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"It could also sew some bitterness within the engineering team: it might be seen as unfair that some people can get hired through the nepotistic route, while ot

"It could also sew some bitterness within the engineering team: it might be seen as unfair that some people can get hired through the nepotistic route, while others have to do the tech loop." More importantly, it will reinforce your organization's demographics. If your trusted referrers are white and male, their networks will be overwhelmingly white and male and it's just putting up another block toward those not already in the system. If that happens in one company, it's likely not a big deal. If it happens systemically, you'll see a bigger problem. (People build networks in college, with people of the same demographics -> people use those networks to get people in with a lower bar of entry while those without the benefit of the network will face a barrier that the people that were hired might not have been able to clear.) The problem is that we don't have a better solution to the technical interview.

philwelch 8y ago
> More importantly, it will reinforce your organization's demographics. If your trusted referrers are white and male, their networks will be overwhelmingly white and male and it's just putting up another block toward those not already in the system. I'm not entirely convinced of this in the general case. I'm white and male, but probably a minority of the people I would recommend (in the sense of personally vouching for their technical ability) are also white and male.
- newen 8y ago
  I would say you are a relatively rare case though. Most people I've seen primarity socialize with people of the same race. Not strictly, obviously, but in general. Like in tech circles in the Bay Area, you have the white, indian, east asian groups and they, in general, tend to hang out with the same races. And by this I mean most of the friend groups I see are typically mostly of one race.
  - Ancalagon 8y ago
    I guess you're getting downvoted because this is anecdotal evidence? But honestly this is my (admittedly anecdotal) experience as well.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      Or perhaps those doing the voting simply don't share that experience?
      - lkbm 8y ago
        Race is so strongly correlated among friends (in the US, anyway) that it's unbelievable that people won't have observed this.[0] Average demographics: * White Americans: 91% of social network are white; 8% black. * Black Americans: 83% of social network are black; 1% white. [0] https://www.prri.org/research/poll-race-religion-politics-americans-social-networks/#page-section-2 https://www.prri.org/research/poll-race-religion-politics-am...
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Some of that is normal population percentages - expected with random friends. Self-reported 'black' citizens are around 1-in-10 across the US. And in Silicon Valley its different - the mix of international people of high education and achievement make it a skewed sample.
        CydeWeys 8y ago
        The vast majority of programming jobs in the US are not in Silicon Valley, though. It's a lot more homogenous outside the major cosmopolitan cities.
        dleslie 8y ago
        Not everyone visiting HN is from the USA.
      - Ancalagon 8y ago
        You're right I should have alluded to that as well. But my point was maybe it wasn't worthy of a downvote is all.
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  - philwelch 8y ago
    It doesn't really matter who I socialize with--it matters who I've worked with and whose skills I can vouch for. There is a tendency that this will lead the demographics of a field to pretty much stay the same over time. If you work in a field that is 90% men, only 10% of the people you have worked with are women, which means in the long run only 10% of people you'd end up referring would be women. This is definitely true in my case--the number of women whose technical skills I can vouch for went up considerably once I started working with more women. That said, the Bay Area is weird and I've never lived there. Also, admittedly, specifying "white males" was a misstep on ebiester's part. Whatever narrative there is about diversity in tech breaks down unless you stipulate that South and East Asians don't count as underrepresented minorities.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  It is a widely and repeatedly observed fact in social sciences that one's friend group is on average biased towards demographics similar to their own. This is true along a wide array of protected demographics relevant to hiring including age, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. For some simple examples, a randomly selected gay person tends to have a significantly higher percentage of gay friends than a randomly selected straight person. Similarly, while 12% of the country is black, a randomly selected black person has way more than 12% black friends, whereas people of other ethnic groups on average have less than 12% black friends. It goes on and on. People cluster by demographics. Good on you for being an exception, but the rule holds in general.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    I'm not talking about friends, and the article isn't talking about friends, either. What's being discussed is people that a referrer has worked with and whose qualifications can be vouched for.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      People tend to refer their friends. Even if you're not friends outside of work, you're more likely to refer people you were friendly with at work.
      - philwelch 8y ago
