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If I say something like "our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back". The implication is

by gdix 9y ago

If I say something like "our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back". The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job. I'm inherently saying some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired. Edit: just to be clear, my point is that Google has, to my knowledge, expressed this sentiment and made changes to their interview process to rely less on brainteasers. They did so without controversy. No one said "hey Google is saying some of its employees shouldn't have been hired by changing their hiring process".

josteink 9y ago
With reasoning like that suggesting any change is guaranteed to offend someone and therefore would be for bidden. And then what happens to freedom of speech? To me this sounds like a totalerian regime.
- gdix 9y ago
  That's generally my point.
wwalser 9y ago
I'm not sure if you're being facetious? If you are, I apologize as it's gone over my head. I don't have a dog in the Google controversy. But I will put my hand up briefly and say that you've you just said, doesn't follow for me. From your quote: > Our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back. I would not infer that you meant: The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job. The most likely case is that someone saying the above quote would be a co-worker of mine. Someone I'm cooperating with in a common endeavor. I would assume they are trying to help us achieve our goals more readily. I would have heard something like: We're turning down highly qualified candidates for software engineering roles because of their failure to answer non-software-engineering questions. Is there any evidence that these non-software-engineering questions contribute meaningfully to our assessment of candidates? If not, we should drop the questions. Turning down qualified candidates makes it harder for to hire the great people that coming through our pipeline. To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made.
- gdix 9y ago
  >To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made. That's exactly my point. Replace "brainteaser" with "being an underrepresented minority" and you'll see why it's absurd to suggest his manifesto is tantamount to saying "some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired".
  - brlewis 9y ago
    If there's a big discussion about underqualified lovers of brainteasers being hired, and my coworkers start to look at me suspiciously, I can simply stop wearing my "I love brainteasers" tee shirt. Underrepresented minorities don't have that option.
    - gdix 9y ago
      What's your point? If we would like to stop using an irrelevant but unchangeable trait (such as gender or race) as a basis for hiring and recruiting, what should we do?
      - brlewis 9y ago
        We should proceed with caution and tact.
        gdix 9y ago
        Yes, good point.
concede_pluto 9y ago
Imagine Google required candidates to bench press 200 lbs as well as solve brain teasers. That means they turned away a lot of qualified devs for no good reason, but it does not mean they hired anyone unqualified, because lifting does not make you stupid.
- gdix 9y ago
  It might. If weightlifting counts for 50% of your total "score" and some hypothetical "worthy" metric (such as coding) counts for 50%, someone scoring a 5/5 on weightlifting but only a 3/5 on coding would have a higher total score than a person who scored 1/5 on weightlifting and 5/5 on coding. The first guy is not necessarily "unqualified", but he would relative to the other guy. People who were hired for their weightlifting abilities wouldn't have had to reach a higher score on coding in order to get hired. So on average, you would expect them to be less qualified.

by gdix 9y ago

josteink 9y ago

With reasoning like that suggesting any change is guaranteed to offend someone and therefore would be for bidden. And then what happens to freedom of speech? To me this sounds like a totalerian regime.

gdix 9y ago
That's generally my point.

wwalser 9y ago

I'm not sure if you're being facetious? If you are, I apologize as it's gone over my head. I don't have a dog in the Google controversy. But I will put my hand up briefly and say that you've you just said, doesn't follow for me. From your quote: > Our interview process has put too much weight on brainteaser-type problems and I think we should scale that back. I would not infer that you meant: The implication is that people who have been hired because they scored high on brainteaser problems are not, on average, going to be as qualified to do the actual job because the metric that we used to measure them (brainteaser problems) is not relevant to the job. The most likely case is that someone saying the above quote would be a co-worker of mine. Someone I'm cooperating with in a common endeavor. I would assume they are trying to help us achieve our goals more readily. I would have heard something like: We're turning down highly qualified candidates for software engineering roles because of their failure to answer non-software-engineering questions. Is there any evidence that these non-software-engineering questions contribute meaningfully to our assessment of candidates? If not, we should drop the questions. Turning down qualified candidates makes it harder for to hire the great people that coming through our pipeline. To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made.

gdix 9y ago
>To conclude that suggesting any changes to an interview process is an implicit indication that the people currently employed by a company were unqualified means that no improvements could ever be made. That's exactly my point. Replace "brainteaser" with "being an underrepresented minority" and you'll see why it's absurd to suggest his manifesto is tantamount to saying "some of my teammates shouldn't have been hired".
- brlewis 9y ago
  If there's a big discussion about underqualified lovers of brainteasers being hired, and my coworkers start to look at me suspiciously, I can simply stop wearing my "I love brainteasers" tee shirt. Underrepresented minorities don't have that option.
  - gdix 9y ago
    What's your point? If we would like to stop using an irrelevant but unchangeable trait (such as gender or race) as a basis for hiring and recruiting, what should we do?
    - brlewis 9y ago
      We should proceed with caution and tact.
      - gdix 9y ago
        Yes, good point.

concede_pluto 9y ago

Imagine Google required candidates to bench press 200 lbs as well as solve brain teasers. That means they turned away a lot of qualified devs for no good reason, but it does not mean they hired anyone unqualified, because lifting does not make you stupid.

gdix 9y ago
It might. If weightlifting counts for 50% of your total "score" and some hypothetical "worthy" metric (such as coding) counts for 50%, someone scoring a 5/5 on weightlifting but only a 3/5 on coding would have a higher total score than a person who scored 1/5 on weightlifting and 5/5 on coding. The first guy is not necessarily "unqualified", but he would relative to the other guy. People who were hired for their weightlifting abilities wouldn't have had to reach a higher score on coding in order to get hired. So on average, you would expect them to be less qualified.