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I agree that tech interviews are terrible, and you cannot do any sort of self-reflection on them (especially if they are these q/a and or puzzle types where the

I agree that tech interviews are terrible, and you cannot do any sort of self-reflection on them (especially if they are these q/a and or puzzle types where they don't give you answers or feedback of what you are looking for, despite being reasonably confident you answered correctly -- even after having requested the feedback -- I had this experience at GitLab) > We believe that technical interviewing is a broken process for everyone but that the flaws within the system hit underrepresented groups the hardest… because they haven’t had the chance to internalize just how much of technical interviewing is a numbers game I just don't understand this reasoning. Can someone explain differently? I also agree with a later point -- no firm should have a "VP of Diversity and Inclusivity" but for different reasons.

burkaman 10y ago
I think the next couple sentences explain it well: > It takes a lot of interviews to get used to the process and the format and to understand that the stuff you do in technical interviews isn’t actually the stuff you do at work every day. And it takes people in your social circle all going through the same experience, screwing up interviews here and there, and getting back on the horse to realize that poor performance in one interview isn’t predictive of whether you’ll be a good engineer. If you don't have friends in the industry and you don't have the time and money to go interview at 10 different places, 1 or 2 failed algorithms interviews can be very discouraging and might convince you that you're not cut out for this industry. In fact the "Poor performances hit marginalized groups the hardest" section has actual data showing that women are much more likely to stop trying after 1 or 2 failed interviews.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  I think this was one of the biggest take-aways I got from attending a coding bootcamp, honestly. Basically everybody failed their first on-site interview, even the strongest candidates from the cohort who went on to get the best overall results.
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- treehau5 10y ago
  But this can be literally true for anyone. I tried re-reading it again and again and I am not seeing the distinction. Different people have different reactions to things. In other fields, it's not uncommon for people to submit resumes to 10, 15, even 20 firms and go through 5 to 10 interviews before landing their first "real" job. I think we forget how good we have it in tech relative to the rest of the economy. It's either that, or work for shit wages and awful benefits. But we don't hear about the diversity problem for a position like, an "analyst" for example. This lends me to believe it really is a pipeline issue.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    Can you think of a different explanation for why women quit so much earlier than men?
    - treehau5 10y ago
      See my edit, I said I think I agree with the premise the author was trying to rebute -- maybe it actually is a pipeline issue. (Side note, I don't think this article is specifically about women, but underrepresented groups in general: women, african americans, hispanics)
  - wpietri 10y ago
    > But this can be literally true for anyone. It can be, but marginalized people are much more often given signals that they don't belong, that they're not as good. They also tend to have less to fall back on when breaks don't go their way because of historical and current marginalization.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    I'm trying to find a previous discussion on this that had some numbers, but the same "early quitting" pattern is seen at the university level. Women go into STEM, do badly in a class, then change majors. So yes, there's definitely a pipeline issue, but that issue is the same root cause. Sounds like we need a root-cause analysis to find and fix the underlying issue. EDIT: Can't find the previous discussion I'm looking for, but Wikipedia has a pretty good section with hard numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields#Leaky_pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields#Leaky_pip...
- burfog 10y ago
  1 or 2 is nothing. For PhD science in industry, I remember my father sending out about 1000 resumes on paper. He took a 2-month drive around the USA for interviews, dropping in wherever he could convince somebody to meet him.
ubernostrum 10y ago
There's a reason why coding bootcamps now tend to have a section at the end, entirely separate from teaching coding, on how to pass technical interviews, because technical interviews are increasingly completely divorced from the skill of knowing how to code (despite the claim that failing a technical interview is unimpeachable proof that a candidate was an impostor who was "lying" and "couldn't really code").

burkaman 10y ago

I think the next couple sentences explain it well: > It takes a lot of interviews to get used to the process and the format and to understand that the stuff you do in technical interviews isn’t actually the stuff you do at work every day. And it takes people in your social circle all going through the same experience, screwing up interviews here and there, and getting back on the horse to realize that poor performance in one interview isn’t predictive of whether you’ll be a good engineer. If you don't have friends in the industry and you don't have the time and money to go interview at 10 different places, 1 or 2 failed algorithms interviews can be very discouraging and might convince you that you're not cut out for this industry. In fact the "Poor performances hit marginalized groups the hardest" section has actual data showing that women are much more likely to stop trying after 1 or 2 failed interviews.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
I think this was one of the biggest take-aways I got from attending a coding bootcamp, honestly. Basically everybody failed their first on-site interview, even the strongest candidates from the cohort who went on to get the best overall results.
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treehau5 10y ago
But this can be literally true for anyone. I tried re-reading it again and again and I am not seeing the distinction. Different people have different reactions to things. In other fields, it's not uncommon for people to submit resumes to 10, 15, even 20 firms and go through 5 to 10 interviews before landing their first "real" job. I think we forget how good we have it in tech relative to the rest of the economy. It's either that, or work for shit wages and awful benefits. But we don't hear about the diversity problem for a position like, an "analyst" for example. This lends me to believe it really is a pipeline issue.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Can you think of a different explanation for why women quit so much earlier than men?
  - treehau5 10y ago
    See my edit, I said I think I agree with the premise the author was trying to rebute -- maybe it actually is a pipeline issue. (Side note, I don't think this article is specifically about women, but underrepresented groups in general: women, african americans, hispanics)
- wpietri 10y ago
  > But this can be literally true for anyone. It can be, but marginalized people are much more often given signals that they don't belong, that they're not as good. They also tend to have less to fall back on when breaks don't go their way because of historical and current marginalization.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  I'm trying to find a previous discussion on this that had some numbers, but the same "early quitting" pattern is seen at the university level. Women go into STEM, do badly in a class, then change majors. So yes, there's definitely a pipeline issue, but that issue is the same root cause. Sounds like we need a root-cause analysis to find and fix the underlying issue. EDIT: Can't find the previous discussion I'm looking for, but Wikipedia has a pretty good section with hard numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields#Leaky_pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields#Leaky_pip...
burfog 10y ago
1 or 2 is nothing. For PhD science in industry, I remember my father sending out about 1000 resumes on paper. He took a 2-month drive around the USA for interviews, dropping in wherever he could convince somebody to meet him.

ubernostrum 10y ago

There's a reason why coding bootcamps now tend to have a section at the end, entirely separate from teaching coding, on how to pass technical interviews, because technical interviews are increasingly completely divorced from the skill of knowing how to code (despite the claim that failing a technical interview is unimpeachable proof that a candidate was an impostor who was "lying" and "couldn't really code").