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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

#81

Post by raxxorrax »

odajay wrote: post #80

On the importance of de-gendering the recruitment process, I have a parallel to submit with a discipline I know well, the professional classical music industry. A few decades ago, it was commonly thought that the brain of women couldn't understand music. "Women have other preferences," "Their brains are not made for that." If it reminds you of some rhetoric seen here and there, trust your instincts. Here is what happ…

But that does not mean we have the same situation here. We are living 50 years later and the pipeline for IT looks different than the pipeline for music.

Also:

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-...

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

#82

Post by raxxorrax »

BoorishBears wrote: post #57
raxxorrax wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just a racist and sexist. The problem is you, not other people.

I'm racist and sexist (against myself) for accurately pointing out the trend where a white male dominated industry normalized drinking in the office and how that affected their definition of "culture"? https://tech.co/news/tech-workplace-drinking-culture-2019-02 Or are you just insecure about your own biases.

Not my experience and I doubt this is true in any way. Maybe young startups by young founders, but even there I have never seen it. I am not from California and not even the US, but demographics of IT looks pretty similar in many countries.

I would expect such behavior in some cases in the established industry branches and large corporations. But that is nepotism and gender or race does not play a role in the slightest.

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

#83

Post by odajay »

raxxorrax wrote: post #81
odajay wrote: post #80

On the importance of de-gendering the recruitment process, I have a parallel to submit with a discipline I know well, the professional classical music industry. A few decades ago, it was commonly thought that the brain of women couldn't understand music. "Women have other preferences," "Their brains are not made for that." If it reminds you of some rhetoric seen here and there, trust your instincts. Here is what happ…

But that does not mean we have the same situation here. We are living 50 years later and the pipeline for IT looks different than the pipeline for music. Also: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-...

Thank you, you are totally correct; we are living 50 years after, and those pipelines are different. I tried, without great success, to create perspective in a very one-sided thread.

This link is interesting indeed. While there was some fair criticism of this study, I do agree with the conclusion:

"I agree that blind auditions can make sense—even if they do not have the large effects claimed in that 2000 paper, or indeed even if they have no aggregate relative effects on men and women at all."

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

#84

Post by vidarh »

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?

In this instance most societies have decided that discrimination by gender is a negative for society irrespective of whether or not you can come up with a metric that gives one gender a higher value to the company, so no.

But it would still be important to understand how the AI would assign value because it would matter to ensure that it does not apply criteria that are not legal.

At the same time, what this seems to suggest is also that purely judging by other factors in resumes might effectively act as a proxy for directly judging by gender. As such the more interesting question to me is whether that means that deciding based on such factors might put employers at risk of claims of gender discrimination.

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

#85

Post by vidarh »

newsclues wrote: post #72
tialaramex wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more value? Suppose men were providing $10 in additional value over the time they work for you. That's barely even worth a Starbucks gift card, the sort of thing you probably give away to people who guess the number of marbles in a jar at a company mandatory fun event. You definitely shouldn't hire James rather than Deborah because of an average $10 gender difference unless they are literally interchangeable…

If you are in a gunfight, would you rather have a slight advantage? You also need to consider the risks and circumstances, sometimes you want every tiny edge possible.

The problem with this is that it presumes you know which actually has an advantage in that scenario to within the error margins.

In the $10 example, I'd argue chances are very small that you actually know who provides the most value because just a tiny shift in the measurement criteria could shift things in the other direction.

If such a tiny edge matters, it's an indicator you have a problem.

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

#86

Post by odajay »

vnorilo wrote: post #23

I'm not sure gender inequality can be solved by some magic machine making gender disappear. Rather we can progress by making inequality visible and challenging it: only when attitudes change we will slowly improve. The HN crowd might like Lauren Klein's approach to this via data science [1] - I do. 1: https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/

Thank you, it seems to be an incredible resource, really appreciate you sharing this.

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

#87

Post by dasil003 »

vidarh wrote: post #85
newsclues wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in a gunfight, would you rather have a slight advantage? You also need to consider the risks and circumstances, sometimes you want every tiny edge possible.

The problem with this is that it presumes you know which actually has an advantage in that scenario to within the error margins. In the $10 example, I'd argue chances are very small that you actually know who provides the most value because just a tiny shift in the measurement criteria could shift things in the other direction. If such a tiny edge matters, it's an indicator you have a problem.

Not to mention someone’s value ends up varying based on what they are assigned to and who they work with. Frankly the whole idea of precisely measuring individual value is bean-counting bullshit.

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

#89

Post by BoorishBears »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #68
BoorishBears wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm racist and sexist (against myself) for accurately pointing out the trend where a white male dominated industry normalized drinking in the office and how that affected their definition of "culture"? https://tech.co/news/tech-workplace-drinking-culture-2019-02 Or are you just insecure about your own biases.

> Or are you just insecure about your own biases. --- > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3…

This would be a great copy pasta if you didn't have to purposely ignore the entire rest if the comment to make it work.

And it's not an insult, people are clearly insecure about their biases, even you for being unable to address a very clear point and immediately taking solace in playing a wannabe mod to somehow invalidate the actual point.

You have biases, I have biases. We all have biases.

Some people hear one guy give their career history with one accent, they hear another guy give it to you with a country twang, and they interpret it differently. They see one guy who's real old and one guy who looks 18 say the same thing and they subtly interpret differently.

That doesn't make you racist or ageist it makes you human. We're not robots raised in a vacuum and covered in Teflon so we never let biases from a million sources from upbringing to media rub off on us.

-

This incredible insecurity that white males (amongst others, but most openly expressed due to the fear the tech industry is now oppressing them) have picked up about ever admitting they're not robots is infuriating as a black man.

Because the moment you bury your head in the sand like this, you're almost deciding "I will continue to be biased and make no attempt whatsoever to fix it"

Like fuck, you're actually going to pretend there are no candidates at all that you maybe get a little excited about because you feel like you connect with them on a personal level in a way that benefits from having a shared culture and is maybe not so helped by being from different cultures???

Because if you are I can tell you it's bullshit:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121129093008.h...

What a person actually interested in dealing with this problem does is accept that, yup I did end up shooting the shit with this candidate, that did improve my image of them a tiny bit, let me look at my feedback again and remove anything that was influenced by that.

9 times out if 10 HR is trying to do this for people and suddenly they act like the tech industry is now built on affirmative action, white men are unable to get ahead (lol) and any non-white-male with a heartbeat is getting hired for walking through the door.

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

#90

Post by BoorishBears »

raxxorrax wrote: post #82
BoorishBears wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm racist and sexist (against myself) for accurately pointing out the trend where a white male dominated industry normalized drinking in the office and how that affected their definition of "culture"? https://tech.co/news/tech-workplace-drinking-culture-2019-02 Or are you just insecure about your own biases.

Not my experience and I doubt this is true in any way. Maybe young startups by young founders, but even there I have never seen it. I am not from California and not even the US, but demographics of IT looks pretty similar in many countries. I would expect such behavior in some cases in the established industry branches and large corporations. But that is nepotism and gender or race does not play a role in the slighte…

I don't even know how this is up for debate!

It is universally known people are biased to hire people they'd like to spend time with: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121129093008.h...

> > I am not from California and not even the US

Oh so you're not from the country in question with these policies?

The whole "tech bro" persona did not come into existence for no reason.

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