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Tech's diversity problem is because of toxic LeetCode interviews

18 points by aycaramba 8y ago

wannabiefaanger 8y ago
People often forget these leetcode interviews guard the top wages in industry. If you remove them any bootcamp cowboy or people who can't code will get in and make same wage increasing competition among workers and pushing down wage. Those who don't get selected keep complaining because other leetcoders are making high salaries while they don't. Many want to install their wife in these companies and are actively complaining for diversity and putting it against interviews, so that once these requirements are relaxed for women, their household will double the income. People job hop every year, so it's impossible to tell who has been fired for bad performance/inability to code vs high performer who is simply job hopping for increased pay/interesting project when hiring for your company. Also you can't get the performance data from their previous employer, you can only verify they worked there, nothing more. Even if you simply cannot code, it takes a year least in big companies to fire you. It's easy to fake portfolio and talk the programmer lingo than to walk the talk by coding.
- 345tw4erfd 8y ago
  You perfectly exemplify the toxic behavior described in the article :(
  - thucydidesofusa 8y ago
    How convenient this would be the first comment.
  - mg794613 8y ago
    Can you support that with arguments instead of reflecting with "you're part of the problem"?
- vorg 8y ago
  > Many want to install their wife in these companies [...] their household will double the income. A husband-and-wife team in a company is like a "mini-union". By feeding intel to each other and playing office politics in unison, they can nudge their household income up to triple.
draw_down 8y ago
I’m not sure I necessarily agree with the argument put forth here, but it does raise an important point: to the extent that hiring and working practices are at odds with diversity, companies are going to have to choose which one to keep. Everywhere I’ve worked so far has mostly wanted to keep everything the same but sprinkle on some magic diversity dust. That approach is not likely to work much longer.
techsin101 8y ago
Don't see how leetcode causes diversity problem... Very weak argument tbh. Even though it's a broken system but in other ways.
jpeg_hero 8y ago
>How did we get here? People apply to coding jobs that literally cannot code .. like at all.
CorvusCrypto 8y ago
In my experience these "leetcode" interviews are just one part of several interviews. They still look toward people interactions in other interviews with managers, etc. So it's not prioritization over interaction, it's a filter for those that can't really program so they can then continue to interview and learn their personal skills as a team member. I.e. why waste a manager's time with a poor candidate. If it wasn't the coding question interviews that warranted complaint it would be the personality interviews. I've seen plenty of people dropped because while they were smart, they were shit at working with other people. So yeah, hiring is a series of filters. That's life imo.

18 points by aycaramba 8y ago

People often forget these leetcode interviews guard the top wages in industry. If you remove them any bootcamp cowboy or people who can't code will get in and make same wage increasing competition among workers and pushing down wage. Those who don't get selected keep complaining because other leetcoders are making high salaries while they don't. Many want to install their wife in these companies and are actively complaining for diversity and putting it against interviews, so that once these requirements are relaxed for women, their household will double the income. People job hop every year, so it's impossible to tell who has been fired for bad performance/inability to code vs high performer who is simply job hopping for increased pay/interesting project when hiring for your company. Also you can't get the performance data from their previous employer, you can only verify they worked there, nothing more. Even if you simply cannot code, it takes a year least in big companies to fire you. It's easy to fake portfolio and talk the programmer lingo than to walk the talk by coding.

345tw4erfd 8y ago
You perfectly exemplify the toxic behavior described in the article :(
- thucydidesofusa 8y ago
  How convenient this would be the first comment.
- mg794613 8y ago
  Can you support that with arguments instead of reflecting with "you're part of the problem"?
vorg 8y ago
> Many want to install their wife in these companies [...] their household will double the income. A husband-and-wife team in a company is like a "mini-union". By feeding intel to each other and playing office politics in unison, they can nudge their household income up to triple.

draw_down 8y ago

I’m not sure I necessarily agree with the argument put forth here, but it does raise an important point: to the extent that hiring and working practices are at odds with diversity, companies are going to have to choose which one to keep. Everywhere I’ve worked so far has mostly wanted to keep everything the same but sprinkle on some magic diversity dust. That approach is not likely to work much longer.

techsin101 8y ago

Don't see how leetcode causes diversity problem... Very weak argument tbh. Even though it's a broken system but in other ways.

jpeg_hero 8y ago

>How did we get here? People apply to coding jobs that literally cannot code .. like at all.

CorvusCrypto 8y ago

In my experience these "leetcode" interviews are just one part of several interviews. They still look toward people interactions in other interviews with managers, etc. So it's not prioritization over interaction, it's a filter for those that can't really program so they can then continue to interview and learn their personal skills as a team member. I.e. why waste a manager's time with a poor candidate. If it wasn't the coding question interviews that warranted complaint it would be the personality interviews. I've seen plenty of people dropped because while they were smart, they were shit at working with other people. So yeah, hiring is a series of filters. That's life imo.