To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#41

Post by dlphn___xyz » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #3

> Instead of using CVs and interviews, potential employees undergo a basic competency assessment in which they are evaluated against 25 desirable attributes for software testers, such as the ability to learn new systems or take on feedback. Following these initial tests, potential staff undergo a week of working from home fully paid. They still have an interview. It just isn’t like a traditional interview. You need t…

these prolonged assessments seem worse than a regular take home assignment + presentation. its a waste of the applicants time really.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#42

Post by karmakaze » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

core-questions wrote: post #28

stared wrote: post #7

As an Aspie/ADD, I have never passed any formal interview, even for an intern position (sic!). (You can compare and contrast it with my GitHub/Resume/blog to make a judgment.) Fortunately, many times (even for mid-size companies or research institutes) the hiring was less formal. For small startups, where it is informal, I didn't feel at a disadvantage. For big, I don't believe I can pass through the first filter. It…

> I've heard it so many times about people interviewing others, as "(s)he is smart, passed all test, but weird, I don't like to work with her/him". At this point, it is systemic discrimination. No, that's a misnomer. Systematic discrimination implies the system itself codifies this behaviour - but instead, what is codified is _team fit_, which is often based heavily on intuition. Humans are capable of being good judg…

How is "team fit" different from "culture fit" which basically means acts/talks/works "like me" and without explicitness can produce a discriminatory monoculture?

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#43

Post by kortilla » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

> Five years in, 75% of Ultranauts’ staff are on the autistic spectrum – and one reason for this is its innovative approach to hiring. Given that autism has a significant male to female ratio (quick Googling suggested 4:1 for Male:Female for autism), this seems to indicate that their percentage of women developers is low.

4:1 is about the ratio of male to female developers anyway so they shouldn’t be doing too bad.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#44

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

pwim wrote: post #15

Any hiring process will by definition favour certain kinds of candidates at the expense of others. Having a week long paid trial is a great way for the company to be less conservative about who they try out, but will also mean they’ll miss out on candidates who are already employed and unwilling to take time off or quit their job to participate in it. In the end though, if they can tap into an undervalued candidate p…

Almost everyone takes more than a week to ramp up to a large codebase. There isn't much differentiation after the first week. It's more like, we know if someone was a quality hire after the first or second quarter (3-6 months) of their employment.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#45

Post by icotyl » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

stared wrote: post #7

As an Aspie/ADD, I have never passed any formal interview, even for an intern position (sic!). (You can compare and contrast it with my GitHub/Resume/blog to make a judgment.) Fortunately, many times (even for mid-size companies or research institutes) the hiring was less formal. For small startups, where it is informal, I didn't feel at a disadvantage. For big, I don't believe I can pass through the first filter. It…

I had the opposite experience. I don't have Asperger's or ADD, but I'm shy and struggle with eye contact and small talk. I interviewed at about ten startups, and despite doing well on the technical questions, I got rejected every time. I began to suspect it was because of "culture fit" -- will this 35 year old introvert fit in at our frat house/office?

I was getting pretty depressed after all that rejection, but I got a random call from a recruiter at a big-N company, and figured why not give it a shot. The interview ended up being more professional, and at the same time the interviewers seemed friendlier and less antagonistic. And I ended up getting an offer.

In any case, I'm mentioning this because I went in expecting what you described -- that startups would be easier for me, as a socially-awkward person -- but that's not always the case.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#46

Post by dmoy » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

dlphn___xyz wrote: post #41

seibelj wrote: post #3

> Instead of using CVs and interviews, potential employees undergo a basic competency assessment in which they are evaluated against 25 desirable attributes for software testers, such as the ability to learn new systems or take on feedback. Following these initial tests, potential staff undergo a week of working from home fully paid. They still have an interview. It just isn’t like a traditional interview. You need t…

these prolonged assessments seem worse than a regular take home assignment + presentation. its a waste of the applicants time really.

The bigger issue is you restrict your hiring pool to the set of people who aren't currently employed somewhere that won't allow that kind of moonlighting, etc.

It works, until your company gets big enough, and then it doesn't work anymore.

