Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech • Hacker News Board

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#181

Post by Dma54rhs » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 8:08 AM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #151

slothtrop wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so many black people try to convince me that I'm guilty of white privilege The articles beating this drum are actually overwhelmingly written by white people. I think the term was popularized precisely because it is needlessly incendiary, as controversy means better click-bait. If you ignore the blanket term entirely and focus simply on meaning, people mostly agree with one another. For instance, it's uncontroversi…

Very well put. This whole BLM and white priviledge movement looks like it's setup to cause trouble, not solve issues. I think it's detrimental to the black cause too, so I wonder who and with what purpose is pushing this messaging? Like you said, it would have been so much easier for everyone to acknowledge the black dis-priviledge. In the current state of affairs, the poors of Appalachia are somewhat privileged? Tha…

It's being pushed by the corporations are politicians so they don't have to treat the real cause, or give away their own wealth, in order to solve the class problems. It's easier to blame some random redneck with low intellect as the root cause instead of watching into their own wallets.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#182

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 8:12 AM UTC

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #177

shard wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately once you move past the lower working level software/engineering jobs, either vertically to team lead positions or horizontally to product management or marketing or sales, whiteboard interviews are not that helpful, as soft skills becomes as important if not more important than technical skills for success at work.

Not only that, but whiteboarding very rarely tests for skills actually needed at the job. As you progress in your career, things like "I have held down the following software development jobs for X years...." are going to be far better ways to judge technical capabilities that are actually relevant to the job than 30-60 minutes of whiteboarding. Many many different industries have jobs that require technical skills -…

Credentialing for software engineers (such as licensing and continuing education for nurses) has its own set of problems, both in terms of gate-keeping but more importantly in the type of work being entirely different.

There’s a spread in performance from the +1σ to the -1σ nurse, but both will be functional in a nursing role, so checking credentials is a mostly sufficient evaluation of occupational ability.

The spread in software ability is so much larger that the -1σ candidates (the least-effective ~15% of people who have ever worked in computer programming jobs) are worth trying to select against in a way the least effective ~15% of nurses probably are not. (I’m not in medicine so I’m not sure; apologies if the same effect is at play there as well.)

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#183

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 8:16 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #168

tomp wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simply invalid science. It’s equivalent to having variables x, y, z , setting x = 0 and then exploring the correlation between y and z . That’s a fair experiment, but you simply cannot generalise the conclusion outside of the tested range for x (i.e. for x != 0 ).

No it's not. It's like having x and claiming y and z might exist. You set it equal to zero and then you demonstrate the existence of the others. Every study I've ever seen dealing with messy social sciences has some kind of fundamental counternarrative. That's why there's follow-up studies to try to demonstrate things in different ways. Take the Milgram experiment. Some participants have claimed they knew the machine…

I would fully expect that receiving a good education would provide benefits even if you didn’t tell anyone specifically where you went.

I daily use my education to my benefit and very rarely does it come up where I attended.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#184

Post by sokoloff » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 8:21 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #145

Nasrudith wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would all social classes be the same in motivations and goals? You can never trust the "loyalty" of groups they never signed up for. A mining company owner, a wall street trader, a tech start up millionaire, a head partner of a law firm and old-money heir(ess) would all have different interests and goals. The same goes for lower classes as well.

For starters, the rich have uniform interest in taxation policy - brackets, inheritance, wealth tax, loopholes, trusts, offshores.

Uniform interest perhaps, but decidedly not uniform motivation and goals on those topics.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#185

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 8:22 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #182

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but whiteboarding very rarely tests for skills actually needed at the job. As you progress in your career, things like "I have held down the following software development jobs for X years...." are going to be far better ways to judge technical capabilities that are actually relevant to the job than 30-60 minutes of whiteboarding. Many many different industries have jobs that require technical skills -…

Credentialing for software engineers (such as licensing and continuing education for nurses) has its own set of problems, both in terms of gate-keeping but more importantly in the type of work being entirely different. There’s a spread in performance from the +1σ to the -1σ nurse, but both will be functional in a nursing role, so checking credentials is a mostly sufficient evaluation of occupational ability. The spre…

> The spread in software ability is so much larger that the -1σ candidates (the least-effective ~15% of people who have ever worked in computer programming jobs) are worth trying to select against in a way the least effective ~15% of nurses probably are not.

This isn’t an argument against credentialling since it is literally the direct effect of not having credentialling in software. Credentialing cuts most-to-all of what would be the low tail of the profession off before it ever enters. Nurses and lawyers who can’t do their profession’s equivalent of fizzbuzz mostly wash out of the exams to enter the profession (or earlier), they don’t show up in job interviews, except where the inability is produced by some kind of post-entry decline in capacity. And even then, decertification is a real possibility, which further purges the low end of the distribution.

