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You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

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Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#211

Post by golemotron »

xorgar831 wrote: post #154
theoh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If certain activities have a huge effect on how the world operates, which is kind of the premise of Y Combinator (software is eating the world, etc.) then it's important that the people who call the shots are representative of the people who are affected. This has to happen from the bottom up, since for obvious reasons you can't parachute in "untrained diversity" at a management/strategy level.

Exactly this, if you don't have that level of representation it leads to social problems down the line. The bloodshed in Iran and Iraq are shining examples of the extremes of what can happen. Democracy only works as much as it can provide an outlet for friction from different groups by allowing them an equal share of the system.

The representation you should be worried about is ideological representation. That's where true diversity -diversity of thought and worldview- resides.

The vilification of Peter Thiel solely for supporting a candidate that 40+ percent of the country supports should open some eyes to the problem but I doubt it will.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#212

Post by douche »

ryanx435 wrote: post #198
douche wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are efforts to try to get more men into teaching and nursing. Unfortunately, teaching pays shit and requires a four year degree and student teaching to get a teaching certificate, so it's not the most attractive option. Those other blue-collar traditionally masculine jobs have a hard dependency on brute strength that most women can't satisfy. Physiology is almost as cruel a mistress as physics.

a large part of construction is now entirely machine based. how much strength does it take to drive a dump truck? or operate a crane? or drive a bulldozer? the answer is that it is the same amount as driving an every day car: almost none. I don't know enough about the other industries to comment.

How about when things break down, and you're out there in the mud turning wrenches and pounding on things to tear the machine apart, fix it, and put it back together? It's not an infrequent occurrence.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#213

Post by skywhopper »

Scea91 wrote: post #57
divbit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty huge statistic, - what also pops out to me is: "stop practicing ". This seems to imply that these technical interviews are skills that you don't really gain on the job. I know that personally would 9 times out of 10 spend time on a cool / beneficial project rather than making time to practice trivia problems.

I've had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn't practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can't get past them.

Meanwhile, I do terribly in technical interviews, and I've failed at pretty much all of them. Then in the jobs I've successfully gotten, I always get surprised feedback of how much stronger an employee I turn out to be than was expected based on my interview. Technical interviews that become a game pass on a lot of potentially strong employees.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#214

Post by tonyarkles »

user5994461 wrote: post #131
deanCommie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like a superstar. I don't mean that condescendingly, but I meant that genuinely - assuming you're telling the truth, you're the kind of candidate (based on tech skills alone) that most companies would love to interview and hire. But there are way more jobs and positions than there are candidates like you. And you can't have every company be full of superstars. The argument is for the rest of us, having a hi…

I wouldn't call 4 interviews a superstar. It's really doable, a bit of skill + a bit of luck for the first interviews + a hiring bar set at 'junior' cuz he's young :D

I suspect that they're not calling you a superstar because you've passed four tech interviews, but because your foundations of CS aren't decaying.

I work with a lot of teams as a contractor/consultant/whatever you want to call it. I often have to bite my tongue when team members that work for my clients forget what I believe are really simple things. For example, doing lookups in a hash vs an array. That was literally the entire solution to a performance problem I solved for a client: loop through an array once and make a hash, and then do lookups from the hash. Dropped the calculation from 4 minutes to 4 seconds.

The point is, this stuff comes naturally to me. When I think about going to town and shopping at 4 stores, I curse google maps for not implementing a heuristic TSP solver. When I started playing with hashicorp consul and vault, I went and read the Raft paper just to understand what was going on.

There's a lot of people in the industry that don't think about this stuff. I probably wouldn't if it didn't just come. I've got this deeply ingrained curiosity, and some kind of innate talent to remember it all and keep drinking from the fountain.

