You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
351–360 of 504 posts
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's just three sorting algorithms anyone cares about, and they're not particularly complex. Someone with a math background should be able to pick them up in a few hours at most.
And outside of interviews, you will, with high probability, never, ever, have to code one yourself. You'll just call sort(), or OrderBy(), and rely on the battle-tested and bullet-proof standard library implementation.
Maybe, but I had to implement Hoare partition scheme which is used in Quicksort a few months ago. If I didn't know Quicksort I wouldn't probably have an idea that this algorithm existed.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as someone who has taken on a lot of hiring responsibility: the cost for rejecting a good applicant is 4-5 hours of my teams time while they interview someone else. The cost for accepting a bad applicant is several months of salary, reduced productivity for my team, risk of a discrimination suit if I don't put them on a PIP, etc. So as a hiring manager I am pretty OK with rejecting a lot of good applicants j…
Maybe actual apprenticeships are the answer. 3-6 months to get someone trained up, and a lot of their pay would be in /training/ them (you'd still pay at least a living wage for the area, but you might upfront plan and disclose to relocate them if hired). The benefit would be both in seeing if they're a good fit, and also enriching that employee as an employee. Both sides would have a much better perspective of if it…
When you think about it, college degrees in IT/CS are the wrong way to go about IT/CS learning. A 3 year apprenticeship like an electrician or plumber does would make a lot more sense. 60% of your time is spent at work, shadowing and helping an experienced professional who can show you the ropes and explain concepts in the real world. Remaining time spent in the classroom doing theory and learning new stuff.
My degree attempted something like this, with a lot of guest companies providing projects that amounted to coursework. For example, one coursework was to make a front and back end in asp.net with a predefined set of features for a company.
The problem with apprenticeships is that educators are handing over a large part of your training to a company with unknown factors, like mental people with random hangups. Still, I'm sure many of us when we got our first job felt hopelessly unprepared for working in a real company.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
Throwaway accounts allow people to express views that aren't politically correct. If all your views are politically correct this may seem like a bad thing, but for people with views that aren't politically correct throw away accounts allow participation.
Because without throwaway accounts people can't express views that aren't politically correct? Look through my history, I express such views all the time. I just don't think virtual points are so important that I need to make sure they're always going up.
I looked through your history but couldn't find a comment where you were being not politically correct, but I didn't try all that hard. Regardless there are certain sentiments that you can't express even though they may be true, to me that is what "politically" correct means. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers. You can't even bring up the possibility that women are different than men as a reason there aren't more women in STEM fields without being persecuted, instead you get articles somehow twisting data to make it look like technical interviews are the main thing holding women back from tech jobs - this may be a small contributing factor, but it isn't a primary cause.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
Throwaway accounts allow people to express views that aren't politically correct. If all your views are politically correct this may seem like a bad thing, but for people with views that aren't politically correct throw away accounts allow participation.
But, if everyone uses throwaway accounts to say what they really want to say, then it just helps perpetuate the same political correctness that they dislike.
I don't understand what you are trying to say - political correctness is all about preventing people from saying things that aren't "politically" correct. It is a tool for preventing discussion about topics which might offend people, and for silencing opposing views. If everyone is allowed to speak freely without the shame of not being "politically" correct than people can say what they believe. You weigh the cost of offending people against the freedom to speak out against the prevailing "politically" correct beliefs.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as someone who has taken on a lot of hiring responsibility: the cost for rejecting a good applicant is 4-5 hours of my teams time while they interview someone else. The cost for accepting a bad applicant is several months of salary, reduced productivity for my team, risk of a discrimination suit if I don't put them on a PIP, etc. So as a hiring manager I am pretty OK with rejecting a lot of good applicants j…
Maybe actual apprenticeships are the answer. 3-6 months to get someone trained up, and a lot of their pay would be in /training/ them (you'd still pay at least a living wage for the area, but you might upfront plan and disclose to relocate them if hired). The benefit would be both in seeing if they're a good fit, and also enriching that employee as an employee. Both sides would have a much better perspective of if it…
My experience, when I ask decision-makers about training, is that there's a lot of resistance to the idea because of fear of poaching.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#357The big result there is this: "Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men." On the hiring side, "For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin th…
Would this imply that women are also more likely to give up
if they get the job and they find that it's particularly challenging or competitive? If so, we'd expect higher churn out of the field, putting more downward pressure on diversity.
And this doesn't have to be just women, it could be anyone with a genetic or cultural predisposition (reducing diversity at least in personality types). Lot's of selection for monoculture here.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#358The big result there is this: "Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men." On the hiring side, "For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin th…
Would this imply that women are also more likely to give up
if they get the job and they find that it's particularly challenging or competitive? If so, we'd expect higher churn out of the field, putting more downward pressure on diversity.
And this doesn't have to be just women, it could be anyone with a genetic or cultural predisposition (reducing diversity at least in personality types). Lot's of selection for monoculture here.
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the start of our teens, we lose the intrinsic value that society places on us as children. For many boys, after this, their only worth is in what they can accomplish, for themselves or for others. For many girls, they learn that they are intrinsically valuable as women, as long as they're attractive. It's not an issue of 'explaining' the odds. It's an issue of women knowing that they're worth something in and of t…
Wouldn't the message of "you are your accomplishments" make men more likely to give up after a failure rather than less?
No one likes to go here but in addition to the cultural reinforcements, young men have 17x serum testosterone compared to women of the same age [1].
Avg. Adult Male 270-1,070 Avg. Adult Female 15-70
Hormones affect behavior and in this case competitiveness.
[1] http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testostero...
Re: You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't you forgetting that different people, even different groups of people, have different motivations? E.g. in general, men like cars, gym and climbing; women like jewellery, yoga and dancing. These are all voluntary activities (well, you could argue that things like gym and jewellery are socially motivated), yet different sexes in average choose differently. Why wouldn't it be the same with careers?
Are you assuming that there is some genetic or evolutionary reason for men to like cars? That somehow it is hard-coded into the Y chromosome to like cars? Or have you considered the possibility that social conditioning can make a large difference in what hobbies and preferences someone ends up having?
There definitely could be an evolutionary reason why men biologically prefer adrenaline, technical subjects and showing off their muscles, whereas women prefer talking, being led and showing off their youth/beauty. After all, despite all the feminist/anti-sexist posturing in our society, no-one bats an eye when someone says that men are more aggressive.
But even if there are first-order biological reasons ("encoded into the Y chromosome"), there could be second-order biological reasons. E.g. women choose when it comes to sex (the underlying biological reason being, men have more time and more chances (more sperm) to make kids, so they can afford to be less picky), so men will put more energy in displaying/becoming a good partner (e.g. by earning more money). I guess it's a similar logic to why murder is immoral - there's no immediate biological reason for it, but the groups where killing in-group members was condoned simply didn't survive.