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I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. Anyone who us

I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. Anyone who uses MacOS (ie. can afford a MacBook Pro) to work on has to have enough money to buy one despite being in a job interview. Most people who use vim and emacs are going to be older, more experienced engineers, and as such, have the resources the acquire the tools they need to succeed (time to learn, books, computer, paid IDE). I see statistics like this and just think about all of the kids who didn't get a free ride through college and a MacBook given to them who aren't succeeding.

xelxebar 9y ago
I didn't really read the article as positing any causal connection, but the warning about confirmation bias is reasnoable. It would be interesting to see more data on things like age, experience, demographics, etc. Despite the "correlation isn't causation" mantra, there are only 27 different possible causal graphs, so with enough data maybe we could get to the bottom of this Best Editor business. :P
kbp 9y ago
> I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. > Anyone who uses MacOS (ie. can afford a MacBook Pro) to work on has to have enough money to buy one despite being in a job interview. > Most people who use vim and emacs are going to be older, more experienced engineers, and as such, have the resources the acquire the tools they need to succeed (time to learn, books, computer, paid IDE). > I see statistics like this and just think about all of the kids who didn't get a free ride through college and a MacBook given to them who aren't succeeding. I think having money and resources is definitely a deciding factor, but I don't think it has much to do with wealthy backgrounds or free rides through college. Like your third paragraph says, the bias seems to favour older, more experienced programmers. It makes sense to me that more experienced programmers would do better in interviews than kids fresh out of school, and that experience just ends up being reflected in the data as being able to afford expensive tools. Like the article says when it discusses the MacOS bias: "if you walk into any tech company in San Francisco you’re inevitably going to count far more than 60% MacBooks. While our interviews are background-blind, having a few years of professional programming experience usually helps!"

xelxebar 9y ago

I didn't really read the article as positing any causal connection, but the warning about confirmation bias is reasnoable. It would be interesting to see more data on things like age, experience, demographics, etc. Despite the "correlation isn't causation" mantra, there are only 27 different possible causal graphs, so with enough data maybe we could get to the bottom of this Best Editor business. :P

kbp 9y ago

> I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. > Anyone who uses MacOS (ie. can afford a MacBook Pro) to work on has to have enough money to buy one despite being in a job interview. > Most people who use vim and emacs are going to be older, more experienced engineers, and as such, have the resources the acquire the tools they need to succeed (time to learn, books, computer, paid IDE). > I see statistics like this and just think about all of the kids who didn't get a free ride through college and a MacBook given to them who aren't succeeding. I think having money and resources is definitely a deciding factor, but I don't think it has much to do with wealthy backgrounds or free rides through college. Like your third paragraph says, the bias seems to favour older, more experienced programmers. It makes sense to me that more experienced programmers would do better in interviews than kids fresh out of school, and that experience just ends up being reflected in the data as being able to afford expensive tools. Like the article says when it discusses the MacOS bias: "if you walk into any tech company in San Francisco you’re inevitably going to count far more than 60% MacBooks. While our interviews are background-blind, having a few years of professional programming experience usually helps!"