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What if the tasks he wants done by meritorious candidates were selected by a very heteronormative, white dominated bloc of powerful people? In your view, would
by saimiam 9y ago
What if the tasks he wants done by meritorious candidates were selected by a very heteronormative, white dominated bloc of powerful people? In your view, would that call into question the propriety of asking a minority candidate to compete against a majority candidate?
Even the SATs struggles/d with making sure their tears didn't implicit strengthen the scores of any one group of students.
- imron 9y agoFor programming and technical tasks, there are objective ways to measure accuracy, correctness and performance of code that don't require any consideration of someone's race, gender or sexuality.
- etchalon 9y agoI've never encountered a programming exercise which was completely objective, outside of pure instructionals. Engineering has large degrees of opinion mixed into any non-rudimentary implementation.
- imron 9y agoI've never encountered a programming exercise where race, gender, or sexuality was a consideration in whether or not the code was correct.
- etchalon 9y agoIt absolutely plays into it. If a programming exercise is subjective, from what perspective is it subjective in bias of? Likely the author's, who's bias will be derived somewhat from their race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, background, peer group, etc. Code is correct if it works. But plenty of "working" solutions will be rejected as being "incorrect" based on current trends, internalized philosophy, preferred approach, etc. etc. As someone who hires engineers, it is difficult if not impossible to separate personal bias and preference from an evaluation.
- jacalata 9y agoYou've never seen code implementing a form to gather names?
- etchalon 9y agoI've never seen that specific test (that'd be a useless test), but I get your point. "Here's a thing to do, do it." But there's a billion ways to write that code. Which ones will the evaluator prefer and/or reject? That's where subjective opinion comes in.
- Nitramp 9y agoInterviews (by design!) simulate intense interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee, similar to a workplace situation when trying to solve a problem. That setup is not objective. The result, even just the code itself, is also not judged on a binary yes/no scale, which again leaves a lot of room for opinions and bias to muddy the water. I've done hundreds of engineering interviews. Conducting objective interviews is very hard. Anybody thinking they are objective either has never done interviews or is fooling themselves.
- deong 9y agoYou absolutely have, because in the real world "correct" isn't a cleanly defined objective target. Humans decide if your code was well-written enough or you used an appropriate data structure, and humans can be pretty solidly relied upon to blunder into all manners of cognitive shortcuts and biases.
- saimiam 9y ago> For programming and technical tasks You are judged and reviewed on a myriad different factors other than this. Are you a "team player?" Do you mentor others well? Do people like you? Were you picked to do complex projects this review cycle? Are you too loud? Too timid? Do you ask insightful questions? Is your coding style "normal"? Do you dress professionally? Can you be asked to interface with clients? Every little thing that can be used will be used to form a composite picture of you as a person. It's wrong to expect a foreigner like me to be judged on whether I know baseball stats but I'm sure someone somewhere has made an inside reference about baseball around me and written me off when didn't even acknowledge it. That's what diversity programs and affirmative action programs try to short circuit.