4 ms·

Why is that a bad thing to point out? A startup I once worked for sent out a memo asking that HR be involved before rejecting a "borderline" female candidate.

by ng12 9y ago

Why is that a bad thing to point out? A startup I once worked for sent out a memo asking that HR be involved before rejecting a "borderline" female candidate. As a generally apolitical junior employee this seemed really concerning -- we had pretty strict hiring standards and from that point on I wondered if each new female employee would have made it if they were born male. I can't say if Google's practices are discriminatory (I don't really know what they are) but it's a very important thing to have open, honest discussion about. At the time, I kept my mouth shut because I was pretty low on the totem pole. If I were an employee at Google I would now know to do the same.

mikeash 9y ago
Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? Bias is real. The exact same resume is, on average, considered more qualified if there's a typically male name at the top versus a female name. Did you ever wonder how many of your male colleagues unfairly benefitted from that sort of thing?
- ng12 9y ago
  > Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? No, I didn't consider it about anyone until they gave me a reason to. Prior to that email I had no reason to think that anyone working there was anything other than the best of the best. Well-intentioned policies can have resounding negative effects. To your second point -- I'm not saying bias isn't real. I'm saying certain methods of counteracting bias have a strong potential for collateral damage.
- rmartelli 9y ago
  At least for phone interviews, the bias doesn't exist or goes the other way: From http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas... : After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data.
  - adventist 9y ago
    Good point. We need more research on this.
- flukus 9y ago
  > Bias is real. The exact same resume is, on average, considered more qualified if there's a typically male name at the top versus a female name. Did you ever wonder how many of your male colleagues unfairly benefitted from that sort of thing? At least one recent study found the exact opposite: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria... > The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door.
oceanplexian 9y ago
This seriously sucks not only for the company (bringing on someone who is borderline), but it hurts the candidate. Now this female candidate, if she gets the position, is going to be thrust into a hostile and difficult environment where it's difficult to succeed or elevate above a certain level. I've experienced this as an engineer, where I've been in environments where I was totally over my head. In retrospect I'm grateful for the rejections as much as the postitions I've landed, because they've pushed me to learn and advance my skill set.

by ng12 9y ago

mikeash 9y ago

Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? Bias is real. The exact same resume is, on average, considered more qualified if there's a typically male name at the top versus a female name. Did you ever wonder how many of your male colleagues unfairly benefitted from that sort of thing?

ng12 9y ago
> Did you consider the opposite questions with your male colleagues? No, I didn't consider it about anyone until they gave me a reason to. Prior to that email I had no reason to think that anyone working there was anything other than the best of the best. Well-intentioned policies can have resounding negative effects. To your second point -- I'm not saying bias isn't real. I'm saying certain methods of counteracting bias have a strong potential for collateral damage.
rmartelli 9y ago
At least for phone interviews, the bias doesn't exist or goes the other way: From http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas... : After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability). If anything, we started to notice some trends in the opposite direction of what we expected: for technical ability, it appeared that men who were modulated to sound like women did a bit better than unmodulated men and that women who were modulated to sound like men did a bit worse than unmodulated women. Though these trends weren’t statistically significant, I am mentioning them because they were unexpected and definitely something to watch for as we collect more data.
- adventist 9y ago
  Good point. We need more research on this.
flukus 9y ago
> Bias is real. The exact same resume is, on average, considered more qualified if there's a typically male name at the top versus a female name. Did you ever wonder how many of your male colleagues unfairly benefitted from that sort of thing? At least one recent study found the exact opposite: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria... > The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview. Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door.

oceanplexian 9y ago

This seriously sucks not only for the company (bringing on someone who is borderline), but it hurts the candidate. Now this female candidate, if she gets the position, is going to be thrust into a hostile and difficult environment where it's difficult to succeed or elevate above a certain level. I've experienced this as an engineer, where I've been in environments where I was totally over my head. In retrospect I'm grateful for the rejections as much as the postitions I've landed, because they've pushed me to learn and advance my skill set.