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How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

brookeallen.com

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Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#201

Post by orbitur »

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #165
benihana wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not wrong in that people often rationalize their 'instinctual' choices, but to imply that nobody is cognizant of any of their thoughts or biases and that we're all slaves to our lizard brains is a bit of a stretch.

There is a TON of data out there demonstrating we all have subconscious bias. Moreso than we believe. Even of our own groups! We are slaves to our brain! This is a good summary of some of the data: http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/ferguson-racism-or-racial-b... Professors at the University of Chicago and MIT sent 5,000 fictitious resumes in response to 1,300 help wanted ads. Each resume listed identical qualification…

That's not a very relevant study, since you (and Ames) are just guessing at the motive.

Many people are consciously racist, not in a "I want them all lynched" way, but in a "meh, I'd rather not meet with a black guy, probably a waste of time" way.

Of course they aren't going to admit that sort of bias. And again, you're just guessing at what happened.

There is indeed subconscious bias, and it rears its ugly head when we're observing people's mannerisms, their speech, their attractiveness, and yes, their skin color. But just looking at names on a resume, I'd argue the decision of calling someone back, based on the stereotypical application of their first name, is just a conscious bias.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#202

Post by mjevans »

nilved wrote: post #36
FooBarWidget wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows. 1. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin. 2. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6. This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients. Why this instead of running…

This is first time I've seen the words "Apache is just easier" in that arrangement. I think php-fpm is significantly easier to set up than Apache and expect it to be more performant with less resources.

It's easier for things that are written in broken ways that work best with Apache because that's the only platform they targeted.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#203

Post by alishan-l »

As a job seeker having recently completed a web dev bootcamp (with no prior experience), how might I go about getting my first tech job? Or, taking a step back, my first interview? I find it frustrating that entry-level positions seek people with years of experience.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#204

Post by jen729w »

theseoafs wrote: post #170
jen729w wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel this 100%. You know from the resume whether the person can do the job. It's whether you want to sit next to them for 8 hours a day while they do it. 30 seconds? Yep.

> You know from the resume whether the person can do the job. Do you? I remember reading a bunch of articles that asserted most people that come in for programming interviews (even if their resumes look solid) are useless.

I'm a Wintel systems & infra person rather than a programmer, so maybe it's different. But yeah, generally, I can tell from the way the thing is written, from the depth of previous experience, from the types of companies the person has worked at, from the career progression.

It also helps that I live in Melbourne, Australia - the IT world here isn't massive, and if you haven't worked with the person the odds are you know someone who has. :-)

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#205

Post by joshdotsmith »

alishan-l wrote: post #203

As a job seeker having recently completed a web dev bootcamp (with no prior experience), how might I go about getting my first tech job? Or, taking a step back, my first interview? I find it frustrating that entry-level positions seek people with years of experience.

One thing to keep in mind is that "entry-level" means the most junior position with that company, not "entry-level" into the workforce at large. I found this equally frustrating in non-technical jobs after I graduated college (with a liberal arts degree). It's a rather encumbered naming convention.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#206

Post by yarou »

courtf wrote: post #85
georgeecollins wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think kazinator is wrong about this. And yes I take the commenters point below that they take hiring very seriously. Study after study shows that people are much less objective than they think. And that they have an impression that they rationalize. I have seen people be very strongly influenced negatively or positively by a word or phrase on the resume that in the scheme of things wasn't that important. I am…

Agree with this. No amount of formality and forced stoicism is going to eliminate the myriad biases that creep into every minute action and decision we all make every day. Hiring is a notorious minefield where believing in your own impartiality merely demonstrates a lack of self-awareness, or worse.

I cannot upvote your comment ( and the parent ) enough. If the labor market in tech was a perfectly competitive market where all parties had perfect information, hiring would be a lot more straightforward. However, as you state, cognitive biases and lack of rationality on both the supply and demand side muddy the waters.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#207

Post by Osiris »

RobertKerans wrote: post #98
kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there is the perspective from having heard "no": 1. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring a…

I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all agree that, almost without exception, we can tell within about thirty seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I assume this is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a poli…

I've found that you can tell within 30 seconds if we're not going to hire someone. It's much easier to filter out the people that won't fit than those that will.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#208

Post by lukeholder »

MichaelGG wrote: post #195
RandallBrown wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how the brain can totally blank in stressful situations.

Eh I doubt that explains it. In my experience, the response is shock. Not "oh hmm well, lemme think". It's " I've never written that code since school! That's a terrible thing to ask! Why would I ever write that? " Also, for trivial algorithms and data structures, mind blanking is a potentially bad sign. Like, if you cannot explain the idea of garbage collection (not necessarily implementation details), then I gotta…

I am reasonably experienced programmer who has delivered numerous web applications and websites. I could not explain to you how a linked list or binary tree worked - although I am sure I could look them up on google and understand the concepts given 30 minutes.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#209

Post by spydum »

The real solution here is not to interview people, but to discover people OUTSIDE of a hiring scenario, and recruit them after you've determined they would be a great fit (inverting the game). It's just unfortunate that it is much more effort to invest as the employer, but it is essentially the best way for everybody involved.

Re: How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire

#210

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #119
midnightclubbed wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go into any specifics as to what was (allegedly) said to the candidates? 18 cases sounds like the company was either interviewing thousands of applicants or giving very strong reasons for legal challenges.

A person does not need 'very strong' reasons for legal challenges. They can be spurious, with the plaintiff hoping the company will find it cheaper to settle than defend themselves. A system where the loser pays the winner the amount the loser paid their own lawyers will stop most of this nonsense.

[deleted]
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