8 ms·

I was happily nodding along, until I got to: "Somehow, he managed to obtain copies of the IBM entrance examination questions and answers, which he surreptitiou

by goldcd 7y ago

I was happily nodding along, until I got to: "Somehow, he managed to obtain copies of the IBM entrance examination questions and answers, which he surreptitiously shared with promising young black job applicants. He coached them on passing the exam and succeeding in their interviews. Many were subsequently hired." I'm sure this helped contribute to an increase in black hires, but is a stupidly short-sighted thing to do and then boast about.

codingdave 7y ago
I'm not sure how it is any different than studying for whiteboard interviews. Especially in a time period when educational opportunities were not equal.
- ericlewis 7y ago
  It’s not, except for bragging about the theft of the material and sharing part.
  - wolf550e 7y ago
    Telling people what kind of questions are asked, or what topics are important is very different from telling people the specific questions and answers!
- darawk 7y ago
  It's a lot different. It's easy to memorize a few answers. It's hard to memorize the entire corpus of material, in ignorance of what might be on the test. Yes, educational opportunities were unequal at the time. No, that does not make this a good way to equalize them.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    I don't remember hearing that IBM suffered a huge losses (or any) as a result of this, so could it then be that it wasn't such a big deal? There's so many variables at play when hiring it's just silly to presume that 100% perfect fairness in tests is of any huge significance to "fairness" of outcome or to maximizing the benefits for a company, especially when compared to the things like racial or other purely personal biases. The idea of "keeping the bar high" is too idealized, as tests and interviews even today just measure how prepared is that person for taking the tests, and not the real world knowledge and abilities. Ultimately what company really cares about is estimating the future performance of that employee, not just the knowledge. People who had to fight hard for a chance to work will often be much better hire and work harder and do more for the company, than someone a little more knowledgeable, but who lacks that kind of drive.
    - the_narrator 7y ago
      So if IBM didn't suffer or (publicly) disclose huge losses, it doesn't matter that someone scammed them into hiring unqualified engineers?
      - smt88 7y ago
        Why do you assume they were unqualified? We already know IBM failed to hire qualified black engineers because they were black. This may well have been cases of qualified people working around a corrupt system. The first black IBM engineer isn't going to want new black hires to be incompetent -- quite the opposite. He likely did his own screening.
        darawk 7y ago
        > Why do you assume they were unqualified? Because the point of being given the answers is to meet qualifications that you don't actually possess.
        ivanhoe 7y ago
        Or to help you to outperform everyone by such a large margin that racist don't have an excuse not to hire you for being black?
        smt88 7y ago
        In this case, there was racial discrimination, so they were unlikely to be hired even if they possessed the qualifications.
        darawk 7y ago
        So what was the point of giving them the answers, then?
        smt88 7y ago
        I can't tell if you're being sincere or not, but I'll assume the best and respond sincerely. Let's say you have two candidates, one white and one black. In IBM's case, it was more likely they had hundreds of white candidates and a handful of black candidates. Now assume your hiring managers or practices are racist, which we know IBM's were (as were most companies' at that point, when it would still be 20 years before racial discrimination became illegal). Finally, assume that the average scores of the black and white engineers are similar. It shouldn't really matter, because (as we've seen from LSAT scores, Google's HR, and other sources) no test has been developed that's a good measure of future productivity. In this situation, you're never going to hire the black engineer. Even if you yourself aren't racist, you know you likely have colleagues who are. You see hiring the black engineer as risky. If the black engineer instead has excellent test scores, you as a non-racist hiring manager get to cover your ass. Does that make sense? Coaching on tests was a way of counteracting the racism. It had no bearing on whether the candidates were less qualified in this case.
- goldcd 7y ago
  The article is written in an ambiguous fashion. If it was "This is the type of interview and type of questions you're likely to come across" - then I've no real issue. As you mention, educational opportunities were not equal, so maybe counteracts the implicit bias of not being provided with general information from tutor/peers/previous-experience - "this being your first IT interview, you should know.." or "how a bunch of white guys tend to do things" Story is being re-told through the father, son, book and now newspaper article - so who knows.
  - human20190310 7y ago
    Does a person have an obligation to respect the rules of a system that, at best, only pretends to treat them fairly?
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      There's sometimes room for civil disobedience, where you openly stand up to authority and say you can't follow the rules because they're unconscionable. Secretly breaking the rules because the system isn't fair is like lying because the truth will get you in trouble. It doesn't right any wrong or effect any change; you're just taking advantage of everyone who assumes you're an honest person.
      - yawaramin 7y ago
        > Secretly breaking the rules because the system isn't fair is like lying because the truth will get you in trouble. So according to you, Jews in Nazi Germany should have come out as Jews instead of pretending to pass off as gentile?
- tziki 7y ago
  Obviously the amount of material is different, by a few of orders of magnitude. No one will be able to memorize all possible whiteboard questions.
anon1m0us 7y ago
