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Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

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Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#161

Post by jdrek1 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #107
dalbasal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We talk a big game about merit, capability, qualifications and such. Ultimately though, nearly all actual selection processes are are subjective or ilegible... depending on how you see these things. How an interviewer feels about you intuitively matters a lot, maybe the most. Actual tests of skill are usually intuitive as well. An interviewer tries to gauge your skills, but it's rarely designed to be an objective tes…

> an objective test of skill Other industries/careers have exactly this: a professional licensing exam. Most programmers vehemently oppose any sort of standardized testing.

I'm curious, what do you want to test? The classic "memorize how to bubblesort" interview questions which so many people complain about because they don't show anything except that someone has prepared? Isn't it better to just look over the code of applicants and check if they are aware of general structures etc?

Obviously some familiarity with algorithms etc is required and it should be checked if that's there, but with tests you can't really test if someone understands the bigger picture and did not just memorize the answer. I know more than enough people who can solve problems just fine but their code is absolutely atrocious and I'd never hire them. Interviews where one can ask them why they write code the way they do are probably far more effective.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#162

Post by KittenInABox »

username90 wrote: post #111
nashalo_nighly wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that as a woman you don’t benefit from the “competency bias” and constantly has to prove yourself (which is not necessarily bad), combined with the fact that many women simply walk out of careers in computer science and physics because of sexism/harassment, you could consider that the women left are indeed more competent than the average man in the industry.

Women do benefit from likeability bias though, and likeability is certainly a factor when hiring and firing. As for fake resume studies, the problem with those is that male and female resumes are evaluated differently. If they made a male looking resume and sent it out with a female name it will do badly. But a female looking resume with a male name will also do badly.

What does a male/female looking resume mean? (Genuinely asking. I can't imagine that a female engineering accomplishment is vs a male engineering accomplishment.)

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#163

Post by CydeWeys »

dcolkitt wrote: post #129
CydeWeys wrote: post #84

Women: +9 to +10% chance of callback relative to men Black, Hispanic, and Asian: -8 to -13% chance of callback relative to White people. I wish they had broken out the other ethnicities separately in the abstract. The reasons that Black and Hispanic people might be getting fewer callbacks relative to whites are likely quite different from the reasons that Asian people might be getting fewer callbacks. I'm making my w…

As far as I can tell, the paper doesn't seem to control for citizenship or immigration status. It seems likely that Hispanic and Asian job-seekers, especially in Silicon Valley, would be much more likely to be from overseas and therefore require a work visa.

I don't know about Hispanic per se but I definitely see that being true of Asians, and yes, it's a potential confounding factor. Would love to know if the longer paper addresses it.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#164

Post by jdmichal »

imglorp wrote: post #67

Okay, honest question coming from ignorance. In computing at least, there's a well known diversity disparity going back to STEM graduation rates. It seems financial is a similar boat: Wells Fargo recently claimed a “limited talent pool" but got criticized by AOC for lacking "talent to recruit Black workers". Obviously society, including industry, could do more to get kids into school. But right now, in the resume pil…

There's a lot of implicit assumptions around this stuff that actually matter a lot, and the demographics of the actual candidate pool [0] as opposed to the general population is a huge one. I would venture that most people pushing diversity agenda want representation to match the general population, but that may not be supported the candidate pool.

As you point out, it's well studied that women don't graduate with STEM degrees at a rate that matches the general population. That means that for every company that matches general population for women in STEM fields, there's other companies that literally cannot unless they hire unqualified women from outside the candidate pool.

[0] I'm defining this as the group of all possible people who are qualified to be hired into a role.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#165

Post by HideousKojima »

milansm wrote: post #112
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I actually believe there should be hiring quotas. Tell departments that at least XX% of their hires are expected to be woman, or older than 50, or racial minorities, or whatever else. Set the percentage based on the pool of applicants, minus a bit to allow wiggle room. (And if there are legal blockers, let's change the law!) It feels wrong to me too, I know it does! But if hiring happens based on gut, and…

Why do we need to systematically counteract our biases? Why is that right thing to do? And who decides what is right? I was biased when I married, I’m biased when I pick people I’ll spend time with, I’m biased when I apply for a job, and wouldn’t like it to be any other way... Of course, unless it’s me deciding for everyone else what they should optimize for their decision making process.

Because people in power have said you must or face financial ruin, freedom of association be damned.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#166

Post by HideousKojima »

commandlinefan wrote: post #131
enraged_camel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely very interesting to see white men's reactions now that they are starting to experience discrimination themselves. Your comment is actually very telling. Instead of realizing and admitting that racism and sexism are bad and hurtful, you instead referred to the perpetrators as "arrogant sexist bigots" and talked about how scary the "echo chamber" was. edit: In fact, it is remarkable that this "it is act…

> experience discrimination But didn't we all agree a long time ago that discrimination is inherently bad?

Hence the effort to redefine discrimination as "prejudice plus power" so that certain people can justify their discrimination.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#167

Post by dragonwriter »

HideousKojima wrote: post #166
commandlinefan wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> experience discrimination But didn't we all agree a long time ago that discrimination is inherently bad?

Hence the effort to redefine discrimination as "prejudice plus power" so that certain people can justify their discrimination.

> Hence the effort to redefine discrimination as "prejudice plus power"

"Discrimination" is not the word that that phrase is (controversially) used to define. ("Racism" originally, and "sexism" based on the use for "racism", yes; discrimination, no.)

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#168

Post by [deleted] »

secondcoming wrote: post #59
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #37

The only problem with blind selection, is that, sooner or later, the race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/fitness/attractiveness/age (I'm an old fart, so I can tell you a thing or two about ageism in tech) becomes apparent. I have heard story after story from peers (around my age), about passing numerous rounds of phone and test interviews, only to see the interviewer's face fall, as soon as they walk in the door.…

This is absolutely one of my nightmares. I'm turning 40 soon and I know my opportunities of being paid to write software will become more and more limited.

[deleted]

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#169

Post by SuoDuanDao »

KittenInABox wrote: post #162
username90 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women do benefit from likeability bias though, and likeability is certainly a factor when hiring and firing. As for fake resume studies, the problem with those is that male and female resumes are evaluated differently. If they made a male looking resume and sent it out with a female name it will do badly. But a female looking resume with a male name will also do badly.

What does a male/female looking resume mean? (Genuinely asking. I can't imagine that a female engineering accomplishment is vs a male engineering accomplishment.)

I'm curious also, but anecdotally, women were over-represented in my engineering school's societies and probably under-represented in design competitions.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#170

Post by username90 »

KittenInABox wrote: post #162
username90 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women do benefit from likeability bias though, and likeability is certainly a factor when hiring and firing. As for fake resume studies, the problem with those is that male and female resumes are evaluated differently. If they made a male looking resume and sent it out with a female name it will do badly. But a female looking resume with a male name will also do badly.

What does a male/female looking resume mean? (Genuinely asking. I can't imagine that a female engineering accomplishment is vs a male engineering accomplishment.)

There are plenty of research done on gendered words. Like highlighting your own personal excellence or skill is more masculine etc. There are also of course that men and women tend to have different hobbies and therefore spends their free time doing different things. So one new grad might have done some leadership roles in a horse club while the other maybe did some chess competitions.

https://www.idealrole.com/blog/gender-job-ads

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