What is the engineering hiring bar? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#191

Post by manfredo » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

omar_a1 wrote: post #186

manfredo wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you do realize that you're equating diverse hiring efforts with getting called racial slurs on the job, yes? Those are two very different definitions of "actual" racism. Right, they are different. The latter makes people uncomfortable or alienated at their job. The former keeps people from getting jobs in the first place on the basis of race and gender. Which one is more serious? Someone who gets bullied for th…

> Right, they are different. [Racial slurs] make people uncomfortable or alienated at their job. [Diverse hiring] keeps people from getting jobs in the first place on the basis of race and gender. Which one is more serious? So, you're saying racial slurs are preferable to diverse hiring? Thanks for definitively putting the "Are you a racist?" question to rest. I think we're about done here.

> So, you're saying racial slurs are better than diverse hiring?

I answered this question:

> Which one is more serious? Someone who gets bullied for their race at their workplace probably has a very different opinion on this than someone who can't get an interview because they aren't diverse. The proverbial grass is usually greener on the other side. Someone who's non-diverse and can't get a job in tech might look at a diverse worker talking about bullying at their job and think to them selves, "well, at least that have a job.". That doesn't mean they are racist. That means they have a perspective different than your own.

> Thanks for definitively putting the "Are you a racist?" question to rest. I think we're about done here.

This kind of rejection of different worldviews is the antithesis of inclusion. You're branding people as racist for looking at the world from a different perspective.

If you met an Asian man who graduated from a boot camp and failed to get phone interviews while his diverse peers got interviews and jobs, would you tell him to his face that he's racist if he thinks he's getting a short end of the stick? If he felt that having a job, even if it meant additional bullying or harassment, was better than not having a job at all would you genuinely tell him that being unemployed and Asian is better than being employed and black, female, or Latino?

Let me turn this question back to you:

> So, you're saying racial slurs are preferable to diverse hiring?

Between getting a tech job but being subject to racial slurs vs. not having a tech job at all, yes many people conclude that the former is the better outcome. I think the former is more disadvantageous. But I'm speaking from the privileged position of already having a tech job. People who don't have the security of already having a tech job often think differently. And it's not right for me to dismiss their views as racist for being different from mine.

Not to mention, non-diverse people are subject to slurs too. I've witnesses more hostility towards Asians than any other race, yet diversity hiring penalizes them hardest.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#192

Post by fg6hr » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

charlesu wrote: post #94

jasondclinton wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was agreeing with you until you used the phrase "diversity hire" in your comment. I think that you could have made the same point without inferring that the hiring bar has been lowered for employees in underrepresented groups. That's a pretty terrible thing to say to anyone who is in one of those groups.

Worked at FAANG. There are diversity programs because most engineers are white and Asian men with professional networks composed almost entirely of white and Asian men. Referrals are a big source of talent, so you can imagine what that does to our hiring pipeline. But there are no diversity hires. Everyone who's hired has to pass the bar.

That's not entirely true because the bar isn't deterministic. For example, diverse candidates are given two attempts to pass a phone screen.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#193

Post by omar_a1 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #191

omar_a1 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right, they are different. [Racial slurs] make people uncomfortable or alienated at their job. [Diverse hiring] keeps people from getting jobs in the first place on the basis of race and gender. Which one is more serious? So, you're saying racial slurs are preferable to diverse hiring? Thanks for definitively putting the "Are you a racist?" question to rest. I think we're about done here.

> So, you're saying racial slurs are better than diverse hiring? I answered this question: > Which one is more serious? Someone who gets bullied for their race at their workplace probably has a very different opinion on this than someone who can't get an interview because they aren't diverse. The proverbial grass is usually greener on the other side. Someone who's non-diverse and can't get a job in tech might look at…

> This kind of rejection of different worldviews is the antithesis of inclusion.

