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I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

triplebyte.com

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Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#291

Post by btilly »

j2kun wrote: post #260
jMyles wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until you said that refraining from hiring someone because his accent was too difficult to understand. That's an insane reason - why pass on a good candidate for this reason? Can your company afford this? If you are working closely with this person, it will be 3 months before his accent is sufficiently adjusted. This is a stupid reason to pass.

I've seen this a million times teaching students. They raise a shitstorm for two weeks because they can't understand their TA's accent. Then they learn and can understand them just fine. The truth is it's part laziness and part racism. That being said, there is reinforcing incentive to be a bad communicator when the people around you don't make the effort because of your accent.

The truth is it's part laziness and part racism.

I would lengthen that list to part inexperience, part laziness, part racism, and part a real problem.

College students are one of the stereotypically worst groups for this. They often have only really experienced one accent and racial group - their own. And suddenly they are being taught by people from another country with strong accents. So inexperienced and lazy are likely, while racist is not rare.

By contrast in tech, you have to work with people who have a variety of accents of different kinds and strengths. And frequently this happens over the phone with outsourced teams. The variety is astounding. For example I'm dealing with countries from Paraguay to Vietnam in my co-workers, and regularly deal with have outsourced contractors from India to Poland. I don't have trouble with any of their accents.

When experienced tech people like me give up on trying to understand you, it is unlikely to be inexperience, doubtful to be laziness, and probably isn't racism. Which means that you likely have a real problem.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#292

Post by tptacek »

dbt00 wrote: post #289
tptacek wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is harder to build a work-sample regimen than to just send candidates to interviewers, sure. But then, the point of Triplebyte is that they're eating all that work for you. Regarding "fleets of laptops" and environments and all that jazz: these seem like unforced obstacles. Just have the candidates use their own machines. Here's a crazy idea: have them use their own offices/couches, too. Regarding security practic…

> Just have the candidates use their own machines I agree with you generally, but you'd better have loaner machines ready. Not every candidate currently has a working, dev-capable laptop. Economic bias. (Hell, my current laptop is only 70% functional because I can't decide if I want to repair or replace it.)

If economic bias is your concern, then you shouldn't be asking people to travel onsite for a tech-out interview; you should be doing everything you can to make tech qualification remote, so that by the time you need to call them to your office, you and the candidate have a pretty good idea it's worth disrupting their work and home life with the trip.

After hundreds of interviews (I have no idea; lots, over 10 years of almost continuous hiring) I've never run into a candidate that couldn't do a tech challenge remotely.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#294

Post by dbt00 »

btilly wrote: post #216
biotech wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't aware of this, but sure enough, "accent discrimination" is addressed by the EEOC. However, in the case that nobody can understand the person due to such a thick accent, the employer may have some argument that it is not discriminatory. Here is the relevant text from the EEOC Enforcement Guidance on National Origin Discrimination: Under Title VII, an employment decision may legitimately be based on an individ…

In my opinion as someone present, this standard was met. (1) Programmers need to be able to communicate about what they did, what they need to do, and how things are designed. (2) Interviewers kept on saying things like, "I managed to pick out enough of the right words that he probably answered me, but I wasn't sure." None of us cared that he had an accent - we hired plenty of people with accents. We cared that we co…

> he would have had grounds to file a lawsuit.

Anybody can file a lawsuit against anyone else at any time for any reason.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#295

Post by PhasmaFelis »

dunpeal wrote: post #185
jorblumesea wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most engineering interviewees fail to advance because of cultural/personality/communication issues and not technical competence. The amount of people I've washed out of the interview process because they've gone on some rant about windows vs linux, political ideology or just came off as unable to communicate in general. This is also the hardest to communicate as it is something inherent to the candidate. It's not per…

> Most engineering interviewees fail to advance because of cultural/personality/communication issues and not technical competence. Not my experience. At least when hiring for programming positions, the typical fatal issue is that the candidate's coding is weak. In my first role as a hiring manager, I didn't stress coding tests for candidates with long work history on their resume. Since then, I learned better. I've s…

True, but give them something they can do at a computer, in an hour or a day or a weekend. Coding on a whiteboard with someone staring at you counting the seconds is not natural. It's like asking someone to do their job backwards and underwater. You'll get a lot of false negatives.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#296

Post by 0xfeba »

irq11 wrote: post #226
dunpeal wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have, however, seen lots of junior interviewers ask idiotic questions and wash candidates out for bad reasons Why are "juniors" interviewing candidates? Let alone juniors asking "idiotic questions", and having decision-making capacity? > then turn around and claim the candidate ”failed at fizzbuzz”, just to cover their own ass Coding questions are among the most quantifiable and objective questions there are. If…

”Why are "juniors" interviewing candidates?” I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the average age of programmers these days is just slightly above “right out of undergrad”. If you wait for the senior people to interview everyone, you’re going to be waiting a while. ”Coding questions are among the most quantifiable and objective questions there are.” Bullshit. Coding questions feel objective, and programmers love…

This topic was pretty lively last time I commented about my interviewing practices. Coding is a creative effort -- yes. It's not objective.