One of the main reasons that interviews stick around is because they allow for a much larger applicant pool.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#47

Post by core-questions » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

karmakaze wrote: post #42

core-questions wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard it so many times about people interviewing others, as "(s)he is smart, passed all test, but weird, I don't like to work with her/him". At this point, it is systemic discrimination. No, that's a misnomer. Systematic discrimination implies the system itself codifies this behaviour - but instead, what is codified is _team fit_, which is often based heavily on intuition. Humans are capable of being good judg…

How is "team fit" different from "culture fit" which basically means acts/talks/works "like me" and without explicitness can produce a discriminatory monoculture?

In my view, companies are inherently discriminatory (they choose who to hire, that's who makes up the company) regardless of any policy that is implemented. A monoculture is often the goal! Whether that's good or not depends very heavily on what that culture ends up being in practice, of course.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#48

Post by wongarsu » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #38

wongarsu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my startup we did a round of "come in for an interview, pass FizzBuzz on a whiteboard, if you passed FizzBuzz you can come back for a 4 hour trial where you solve a small task representative of normal work in our normal work environment". We only hired students for 10-20 hours per week, so fairly low risk for both sides. My main takeaway from that was that the actual talking was close to useless for judging candid…

>> great at talking about themselves but >> were at best mediocre otherwise Happens all the time. There's simply no way to judge intrinsic motivation one may or may not have for the job, and without that even a smart person will do the bare minimum to not get fired. Which is not much at all, at most places.

There are more reasons than that to perform good, I guess that's what the classic "where do you see yourself in 5 years" is trying to judge. But in general this is a problem, yes.

More importantly, the fact that FizzBuzz is used to the point of being a cliche is already admitting that given just a CV and a verbal interview we are unable to reliable judge if a person can even program at all.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#49

Post by core-questions » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:33 AM UTC

celdon25 wrote: post #39

core-questions wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard it so many times about people interviewing others, as "(s)he is smart, passed all test, but weird, I don't like to work with her/him". At this point, it is systemic discrimination. No, that's a misnomer. Systematic discrimination implies the system itself codifies this behaviour - but instead, what is codified is _team fit_, which is often based heavily on intuition. Humans are capable of being good judg…

I'll be happy to disagree with this post for reasons other than claims of "systemic discrimination". It celebrates behaviors that are linked with hypocrisy and arbitrary bias. The problem isn't that you're weeding out people who don't fit in with the team. The problem is that you're weeding out people as a result of invalid, inaccurate, arbitrary biases that are more likely to stem from animal-brain genetic instincts…

> animal-brain genetic instincts

You're discounting intuition with this dismissive label. Trusting the instincts of your team to make decisions on who they can work with is critical to maintaining cohesion on that team and keeping people happy, which is a critical competitive advantage (especially during any kind of downturn). We're not talking about "low mediocre", "animal-brain" people, we're talking about professionals who may have hired / worked with hundreds of different people.

But then, you're just using ad hominems, and not actually providing any kind of evidence, or really an argument of any kind other than "you're obnoxiously ignorant", which ironically enough is _your_ intuition about _me_. Delightful! Thanks for this crass exchange.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#50

Post by Retric » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:33 AM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #26

stared wrote: post #7

As an Aspie/ADD, I have never passed any formal interview, even for an intern position (sic!). (You can compare and contrast it with my GitHub/Resume/blog to make a judgment.) Fortunately, many times (even for mid-size companies or research institutes) the hiring was less formal. For small startups, where it is informal, I didn't feel at a disadvantage. For big, I don't believe I can pass through the first filter. It…

At my startup we did a round of "come in for an interview, pass FizzBuzz on a whiteboard, if you passed FizzBuzz you can come back for a 4 hour trial where you solve a small task representative of normal work in our normal work environment". We only hired students for 10-20 hours per week, so fairly low risk for both sides. My main takeaway from that was that the actual talking was close to useless for judging candid…

In my experience interviews are less effective with students because they rarely have relevant experience to talk about. At the mid level and above tests and technical questions become less useful, but they can talk about meaningful past projects. I don’t know of anything else that’s predictive without weeding great people out.

PS: It’s odd, but I suspect a random process may actually work better because the great people actively looking for jobs are likely to be bad at getting them.