Ah yes, the old "You're intolerant of our intolerance" chestnut. Every post of yours is just doubling down on insistently denying the realities of racial biases in hiring, and portraying any attempt to hire diverse candidates as the real racism. Oh, and look: more strawmen.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#194

Post by jgwil2 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #182

jgwil2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of "the bar" as being basically our industry's equivalent to a law degree: it's just a way to show that you have some foundational knowledge in the subject, even if it bears little resemblance to day-to-day work. All of the flaws you enumerated could also apply to law school, but at least "the bar" is reasonably accessible and doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The annoying thing is that with the bar exam, there is a clearly defined test with criteria. Whereas what you have in the software industry is a vaguely-defined set of expectations that vary widely. There's no standard.

Definitely agree with you there. I wonder how far we are from some kind of standardization. Lots of startups are already in this space, but if a few FAANG companies adopted a common standard it wouldn't be long before a large share of the industry followed suit.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#195

Post by manfredo » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

omar_a1 wrote: post #193

manfredo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, you're saying racial slurs are better than diverse hiring? I answered this question: > Which one is more serious? Someone who gets bullied for their race at their workplace probably has a very different opinion on this than someone who can't get an interview because they aren't diverse. The proverbial grass is usually greener on the other side. Someone who's non-diverse and can't get a job in tech might look at…

> This kind of rejection of different worldviews is the antithesis of inclusion. Ah yes, the old "You're intolerant of our intolerance" chestnut. Every post of yours is just doubling down on insistently denying the realities of racial biases in hiring, and portraying any attempt to hire diverse candidates as the real racism. Oh, and look: more strawmen.

> Every post of yours is just doubling down on insistently glossing over the realities of racial biases in hiring by painting any attempt to hire diverse candidates as the real racism.

If this is your takeaway, then I don't think you've been getting the message that I've been trying to convey this whole time.

There are benefits and drawbacks of being diverse in tech. You correctly highlight that diverse workers are often subject to more bullying and harassment. On the other hand, many tech companies do discriminate in hiring and that results in greater opportunities being extended to diverse candidates as compared to non-diverse candidates. Both of these are "real racism" (and sexism). Which one is more impactful than the other? That's a subjective question, and people with different experience are going to have different responses.

Someone who is diverse and subject to bullying or harassment might think, if I weren't diverse I might have diminished career opportunities but it'd be worth it to avoid this harassment. By comparison, a non-diverse aspiring tech working might think, If I were diverse I might be subject to more harassment or bullying but the career opportunities would be worth it. Which one is right? They both are, because these are their opinions. Trying to say one is right is like trying to identify the correct flavor of ice cream.

And the "strawmen" are real diversity hiring polices I've encountered. If you're a boot camp grad and you applied to Dropbox between 2014 and 2019 you only got an interview if you were diverse. Dismissing the things I've personally witnessed as strawmen makes me think your opinion comes from a perspective that is not aware of the extent of diversity hiring. Perhaps you'd think differently if you worked at my current and past employers and witnesses our hiring policies.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#196

Post by manfredo » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

tropo wrote: post #189

manfredo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've sat at company hiring panels, and have taken part in discriminatory policies first hand. At career fairs, Dropbox recruiters had us mark candidate resumes with a star for diverse candidates, two starts for "double diverse" candidates (female + URM), and "ND" for Asian male candidates. It turns out "ND" stands for "negative diversity". Literally the first thing we did was bucket candidates by the desirability of…

Were you required to remove stars already on the resume? If not, then I know just what to do. Where on my resume should I put the two stars? Are those the traditional hand-written style, with the lines crossing to make a pentagon in the middle? What sort of pen or pencil should I use?

