guess there's always the wheelbarrow of money, but they don't really even do that anymore, at least here in Boston.)

If you work at google the little shits on the internet can’t say “LuL ur just not good enough” anymore.

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

#392

Post by jroseattle »

kxyvr wrote: post #388
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 preferenti…

That's basically the intent -- remove elements that sway us.

And for sure, we're not _anti_ credentials. If you have earned your MBA, we're not looking to avoid you. We have some great colleagues who have earned degrees from very good schools (including elite ones).

We've just found that those colleagues can stand on their own work, and their abilities shine through. Credentials don't impress us; work ethic, moral code, positive personal energy, and drive -- that gets our attention.

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

#393

Post by dsharlet »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #147
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…

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). One exception at least. One of my fraternity brothers at RPI came to beautiful Troy, NY when he had the option of MIT. There really are good reasons for such a choice. The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those eli…

> There really are good reasons for such a choice. The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those elite professors doing research, and that comes at the expense of teaching. Going to a merely "most selective" school rather than "Ivy Plus" is an decent solution to that problem.

One of the points of going to good research universities is to immerse yourself in exactly that environment: research. Good students probably don't need good teachers to learn. The reason to go to a top research university is to get involved in exactly that research. Especially in computer science and engineering, this is part of the pipeline to the really interesting jobs in industry.

I completely missed this when I was in school, and I regret it.

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

#394

Post by jroseattle »

hexane360 wrote: post #320
jroseattle wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We have yet to find a predictive correlation between GPA and performance metrics for our employees and their work.

Seeing as you've done some exploratory inference, are there any surprising correlations you have found?

I lead teams of software engineers, and what we have learned is that those who bring drive and active energy in their positions excel the best. It's a performance business, and over the long haul effort matters greatly.

It's also a marathon. Tech is constantly changing, and we all need to stay current and avoid becoming a dinosaur. It requires a persistent drive to always be willing to learn new things, to challenge what you've learned in the past, and stay on top of changes in our industry.

We put our trust in those who sustain this over time.

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

#395

Post by [deleted] »

eradicatethots wrote: post #391
eropple wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google can't offer me anything I want anymore. They could have when I was less experienced, but I have enough in my toolbox that ending up stuck in a Google ecosystem for years and losing my edge would be a net negative. (I guess there's always the wheelbarrow of money, but they don't really even do that anymore, at least here in Boston.)

If you work at google the little shits on the internet can’t say “LuL ur just not good enough” anymore.

[deleted]

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

#396

Post by BadassFractal »

wpietri wrote: post #247
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,…

Well written, thanks for that. I'm usually on the more conservative end of things but this has definitely helped me think of the issue differently, I love having my opinion changed or at least nudged in a different direction, confirms that I'm not sitting in an echo chamber all day.

What would be in your opinion a reasonable way to support the opinion of the poster you replied to? Could you steel man his position? Curious what the counter-arguments would be.

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

#397

Post by dsharlet »

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.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your point, but: doing small team group work with supervision that leads to being effectively able to solve problems sounds like a thing that makes someone actually a good candidate, not just good at interviewing.

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

#398

Post by nojvek »

mcguire wrote: post #340
samstave wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That story sounds very familiar. :-)

I've had the worst interviewing experience with google. It seems like they just don't give a shit about the people they're trying to hire. In my phone interview, my interviewer never came. I got rescheduled. In my next interview, the lady thought I was someone else and was reading someone else's resume. She apologized and then I did a binary tree search problem in google search.

The recruiter wanted to do a full on-site panel. I had already offers from several companies at that point. Google was just so bad and careless that I decided to there was no point moving forward. I called it off and chose another company with a sane hiring process.

Google is big and has an insane amount of money in the bank. They can have the shittiest interview process but the input to the pipe is so large that their hiring funnel still works out.

Although I am convinced the reason why google has such a bad male:female ratio of engineers compared to Microsoft is possibly due to their hiring process.

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

#399

Post by dba7dba »

dragonwriter wrote: post #318
Spooky23 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a common myth. They usually weasel word the scope of their generosity, treat loans as gifts, etc. The sticker price is always negotiable, but state schools are usually ahead.

> That’s a common myth. Since I personally experienced it, I'm pretty sure it's not.

I'm sure you and few others experienced it. But I'd say it's not that common. Just look at the make up of study body at the top 5 schools.

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

#400

Post by topmonk »

wpietri wrote: post #251
lutorm wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying assumption is that, if you average over a large enough population, there should be no underlying consistent difference between subsets selected on gender, race, or class, so a difference of outcome is presumed to be a result of difference of opportunity. The underlying assumption is definitely an assumption, but it seems like a good zeroth-order assumption to me.

An especially good assumption given that assuming otherwise has been proven wrong time and time again. Pretty much every advance for women was argued against on the basis that women were somehow not biologically capable. That argument has been consistently wrong since women's suffrage, but that doesn't stop chowderheads from hauling it out anew, apparently unaware of its rich history of failure.

Interesting tint on your glasses there...
Post reply on HN