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To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

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Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#141

Post by eru »

Bootwizard wrote: post #75
rozenmd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hiring bad people in engineering can cripple your services. Adding code that's hard to understand, has poor time complexity, or is over-engineered can add more technical debt that any one feature is solving for, and reworking that code can cost way more time than it originally took to write once it's part of some production service. So use code reviews prior to merging, and prevent that code from becoming part of t…

The last place I worked, the junior engineers reviewed the interns code. There weren't enough senior engineers to review the junior engineers code, so we ended up reviewing each other's code. I was pretty green at the time, so we just ended up with a terrible codebase after being there for a few years. It was already bad to begin with, but that's because it seemed like what that company does is churn through junior e…

Strong support from technology alleviates the problem.

If your linter already complains about bad indentation, your senior devs can concentrate their limited time on more substantive issues.

Of course, that scaling by technology has limits.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#142

Post by jonny383 »

peferron wrote: post #137
jonny383 wrote: post #100

Any software engineer that wants to build a _real career_ with _real progression_ will already know that changing jobs should be done by connections, not cold-applying for jobs. Sure you need to get your foot in the door, but if you don't utilize the connections you've made throughout your working history, you either A) weren't useful enough to build higher standing connections, or B) were probably too focused on bei…

> Any software engineer that wants to build a _real career_ with _real progression_ will already know that changing jobs should be done by connections, not cold-applying for jobs. If you can get referred, sure, do that. Why should that be a requirement to build a "real career" with "real progression" though? (And what does that even mean?) Earlier this year I interviewed with several companies. I was referred to some…

>If you can get referred, sure, do that. Why should that be a requirement to build a "real career" with "real progression" though? (And what does that even mean?)

It means moving away from being a shit-kicker coder to a more senior position at a fast pace. And eventually on to upper management.

If you ever want to reach upper-management, you basically have two choices: A) You work from the ground up _at the same company, forever_, or B) You work at various companies, developing a network and getting recommended into higher positions from your networks.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#143

Post by eru »

jonny383 wrote: post #108
soup10 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There ARE firms that do not care who you know and just want highly skilled technical people. Not saying it's a majority, but they do exist.

Agreed, but if you continue to target these places as a worker, your career will never progress.

All but one [1] of my jobs have come from cold applying or being approach by recruiters.

That includes stints at Google, Bloomberg and Goldman; and offers from Facebook and some hedge funds etc.

Connections can definitely help. No use contesting that. But they are not necessary.

(Of course, perhaps in the counterfactual world where I had lots of connections, I would be a billionaire by now?)

[1] The exception was my first job, where I had chatted to people in the hiring company at the International Conference on Functional Programming. Not much of an inside connection either---everyone can show up and attend a conference. They usually don't even check whether you have a ticket.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#144

Post by eru »

dmoy wrote: post #46
dlphn___xyz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these prolonged assessments seem worse than a regular take home assignment + presentation. its a waste of the applicants time really.

The bigger issue is you restrict your hiring pool to the set of people who aren't currently employed somewhere that won't allow that kind of moonlighting, etc. It works, until your company gets big enough, and then it doesn't work anymore. One of the main reasons that interviews stick around is because they allow for a much larger applicant pool.

A larger applicant pool, AND because they are a commitment device.

As a candidate, I know that the company is burning roughly the same amount of engineering hours interviewing me as I am burning interviewing them. So it's an honest signal that they are at least somewhat serious.

For comparison, one problem with take-home exercises as a first step, is that (especially good) candidates will wonder whether it's really worth their time when their work might just go into the round file straight away.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#145

Post by eru »

zestyping wrote: post #91

Pet peeve: there is no such thing as a "neurodiverse person". Individual people cannot be more diverse or less diverse than others. Diversity is a property of a group.

Oh, that's just because you are reading 'neurodiverse' literally. The usage here tells you that it's obviously a euphemism for a term that doesn't have the problem you describe.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#146

Post by eru »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #23
pwim wrote: post #15

Any hiring process will by definition favour certain kinds of candidates at the expense of others. Having a week long paid trial is a great way for the company to be less conservative about who they try out, but will also mean they’ll miss out on candidates who are already employed and unwilling to take time off or quit their job to participate in it. In the end though, if they can tap into an undervalued candidate p…

That seems unclear to me too. Can the 1 week trial period begin after you gave your employer your 2 weeks.

> The “first rule” of wing-walking, according to observers, went something like this: “Don’t let go of what you’ve got until you get hold of something better.”

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#147

Post by nullandvoid »

stared wrote: post #7

As an Aspie/ADD, I have never passed any formal interview, even for an intern position (sic!). (You can compare and contrast it with my GitHub/Resume/blog to make a judgment.) Fortunately, many times (even for mid-size companies or research institutes) the hiring was less formal. For small startups, where it is informal, I didn't feel at a disadvantage. For big, I don't believe I can pass through the first filter. It…

I think "weird" is a bit of an umbrella term with areas of "weird" that make it pretty undesirable to work with said person.

Do you believe there should be no other criteria other than strictly strictly technical competence when hiring? Some of the more unpleasant workplace environments i've had hasn't been because of lack of peer technical skill.

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#148

Post by eru »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #65
shantly wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be infeasible for a number of reasons, but this post makes me wonder whether it'd be worth asking candidates how they'd like to be interviewed , then doing that.

I'm pretty sure most of the people who have problems with where do you see yourself in 5 years, what's your biggest weakness, tell me about a time when things didn't go as planned etc. will have just as big a problem with how you'd like to be interviewed - I know for me the answer for how would you like to be interviewed is honestly I would not like to be interviewed in any way whatsoever.

You can ask that question in writing and with no expectation for an immediate response. Much less terrifying that way.

And you'd ask it like: "Here's a bunch of different options for assessing your skills, which one do you think would showcase your strengths best and fits into your schedule etc? Please take your time to think it over, a reply by next week is fine."

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#149

Post by gaspoweredcat »

i have ASD and ADD, it certainly isnt easy, while i have ability my social skills are pretty terrible and the sad truth is that is what an interview is about, regardless of what the job is the one thing basically everyone has to have is the ability to work in sales because thats basically what you have to do at an interview, sell yourself (in full knowledge that there are others applying for the same position with more experience and no issues)

which is generally not easy when you know that youre already a poor prospect due to various conditions, and then getting asked vague questions like "tell me about a time when you were valuable to your team"

i find talking about myself awkward at the best of times, getting asked to pull random events where i think i might have pleased someone etc and turn them into some mini story on the fly is never going to end well for me

thats another issue, everything is about being a "team player" etc and putting it bluntly im not and doubt i ever will be, i dont do things the way others do which means im unlikely to be a "good fit" amongst a bunch of classically trained people who stick to rigorous methods

in the places i have worked ive usually ended up as one of the "go-to" people, i make a point of being good at what i do but getting someone to actually take a chance on you is not easy

Re: To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews

#150

Post by eru »

pseudalopex wrote: post #27
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

> Five years in, 75% of Ultranauts’ staff are on the autistic spectrum – and one reason for this is its innovative approach to hiring. Given that autism has a significant male to female ratio (quick Googling suggested 4:1 for Male:Female for autism), this seems to indicate that their percentage of women developers is low.

4:1 is the US average for software engineers.[1] [1] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm

That's less skewed than I had expected!
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