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Is Blind Hiring the Best Hiring?
- zenplatypus 11y agoBlind hiring is a good idea. But definitely cannot explain the bulk of the issue. It is systemic and the article completely writes of the idea that there is a pipeline problem - which ignores a lot of the pre-college factors that go into whether or not a student of a minority demographic can succeed in a top tier engineering program in particular (I mention engineering because the article refers to Silicon Valley jobs a lot). Below are two pieces on the demographics of engineers at Harvard and Stanford: they show pretty clearly that the percent of Black and Hispanic students in these programs lags significantly to the US population percentage. https://medium.com/@jcueto/race-and-gender-among-computer-science-majors-at-stanford-3824c4062e3a#.kng7b82dw https://medium.com/@jcueto/race-and-gender-among-computer-sc... https://medium.com/@winniewu/race-and-gender-among-computer-science-concentrators-at-harvard-1c1943a20457#.5yszoxbd0 https://medium.com/@winniewu/race-and-gender-among-computer-...
- Retric 11y ago"Stanford Computer Science majors are Asian (46.4%), followed by White (38%), Hispanic (9.5%) and Black (6.1%)." High school: Nationwide, black students graduated at a rate of 69 percent; Hispanics graduated at 73 percent; whites graduated at a rate of 86 percent. 13.2% of the population is black, 17.1% Latino, 63% white. If White = (38%) then you would expect black to be: 38% / (.63 * .86) * (13.2 * .69) = 6.39%. So if anything Standford is about right for black people, and massively over represents Asians. It seems like HS graduation rates are the real issue everything else just flows from that. But, income and graduation rates are linked so it's a self perpetuating cycle.
- OJFord 11y ago> So if anything Standford [sic] is about right for black > people, and massively over represents Asians. That assumes only local applications though. And even then ignores demographic prejudice in where to apply (which is probably more slight). I would guess Asian students are a majority among international applicants to Stanford. If we then looked at high school 'graduation' worldwide as the baseline, that's probably an underrepresentation.
- Retric 11y agoI am ignoring where people apply, just adjusting for % of population and % of high school graduates. There are a lot of ways to play with the numbers but that seemed like a good first approximation. Also, international students are 8.70% of undergrads at Stanford, so they can't really change the stats that much.
- anpk 11y agoAsians is a huge group. Would be nice to see a break down between Chinese, Indians and the rest of asia
- throw2048-AZ43 11y agoStanford and Harvard are top-level universities aiming to enroll (mostly) those who are in top 5-15% of national IQ levels. How would the characteristic of their diversity efforts change if instead of comparing to the US population percentage you start comparing to the population percentage at the right end of the IQ distribution?
- DelaneyM 11y agoAre you really suggesting that underrepresented groups are just less intelligent?
- yummyfajitas 11y agoHe's suggesting that we should dig up academic papers studying the topic and run the numbers based on the intelligence distributions found therein. Here are a few review articles to get you started - more detailed studies can be found referenced therein. http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/roth%20et%20al%20ethnic%20grp%20diff%20in%20cog%20abil%20ppsych%202001.pdf https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/roth%20et%20al%20... http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf http://matt.colorado.edu/teaching/highcog/fall8/nbbbbchlpsu96.pdf http://matt.colorado.edu/teaching/highcog/fall8/nbbbbchlpsu9... https://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf https://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstrea...
- tptacek 11y agoJ. Philippe Rushton, who you cite directly twice here, ran The Pioneer Group, an organization that funds both research and public policy premised on the idea that "white persons" are superior to other "races"; it's an organization that was literally founded (prior to World War 2) to promote the eugenics ideas of the Third Reich.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
- supercheetah 11y agoWhat are you talking about? That was about half of the article.
- jgh 11y agoI dunno I couldn't read the article because I tried to close that annoying ad at the bottom and when I moused over the X it moved up and I clicked on the ad. So I closed the whole page.
- bko 11y ago> A new study from Harvard Business School backs up this line of reasoning. It found that when service-sector employers used a job test, they hired workers who tended to stay at the job longer — indicating that they were a better match. When employers overruled the test results to hire someone for more subjective reasons, the employees were significantly more likely to quit or be fired. That's an interesting finding considering that standardized tests are often criticized for not promoting diversity. Ive read that standardized tests were originally intended to combat bias, and i think they are fairly successful in that regard. It's a shame that they have fallen out of political favor in favor of looking for "the right type" of subjective qualities of candidates.
- dragonwriter 11y agoStandardized tests are rarely job tests. Non-job-specific standardized tests may eliminate bias with regard to what they are designed to measure, but the choice of such a test itself introduces bias to the extent that the test favors one group over another in ways which do not reflect the job for which it is given, even if it is unbiased in what it is intended to measure. (This is the basic reason behind the case that is often mispresented as outlawing standardized IQ tests in hiring, which did not actually do that but instead required that, to the extent that such tests disproportionately disqualified members of a protected class, that there be evidence that the test was a real measure of performance on the job for which it was used as a hiring filter.)
