What is the engineering hiring bar?

This is the part of the document that described the motivation:

> The Problem Statement

> Based on 177 like tech companies in Silicon Valley (market research and EOO-1 Diversity Statistics data), the percentage of diverse engineering talent is sparse. In short, 4.7% are latino, 2.1% are African American, and 19.2% are female. These candidates are being targeted with all of our top competitors with white gloves tactics, strategic outreach, and engagement strategies, while Dropbox has yet to systematically establish any of these practices to compete for this top talent and showcase our uniquely inclusive, dynamic, and thoughtful culture.

> Opportunity to market DBX [Dropbox] more broadly:

> Moreover, diverse engineers are the most sought after group of individuals on the market today. While the average response rate to engage is high (37%) the rate at which they are interested in moving forwards is quite low (11%). We interpret this in two ways: > First, due to the small pool and scarcity of diverse talent, companies are motivated to keep their diverse talent happy, well-compensated, and engaged; prospects are rarely on the market, and when they are, it is a highly calculated and careful search based on existing relationships. > Second, traditional sourcing engagement methods (email, LinkedIn) do not adequately showcase what makes Dropbox special, and because these candidates are so highly sought-after, it would serve us to highlight our culture early on, and to take a more long term approach to courting them.

And here's the proposed solution

> Opportunistic Hiring

> As the business needs shift and open roles become more narrow, it will become difficult to find a home for diverse candidates that we're able to engage and who pass our bar. Wee feel like it would be a disservice to use in the long-term if we miss out on hiring critical talent for Dropbox because of current headcount constraints. To this end, we propose that Eng VP's withhold 20 heads to hire opportunistically. > When a diverse/URM candidate is interested in interviewing, regardless of headcount, we will put them through the process. If they pass the TPS [technical phone screen] we will bring them onsite and evaluate based on their skillset. * If the candidate goes to HC [hiring committee], we will proactively find a sponsor/team home for the candidate, and that team would receive a preciously withheld headcount for that hire.

This was announced April of 2019. I've transcribed parts of the document that announced this policy above. I can't speak as to whether or not this is still in place as I have since left Dropbox.

Interestingly, Dropbox already 23% women in tech roles[1] at the time that this was announced - larger than the figure of 19% shown above.

1. https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/an-update-on-diversi...

Our questions aren't on leetcode and we aggressively monitor for leaks (including on Blind). You're also missing the point: we're intentionally avoiding the questions which boil down to a binary question of "do you know this algorithm or not?". Most of our questions are open-form, asking the candidate to implement a widget or interface with an API. They usually don't involve big-O or any data structure tricks. Unless you've seen the exact problem before leetcode won't help aside from general programming practice.

Also I will say that the few candidates who've tried lying about seeing a question before are not as good at acting as they think they are. Not only do you have to pretend that you've never seen the question before but if you don't stumble, second-guess yourself, refactor parts of it, etc. it's usually pretty obvious.

Now, if someone's a great actor and they've seen all four problems before and manage to impress the hiring manager -- well, what can you do. But I don't think there are very many of those.

There's also the issue of laws that mandate offering equal opportunity on the basis of race and gender. By comparison, I'm not aware of any legislation mandating equal opportunity between candidates with and without referrals.

Furthermore, I'm hesitant to write off discrimination as a non-issue. I don't feel personally impacted by it - but I'm also incredibly fortunate to have graduated from one of the most prestigious universities for computer science, and to have household names on my resume. The fact that my employers don't interview White and Asian men from boot camps doesn't impact me. But what would a white or Asian man think about this situation? The nature of this discrimination is that we don't get to hear the opinions of the people who are impacted by it. We get to talk to the diverse people who were included because of discrimination, but the people who were excluded because of it are absent from our workplaces.

Ultimately, I have no good answer here. Tech companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Companies are getting criticized for having "only" 20-25% of women in tech roles, when most estimates put the share of women in tech roles industry-wide at 18-20%. So companies have to choose between either enduring criticism and being portrayed as sexist, or discriminating in their hiring policies to increase their diversity numbers. With the techlash in full swing, public perception is important and I don't fault companies for doing the latter.

Thanks for the update. It is an interesting read.

I used to think naively that checking these boxes does nothing: - "I prefer not to disclose my sexual preference" - "I prefer not to disclose my race/ethnicity" - "I prefer not to disclose whether I'm a veteran or not"

Anyway, it is a sad read for people like me who don't get preferential treatment. It seems like I'm being salty, but it is just the reality. People like me studied hours and hours doing Leetcode and sacrificing other things, even sacrificing things that should have helped our career better, such as learning relevant skills like techniques, libraries, etc. It is what it is. Naively think about meritocracies.

If I can just write a huge *sigh here, it is what I'm currently doing right now. I don't care about downvotes. I just need to rant.

Anyway thank you for the replies! I really appreciate it.

Puzzles no, but it really matters how candidates are evaluated on coding.

For coding, if a coding question boils down to implementing KMP string matching or something that's only realistically solvable by memorizing the entire algorithm and writing it out on a whiteboard, then it's not any different than any of the puzzle type questions like "why are manholes round?"

The proper way to evaluate coding questions, and what is mentioned in the article, is that one is evaluating general intelligence in the context of software programming. Is the candidate coming up with a reasonable solution? Are they asking questions to understand the problem better? If they get stumped by something, do they stay stuck on it, ask for help, or think through it? Can they find the issues with their code and improve on it?

I haven't heard of a better way to interview engineers, but if there is I'm definitely all ears.