I honestly don't know what to think of your comment. I will say though, that from a perspective, you are basically saying you read with interest until you found a reason the "stupidly short-sighted" black man shouldn't have been hired. When compared to the reality that almost an entire race of people in North America were stolen from their homes and brought to a new land as slaves to benefit their white owners... any potential wrong you are focusing on here is only visible with a microscope. Your bad behavior doesn't need intent. You didn't need to intend to be a racist when you put him under a microscope like that -- but that doesn't mean you weren't racist when you decided it was important enough to write about. Especially considering the exact behavior is frequent among all races. And it's the top comment at HN. I can't help but think this says something important about what is really going on.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  Chill out. The reason the original commenter doesn't like it is because said behavior is cheating. Injecting race as an attribute doesn't change the fact that the behavior is cheating.
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    AirBnB doesn't cheat? Uber? Facebook? Cheating and breaking rules is lauded in Silicon Valley, dare I say admired in entrepreneurs. Black employees though, not so much. This is racism. EDIT: Before you start nitpicking my examples: http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html "They delight in breaking rules..."
    - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
      All 3 of those companies you mentioned are pieces of shit and I do not endorse their various elements of cheating. If you admire them, you're stupid and morally stunted. Stop trying to make everything about race. It is all so tiresome.
    - nickpeterson 7y ago
      Those companies are also wrong then. Stop justifying poor ethics by pointing at other examples of poor ethics, it's a race to the bottom.
dasil003 7y ago
Your response is confusing to me. His son telling the story 70 years later hardly qualifies as boasting. I'm not sure what is short-sighted about the first black man hired by IBM helping other blacks get hired in an era of not just systematic, but explicit and open racism. Perhaps you're saying it's short-sighted if he got caught or brought in unqualified people, but he was no doubt keenly aware of the stacked deck against him and wanted to help level the playing field for others. This strikes me as more altruistic than short-sighted.
- zxcvbn4038 7y ago
  Do I detect the use of past tense? It still happens regularly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Markeis_McGlockton https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Markeis_McGlockt... And these are just recent incidents where the victims were lucky enough to have their stories told and be remembered. Stuff like this happens all day everyday. Job descrimination more so. Why did we spend four trillion dollars (adj) fighting Hitler?
- Angostura 7y ago
  I think he was saying it was unwise to tell anyone about it.
  - goldcd 7y ago
    The specific thing I was thinking, was that the guys who got in after them probably had their own stories of being "the 2nd or 3rd black guy in an IBM office" - which I'd have thought would likewise be a source of pride to them and their families. Then this appears, which might indicate that they might (maybe didn't happen, maybe not to this candidate) have had the interview answers given to them. It potentially taints.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sumedh 7y ago
There are many sites which have interview questions of famous tech companies, looking at those questions is cheating?
- citrablue 7y ago
  It becomes cheating when it's an unfair advantage that isn't available to other people. The fact that it was cheating based on race makes it problematic. The fact that black applications likely faced other unfair difficulties makes it less problematic. I guess it boils down to whether you think life should be like golf, where (terrible term in this context, apologies for the usage here) you carry a handicap to level the playing field.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
goog-anon 7y ago
Black engineer here at a FANG. I do this all the time with black candidates who interview. In fact I use my round to coach them on the upcoming rounds and give them stellar feedback afterward. I know many would think this is ethically egregious, but it is only balancing the unbelievable prejudice against them by Asian interviewers who would not pass a black candidate under any circumstance.
- smt88 7y ago
  Please do the world a favor and blow the whistle (or at least speak anonymously to a journalist) instead of trying to subvert a broken system.
  - goog-anon 7y ago
    This problem gets written about every other month in the media. While revealing the details of my observations and experiences might be interesting, it's definitely not whistleblower material.
    - smt88 7y ago
      Your claim that the interviewers wouldn't pass black applicants "under any circumstances" is much stronger than any media report I've ever seen. Were you exaggerating?
      - goog-anon 7y ago
        > Were you exaggerating? Only slightly. Very strong candidates will more than likely get a pass, but those are exceedingly rare and haven't seen one yet tbh. It's the majority who are genuinely borderline/just above average who will never get a pass/given benefit of the doubt that are given to others.
- azn_coder 7y ago
  Pretty common in this industry. I worked at a few major companies( check article below). Not only was racism widespread, you were looked badly at for not helping your race. https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2019/01/28/what-might-racism-cost-oracle-400m/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2019/01/28/what-mig... It's actually very complicated, because there were a lot of backroom deals between the two major races to make it not look like racism.
stebann 7y ago
Maybe unwise and short-sighted. Human beings aren't perfect, even who fight racism. I think his legacy goes far beyond that point.
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
He passed them on to promising(!) applicants. That means he was substituting his judgement of applicants' skills for those applicants' interviewers. Assuming (somewhat fairly) that racism was a factor in IBM's hiring decisions at the time, it's reasonable to believe his judgement to be better. Since he would never have a chance to influence more than a small fraction of IBM's many hires, any "reverse racism" he might exhibit in his judgement would still fall short of tipping the balance. And, of course, several factors would moderate any pro-black bias: he has a clear interest to only promote competent candidates able to change people's minds. The candidates would still need to be able to convince their interviewers, etc.

