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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 yo
by 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 agoI 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 agoBut 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 agoCan you think of a different explanation for why women quit so much earlier than men?
- treehau5 10y agoSee 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 agoI'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...
- vonmoltke 10y agoPeople in other fields do not go through this while simultaneously being told how their is a critical shortage of people with their skills. The disconnect is probably very off-putting to people of certain persknalities. Personalities which happen to be over-represented in certain minority groups.
- burfog 10y ago1 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.