But I see no other way to test if the person is competent than sitting them down with a problem to solve -- if only to have them explain what they do and don't understand, and what their process is.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#297

Post by tptacek »

dbt00 wrote: post #294
btilly wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion as someone present, this standard was met. (1) Programmers need to be able to communicate about what they did, what they need to do, and how things are designed. (2) Interviewers kept on saying things like, "I managed to pick out enough of the right words that he probably answered me, but I wasn't sure." None of us cared that he had an accent - we hired plenty of people with accents. We cared that we co…

> he would have had grounds to file a lawsuit. Anybody can file a lawsuit against anyone else at any time for any reason.

To whatever extent that is true, there is a practical difference between the kinds of suits that any law firm can get dismissed, and the kinds that decent plaintiff's lawyer can credibly threaten will see trial.

I think the reality is that credible lawsuit threats will virtually always settle, relatively quickly. That's what I've seen at smaller companies, and I assume it's even more the case where Ben Tilly works.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#298

Post by PhasmaFelis »

dunpeal wrote: post #246
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Me personally? I’ve never interviewed a senior person who couldn’t code at all. Not after the phone screen, anyway. Not sure how common this is, but I've been one of those flame-outs. It was during a Google phone-screen. I was given a very simple programming problem, and something in my brain just broke (figuratively). In retrospect it was probably from being too tense because I was star-struck about the employer.…

If it's any comfort: everyone performs worse under the stress of an interview. This is widely recognized by hiring employers, and accounted for in the interview evaluation. For example, if I test-run a new question, and it takes my engineers 20 minutes to solve it, I will add 30-50% handicap for stress. I.E. if a candidate manages to solve it within 30 minutes, that's roughly equivalent. Unfortunately, there's no way…

Don't ask people to do something they've maybe never done before and will never have to do on the job (write code with a marker on a whiteboard as seconds tick down). If you want a reasonable coding assessment, sit them down at a terminal and give them an hour (and an appropriately difficult problem). But literal whiteboard tests are a recipe for complete blackouts.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#299

Post by flukus »

reversecs wrote: post #274
j2kun wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this a million times teaching students. They raise a shitstorm for two weeks because they can't understand their TA's accent. Then they learn and can understand them just fine. The truth is it's part laziness and part racism. That being said, there is reinforcing incentive to be a bad communicator when the people around you don't make the effort because of your accent.

I am conflicted about the use of racism in this context. Accent varies by ethnicity and ethnicity is a proxy for race, so they are disadvantaged by their race. But if a student had a ta of the same race but no accent it would be fine. Or if the ta was white but had a bad accent the complaining would continue but it wouldn't be considered racism.

> Accent varies by ethnicity and ethnicity is a proxy for race

Accent varies by location, not ethnicity. My Scottish ancestry does not in any way help my understand a thick Glaswegian accent but if we took a kid from China and bought them up in Glasgow they'd have the same accent as everyone else.

Location isn't a great proxy for race.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#300

Post by btilly »

tptacek wrote: post #283
btilly wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That decision would have been up to HR and the executive team. I was neither. Speaking personally, if the company hired an interpreter, I would have been OK with it. If the company insisted on having all design meetings in a chat room, I would think that crazy. Most people's typing speed is a small fraction of their speaking speed.

Actually that decision would not have been up to HR and the executive team, would it? In the United States, that decision was made for you at least 28 years ago, right?

Actually, no.

You're referring to the Americans with Disability Act. What it requires depends on the "essential duties of the job" and what is consider a "reasonable accommodation". Those are judgement calls. Those judgement calls need to be made by executives on the advice of HR.

My lay understanding is that the law does not insist that the job requirements change. So if being able to participate in design meetings, daily scrum, and so on are daily requirements for anyone to have a programming job at your organization, they are essential duties. Even if the same job title in another organization has different requirements. (But can you document your requirements?)

That brings us to the question of what a reasonable accommodation might be. Hiring a full time interpreter to follow that person around is probably considered unreasonable. Allowing someone who lip reads a device that can do text to speech is clearly reasonable.

The ADA affects the decision. But it doesn't make it for you.

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