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

#431

Post by Joeri » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 9:03 AM UTC

ifhd wrote: post #363

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…

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 anno…

If they have enough candidates it makes sense to not care much about false negatives, only about false positives. Anyway, the way a company treats applicants strongly correlates to the way they treat staff, so a bad interview process is a red flag. It can be tough, but it must be respectful.

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

#432

Post by Fnoord » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 9:06 AM UTC

cyberpunk0 wrote: post #312

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warms my heart to know that I was not the only person/startup given this treatment. I was invited to pitch my startup to google startup team twice (For their launchpad AI studio and Gradient ventures). Got an email two months later that I made it to the next round and requesting more information about the startup. I sent the emails and then... crickets. Followed up via emails and linkedin and there is just no respons…

You placed your hopes in someone other than yourself and we're disappointed when it didn't go well?

Its not the outcome which matters. The outcome is what it is, you move on. Its the way the outcome is communicated which is a complete disregard of social norms. Its considered impolite to flat out ignore someone. You only do that if you seriously dislike that person, and want to burn your bridges to them, or if you lack communication skills. Consider you might have an appointment with a possible customer on Thursday at 2 PM at Starbucks, but you'd verify it because you are also busy. You never follow up on it. They phone you at 1 PM, but you don't pick up. You don't reply to the missed call either. Now, consider how your potential customer felt at Wednesday evening and Thursday morning. They wonder what's up. They'd like to plan their time as well.

I know, I know, corporations are psychopaths [1], but a hint of humanity or compassion would've at least kept the façade somewhat up. Actions like these can harm your faith in corporations and humanity, and that might very well be the goal. It can be extremely demotivating, and if Google doesn't buy the startup its generally in Google's interest the VC doesn't get bought by the competitor. So from that PoV it makes sense.

But we are talking about real humans here, with startups, with limited resources, and a lot of stress. Is it too much to ask for a response you've been declined preferably also with a honest mention of "because of reason X or Y"?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(film)

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

#433

Post by vacri » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 9:14 AM UTC

Anderkent wrote: post #329

Manishearth wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, this means outsourcing the decision back in time, too. You're basically hiring for "the best students by from four years ago" the moment you factor the college into the question.

You're basically hiring for intelligence, but you're not allowed to ask about IQ, so you use bad proxies like the school someone attended.

Not 'intelligence', but 'capability'. There are plenty of intelligent-but-not-capable people out there, and plenty of capable-but-not-highly-intelligent folks as well.

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

#434

Post by peoplewindow » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 9:20 AM UTC

lutorm wrote: post #375

fareesh wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right - like I said, fighting equality of opportunity is worthy and must be pursued relentlessly. What seems to be happening (the impression I get) is something analogous to this: I have a game released on two mobile platforms - android and iOS. The iOS players are disproportionately scoring better than the android players. Some are suggesting that the server is bugged/programmed to give iOS players better scores. I…

If my experiment fails to show anything conclusive, I should be open to re-evaluating some of the things I rejected, but I refuse to do it out of zealous belief in my hypothesis. You are arguing a straw man. The "experiments" in this case are showing ample evidence of biases, so as long as those biases exist the underlying hypothesis can by definition not be falsified.

Which experiments? I'm not aware of much in the gender diversity 'sciences' that would rise to the level of being called an experiment, except for the sort of neuro-psychology that Damore cited and which he got slated for (because they show biological reasons for differences in subject interest)

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

#435

Post by fnwx17 » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 9:36 AM UTC

> Mason, the Harvard student, attends an event on campus with Facebook engineers teaching him how to pass the technical interview.

> Emily’s school has an informal, undergraduate computer science club in which they are collectively reading technical interviewing guides and trying to figure out what tech companies want from them. She has a couple interviews lined up, but all of which are for jobs she’s desperate to get. They trade tips after interviews but ultimately have a shaky understanding of they did right and wrong in the absence of post-interview feedback from companies.

This pains me every.single.time.

Being part of a specialized recruiting agency, I want to double down on how much preparation and insight before the actual interview matters.

Devs spend most of their time developing, not sitting in interviews, so every recruiter should spend at least a few minutes with every candidate giving them some heads-up.

Not like "for question 1, the answer is b", but like how to carry themselves through the interviews and generally what to expect.

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

#436

Post by walshemj » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 10:23 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…

Ah so they don't have a HR director who can impose better practices no wonder they are having problems with being investigated for pay discrepancies.

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

#437

Post by ken47 » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 10:33 AM UTC

I've witnessed the imperfection of using the brand name of a degree as a measure of ability. Numerous times throughout my career as an engineer, I've seen someone from [INSERT WELL-KNOWN DEGREE HERE] outperformed by [INSERT LESSER-KNOWN DEGREE HERE], or in one case by an engineer without a college degree.

I've also witnessed the corruption of the college admissions process first-hand. I went to a high school where many of the students came from privileged families. I've witnessed a student cheat on multiple exams, including an AP exam, get caught multiple times, and have nothing happen to her -- only to later be admitted to an Ivy League. I've seen students who could barely pass AP Calculus get into Stanford and other Ivy Leagues, because their parents had the right name / connections. The bright students also got into good colleges, but the ratio was shockingly close to 50/50. Unsurprisingly, one of the college admissions counselors for the high school was later caught fabricating admissions materials, and was fired, but only because he became extremely brazen in his lies. If he had been less lazy, he probably would never have been caught. And who knows how many admissions counselors are out there that are just a bit less lazy than he was...

I'm not the only person who feels this way. Look at this Quora thread about MIT admissions: https://www.quora.com/If-MIT-only-admits-people-with-a-4-0-u.... An admissions counselor admits to rejecting students who have higher GPA's and test scores. The reasons for doing so may or may not be valid, but that's not the point. The applicants who got rejected in this manner have the potential to become better engineers than many of those who were accepted. And all the brand name universities suffer from this same problem.

The university one attends is a noisy signal that can and should be improved upon. That's why I respected Google's Foobar initiative. It is an unbiased measure of a prospective engineer. The Foobar test doesn't know what college you went to. All it knows is whether you can handle some pretty tough engineering problems. But I think Foobar is only the beginning. In the age of MOOC's, increasingly comprehensive, unbiased tests of this nature should only become more prevalent.

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

#438

Post by kamaal » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 10:58 AM UTC

leeny wrote: post #8

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…

That's why we're really proud of what we do at interviewing.io. All students have to go through a series of practice interviews, so by the time they talk to companies, we know they're great, and so far, most of the students we've presented have gotten offers, independently of their backgrounds. With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what you described because we incur the vetting.

>>All students have to go through a series of practice interviews

Interviewing is supposed to be hiring people who work everyday, to do everyday jobs.

If people have to practice to clear your interviews. You are either hiring the wrong people, or people who want to get in to only game the interview. In both the instances you are hiring the wrong people.

Put in other words if even ordinary perfectly qualified candidates have to practice to clear a company's interview. The company is likely asking wrong questions.

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

#439

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 12:01 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #372

Spooky23 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t. Our hiring pipeline is almost completely from these schools. You get great talent that big tech companies won’t interview!

And you can underpay them, which is a nontrivial part of my concern. No insult intended, I would rather they benefit and not you.

Not really. We don’t operate in an insanely overpriced metro, so a grossly underpaid person probably takes Home more than the average tech company person out of college.

Nobody is making the big money that elite engineers make though.

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

#440

Post by sharemywin » Wed, Oct 25, 2017, 12:53 PM UTC

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…

Wonder if they watch the movie Gattaca and think yes the perfect society.