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

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

#71

Post by [deleted] »

atupis wrote: post #67
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

>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. Somebody should almost build a toy startup around that random process eg Chatroulette for hiring. that might make sense.

[deleted]

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

#72

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

In defense of GP, you know why we haven't replaced all hiring interviews with standardized tests and statistical models? Gut instinct. People can make a good guess about how they'll get along with an interviewee. Machines can't just yet. And this is important, because while a mediocre person that fits in well with a team is only a minor positive contribution, a bad team fit is a negative contribution even if they're exceptional in hard skills.

> modern evidence-based research and training.

Interviewing process is hard, social-sciences-style hard. Completely bullshit theories and "standard practices". This doesn't rise anywhere near "evidence-based".

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

#73

Post by icotyl »

missosoup wrote: post #10
shantly wrote: post #6

> Terms like these – or interview questions such as ‘where you see yourself in five years’ – can be too general for people with autism, as many with the condition can find vague questions particularly hard to decipher. Pretty sure it's not just autistic folks who have to have prepped & memorized some bullshit in advance to have any kind of "acceptable" answer to those sorts of questions. Not to take away from the bro…

Never in my entire career have I been asked the 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' question. It doesn't even make sense in the tech world. In five years? There's a good chance your company/business unit won't exist and I'll be 1-2 jobs on from this one mate. Don't worry about it. It sounds like a hollywood movie cliche you'd hear at an interview scene. I'd laugh if I got that question in an actual interview. I'm…

I haven't had heard it in interviews, but I've been asked several times by former managers in performance reviews.

Do they want the truth? "I'd like to be managing you."

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

#74

Post by TeMPOraL »

antoinevg wrote: post #55
core-questions wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, if you want to make it a racial thing, that's your problem. I find people "go to the well" for this sort of argument when they can't actually argue with the real premise.

You mistake my intent. I'm not trying to "go to the wall" because I want to win an argument with you. What I'm trying to do is use an example of another kind of discriminatory behaviour which is socially unacceptable to demonstrate to you that many people will find your words to be obnoxious and judge you harshly for them. But hey, if you don't care about that kind of thing then it's not your problem I guess.

GP pointed out a real, existing problem, and trying to deny it by pattern-matching into a racial problem isn't helping either of them.

> that many people will find your words to be obnoxious and judge you harshly for them.

That probably speaks more about those people than about GP.

Having worked and being friends with people who most definitely fall into the spectrum (didn't get confirmed diagnosis, though), it does present very unique challenges in terms of teamwork and workplace organization, challenges that gender or ethnic differences don't bring in. It takes special company architecture and open-minded people to make it work; your typical 9 to 5, crank out code and kill tickets off Jira software company won't.

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

#75

Post by Bootwizard »

rozenmd wrote: post #63
JimmyRuska wrote: post #40

A young recruiter asked me how I interview people. I asked him what his favorite video game was. Super smash brothers, he said. I asked if he could ask enough questions to gauge how much of an expert someone was. He said, "of course!" Asking a lot of general questions about a number of things and encouraging them to go into detail often shows if they've been there, done that, and shared in the same blood sweat and te…

> Hiring bad people in engineering can cripple your services. Adding code that's hard to understand, has poor time complexity, or is over-engineered can add more technical debt that any one feature is solving for, and reworking that code can cost way more time than it originally took to write once it's part of some production service. So use code reviews prior to merging, and prevent that code from becoming part of t…

The last place I worked, the junior engineers reviewed the interns code. There weren't enough senior engineers to review the junior engineers code, so we ended up reviewing each other's code.

I was pretty green at the time, so we just ended up with a terrible codebase after being there for a few years.

It was already bad to begin with, but that's because it seemed like what that company does is churn through junior engineers and interns at the nearby university to get their shoddy projects done.

TLDR: If you hire too many bad or junior engineers, you're going to lose control of your project since you might not have time to review all their code.

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

#76

Post by GhostVII »

antoinevg wrote: post #31
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…

> Let's face it: for neurotypical people, a lot of autists are very hard to get along with. Their behaviour is not always predictable in the way that we need behaviour to be in a workplace; and when more pronounced, their specific needs are not something that we want to have to address in our coworkers. Or try it like this and see how it feels: "Let's face it: for white people, a lot of black people are very hard to…

Race has very little influence on behavior. By definition, autism has a significant affect on behavior. You are comparing pears to grapefruit.