        Sure. And most of that happens in the context of "refer anyone and we will vet them with our hiring process". If you change that to "only refer people whom you personally vouch for because we will trust your judgment to replace parts of the hiring process", there will (or can) be incentives to refer people who are really good, not just people you personally like and would like to help out. If you combine that with hiring people who've worked in diverse environments, that might counteract the natural referral biases.
    - learc83 8y ago
      That's a good point, the demographics of my coworkers are nothing like the demographics of my friends. Most people are probably more likely to refer people who are both friends and coworkers though. But a monetary incentive based on performance might be able to change that.
bertil 8y ago
Do you think that it would make sense to have that waiver for candidates who are part of a minority group in the current population, and include some test —possibly lighter— for other candidates? I’ve had very convincing interviews with great (senior) candidates where the setup was: Here is our problem, what would you do with it? And have an hour-long planning session with them. Same for junior candidates around: this is what I was working on this morning, I’m stuck here because of that error message; what would you do?
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  That can easily be perceived as minority candidates being given preferential treatment, which is also bad.
thanatropism 8y ago
You're fetishizing "demographics". It's unfortunately that people don't get their fair chance period. That at times this is evidenced by things that are more visible (black versus white, female versus male) rather than more invisible (extroverted rather than introverted, smiling versus shifty-doesn't-look-you-in-the-eyes) is both unfortunate (there should be no racism!) but also symptomatic of which things we care about and which things we don't. People discriminated for reasons we don't care about (introverted, can't make eye contact) are at the bottom of the pyramid then. We've decided they don't have "demographics" and don't matter.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  You're probably getting downvoted for the first line in your comment, but I think you're making an excellent point here.
  - thanatropism 8y ago
    HN has changed a lot since ~mid December.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Of key importance here is that race, gender, etc. are federally protected classes, while introversion is not. Thus, businesses have way more incentives to curtail discrimination against the former than the latter.
  - thanatropism 8y ago
    Well, there's this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    I know you probably didn't mean to imply otherwise, but it's worth saying out loud: that it's not illegal to discriminate against people with poor social skills does not at all make it ok. The context was ethics, not law, as I read it.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
This was my first reaction as well. Granted, the author doesn't seem to consider this aspect, simply whether the process is efficient in the short term. Tangentially, I'm not sure why everyone is trying to "solve" technical interviewing. It's a painful process, but so is any kind of hiring. In the long run people seem pretty good at sorting themselves irrespective of the process.
BurningFrog 8y ago
> If your trusted referrers are white and male, their networks will be overwhelmingly white and male I don't think this makes sense. People will recommend from their previous jobs, which will on average have the same demographics as the industry in general. The only way to avoid that is to recruit people from outside the industry. I'm white and male, but like anyone else in Silicon Valley, most of my ex coworkers are not. The percentage that is straight, white, male and US born in my personal ex coworker network is probably around 20%.
- Sophistifunk 8y ago
  Yup. I'm tired of hearing that a) everybody in software looks like me, and b) what we look like is somehow important. Both of these statements are false.
- jayd16 8y ago
  >The percentage that is straight, white, male and US born in my personal ex coworker network is probably around 20%. If true, you have to realize you're an outlier. Statistically the industry is still predominately white and male even in silicon valley.
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    Well, I've been around a long time and worked at a lot of places. Still far from a scientific sample, of course. Do you have any statistics to show? Honest question! You're of course right that the industry is predominately male. 80/20 is about what I've seen. As for white, maybe, but the proportion is definitely lower than the ~75% white proportion of the US population, which I suppose makes whites underrepresented, unless I've misunderstood that concept? And many of those whites are, like myself, immigrants.
    - jayd16 8y ago
      Well for starters you're using statistics on the US as a whole and not, say, urban or California statistics which is where most of the tech is represented.
fuckyah 8y ago
What’s your obsession with white males?
dfabulich 8y ago
People keep replying to this post saying, "nah, that doesn't jibe with my personal experience/intuition," but there is solid data supporting the claim that referral programs disproportionately benefit white men. For example, PayScale published a report last year surveying 53,000 employees. Here's what they found. > Referrals benefit white men more than any other demographic group. Our research shows that, holding all else constant, female and minority applicants are much less likely to receive referrals than their white male counterparts: white women are 12 percent less likely; men of color are 26 percent less likely and women of color are 35 percent less likely to receive a referral. https://www.payscale.com/data/job-referrals https://www.payscale.com/data/job-referrals

