To hire neurodiverse workers, one firm got rid of job interviews • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by cloverich » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

ssully wrote: post #275

Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience interviews are less effective with students because they rarely have relevant experience to talk about. At the mid level and above tests and technical questions become less useful, but they can talk about meaningful past projects. I don’t know of anything else that’s predictive without weeding great people out. PS: It’s odd, but I suspect a random process may actually work better because the great pe…

When I was nearing graduation and doing interviews, the biggest question that stumped me was a "Where do you see yourself in five years". I was a few months away from finishing my masters, so between that and looking for a job, I was pretty overwhelmed. I answered basically by saying "I honestly don't know where I see my self in the next 6 months with everything going on. I am just focused on graduating and landing a…

Its kind of a BS question. But I think it holds water, at least a little. You went through a lot of school -- why? What career path were you trying to open that would not otherwise have been available, and how do you see yourself progressing in it? Truly not knowing is a sign that you haven't looked into the career and progression much. It means the hiring manager has less of a signal on if you'll be happy at the company in 1, 3, 5 years, because you can't tell them what you are looking for.

I was asked a similar question when I was applying for Medical School, and told my non-answer was BS. It frustrated me at the time. 10 years after quitting medicine, I can't say that person's viewpoint was wrong.

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

#342

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

nscalf wrote: post #322

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…

Just so I'm getting this straight, in a setting where your entire goal is to make a company want to work with you every day, it's discrimination to turn you down because you did not make them want to work with you? Listen, companies have their own cultures, and if you're not a fit to that culture, bringing you on runs the risk of ruining the culture they have been building and making their employees quit. I turn down…

"Listen, companies have their own cultures..."

Peter Thiel once used "culture fit" to exclude people who liked playing basketball:

"PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used the world “hoops.” Probably no one even knew how to play “hoops.” Basketball would be bad enough. But “hoops?” That guy clearly wouldn’t have fit in. He’d have had to explain to the team why he was going to go play hoops on a Thursday night. And no one would have understood him."

https://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183...

Gee, which racial demographic has an affinity for basketball? If you wanted to discriminate based on race, you can always find a "culture" proxy, like a hobby, fashion, speech pattern, etc. to use as an excuse, without citing race explicitly.

Or gender. Or class. Or "neuro-diversity". Or almost any trait you want to discriminate against.

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

#343

Post by shaggyfrog » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

nscalf wrote: post #322

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…

Just so I'm getting this straight, in a setting where your entire goal is to make a company want to work with you every day, it's discrimination to turn you down because you did not make them want to work with you? Listen, companies have their own cultures, and if you're not a fit to that culture, bringing you on runs the risk of ruining the culture they have been building and making their employees quit. I turn down…

> Listen, companies have their own cultures, and if you're not a fit to that culture, bringing you on runs the risk of ruining the culture they have been building and making their employees quit.

This is the same reasoning that has been used in the past to deny opportunity: to people of colour, to women, to LGBTQ+... to people who didn't attend the "right" university or college...

This kind of active bias is harmful to the candidate, creates liability to the interviewer and the company, and also reinforces monoculture in an industry where being flexible and responsive to change has direct impact on the bottom line.

> These cries of discrimination are getting a bit out of hand.

I have often heard this from people in real life, from the cisgendered/male/caucasian/heteronormative/neuronormative, as if making space for people who aren't exactly like them is going to drive them into some lower social caste.

> You may just be rude in an interview, and that will 100% result in me turning you down.

That's fine, and your prerogative.

> It doesn't matter much to me if you're an "Aspie/ADD" or if you just found out your wife cheated on you, I don't want you around me all the time based off the only data point I have.

Do you and everyone at your organization always present a level-headed, calm, non-confrontational demeanour, or are you or anyone else ever ruffled by anything? Including lack of sleep, lack of caffeine, family crisis, friend crisis, personal crisis, unplanned bill, crashed computer, or anything else big or small? If not, perhaps there are unnecessary risks with making a major judgement based on a single data point.

> I think interviews aren't the best way to find out if someone is a going to be a good engineer, but to be a good team member, you have to have good interactions with the team.

How are you allowing the candidate the best chance to evaluate if you and your team will have perfect interactions with them?

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

#344

Post by jasode » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

wysifnwyg wrote: post #330

nscalf wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I'm getting this straight, in a setting where your entire goal is to make a company want to work with you every day, it's discrimination to turn you down because you did not make them want to work with you? Listen, companies have their own cultures, and if you're not a fit to that culture, bringing you on runs the risk of ruining the culture they have been building and making their employees quit. I turn down…

Good hiring managers will recognize that everyone doesn't have to like everyone. Work isn't a social club, it's a business in the market of delivering products. If candidates aren't measured on a metric of their capability to deliver and instead is measured on their metric as a drinking buddy, your company needs better managers.

>Good hiring managers will recognize that everyone doesn't have to like everyone. [...] as a drinking buddy,

In every thread where people go through great pains trying to clearly articulate why creating a cordial, amiable, and friendly work environment is important, people don't read that with charity. Instead, it's always twisted into "drinking buddy".

Let me try some different examples as models. Penn & Teller magicians are "not friends" or "drinking buddies".[0] However, they are friendly and cordial in their working relationship.

