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

#131

Post by erik_seaberg » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:09 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #72

celdon25 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Some of my interview is giving them an underspecified problem and seeing whether they can formulate questions (and dare to ask them!) that lead to solving the important part. I don't know how to standardize that, but we definitely need it.

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

#132

Post by gunnihinn » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:10 AM UTC

botwriter wrote: post #127

Why do we have to bring social justice crap into this? I know plenty of companies who will hire Aspie's or other brilliant people without a diversity manager there to tick off boxes. 'Jamal' may struggle because he doesn't have the intellect to do the job but antisocial aspie 'Luke' who needs to be reminded by his line manager to take a shower a couple of times a week but who is a genius at what he does will always f…

Wow.

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

#133

Post by eru » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:11 AM UTC

firstplacelast wrote: post #79

missosoup wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

I wouldn't judge them to badly for such an inane question by itself. Being an interviewer is also hard.

(If they did other weird things before, it might just be the straw to break the camels back.)

The status quo needs justification every once in a while, too. Though you could formulate the same question nicer as: "If you could do it all over again, what other fields would you be interested in? What are the pros and cons? What do you love and what do you hate about your chosen field?"

As an candidate, I often ask a variant of the latter: "What's great about the company? What sucks?" Even the greatest company has some aspects that suck, and it would be a huge red flag if they lack an honest answer. That would mean either it's a "cult" or stuff is so embarrassingly bad that they don't want to break the floodgates.

All the good places I ended up working for had decent answers about their downsides.

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

#134

Post by Smithalicious » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:12 AM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #64

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…

Weird may be a simple emotional feeling people get because they sense you will mistreat them. (likely based on previous experience) What I have found dealing with people that are Aspie/ADD (father and brother) is they expect others to change behavior to adapt to themselves, but refuse to change their own behavior to adapt to others. (even when directly told their behavior is not acceptable) This means that many socia…

I know it's not intended, but this comment comes off as very mean. I don't know your father and brother, but that kind of assholish behavior is completely different orthogonal to having Aspergers or ADD.

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

#135

Post by pheug » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

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…

What you describe mostly applies to smaller companies or niche domains.

FAANG hiring is much more formalized and your connections hardly matter beyond getting invited for an interview.

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

#136

Post by eru » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

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…

Yes, of course. Problem is: senior supervision is a limited resource.

So even if you had perfect code review, you'd only want to hire people that produce code that actually makes it through the review with less hassle for the reviewers than it would be for the senior folks to write the code themselves.

In practice, code review is imperfect. You want to hire people with good taste and good skills.

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

#137

Post by peferron » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

If you can get referred, sure, do that. Why should that be a requirement to build a "real career" with "real progression" though? (And what does that even mean?)

Earlier this year I interviewed with several companies. I was referred to some of them. For some others I didn't know anyone so I cold-messaged recruiters on LinkedIn. It worked just fine and I received similar offers in both cases.

You're probably doing more harm than good by scaring people away from cold-applying.

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

#138

Post by dominicr » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:16 AM UTC

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…

I think the point is that companies shouldn't be frat houses full of brogrammers.

If you want to hang out with your friends and wrestle to decide coding patterns, then that's all well and good. But the second that it becomes a company that employs people it should be more mature, equal and accepting. Work is indeed not always only about output and skills, it's also about respecting each other and collaborating with different people and their opinions & experience to produce the best outcome.

Anecdotally, I have worked at a company whose unofficial hiring mantra was "hire people you'd go drinking with". It did not go well! Luckily some adults got hired and the company started functioning better.

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

#139

Post by flukus » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:16 AM UTC

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…

> especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues

So you'd discriminate against introverts because the team are awful at socializing? Apart from how sad that sounds and how awful it is for people (you're whole life has single point of failure), it also sounds very self defeating.

> Work is not always only about output and skills

Treating it that way is basically the foundation of what's considered professional behavior. I hate when that gets taken too far, but the core idea is good.

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

#140

Post by newnewpdro » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 7:16 AM UTC

At one of my early startups I shared a sizable private office with two other engineers, one other full-timer who was the lead and a contractor we were pretty sure had aspergers based on a variety of odd but relatively easy to ignore behaviors.

Everything was fine and his work was acceptable until he apparently became convinced we were talking about him behind his back and conspiring in some way against him. He started leaving an external webcam w/microphone attached to his desktop and monitoring the shared office when he wasn't around, his contract required him to provide his own computer so he didn't seem to see a barrier to attaching a camera and microphone despite his role having no need for such things - this was years before video conferencing for meetings was commonplace.

Because we were a proper scrappy startup we would work crazy hours often, but his being an hourly contractor didn't enable him to pull all-nighters with us salaried folks. So the circumstances somewhat encouraged this paranoia, but his mind went crazy with it.

His contract wasn't renewed because of this crap, it was a really annoying situation. I hated that we essentially fired someone because of dumb social issues despite their technical contributions being good.