Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#101

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

thedufer wrote: post #48

protonfish wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about D-K and mediocre developers, but I do know that those coming out on top of any test only proves one thing: that you are good at the test. Let's say for argument's sake that the test is accurate (it flawlessly measures what its creators intended to measure.) This still doesn't mean that those who score highest are the "best." It only indicates congruence with the test designers. The fact that Fog Cr…

> The fact that Fog Creek has 0% gender diversity is evidence of this No it's not. Do the math - at the rate of women in the application pool, and the total number of devs Fog Creek has ever hired, it would actually be fairly surprising if they'd ever hired a woman. The internship program, on the other hand (larger sample size) runs at more or less the expected rate, if memory serves. This seems to make it pretty cle…

When I applied at Fog Creek, I asked about diversity in the workplace and got what I considered to be a hasty, defensive, almost-canned response.

Prior to their jarring, incongruous answer, I was worried I was not good enough at software development to get the job. Afterward, I suspected it was just another "cultural fit" thing. They did use videoconferencing in the interview process, if I recall correctly. I thought at the time that maybe age discrimination could have been a factor, or regionalism.

Of course, Fog Creek, just like everyone else I have ever interviewed with, declined to give any sort of meaningful feedback afterward. "No, you were great, really; we just didn't pick you. No, we won't say why."

Not knowing any of the real reasons why I didn't make the cut, I am free to imagine any stupid, bogus reason that I can rationalize to myself. The only reason I would really accept with finality, in a way that wouldn't diminish my image of the company, is "we don't think your software skills are good enough to work here." But they very carefully implied that was not the reason. So my image of the company is diminished.

And a lengthy and arduous screening process only makes it more frustrating when the company won't provide any useful feedback.

I guess that sword swings both ways. They also don't know why they don't get more female applicants. I must admit feeling a little schadenfreude over that. It's mean and petty, of course, but I still feel it.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#102

Post by ManFromUranus » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

terrywilcox wrote: post #93

ManFromUranus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the easy answer. "but it was pretty obvious I was too old to work there" Who said that? Did they say that to you? If they did that was definitely wrong. However it sounds more like you imposed that criteria on yourself, and then attribute the blame to them. If gender diversity in tech is a good thing, why not age diversity? Sounds like they needed you there.

I certainly didn't impose that criteria. I wanted the job. I certainly had the experience they were looking for. And no, nobody came out and said I was too old. They just reacted like I used to react when old people told me they understood computers. Pleasant, but patronizing. How could an old guy possibly handle any modern technology when he's got COBOL and FORTRAN on his resume? Discrimination is rarely blatant. I'…

Well for starters, COBOL and FORTRAN are effectively ancient technologies are far as much of modern business programming is concerned. I would omit them from your resume. State them for interest sake only.

Also they are not a charity organization, the business goal is to get value out of you. Perhaps you did not demonstrate sufficient value, or seemed out of touch with current technology. I have found that programmers are a fairly meritocratic group of people, but you do have to stay up to date with tech, and that is a battle that gets harder and harder as you age.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#103

Post by throwawayaway » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #40

throwawayaway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Dunning-Kruger thing is a nice idea but it's immediately ruined once you become aware of it, like a Heisenberg uncertainty sort of thing. I used to think I was crap, but Dunning-Kruger, so I must be great. I used to think I was great, but Dunning-Kruger, so I must be crap. It just seems a bit trite to base any real world conclusions or behaviour off of. I agree that the interview process is broken. The re…

> I think the Dunning-Kruger thing is a nice idea but it's immediately ruined once you become aware of it, like a Heisenberg uncertainty sort of thing. Not at all! You're being too binary with it. Dunning-Kruger is about the relationship between discernment and capability. In particular, it's saying discernment drives capability. A great way of applying it is this Ira Glass quote: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3094…

I like that Ira Glass quote, maybe some day I'll get there.

I think you are just positively improving your work, I don't think what you are saying is an application of Dunning-Kruger. Why in the first instance do you give your negative assessment credence, and have doubts about your positive assessment in the second?