We wrote the stars ourselves - normal 5 point star style. If you wrote the stars yourself recruiters would probably cross them out and write in the stars that correctly reflect your diversity status.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#197

Post by juped » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #76

stuxnet79 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there wasn't any actionable advice, but it's a sad indictment of the current state of tech hiring. Based on the article you can assume that Recursive Cactus is already in Big-Tech ("well known tech company") so "(a lot) higher pay" is a moot point and quite frankly it's unlikely that the daily tasks involved in the next job will bear a strong resemblance to the kind of synthetic tasks or problems you are aske…

> and quite frankly it's unlikely that the daily tasks involved in the next job will bear a strong resemblance to the kind of synthetic tasks or problems you are asked about in an interview setting. The blog post mentions in passing that their interview.io site gives users a choice between practicing traditional "synthetic"/algorithmic questions and a different approach focused on "systems design". I'm not entirely s…

Algorithmic coding tasks and system design questions are the two types of things you get asked in SWE interviews. They just have practice interviews for both. It's not novel.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#198

Post by heavenlyblue » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

leggomylibro wrote: post #32

chrisweekly wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech interview process is just so badly messed up. Even if the process were a reasonable proxy for IQ (it's not), or correlated somewhat with use of actual required technical skills (it doesn't), it still almost entirely ignores the EQ (emotional intelligence) and CQ (cultural intelligence) factors which comprise the other 2 legs of the "good hire" stool.

In my experience interviewing candidates for a FAANG, people say that they weight "CQ" heavily behind closed doors, but it is mostly used as a way to enforce various -isms under the guise of "probably would[n't] be a good cultural fit". It's how they screen out people who might have or develop a family life, among other things. But that's just my anecdotal experience.

I work for a company where almost everyone has a family and kids. We work in FinTech and highly value cultural fit.

I am also single.

However I don’t think this company would generally tolerate brilliant assholes; who would almost certainly not be a good cultural fit.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#199

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #169

UncleMeat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googler here. I've probably done 150 interviews. I've never once adjusted my question based on where the candidate was coming from. The idea that people would ease up if they saw FAANG on a resume or a 10+ year career is just not a thing I've ever seen. There are a few truths in modern tech interviewing: 1. There is a large amount of randomness. Between the question that an interviewer chooses to ask and whether the…

You answered some of my questions in some other HN posts. I remember you. Thanks for the replies. Btw I am curious of this one thing. Say a FAANG has X years of experience in a FAANG company and then quit. When he/she reapplies to the company, is there any sort of stuff that makes he/she preferred over other candidates? Why I'm asking this question is this. I imagine that a FAANG engineer who has more than X years of…

I only have experience with this at Google.

If you leave and then re-apply, hiring managers will look at your past performance reviews when considering you as a candidate. If your past performance reviews were excellent, it'll be a lot easier to come back. If you left another FAANG company... it doesn't matter beyond maybe making it easier to get a phone screen.

I expect that everybody has better things to do than memorizing Leetcode problems. That's because I don't expect people to memorize problems at all. I strongly believe that candidates should be able to succeed at the question I ask despite never having seen it before in their lives.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#200

Post by omar_a1 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #195

omar_a1 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of rejection of different worldviews is the antithesis of inclusion. Ah yes, the old "You're intolerant of our intolerance" chestnut. Every post of yours is just doubling down on insistently denying the realities of racial biases in hiring, and portraying any attempt to hire diverse candidates as the real racism. Oh, and look: more strawmen.

> Every post of yours is just doubling down on insistently glossing over the realities of racial biases in hiring by painting any attempt to hire diverse candidates as the real racism. If this is your takeaway, then I don't think you've been getting the message that I've been trying to convey this whole time. There are benefits and drawbacks of being diverse in tech. You correctly highlight that diverse workers are o…

> You correctly highlight that diverse workers are often subject to more bullying and harassment. On the other hand, many tech companies do discriminate in hiring and that results in greater opportunities being extended to diverse candidates as compared to non-diverse candidates. Both of these are "real racism" (and sexism). Which one is more impactful than the other? That's a subjective question, and people with different experience are going to have different responses.

It's actually pretty clear which of these has the greater impact. Hint: if it were the latter, women and minorities would be over-represented rather than underrepresented in tech. Which I've already stated above.

And, no, comparing racial slurs on the job to diverse hiring is not apples-to-apples, it's apples-to-clan-hooded-racist. There is no way you can be making that comparison in good faith. But do continue tell me how racist slurs and diverse hiring committees are basically the same thing...