Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#331

Post by PunchTornado » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 10:05 AM UTC

x220 wrote: post #321

PunchTornado wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

equal opportunities? freedom of choice? How can you control for these really abstract concepts that involve thousands of variables. What constitutes freedom of choice when you have the internet and articles that say males should do x and women y? How can you say that something is inherited or environmental? Even with biology, most of the disease imply both factors. I've seen some of the articles about the Nordic coun…

The Nordic countries are the most egalitarian countries on earth with regards to rights, equal pay, and gender norms. The sex differences in many different academic fields and professions persist and are even more pronounced than countries which are more blatantly sexist. This is the best evidence available, and it suggests that not everything is socially learned. This suggests that some basic tenets of social constr…

Rather than accept poor science I suggest not pretending to do science if you can't do it in a rigurous, scientific way.

There is nothing wrong in saying that we don't know if coffee is good or not for your health. Science is not there yet with its tools to test for this. Instead of presenting studies over studies that contradict each other.

The same with inherited differences between genders. Science is not there yet to tell us anything about it.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#332

Post by kamaal » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #330

kamaal wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion came up in even during that Netflix thread. These companies aren't looking for top 1% people. They are looking for top 1% people who are in form currently. The day you get unlucky and slip out of form, they don't want you.

Which means they will miss the real top performers. The savants who are capable of flashes of brilliance that can make whole new industries. These people will most definitely fall outside any measure / quantifiable scale that any company uses for comfort.

They apparently want people are having flashes of brilliance at this moment. They don't want them on their payroll once the flash dies. Then they want the next set of savants in form.

Its basically the equivalent reducing the great people to Kleenex. Once used, they want to throw them. Then buy the next Kleenex box.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#333

Post by mo1ok » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #231

mo1ok wrote: post #45

Dang, I am so tired of hearing about imposter syndrome. I get it. It exists. Maybe I'm more comfortable knowing that there are lots of things I don't know, even as an experienced engineer? It seems like such endless studies and banter about a relatively minor thing that is (in my opinion) easily gotten over.

It's generally easier to just flag and hide topics you don't care about. A lot of such topics have been beaten to death, and there's little to be gained. The front page gets a lot more interesting that way.

wow, never noticed that feature. thanks for the heads up!

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#334

Post by noonespecial » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

keeptrying wrote: post #272

noonespecial wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through a phase where I interviewed for fun . When there's nothing on the line and you're treating it like a TV gameshow, the innate absurdity of the whole process is laugh-out-loud funny and a generally good time to be had.

How did u do? Sometimes having this attitude helps!

The most interesting takeaway?

I got offers I didn't expect at all and many of the ones I fully expected never materialized. It was random!

The moral of the story? Don't take it personally. It has little to do with you! Once you have enough skill to "roll the dice", you just have to roll until your number comes up.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#335

Post by rhizome » Fri, Nov 09, 2018, 6:05 AM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #161

rhizome wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try and extract that level of detail about the company's internal dynamics, desires, and plans in an interview and see how far you get.

Well, I find I answer those types of questions at such a vague level of detail anyway that I don’t think anybody’s getting any real information out of my answers.

Eh, they're extracting more than a story from you. In the spirit of this post overall, the question is a great informal trigger for Imposter Syndrome: what you describe, and how you describe it.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#336

Post by _Tev » Fri, Nov 09, 2018, 10:19 AM UTC

tremon wrote: post #267

GauntletWizard wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where do you see yourself in 10 years" is a simple way of asking how you expect your career to advance and what they should expect of you in the future - It's totally reasonable for a company to be interested in an employee's personal growth plans and yes, your long-term commitments to yourself If you don't have any work-safe dreams, you might want to see a psychiatrist. Again, though, you've misinterpreted the ques…

They're looking for you to express your spark of passion That's the charitable reading. The adversarial reading is that they're looking for the emotional buttons to push to maximize your output while minimizing their investment in you.

Why this has to be only "them maximizing your output" and not "giving you opportunity to grow in a direction you want and company can make use of"?

There's so much zero sum game thinking here when it comes to job relations ...