What is the engineering hiring bar?

Yes, they really do. I've explained the details my employers' hiring processes to white and asian men trying to get into tech, and the majority feel like it is an overall benefit to diverse candidates - other discrimination in tech notwithstanding. Really, how can you write this? Do your claim to know the opinions of every white and asian man in this country?

My point is, that the fact that diverse tech workers may face discrimination in other ways (e.g. slurs as you pointed out) doesn't necessarily "even out" discrimination in hiring that favors diverse candidates. Someone who can't land an interview may feel that the opportunity to get a job, even if it comes at the expense of other forms of hostility, is a net positive.

> What a horrifying thing to say. Normalizing racial and sexual harassment is a large part of the problem. Are you going to claim you don't understand how the tech industry is so homogenous while simultaneously claiming that racial slurs are just some inconsequential price of admission in tech?

The idea that discrimination in hiring is justified because of other forms of discrimination (such as slurs) is something you originally claimed:

> Exaggerating the status of "diversity hires" just ignores the harsh reality of rampant discrimination in the tech industry. And not just on the basis of sex and race, but age and disability too. There wouldn't need to be such a hard push for underrepresented candidates if it were a more welcoming, diverse workforce in the first place.

Your message here is that discrimination in hiring is necessary and justified because of other forms of discrimination. This seems like the "price of admission" mentality you refer to above. Whether or not this is "Horrifying" is up to you, but lets be clear: the idea that one form of discrimination justifies another form of discrimination is an idea that you originally brought up.

For what it's worth, I'm of the mind that two wrongs don't make a right. If people are being treated with contempt on the basis of race, then the appropriate response is to curb that behavior - not discriminate in favor of the targeted demographic in hiring. Claiming that one slurs are okay because candidates are beneficiaries of discrimination is wrong. So is claiming that discrimination is okay because these people are subject to slurs, or other forms of hostility.

I've never once adjusted my question based on where the candidate was coming from. The idea that people would ease up if they saw FAANG on a resume or a 10+ year career is just not a thing I've ever seen.

There are a few truths in modern tech interviewing:

1. There is a large amount of randomness. Between the question that an interviewer chooses to ask and whether the interviewer is having a really bad day, you might just get screwed.

2. A lot of people are genuinely working really hard to do a good job interviewing. I've seen careful and detailed interview feedback and talked with a huge number of people who really care about interviewing well.

3. Interviewing has less oversight than ordinary work, so some people are bad at it and don't get feedback. Some people get back luck and are assigned one of these interviewers.

4. Interviewees suck at evaluating their experience. This means that when somebody says "I did everything well except I missed some impossible optimal algorithm and they rejected me so that's bullshit" you should become skeptical.

5. Angry people get signal boosted. Online discourse around interviewing is dominated by people with bad experiences.

> Many see getting called slurs as a small price to pay to get a chance to break into tech.

I'm still having trouble believing anyone who isn't a frothing racist can pass off "many" getting called racial slurs on the job as just business as usual. Or, "a small price to pay."

Whereas what I was saying is that the policies which you cited incentivisng more diverse applicants to apply doesn't even begin to counter the ubiquitous prejudice in hiring and on the job. If it did, minorities and women would be over-represented in tech rather than under-represented.

The whole "minority free pass" idea is what grates on me. Plenty of hiring managers have unconscious biases against women, minorities, older candidates, people with disabilities, etc. So, it's throwing more diverse candidates into a situation where diverse candidates are going to be disproportionately rejected.

But the employers who actually incentivize diverse candidates are also frequently over-emphasized despite it being an uncommon practice. The boilerplate EEOC "we encourage diverse candidates to apply" statement is usually just that: an empty boilerplate put there for legal purposes, backed with zero action behind it. More often than not, it's nothing close to what you've described above

Technical understanding of systems in general (networking, CAP, testing, writing maintainable code) are all overlooked in the interview process, though these are what actually make a developer productive.

The older you get the more specialized and optimized you are to learning what matters, which is why most of the older guys suck at these types of interviews.

Imagine interviewing Brendan Gregg by giving him some leetcode problems!