5 ms·

Probably all the typical bad programming interview questions. The ones that target people who can set aside a month of no work, no family, and no 'other respon

by lithos 9y ago

Probably all the typical bad programming interview questions. The ones that target people who can set aside a month of no work, no family, and no 'other responsibilities' to study tangentially related riddles and similar. Culture fit probably. Though it'll just be replaced with something similar.

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Also, insane hours would probably just select for people who can do 60 hrs plus a week. You just intentionally burn out everyone else and your left with a team that can do it. Note, I am making no claims that this is a good solution or even effective.
sinxoveretothex 9y ago
I think you have to just assume that there is a lot of stupid in any system, so it can't be _all_ of those questions. The people out there who drive drunk or without insurance aren't doing it with the intent of killing people or not having to pay for their damages: they're doing it because they "didn't think about it". Hanlon's razor tells us that a similar phenomenon is at play in many "bad interview questions".
- tptacek 9y ago
  Or, the emergent result of our hiring processes (alienating and near-untenable interviews coupled with fast tracks for sponsored candidates) is that cultural outsiders (women, people of color, older workers) are effectively locked out of higher-status resume-building jobs, and when companies try to fix those processes even a little, engineers are confronted with culturally unfamiliar potential coworkers and experience the human default of hypervigilance in unfamiliar social situations, which creates a false perception that reformed, rationalized hiring processes are "lowering the bar" when in fact the opposite would probably be happening, with a long term net result that nothing changes, and our industry remains structurally biased against people who can't pass for proto-Zuckerbergs.
  - eradicatethots 9y ago
    I call affirmative action policies lowering the bar. If you are intentionally seeking people based on criteria like race or gender, then you are less likely to find the best candidates, unless you believe those are relevant criteria.
    - sethev 9y ago
      What does intention have to do with it? Are you saying that if you unintentionally seek people based on criteria like race or gender you're more likely to find the best candidates? Affirmative action, as you call it, is an intentional effort to overcome the sort of unintentional bias that tptacek described. By the way, one reason people react strongly to objections like yours is that a very direct interpretation is that you believe the distribution of people in high status jobs actually does accurately reflect differences based on race and gender. Not sure if you intended that.
      - sinxoveretothex 9y ago
        > By the way, one reason people react strongly to objections like yours is that a very direct interpretation is that you believe the distribution of people in high status jobs actually does accurately reflect differences based on race and gender. I think this is partly true. But then, a similar interpretation of "pro-affirmative action" is that one believes that whatever bad thing happens to a minority is never their fault. I think both are only partly true. The problem with affirmative action is that it (I don't know if it's always the case, but it seems to be often so) specifically considers minority status. It is obvious, I think, that this is not the kind of criteria a computer, say, would consider if it were to look only for the most qualified applicants. On the other hand, you or someone else in the thread made a good point: this pro-minority bias can be seen as an effort to counter the systematic bias against "outgroups". The problem is that I don't think we know the effect size of each of those: how strong is this systematic bias? In a protected status agnostic society, would all professional fields perfectly mirror population rates? I don't think so. We know there are metal disorders/illnesses that impact cognitive functions (Down's syndrome) and obviously genetics is partly responsible (do Down syndromers have similar rates of Down syndrome babies?). Similarly, I don't think the success of Asians and Jews is due to some form of societal bias in their favor. In the end, the question is whether the anti-bias bias is correcting towards 0 or in the other direction (i.e.: protected status is very important, just the other way). I don't know what the answer to this one is.

by lithos 9y ago

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Also, insane hours would probably just select for people who can do 60 hrs plus a week. You just intentionally burn out everyone else and your left with a team that can do it. Note, I am making no claims that this is a good solution or even effective.

sinxoveretothex 9y ago

I think you have to just assume that there is a lot of stupid in any system, so it can't be _all_ of those questions. The people out there who drive drunk or without insurance aren't doing it with the intent of killing people or not having to pay for their damages: they're doing it because they "didn't think about it". Hanlon's razor tells us that a similar phenomenon is at play in many "bad interview questions".

tptacek 9y ago
Or, the emergent result of our hiring processes (alienating and near-untenable interviews coupled with fast tracks for sponsored candidates) is that cultural outsiders (women, people of color, older workers) are effectively locked out of higher-status resume-building jobs, and when companies try to fix those processes even a little, engineers are confronted with culturally unfamiliar potential coworkers and experience the human default of hypervigilance in unfamiliar social situations, which creates a false perception that reformed, rationalized hiring processes are "lowering the bar" when in fact the opposite would probably be happening, with a long term net result that nothing changes, and our industry remains structurally biased against people who can't pass for proto-Zuckerbergs.
- eradicatethots 9y ago
  I call affirmative action policies lowering the bar. If you are intentionally seeking people based on criteria like race or gender, then you are less likely to find the best candidates, unless you believe those are relevant criteria.
  - sethev 9y ago
    What does intention have to do with it? Are you saying that if you unintentionally seek people based on criteria like race or gender you're more likely to find the best candidates? Affirmative action, as you call it, is an intentional effort to overcome the sort of unintentional bias that tptacek described. By the way, one reason people react strongly to objections like yours is that a very direct interpretation is that you believe the distribution of people in high status jobs actually does accurately reflect differences based on race and gender. Not sure if you intended that.
    - sinxoveretothex 9y ago
      > By the way, one reason people react strongly to objections like yours is that a very direct interpretation is that you believe the distribution of people in high status jobs actually does accurately reflect differences based on race and gender. I think this is partly true. But then, a similar interpretation of "pro-affirmative action" is that one believes that whatever bad thing happens to a minority is never their fault. I think both are only partly true. The problem with affirmative action is that it (I don't know if it's always the case, but it seems to be often so) specifically considers minority status. It is obvious, I think, that this is not the kind of criteria a computer, say, would consider if it were to look only for the most qualified applicants. On the other hand, you or someone else in the thread made a good point: this pro-minority bias can be seen as an effort to counter the systematic bias against "outgroups". The problem is that I don't think we know the effect size of each of those: how strong is this systematic bias? In a protected status agnostic society, would all professional fields perfectly mirror population rates? I don't think so. We know there are metal disorders/illnesses that impact cognitive functions (Down's syndrome) and obviously genetics is partly responsible (do Down syndromers have similar rates of Down syndrome babies?). Similarly, I don't think the success of Asians and Jews is due to some form of societal bias in their favor. In the end, the question is whether the anti-bias bias is correcting towards 0 or in the other direction (i.e.: protected status is very important, just the other way). I don't know what the answer to this one is.