Dunning-Kruger says both assessments are likely to be wrong, and in both cases you are striving to improve - so Dunning-Kruger has little to do with it.

In fact you could go further in a "worse is better" sense and say your striving to improve one thing is letting down something else you could be paying attention to.

Dunning did an AMA on reddit a few months back:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2m6d68

Your hiring approach does sound very common sense and I am sure people did as you do long before Dunning Kruger was a thing.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#104

Post by cauterized » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

mason240 wrote: post #77

cauterized wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between "lower self-confidence" and "can't handle pressure, stress, and competition". It's also possible that even women who have high self confidence in their abilities are less confident that they will be judged positively by others. There's plenty of research to the effect that men will apply to a job if they meet 40% of the listed requirements, whereas women won't until they meet 90%. And whe…

I'm not saying that working world has to be competitive rather than collaborative. The OP is talking situations that are presented as being competitive.

To me at least, what's intimidating about applying for a job described as Fog Creek's are isn't that they're competitive -- they don't say "you'll be in a knock-down drag-out competition to beat 100 other candidates". It's that the criteria for acceptance are high -- only those who have an extremely high opinion of their own abilities will consider themselves likely not only to meet those criteria but to be judged by others as meeting those criteria. And many people who are very capable are unlikely to judge themselves so favorably. Women in particular are socialized to underrate our own abilities and conditioned to expect our abilities to be underrated by others, especially in STEM fields.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#105

Post by yurymik » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #73

api wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And it may be that it intimidates more women than men." I've been looking around for a developer recently, and in looking at the profiles of women vs. men at places like AngelList I noticed a few key differences in how they described themselves. We're talking about people with very similar academic backgrounds here with similar levels of experience. Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while…

I worked with a 10x developer once, he was awful and I couldn't stand to work with him. Although he could produce an insane amount of code and functionality his presence was like throwing a grenade into the middle of the dev team everyday. He left to take a job at google and the overall team productivity went up significantly. He basically did 10X individually,but took 11x away from the team. So team work is pretty d…

Here's my favorite quote by @bmdhacks that reflects my experience dealing with such people:

How to be a 10x engineer: Incur technical debt fast enough to appear 10x as productive as the ten engineers tasked with cleaning it up.

https://twitter.com/bmdhacks/status/560949130999365633

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#106

Post by jnbiche » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

Kronopath wrote: post #89

jnbiche wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my interview attitude is that I'm there to find out what you can do, not to find out what you can't, Have you ever considered trying to find out and confirm what the candidate has done in the past, instead of the almost impossible task of finding out what they "can do" in a few short hours? Barring some major new life issue, a developer's past performance is highly predictive of their future performance. Edit: Remo…

What about developers with little experience, that come right out of school, or are applying for an internship position? Are you going to cut them out of the process? If so, are you okay with the fact that you'll often be missing out on getting an early lead on good junior developers? Good developers rarely kick around on the job market, and so it's often much more difficult to hire them when they've become more seni…

I'm not suggesting to do this exclusively. By all means, hire promising devs out of college using the method the GP prefers.

I'm just suggesting that when an applicant like this exists before you, it makes more sense (assuming you're happy with their accomplishments) to confirm that these are indeed their accomplishments than to try to cram in some ad hoc heuristic for determining their range of skills in an hour or two.

And if my peers are any indication, the reason it's become so hard to hire senior devs is that no one wants to go through the headache of the interview process anymore once you've reached a moderately satisfactory job situation.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#107

Post by erikwiffin » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:23 PM UTC

tenpoundhammer wrote: post #73

api wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And it may be that it intimidates more women than men." I've been looking around for a developer recently, and in looking at the profiles of women vs. men at places like AngelList I noticed a few key differences in how they described themselves. We're talking about people with very similar academic backgrounds here with similar levels of experience. Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while…

I worked with a 10x developer once, he was awful and I couldn't stand to work with him. Although he could produce an insane amount of code and functionality his presence was like throwing a grenade into the middle of the dev team everyday. He left to take a job at google and the overall team productivity went up significantly. He basically did 10X individually,but took 11x away from the team. So team work is pretty d…

