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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

#101

Post by icotyl »

mnsc wrote: post #96
icotyl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

> I had the opposite experience. I don't have Asperger's or ADD (...) So you had experience that's not related to interviewing with Asperger's or ADD. That's cool too.

I can certainly relate to coming off as weird or socially awkward or unintentionally rude, and it has affected my job interview performance. People diagnosed with ADD/Asperger's don't really have a monopoly on that.

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

#102

Post by flukus »

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…

> "Let's face it: for white people, a lot of black people are very hard to get along with ..."

I thought this was a silly comparison at first, but if you ask why is racial/sexual/other discrimination wrong (and not just illegal) in in hiring then it makes sense. When hiring you're judging an individual and not the group as a whole, if that person isn't at the peak of the bell curve of whatever group you're discriminating against/for then you're probably making a sub optimal decision.

Women are weaker than men but in an interview the only question you need to ask is if this women is strong enough to do the job. To various degrees over various times black people had much worse k-12 education, but in an interview you only needed to know if the person in front of you has the appropriate education level. If you avoid someone neurotypical because "a lot of autists are very hard to get along with" then you're doing the same thing a racist person is doing, just with different prejudices.

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

#103

Post by soup10 »

jonny383 wrote: post #100

Any software engineer that wants to build a _real career_ with _real progression_ will already know that changing jobs should be done by connections, not cold-applying for jobs. Sure you need to get your foot in the door, but if you don't utilize the connections you've made throughout your working history, you either A) weren't useful enough to build higher standing connections, or B) were probably too focused on bei…

There ARE firms that do not care who you know and just want highly skilled technical people. Not saying it's a majority, but they do exist.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by joshuamorton »

throwaway45261 wrote: post #88
WillDaSilva wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> have I heard any coworkers or friends express this belief. You don't seem to value diversity of opinion that high, and expressing such opinions can be disastrous for one's career. > Being unable to view female coworkers as you do any other coworker is misogynistic. Sure, now what? There exists misogynistic people in the world, a lot of them in the workforce. That would imply that comment saying "men and women still…

Not at all, it would imply, perhaps, that mysogynistic people don't work well with others. And that certainly isn't a surprising conclusion.

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

#106

Post by tomp »

tsimionescu wrote: post #90
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…

You're discussing from a position that puts team efficiency (and company efficiency) above any other value. You may in fact be right that certain kinds of diversity can hurt team efficiency (for an obvious example, if you already have a team of white power types, hiring a black man on that mteam will lead to morale issues). However, in practice, and especially for large companies, optimizing only for efficiency is si…

> Since the ability to find a place to work is so important for any individual in our society to have a chance at a decent life, companies' social responsibilities must have them potentially sacrifice some efficiency to prevent discrimination of large groups.

I think about this often, so let me try to play the devil’s advocate: (1) why are we (the society) allowed (even encouraged) to discriminate for intelligence at almost every point in our lives (school, job, marriage)? (2) sure, companies are forbidden from discriminating because of certain characteristics, let’s take pregnancy; but why should companies be expected to shoulder that burden all by themselves? It’s more than reasonable for the society to cover the costs, as a sort of insurance policy - it probably doesn’t matter that much for big companies that can just statistically assume that a certain percentage of employees will be sick / pregnant / etc. but for a small company 1 missing employee is a big burden (even if the government covers parental leave salary)

edit: could also include "assholeness" in (1), could even blame it on neurodiversity

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

#107

Post by mda »

mnsc wrote: post #96
icotyl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

> I had the opposite experience. I don't have Asperger's or ADD (...) So you had experience that's not related to interviewing with Asperger's or ADD. That's cool too.

This was a totally unnecessary comment.

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

#108

Post by jonny383 »

soup10 wrote: post #103
jonny383 wrote: post #100

Any software engineer that wants to build a _real career_ with _real progression_ will already know that changing jobs should be done by connections, not cold-applying for jobs. Sure you need to get your foot in the door, but if you don't utilize the connections you've made throughout your working history, you either A) weren't useful enough to build higher standing connections, or B) were probably too focused on bei…

There ARE firms that do not care who you know and just want highly skilled technical people. Not saying it's a majority, but they do exist.

Agreed, but if you continue to target these places as a worker, your career will never progress.

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

#109

Post by icotyl »

Leherenn wrote: post #94
icotyl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

I don't really understand this dismissing about "culture fit". You describe it yourself as a frat house, which, I assume from the rest of your post, is not what you want. Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired…

Some had frat house vibes, some didn't.

In any case, I think I'm pleasant and easy-going at work, and I do a good job, which makes other peoples' job easier. If someone would become "miserable" because I was hired... well, OK, but that might say more about their personality than mine.

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

#110

Post by itronitron »

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.

'open-source contributions' might be what job postings are trying to capture with this ... presumably the longer a good developer is unemployed the more likely they are to contribute to open source
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