by goldcd 7y ago

codingdave 7y ago

I'm not sure how it is any different than studying for whiteboard interviews. Especially in a time period when educational opportunities were not equal.

ericlewis 7y ago
It’s not, except for bragging about the theft of the material and sharing part.
- wolf550e 7y ago
  Telling people what kind of questions are asked, or what topics are important is very different from telling people the specific questions and answers!
darawk 7y ago
It's a lot different. It's easy to memorize a few answers. It's hard to memorize the entire corpus of material, in ignorance of what might be on the test. Yes, educational opportunities were unequal at the time. No, that does not make this a good way to equalize them.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  I don't remember hearing that IBM suffered a huge losses (or any) as a result of this, so could it then be that it wasn't such a big deal? There's so many variables at play when hiring it's just silly to presume that 100% perfect fairness in tests is of any huge significance to "fairness" of outcome or to maximizing the benefits for a company, especially when compared to the things like racial or other purely personal biases. The idea of "keeping the bar high" is too idealized, as tests and interviews even today just measure how prepared is that person for taking the tests, and not the real world knowledge and abilities. Ultimately what company really cares about is estimating the future performance of that employee, not just the knowledge. People who had to fight hard for a chance to work will often be much better hire and work harder and do more for the company, than someone a little more knowledgeable, but who lacks that kind of drive.
  - the_narrator 7y ago
    So if IBM didn't suffer or (publicly) disclose huge losses, it doesn't matter that someone scammed them into hiring unqualified engineers?
    - smt88 7y ago
      Why do you assume they were unqualified? We already know IBM failed to hire qualified black engineers because they were black. This may well have been cases of qualified people working around a corrupt system. The first black IBM engineer isn't going to want new black hires to be incompetent -- quite the opposite. He likely did his own screening.
      - darawk 7y ago
        > Why do you assume they were unqualified? Because the point of being given the answers is to meet qualifications that you don't actually possess.
        ivanhoe 7y ago
        Or to help you to outperform everyone by such a large margin that racist don't have an excuse not to hire you for being black?
        smt88 7y ago
        In this case, there was racial discrimination, so they were unlikely to be hired even if they possessed the qualifications.
        darawk 7y ago
        So what was the point of giving them the answers, then?
        smt88 7y ago
        I can't tell if you're being sincere or not, but I'll assume the best and respond sincerely. Let's say you have two candidates, one white and one black. In IBM's case, it was more likely they had hundreds of white candidates and a handful of black candidates. Now assume your hiring managers or practices are racist, which we know IBM's were (as were most companies' at that point, when it would still be 20 years before racial discrimination became illegal). Finally, assume that the average scores of the black and white engineers are similar. It shouldn't really matter, because (as we've seen from LSAT scores, Google's HR, and other sources) no test has been developed that's a good measure of future productivity. In this situation, you're never going to hire the black engineer. Even if you yourself aren't racist, you know you likely have colleagues who are. You see hiring the black engineer as risky. If the black engineer instead has excellent test scores, you as a non-racist hiring manager get to cover your ass. Does that make sense? Coaching on tests was a way of counteracting the racism. It had no bearing on whether the candidates were less qualified in this case.
goldcd 7y ago
The article is written in an ambiguous fashion. If it was "This is the type of interview and type of questions you're likely to come across" - then I've no real issue. As you mention, educational opportunities were not equal, so maybe counteracts the implicit bias of not being provided with general information from tutor/peers/previous-experience - "this being your first IT interview, you should know.." or "how a bunch of white guys tend to do things" Story is being re-told through the father, son, book and now newspaper article - so who knows.
- human20190310 7y ago
  Does a person have an obligation to respect the rules of a system that, at best, only pretends to treat them fairly?
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    There's sometimes room for civil disobedience, where you openly stand up to authority and say you can't follow the rules because they're unconscionable. Secretly breaking the rules because the system isn't fair is like lying because the truth will get you in trouble. It doesn't right any wrong or effect any change; you're just taking advantage of everyone who assumes you're an honest person.
    - yawaramin 7y ago
      > Secretly breaking the rules because the system isn't fair is like lying because the truth will get you in trouble. So according to you, Jews in Nazi Germany should have come out as Jews instead of pretending to pass off as gentile?
tziki 7y ago
Obviously the amount of material is different, by a few of orders of magnitude. No one will be able to memorize all possible whiteboard questions.