I think you're misunderstanding what "10x developer" is supposed to mean. The impression I've gotten is that they are considered to be 10 times as productive because of the work they don't do. They write code that has less bugs, is more scalable, requires less refactoring, is easier for other developers to understand, etc. You'd never see it in LOC or sprint points completed, but there'd be a noticeable difference of pace between a project of 10x devs and a project with 1x devs.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#108

Post by dreamweapon » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #6

I'm glad the "rigorous testing process" was mentioned. The facade of "we only hire superninja-kickass-hyperexperts and we will verify that you are such a programmer before we hire you" attracts a certain type of person, and intimidates another. And it may be that it intimidates more women than men. But the article seems to glide past that and presents the idea that five years of experience might change someone's will…

I'm glad the "rigorous testing process" was mentioned. The facade of "we only hire superninja-kickass-hyperexperts and we will verify that you are such a programmer before we hire you" attracts a certain type of person, and intimidates another.

Yup. And I've always suspect that this cant was ultimately something of a foil, and that the actual messages it's intended to send are of a rather different sort. To wit:

Internal: Hoo-ray for you! You made it through the gauntlet! Aren't you just swell and awesome!

External: You know you have to invest in us / buy our products because we only hire the top 0.001 percent! And we have a rigorously testing process (as verified by the magic of survivorship bias) to prove it!

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#109

Post by colmvp » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:42 PM UTC

ashray wrote: post #49

skywhopper wrote: post #6

I'm glad the "rigorous testing process" was mentioned. The facade of "we only hire superninja-kickass-hyperexperts and we will verify that you are such a programmer before we hire you" attracts a certain type of person, and intimidates another. And it may be that it intimidates more women than men. But the article seems to glide past that and presents the idea that five years of experience might change someone's will…

We (www.gapjumpers.me) are trying to solve the gender diversity issue in tech by using blind auditions as a first filter. Our data shows that blind auditions result in greater diversity numbers. By using a technical challenge as the first step and fast forwarding people to an advanced interview stage, we're eliminating candidate reluctance and increasing transparency (the candidate interacts directly with the hiring…

Interesting that you mention gender diversity but there's no mention about racial diversity.

Re: Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

#110

Post by geebee » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #46

geebee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making fair points. I think I understand the equation you're setting up here (harm of false positive vs harm of false negative, along with probabilities for each). I'm just starting to believe that the damage of so many false negatives to avoid the occasional false positive may be harming the industry more than we realize. Let's not forget, we're an industry where employers very consistently claim a serious an…

> I'm just starting to believe that the damage of so many false positives to avoid the occasional false negative may be harming the industry more than we realize. I think you have "false positive" and "false negative" backwards, but I agree with your point. I have long thought that the industry systematically understates the damage of false negatives and overstates the damage of false positives. If you are hiring, it…

You're on to something here. There's the specific, need-based interview, and there's the "sure, we're always looking for talent" interview.

The latter can lead to an unintended problem. I once went on an interview where I was passed from room to room, on the hour, and taken through my technical paces each time. Each interview was intensely technical. If my interview had been my only exposure to the company (i.e., I hadn't gone to the site, read press releases and articles, and so forth), I would have no idea what the company does, other than that it seems to involve operations-research style math (optimization and stochastic processes), data structures and algorithms, and complex sql. I certainly would have no idea what they planned on having me do from a business point of view. I didn't get an offer (was busy, hadn't adequately refreshed my knowledge of tree traversal, markov chains, and linear optimization to immediate post-exam undergrad/grad levels), but I wasn't hot on the company anyway, because it left me with the impression that they wouldn't value my business input in any way.

So, why would they do this? Maybe they're just sort of looking generally for people. They figure, eh, if we find candidates who can rock an exam[1], sure, let's go ahead and make an offer, I'm sure we'll find something for them to do. Because their need isn't immediate, their standards (no false positives) will be set unusually high.

The unintended consequence is that yet another developer in this space is now reluctant to interview, because who wants to prepare for and re-take their undergraduate/graduate math and CS exams?

[1] At this point, I don't even think we should call this an interview, it was an exam that lasted longer than my MS graduate exams, with far less information about what would be tested.