philwelch 8y ago

> More importantly, it will reinforce your organization's demographics. If your trusted referrers are white and male, their networks will be overwhelmingly white and male and it's just putting up another block toward those not already in the system. I'm not entirely convinced of this in the general case. I'm white and male, but probably a minority of the people I would recommend (in the sense of personally vouching for their technical ability) are also white and male.

newen 8y ago
I would say you are a relatively rare case though. Most people I've seen primarity socialize with people of the same race. Not strictly, obviously, but in general. Like in tech circles in the Bay Area, you have the white, indian, east asian groups and they, in general, tend to hang out with the same races. And by this I mean most of the friend groups I see are typically mostly of one race.
- Ancalagon 8y ago
  I guess you're getting downvoted because this is anecdotal evidence? But honestly this is my (admittedly anecdotal) experience as well.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    Or perhaps those doing the voting simply don't share that experience?
    - lkbm 8y ago
      Race is so strongly correlated among friends (in the US, anyway) that it's unbelievable that people won't have observed this.[0] Average demographics: * White Americans: 91% of social network are white; 8% black. * Black Americans: 83% of social network are black; 1% white. [0] https://www.prri.org/research/poll-race-religion-politics-americans-social-networks/#page-section-2 https://www.prri.org/research/poll-race-religion-politics-am...
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Some of that is normal population percentages - expected with random friends. Self-reported 'black' citizens are around 1-in-10 across the US. And in Silicon Valley its different - the mix of international people of high education and achievement make it a skewed sample.
        CydeWeys 8y ago
        The vast majority of programming jobs in the US are not in Silicon Valley, though. It's a lot more homogenous outside the major cosmopolitan cities.
      - dleslie 8y ago
        Not everyone visiting HN is from the USA.
    - Ancalagon 8y ago
      You're right I should have alluded to that as well. But my point was maybe it wasn't worthy of a downvote is all.
- deleted 8y ago
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  - deleted 8y ago
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- philwelch 8y ago
  It doesn't really matter who I socialize with--it matters who I've worked with and whose skills I can vouch for. There is a tendency that this will lead the demographics of a field to pretty much stay the same over time. If you work in a field that is 90% men, only 10% of the people you have worked with are women, which means in the long run only 10% of people you'd end up referring would be women. This is definitely true in my case--the number of women whose technical skills I can vouch for went up considerably once I started working with more women. That said, the Bay Area is weird and I've never lived there. Also, admittedly, specifying "white males" was a misstep on ebiester's part. Whatever narrative there is about diversity in tech breaks down unless you stipulate that South and East Asians don't count as underrepresented minorities.
CydeWeys 8y ago
It is a widely and repeatedly observed fact in social sciences that one's friend group is on average biased towards demographics similar to their own. This is true along a wide array of protected demographics relevant to hiring including age, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. For some simple examples, a randomly selected gay person tends to have a significantly higher percentage of gay friends than a randomly selected straight person. Similarly, while 12% of the country is black, a randomly selected black person has way more than 12% black friends, whereas people of other ethnic groups on average have less than 12% black friends. It goes on and on. People cluster by demographics. Good on you for being an exception, but the rule holds in general.
- philwelch 8y ago
  I'm not talking about friends, and the article isn't talking about friends, either. What's being discussed is people that a referrer has worked with and whose qualifications can be vouched for.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    People tend to refer their friends. Even if you're not friends outside of work, you're more likely to refer people you were friendly with at work.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Sure. And most of that happens in the context of "refer anyone and we will vet them with our hiring process". If you change that to "only refer people whom you personally vouch for because we will trust your judgment to replace parts of the hiring process", there will (or can) be incentives to refer people who are really good, not just people you personally like and would like to help out. If you combine that with hiring people who've worked in diverse environments, that might counteract the natural referral biases.
  - learc83 8y ago
    That's a good point, the demographics of my coworkers are nothing like the demographics of my friends. Most people are probably more likely to refer people who are both friends and coworkers though. But a monetary incentive based on performance might be able to change that.

bertil 8y ago

Do you think that it would make sense to have that waiver for candidates who are part of a minority group in the current population, and include some test —possibly lighter— for other candidates? I’ve had very convincing interviews with great (senior) candidates where the setup was: Here is our problem, what would you do with it? And have an hour-long planning session with them. Same for junior candidates around: this is what I was working on this morning, I’m stuck here because of that error message; what would you do?