So, yeah, a -1σ software developer (or at least software developer job applicant) is worse compared to basic expectations than a -1σ nurse, because a nurse as below expectations as a -1σ software developer is would be compelled to find a different profession because of credentialling requirements.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#186

Post by bryanrasmussen » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 8:53 AM UTC

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #114

mavelikara wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it's not testing for anything real. You are too quick to dismiss the study, I think. What the study shows, I think, is that other things being equal the person who sounds to be from higher class is likely to get the job. The study simulates the other things being equal scenario by eliminating all other avenues for the hiring manager to judge. Here is the quote from the TFA, lightly edited for emphasis: The study…

This is how research works, you isolate variables. By OP’s logic science is never testing for anything “real.” I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy, but this is kinda silly.

>I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy

I'm surprised you evidently haven't seen the thousands of threads where HN predominantly does nothing but complain about how hiring is not a perfect meritocracy.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#187

Post by michaelt » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 8:53 AM UTC

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #114

mavelikara wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it's not testing for anything real. You are too quick to dismiss the study, I think. What the study shows, I think, is that other things being equal the person who sounds to be from higher class is likely to get the job. The study simulates the other things being equal scenario by eliminating all other avenues for the hiring manager to judge. Here is the quote from the TFA, lightly edited for emphasis: The study…

This is how research works, you isolate variables. By OP’s logic science is never testing for anything “real.” I’m not surprised that HN rushes to discredit the idea that hiring is not a perfect meritocracy, but this is kinda silly.

Well, the experimenters could have combined their corpus of job candidates describing themselves with a bunch of recordings of actors giving the same descriptions in different accents.

Then each hiring manager could have been presented with a different subset of that pool, with both resume and recording.

A multivariate regression would then reveal the relative impacts of class, being an actor, and the different self-descriptions.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#188

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #66

fighterpilot wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities use an unblinded selection process as a way to intentionally handicap East Asians (and to a slightly lesser extent, white people). Their proportion in enrolment has been trending down steadily over time and has converged to be nearly identical across all the top universities (except for Caltech) which suggests they're all silently colluding (by copying each others' quotas) to keep the Asian enrolment per…

> suggests they're all silently colluding (by copying each others' quotas) to keep the Asian enrolment percentage at precisely the depressed X percent. You need more evidence than a trend to claim that there is a conspiracy. And you can look the data & admissions guidelines publicly released in SFFA v. Harvard to see that there is no evidence that quotas exist. > Google does this by making the interview process easie…

[deleted]

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#189

Post by mjevans » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:11 AM UTC

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #174

epgui wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody can take these experiences away from you or discount the difficulties you went through. But saying that you don't have white privilege because you grew up poor is not quite right either. The thing with privilege is that there's more than one kind, and they all add up (and most likely they interact as different factors, so they're more than additive). * If you're non-white in the US, you're underprivileged. * I…

Do you believe that being black or white has a larger impact than being poor or rich? If so, why? If not, why do people focus so much on race instead of wealth?

Race was, probably still IS, one of many cast-ist and class-ist factors used to disenfranchise groups outside of the rich elite, and probably to some extent within them.

It would be far healthier to recognize discrimination is anyone not exactly like the person discriminating; which includes ALL the factors. Not just race. (Though that was historically the easiest to notice filter in many terrible and egregious ways that were more obviously systemic.)

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#190

Post by mjevans » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #148

metiscus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't my argument, but as I try to understand all sides I'll do my best to explain the position anyway. The idea goes something like this. You have white privilege because you are visibly white. By being visibly white you gain an automatic differentiation from those who are non-white. The belief is that the system, being largely run by white people will extend courtesy and nicer treatment to those who look like it…

`By being visibly white you gain an automatic differentiation from those who are non-white.` Thought experiment. Two crazy looking homeless people approach you yelling. They are dirty in ripped clothes and look to be high on strong drugs. One is black, one is white. Do you feel better about, or differentiate the white person because he is "your people"?

There's probably an unconscious bias, but I'd still be fearful to some degree of both.

Homelessness is a problem that must be solved at the highest possible level of government. Since the 'problem' is able to move around the entire country that is the only way to fairly have the collective whole (society) integrate and restore the individual in need to either being a productive member of society, or at least a dignified living solution for when medicine or some other aspect has failed.

Seen in an even wider view, much of illegal immigration is quite likely driven by the homeless or persecuted ignoring the borders of nations that have failed them, as they seek the natural birth rights of anyone on their planet.