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

#77

Post by monsieurbanana »

kbenson wrote: post #16
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…

It's not an interview if they're paying you, it's a conditional hire for a week. Calling it an interview is like calling actually starting a job after a barrage of three interviews the fourth interview. At some point you're torturing the meaning of the word to pointlessness.

If the tasks you're doing that week are purely for assessment purposes and the environment is completely different from the actual work place (as it takes place remotely), I'd say it's closer to a paid interview, which isn't new, than a classic trial period. It isn't that much longer than the process of some big companies, if you add all the interviews together.

I certainly understand people who think otherwise though.

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

#78

Post by shantly »

K0SM0S wrote: post #68
shantly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I had that exact one once early on. I did actually get an "if you could go back in time a couple years, what advice would you give yourself?" a little while ago, which 1) threw me, because I wasn't expecting much of that formula crap from this place, and 2) I hadn't prepped for, so I just punted, being able to think of very little other than things unrelated to work but also lame, cliché, or "don't interview…

I'm curious, what do you think is a "good" answer? Because, from the interviewer standpoint, here's what such questions are about. Prepare to have your mind blown, maybe. 1. Hiring is by far the most stressful, unpredictable, career-destroying part of a manager's job. And that's as an employee, if that's your business (founder, entrepreneur) you're scared shitless that a mistake may plain and simple ruin your busines…

> So the 'soft' questions are attempts to weed out 'problems'. Get this through your head: when interviewing, experienced managers are not "selecting the best" but rather "avoiding the worst". And these questions... they're crapshots in the dark — “how the hell am I supposed to know if this person is OK/normal or a piece of work?” It's even more blurry from the interviewer's side. So they just try to get a 'feel' for it, intuitively.

Oh, I get it, I've been on the other side of the table, plenty, and in more than just a "pull in some dev to get their take" role. But you've gotta have some answer to those when you're interviewing and I need some prep + a little fiction to avoid the possible red flag that comes up from simply blanking on them. My goal is to get past them such that no-one thinks about the answers again, not to wow anyone, which I know isn't what anyone's fishing for with those.

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

#79

Post by firstplacelast »

missosoup wrote: post #10
shantly wrote: post #6

> Terms like these – or interview questions such as ‘where you see yourself in five years’ – can be too general for people with autism, as many with the condition can find vague questions particularly hard to decipher. Pretty sure it's not just autistic folks who have to have prepped & memorized some bullshit in advance to have any kind of "acceptable" answer to those sorts of questions. Not to take away from the bro…

Never in my entire career have I been asked the 'where do you see yourself in 5 years' question. It doesn't even make sense in the tech world. In five years? There's a good chance your company/business unit won't exist and I'll be 1-2 jobs on from this one mate. Don't worry about it. It sounds like a hollywood movie cliche you'd hear at an interview scene. I'd laugh if I got that question in an actual interview. I'm…

I've been asked that question a few times. Currently interviewing and was asked that by one company by the guy that runs the dept, he also went on to ask me why I "want to work in this field". It was for a job that was pretty much the exact same as what I'm doing now (just trying to move cities). I found it incredibly insulting to have to justify why I want to do the work that I do, when I've been doing it for many years.

When they offered me a second interview I immediately turned it down.

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

#80

Post by WillDaSilva »

shadowmore wrote: post #61
stubish wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads almost identical to the rationales against hiring women from past decades. Women did not fit in with the male teams; ingrained misogyny was so common. And yes, they didn't behave the same, and had special needs (they were still expected to be mothers, needed separate toilets installed, customs like having the boss over for dinner prepared by wife didn't work, weekend golf and the bloke talk was unthinkable…

> ingrained misogyny was so common Was? I wouldn't call it misogyny, because it isn't out of hate but out of the unique social dynamics between genders, but absolutely nothing has changed except one thing: it's now politically incorrect and against the rules to actually say what you think/feel, so everyone hides it. Men and women still don't work well together. The attraction dynamics between them still overpower any…

> Men and women still don't work well together

Citations needed. I've never had any issues working with women, nor have I heard any coworkers or friends express this belief, or raise issues about working with members of the opposite gender. I don't think people aren't talking about this because it's "politically incorrect", but rather because most people (at least in Canada) simply don't have any issues working with members of the opposite gender.

Being unable to view female coworkers as you do any other coworker is misogynistic, whether it's intentional or not.

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