CydeWeys 8y ago
That can easily be perceived as minority candidates being given preferential treatment, which is also bad.

thanatropism 8y ago

You're fetishizing "demographics". It's unfortunately that people don't get their fair chance period. That at times this is evidenced by things that are more visible (black versus white, female versus male) rather than more invisible (extroverted rather than introverted, smiling versus shifty-doesn't-look-you-in-the-eyes) is both unfortunate (there should be no racism!) but also symptomatic of which things we care about and which things we don't. People discriminated for reasons we don't care about (introverted, can't make eye contact) are at the bottom of the pyramid then. We've decided they don't have "demographics" and don't matter.

rootusrootus 8y ago
You're probably getting downvoted for the first line in your comment, but I think you're making an excellent point here.
- thanatropism 8y ago
  HN has changed a lot since ~mid December.
CydeWeys 8y ago
Of key importance here is that race, gender, etc. are federally protected classes, while introversion is not. Thus, businesses have way more incentives to curtail discrimination against the former than the latter.
- thanatropism 8y ago
  Well, there's this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  I know you probably didn't mean to imply otherwise, but it's worth saying out loud: that it's not illegal to discriminate against people with poor social skills does not at all make it ok. The context was ethics, not law, as I read it.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

This was my first reaction as well. Granted, the author doesn't seem to consider this aspect, simply whether the process is efficient in the short term. Tangentially, I'm not sure why everyone is trying to "solve" technical interviewing. It's a painful process, but so is any kind of hiring. In the long run people seem pretty good at sorting themselves irrespective of the process.

BurningFrog 8y ago

> If your trusted referrers are white and male, their networks will be overwhelmingly white and male I don't think this makes sense. People will recommend from their previous jobs, which will on average have the same demographics as the industry in general. The only way to avoid that is to recruit people from outside the industry. I'm white and male, but like anyone else in Silicon Valley, most of my ex coworkers are not. The percentage that is straight, white, male and US born in my personal ex coworker network is probably around 20%.

Sophistifunk 8y ago
Yup. I'm tired of hearing that a) everybody in software looks like me, and b) what we look like is somehow important. Both of these statements are false.
jayd16 8y ago
>The percentage that is straight, white, male and US born in my personal ex coworker network is probably around 20%. If true, you have to realize you're an outlier. Statistically the industry is still predominately white and male even in silicon valley.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  Well, I've been around a long time and worked at a lot of places. Still far from a scientific sample, of course. Do you have any statistics to show? Honest question! You're of course right that the industry is predominately male. 80/20 is about what I've seen. As for white, maybe, but the proportion is definitely lower than the ~75% white proportion of the US population, which I suppose makes whites underrepresented, unless I've misunderstood that concept? And many of those whites are, like myself, immigrants.
  - jayd16 8y ago
    Well for starters you're using statistics on the US as a whole and not, say, urban or California statistics which is where most of the tech is represented.

fuckyah 8y ago

What’s your obsession with white males?

dfabulich 8y ago

People keep replying to this post saying, "nah, that doesn't jibe with my personal experience/intuition," but there is solid data supporting the claim that referral programs disproportionately benefit white men. For example, PayScale published a report last year surveying 53,000 employees. Here's what they found. > Referrals benefit white men more than any other demographic group. Our research shows that, holding all else constant, female and minority applicants are much less likely to receive referrals than their white male counterparts: white women are 12 percent less likely; men of color are 26 percent less likely and women of color are 35 percent less likely to receive a referral. https://www.payscale.com/data/job-referrals https://www.payscale.com/data/job-referrals