Another example is Golden State Warriors basketball teammates, Steph Curry & Klay Thompson.[1] They are very friendly with each other as work associates on the basketball court but they are also not drinking buddies. Steph is a family man with 3 small children. In contrast, Klay lives a bachelor lifestyle. Obviously, they don't need to share beers every week to be deadly effective as a team on the court.

It's perfectly acceptable to try and create those levels of employee camaraderie without being drinking buddies. The gp was talking about rejecting "rude people" that disrupt office harmony and that's acceptable to create cohesive teams like Penn & Teller and Steph & Klay.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=penn+%26+teller+not+friends

[1] https://np.reddit.com/r/warriors/comments/6avmse/ama_w_marcu...

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

#345

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

Leherenn wrote: post #94

icotyl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite experience. I don't have Asperger's or ADD, but I'm shy and struggle with eye contact and small talk. I interviewed at about ten startups, and despite doing well on the technical questions, I got rejected every time. I began to suspect it was because of "culture fit" -- will this 35 year old introvert fit in at our frat house/office? I was getting pretty depressed after all that rejection, but I go…

I don't really understand this dismissing about "culture fit". You describe it yourself as a frat house, which, I assume from the rest of your post, is not what you want. Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired…

"Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired, so it makes sense to find someone who would fit in the mold, even if less experienced/skillful."

Right, so better not hire any married people, older people, people of the opposite gender of the founders, people of the wrong political party, people of the wrong religious persuasion, the wrong class, or any other characteristics that risk interrupting the frat party...I mean "work environment".

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

#346

Post by commandlinefan » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

kempbellt wrote: post #294

dominicr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that companies shouldn't be frat houses full of brogrammers. If you want to hang out with your friends and wrestle to decide coding patterns, then that's all well and good. But the second that it becomes a company that employs people it should be more mature, equal and accepting. Work is indeed not always only about output and skills, it's also about respecting each other and collaborating with d…

Companies should be comprised of whatever works best to build the product effectively that people want to buy. Your argument could be used to ban beanbag chairs, nerf-guns, and kegs from the office because it doesn't meet your "maturity" standards. I've worked at places that have all of these and we made a productive and effective team. If you don't like the company culture, complaining that they aren't "mature enoug…

I think that what underlies this fear of apocryphal “brogrammers” is the fear that, if everybody is left alone to do as they please without being brought to heel, every company will grow into a place where they, personally, don’t feel they fit in. It says a lot more about the authoritarian mindset of people who use the term brogrammer than it says about programmers and nerd culture.

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

#347

Post by sam0x17 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

sam0x17 wrote: post #240

marksweston wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a thing and you summon it into existence. 'Brogrammer' started as a witticism and has become a social phenomenon that people discuss as though it was based on rigorous observation and not just a joke.

In college I knew a number of "brogrammers" (frat boys, who did fratty things, and banged their head against coding as best they could). None of them are programming today.

Many are in banking, finance, etc., though.

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

#348

Post by senderista » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

dominicr wrote: post #138

Leherenn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand this dismissing about "culture fit". You describe it yourself as a frat house, which, I assume from the rest of your post, is not what you want. Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired…

I think the point is that companies shouldn't be frat houses full of brogrammers. If you want to hang out with your friends and wrestle to decide coding patterns, then that's all well and good. But the second that it becomes a company that employs people it should be more mature, equal and accepting. Work is indeed not always only about output and skills, it's also about respecting each other and collaborating with d…

GitHub?

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

#349

Post by otakucode » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

x220 wrote: post #183

flukus wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues So you'd discriminate against introverts because the team are awful at socializing? Apart from how sad that sounds and how awful it is for people (you're whole life has single point of failure), it also sounds very self defeating. > Work is not always only about output and skills Treating it that way is basically the founda…

>you're whole life has single point of failure wontfix, working as intended. The startup wants you dependent on them for everything and to spend nearly all your waking hours inside their office so they can coerce your loyalty.

I don't know if it's to coerce loyalty. I would presume that the main motivation is that they know that you are what generates profit. So if they can exploit you as a profit-generating resource, and get away with it, they will do so. This isn't novel. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was common for entire families, children included, to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, and barely earn enough to survive. That was not done out of economic necessity. When the government stepped in and required companies to pay 1 person enough to raise a family for 40 hours of work in a week, that essentially amounted to requiring them to give a greater than 960% wage increase. (Going from getting 384hr of work out of a family of 4 in a week to getting 40hrs of work from that same family, just to keep that family at the same subsistence level would require paying 960% more for that 40 hours.) And they survived. In fact, they thrived, as did all of society when they were forced to do that. But, the type of people who created that situation in the first place are still being born. They're still running companies. And they will still attempt to wring every valuable moment out of the lives of human beings to take for themselves. If we let them.

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

#350

Post by oarabbus_ » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

dominicr wrote: post #138

Leherenn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand this dismissing about "culture fit". You describe it yourself as a frat house, which, I assume from the rest of your post, is not what you want. Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired…

I think the point is that companies shouldn't be frat houses full of brogrammers. If you want to hang out with your friends and wrestle to decide coding patterns, then that's all well and good. But the second that it becomes a company that employs people it should be more mature, equal and accepting. Work is indeed not always only about output and skills, it's also about respecting each other and collaborating with d…

I mean... you don't think that BroBible.com (for example) has the right to hire a particular type of person for their front end engineer? I don't think they should be obligated to hire an artsy introvert type for that role.