It's hard to remember that not everyone is like me. I'm not trying to say any of this as some form of humble brag or anything. It's just really important to remember that how I think and act isn't the same as most people. That, I suspect, is why the GP called you a superstar. You likely think about things in a much deeper and more frequent way than others.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#215

Post by curun1r »

FT_intern wrote: post #97
Manishearth wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This addresses a straw man; nobody is saying that there is systemic bias against _all_ minorities, just some. This in particular is the concept of a "model minority". Culture difference cannot explain why women are not well represented in tech. Culture difference can be a part of systemic bias, anyway. Let's say you have some programming job. The interviews focus on questions about frobbing linked lists (which is oft…

It's a pipeline issue but there are ways to cater to certain groups (see affirmative action). The question is, why is there a need to cater to certain groups? Incongruity is present in every field, every job, every company, everywhere. As long as opportunity is sufficiently available for everyone (which it is, one can learn to program, get input on their code and collaborate with other people on the internet without…

> The question is, why is there a need to cater to certain groups?

Have you ever used software or website that was written entirely by an offshore team and felt that it was a bit "off"? The translations were a bit wonky and the interactions felt somewhat unintuitive?

Most people have and we're more than willing to attribute it to a lower skill level, but it's also the case that clear and intuitive aren't universal concepts. White men make software that's intuitive for white men and less so for other groups. The more than you can blend different perspectives into the product development process, the more the finished product will appeal to those represented perspectives.

There's a reason all the big tech companies are trying to address their lack of minority representation, and it's only partly PR. It's also the case that these companies have largely saturated the tech-savvy market where the demographics look similar to the demographics of their employees. And in a world where high valuations require growth, reaching those under-represented groups of consumers is critical to achieving that growth.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#216

Post by kasey_junk »

tmnvix wrote: post #207
kasey_junk wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm happy to make an argument that given a lack of evidence that gender plays a negative roll, we have a moral imperative to eliminate unfair and discriminatory barriers to entry because its the right thing to do . But lets say that isn't a compelling argument for you. Our industry has a disastrous success rate. Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On t…

> Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to fill positions with qualified applicants. True. > Given that, there is a pretty strong argument that we should change the way we hire software developers and an obvious way to change it is to be more inclusive. What is this 'strong argument'? Your conclusion "be more inclusive" is ba…

The argument is we could hardly be worse. I'm not convinced we know what qualified even looks like. We certainly can't tell in any objective way.

Given that a purely random inclusion of more applicants is likely to improve the situation. Thats before arguing for the merits of a diverse work force or relying on moral imperatives.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#217

Post by finid »

diyorgasms wrote: post #172
finid wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bloodshed in Iran and Iraq are shining examples of the extremes of what can happen. That leaves me scratching my head. I know that Iraq is a mess, but how is that because of diversity, or lack of it? And about Iran. There's bloodshed there?

I'm suspecting parent is referring to the Iran-Iraq War, though I may be mistaken.

But that war had nothing to do with diversity. It was, in a sense, one of our proxy wars, when Saddam was our bastard.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#218

Post by exstudent2 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #186
exstudent2 wrote: post #56

There's nothing to "fix" here. If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success. If that's not happening, then it's a supply issue. And really it's no issue at all since people have free will and certain demographics just aren't choosing to be engineers. There's nothing wrong with that, we should stop trying to force them into our line of work.

> "If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success." BS, that's a dodge. I've seen plenty of people (regardless of their background, ethnicity, or gender) who've been screwed by the system and have spent way too long in crappy jobs where they were unable to make much of a difference. Some people get lucky and early on they find jobs where their talent can sh…

That's not been my experience at all. I've generally seen good people get ahead. Sure everyone has personal setbacks but en mass it's definitely not an issue.

Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview

#220

Post by [deleted] »

avasylev wrote: post #150
DigitalSea wrote: post #130

I consider myself a competent developer, but I have no academic background as I am self-taught. While I have had a steady supply of work, because of this, I will most likely never get to work for a big company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook because I wouldn't pass their technical interview. I lack the understanding of core computer science principles and I am okay with admitting that, I don't think it makes me a…

I'm one of the people who ask those algorithm/white board questions. I've read a lot criticism on this topic, here're my reasons to stil keep asking these questions: 1) Working on algorithm problem requires very little in common between interviewer and interviewee. I'm C++/C#, I won't be able to give Ruby dev a real world task and evaluate it properly. Algo/data structure problems are universal and looks similar in a…

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