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Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

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Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#41

Post by shultays »

shultays wrote: post #30
skinkestek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We happily take anyone qualified and I get my bonus. But as mentioned, percentage of female employees is a KPI and it makes my boss looks good and it makes the CEO happy in all hands meetings.

I am an engineer that involves in hiring (technical interviews, assignment reading (we have a home assignment for candidates)) and I have a couple experiences in which I felt like my decision was overruled. One was a female applicant. I was reading her assignment and felt like it was subpar and my decision was a thumbs down. Later we went forward with the application to the technical interviews because it was a femal…

And to add, when I was hired I was also "first employee from country Y". Still wondering if I was a diversity hire

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#42

Post by gladinovax »

skinkestek wrote: post #18
geraldwhen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have quotas we need to fill. Hiring a white male is basically a nonstarter without prostrating yourself before HR

We happily take anyone qualified and I get my bonus. But as mentioned, percentage of female employees is a KPI and it makes my boss looks good and it makes the CEO happy in all hands meetings.

Disgusting. And you are okay with it.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#43

Post by BoorishBears »

najqh wrote: post #34
Draiken wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads to me as it's okay to discriminate as long as it's for the "right group". I honestly feel a bit sick about all this. Maybe it's the only way, but it doesn't feel like it is from my perspective.

It's not the only way. They want you to think it is. Don't let them break you.

ha that's a hoot.

What a horrible injustice for an HR team to try and bring some diversity to a company that mostly hired white males.

If white males weren't so busy looking for drinking buddies under the guise of a "culture fit" for the last 2 decades this wouldn't be a thing.

Diversity stats for our industry are a boondoggle, most of the diversity is concentrated in a few large companies, and it takes the bare minimum of exposure to tech to realize this.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#44

Post by raxxorrax »

Draiken wrote: post #31
geraldwhen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have quotas we need to fill. Hiring a white male is basically a nonstarter without prostrating yourself before HR

This reads to me as it's okay to discriminate as long as it's for the "right group". I honestly feel a bit sick about all this. Maybe it's the only way, but it doesn't feel like it is from my perspective.

It is absolutely just another form of discrimination. In the past people thought they had reason too.

If you want compensatory justice and you are male, the only thing you could do is to resign and give your job to a woman. If you demand the same from others you are just as bad as someone that discriminated in the past.

There is no higher motivation behind this. HR just follows laws though, so you should boot your legislators for this.

Additionally it very much influences work relations for women far more negatively than for men, so they don't even profit from this aside very few selected high earning positions. But those will still have a problem with authority.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#45

Post by jcun4128 »

shultays wrote: post #30
skinkestek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We happily take anyone qualified and I get my bonus. But as mentioned, percentage of female employees is a KPI and it makes my boss looks good and it makes the CEO happy in all hands meetings.

I am an engineer that involves in hiring (technical interviews, assignment reading (we have a home assignment for candidates)) and I have a couple experiences in which I felt like my decision was overruled. One was a female applicant. I was reading her assignment and felt like it was subpar and my decision was a thumbs down. Later we went forward with the application to the technical interviews because it was a femal…

It is crappy to think you got a job not because you deserved it/good at it but yeah... Well if you need the opportunity I guess that's nice.

I have played the poverty card before regarding student loans.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#46

Post by ZeroGravitas »

enriquto wrote: post #2

> The model had learned through historical hiring data that men were more likely to be hired, and therefore rated male resumes higher than female resumes. A lot of machine learning sounds like the computers are just cargo-culting. But this concrete example is spectacularly so.

I think the key insight is that the humans the AI replaces were probably also cargo culting. They'd just get a bit more defensive if you suggested that.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#47

Post by Zababa »

enriquto wrote: post #2

> The model had learned through historical hiring data that men were more likely to be hired, and therefore rated male resumes higher than female resumes. A lot of machine learning sounds like the computers are just cargo-culting. But this concrete example is spectacularly so.

I would call it "pattern recognition" rather than "cargo culting". Cargo culting is an example where pattern recognition fails.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#48

Post by JaumeGreen »

jsmith99 wrote: post #32
vidarh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not the computers faults that the people designing the system failed to (and probably are completely unable to) provide a proper measure of "value once hired". In the absence of a signal to tell you that you're stuck looking for proxies, and that it then ends up doing the same as many humans and assume that "past success at getting hired" is a good proxy for "value once hired" is not very surprising. The m…

If one gender really did provide more 'value once hired', would it be reasonable for the AI to favour them?

Not necesarily, because it could have given more value for the wrong reasons.

Imagine a misoginistic, but horny, boss, that only hires good working ugly men and hot dumb women, specifically looking for these traits in order to have a "playing" field. If the AI got in here it would be constrained to the same parameters, af if it was looking for good workers of any gender it would prefer men.

An the thing is that although this boss is part of history (we hope) the influence they had on the workforce at large was enormous, and it'll be a long time before this is reversed.

And this without taking into account all the coworkers that could hinder your job because you are not part of their cadre (gender, football club, fortnite clan, whatever).

We really should exepriment with equality, or even the opossite extreme, before considering one gender "superior" than another for a given role. And even then there would be exceptions.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#49

Post by baoluofu »

geraldwhen wrote: post #16
skinkestek wrote: post #6

FWIW at least at the company I work this gives women an advantage. I get a nice bonus for anyone I recruit but recruiting a woman also increases my managers KPI.

We have quotas we need to fill. Hiring a white male is basically a nonstarter without prostrating yourself before HR

Depending on what country you are in, this is illegal no? Not hiring someone based on their ethnicity who is otherwise qualified/the best candidate is racial discrimination, regardless of what that ethnicity is.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#50

Post by belorn »

vidarh wrote: post #4
enriquto wrote: post #2

> The model had learned through historical hiring data that men were more likely to be hired, and therefore rated male resumes higher than female resumes. A lot of machine learning sounds like the computers are just cargo-culting. But this concrete example is spectacularly so.

Well, it's not the computers faults that the people designing the system failed to (and probably are completely unable to) provide a proper measure of "value once hired". In the absence of a signal to tell you that you're stuck looking for proxies, and that it then ends up doing the same as many humans and assume that "past success at getting hired" is a good proxy for "value once hired" is not very surprising. The m…

The there are differences in human learning and knowledge and machine learning, one being the kind of errors machines makes compared to humans. A human is unlikely to confuse the side of a truck with the sky (tesla), or the image of an item with the actually item. Humans in turn get effected by stress, metabolism and other biological factors.

For an AI to actually predict which employees are going to benefit the company, it need to understand both how the company has evolved over the data period, how it will likely continue to grow, and that some employees that have successful careers are not necessary the people that contribute to the success of the company. An AI might think nepotism is a great indicator for a highly retained and employable employee, but a human would recognize it for what it is but may accept it as an acceptable level of corruption. It would be the same conclusion (ie, hire the person), but for two very different reasons.

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