- bko 11y agoYes, no test is perfect but I think its better than the alternative. The best part is that its fair in the sense that the person knows what to expect. A lot of people feel disillusioned about processes that have a subjective element, so much so that they don't participate. If I were told the precise steps that all but guarantee an outcome, that person would likely find that preferable to the alternative. It would build trust into the system, even though the objective methods may be too rigid at times. Businesses have all the incentive to create tests that measure real performance. These kinds of problems are best solved in the highly competitive market place for talent. I don't think some politician would do a better job at determining what makes a good employee and how to hire that employee. I've read somewhere that the push for "well-rounded" candidates in colleges was pushed partly to stop the flow of very strong asian candidates displacing others. That's why schools that rely primarily on tests, like the elite Stuyvesant high school, end up with disproportionately asian students (Stuyvesant is 72% Asian). They get criticized for some reason due to the outcome of their selection method. Perhaps going to a school with predominately Asians has downsides for the student, but that's really a judgement call that should be left up to the parents. And the rationales normally used to prove racial bias for a test doesn't really hold water since the groups doing well are usually first or second generation immigrants. I think rigging the system in favor of one group is pretty bad, but rigging it just so that its harder for another group may be even worse.
- paulddraper 11y agoI had a customer-facing programming job (something like a technical consultant). I had to speak English understandably -- even over the phone -- and be a polished, likeable, and competent representative for the company. It's hard to imagine how this could be done without "flawed human judgement". Some jobs might be form-filling or widget-building in a dark basement, and you might be able to get away with this. But a lot of jobs are not that.
- lsc 11y agoThe rules for sales are... different, but sales (and to a lesser extent, consulting, at least the "make the customer feel special" part of consulting) exists in what most of us consider to be a kind of ethical gray area. You're trying to tell the customer "I'm one of you" Most technical jobs are not like that. Most have pretty minimal social requirements. If you can't work with a programmer who doesn't look like you, I'd argue that the problem is with you, not with the person who looks different. Every time I argue that competency should be more important than 'cultural fit' people bring up the example of the asshole. But the asshole isn't usually the one rejected for 'cultural fit' - assholes usually do fairly well during the interview.
- geofft 11y agoAnd there are technical ways to find the asshole. Send them some bad code for review and see how they review it; ask them to work with the author to get it merged. (Enough code review happens in open-source projects over email/GitHub, over text, with pseudonyms, that having it be anonymous is entirely realistic.) Alternatively, keep an eye out for asshole behavior -- to any employee, not just those on the same team -- during the first few weeks, and be willing to fire.
- analog31 11y agoI'm not talking about you, per se, but about hiring for such a job. One could justify a face-to-face interview for a job like that, but if blind hiring became commonplace, you might have to settle for second best in terms of technical ability. This is already typical of technical sales jobs.
- apatters 11y agoAs the article notes, software engineering is an interesting discipline in that an engineer's main responsibility is to produce a discrete body of work which can be peer reviewed. I don't want to dismiss culture entirely, but it's a very vague idea that gets used to justify a lot of negative hiring practices. I think it's less important to assess "culture fit" than it is to do a very thorough review of a candidate's prior work. The candidate can be included in this review and even asked to explain/defend particular choices they made while creating that work -- since sometimes external constraints force non-ideal technical decisions and if the candidate understands that it's a sign they're a strong engineer. Why not hire the best engineers you can find and then let them define the culture of the company? People who have a hand in defining the culture of their team/company tend to be more motivated and invested in it.
- gaius 11y agoBut their prior work is their cultural fit. Has this person worked for F100s, startups, in academia, as a contractor, etc etc etc. Your test would rule out anyone looking to change direction regardless of the reasons.
- yummyfajitas 11y agoBecause culture does matter, even in tech. Consider a company where social inclusion is important. That'd be a terrible culture fit for me. When debating a technical choice, I'll say "do we all agree to run X experiment, outcome Y => choice A, outcome Z => choice B? Then we can all STFU and stop arguing." In the happy/social/fun environment, this is terrible. The promoters of B might feel unhappy, harming team cohesion, and that could be more important than 10% lower latency. On the flip side, consider the confrontational "put up or shut up" environment I tend to prefer (and create). In this environment, "you suck at SQL" is just a factual statement that you can choose to remedy or not. Some folks really don't like being told "experiment failed, your idea is wrong, be smarter next time". Even if they are technically competent, they need a form of social interaction at work that they don't get. There are a variety of cultural dimensions like this that matter. Another is implicit vs explicit - whether you can navigate implicit job responsibilities or they need to be spelled out. Much as we'd like to act like we are just machines taking money as input and code as outputs, this stuff does matter.
- mattedwards984 11y agoI once had an amazing experience with an organization who explained on its website that you should remove your ''personal information'' from your resume as they do not select based on name, gender, age or race. I did not get hired, but to this day I still recommend that organization to my friends!
- spacehome 11y agoWould you mind recommending it to us?
- waylandsmithers 11y agoHaven't we already decided that the answer is definitively no? That the "rockstar" developer who is also a complete prick is a bad hire?
- Dr_tldr 11y agoIt really, really depends. If you've got a large team and a mature codebase, a rockstar programmer who's a douche is usually worse than useless. But if you've got a small team and are making major architecting decisions, the competent, meticulous, anal-retentive jerk can be perfect. A good manager knows how to get the best work out of everyone, and managing different/difficult personalities is an important skill.
- ScottBurson 11y agoThat's fine as long as you're happy having only one person at that level of competence. You're not going to get a second one to stay long.
- chromanoid 11y agoRelevant paper: Unintended Effects of Anonymous Resumes http://ftp.iza.org/dp8517.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp8517.pdf
- paulwitte253 11y agoI am pro blind hiring. You should get hired based on your skills and abilities, not your personal background.