anon1m0us 7y ago

I honestly don't know what to think of your comment. I will say though, that from a perspective, you are basically saying you read with interest until you found a reason the "stupidly short-sighted" black man shouldn't have been hired. When compared to the reality that almost an entire race of people in North America were stolen from their homes and brought to a new land as slaves to benefit their white owners... any potential wrong you are focusing on here is only visible with a microscope. Your bad behavior doesn't need intent. You didn't need to intend to be a racist when you put him under a microscope like that -- but that doesn't mean you weren't racist when you decided it was important enough to write about. Especially considering the exact behavior is frequent among all races. And it's the top comment at HN. I can't help but think this says something important about what is really going on.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago
Chill out. The reason the original commenter doesn't like it is because said behavior is cheating. Injecting race as an attribute doesn't change the fact that the behavior is cheating.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  AirBnB doesn't cheat? Uber? Facebook? Cheating and breaking rules is lauded in Silicon Valley, dare I say admired in entrepreneurs. Black employees though, not so much. This is racism. EDIT: Before you start nitpicking my examples: http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html "They delight in breaking rules..."
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    All 3 of those companies you mentioned are pieces of shit and I do not endorse their various elements of cheating. If you admire them, you're stupid and morally stunted. Stop trying to make everything about race. It is all so tiresome.
  - nickpeterson 7y ago
    Those companies are also wrong then. Stop justifying poor ethics by pointing at other examples of poor ethics, it's a race to the bottom.

dasil003 7y ago

Your response is confusing to me. His son telling the story 70 years later hardly qualifies as boasting. I'm not sure what is short-sighted about the first black man hired by IBM helping other blacks get hired in an era of not just systematic, but explicit and open racism. Perhaps you're saying it's short-sighted if he got caught or brought in unqualified people, but he was no doubt keenly aware of the stacked deck against him and wanted to help level the playing field for others. This strikes me as more altruistic than short-sighted.

zxcvbn4038 7y ago
Do I detect the use of past tense? It still happens regularly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Markeis_McGlockton https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Markeis_McGlockt... And these are just recent incidents where the victims were lucky enough to have their stories told and be remembered. Stuff like this happens all day everyday. Job descrimination more so. Why did we spend four trillion dollars (adj) fighting Hitler?
Angostura 7y ago
I think he was saying it was unwise to tell anyone about it.
- goldcd 7y ago
  The specific thing I was thinking, was that the guys who got in after them probably had their own stories of being "the 2nd or 3rd black guy in an IBM office" - which I'd have thought would likewise be a source of pride to them and their families. Then this appears, which might indicate that they might (maybe didn't happen, maybe not to this candidate) have had the interview answers given to them. It potentially taints.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sumedh 7y ago

There are many sites which have interview questions of famous tech companies, looking at those questions is cheating?

citrablue 7y ago
It becomes cheating when it's an unfair advantage that isn't available to other people. The fact that it was cheating based on race makes it problematic. The fact that black applications likely faced other unfair difficulties makes it less problematic. I guess it boils down to whether you think life should be like golf, where (terrible term in this context, apologies for the usage here) you carry a handicap to level the playing field.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

goog-anon 7y ago

Black engineer here at a FANG. I do this all the time with black candidates who interview. In fact I use my round to coach them on the upcoming rounds and give them stellar feedback afterward. I know many would think this is ethically egregious, but it is only balancing the unbelievable prejudice against them by Asian interviewers who would not pass a black candidate under any circumstance.

smt88 7y ago
Please do the world a favor and blow the whistle (or at least speak anonymously to a journalist) instead of trying to subvert a broken system.
- goog-anon 7y ago
  This problem gets written about every other month in the media. While revealing the details of my observations and experiences might be interesting, it's definitely not whistleblower material.
  - smt88 7y ago
    Your claim that the interviewers wouldn't pass black applicants "under any circumstances" is much stronger than any media report I've ever seen. Were you exaggerating?
    - goog-anon 7y ago
      > Were you exaggerating? Only slightly. Very strong candidates will more than likely get a pass, but those are exceedingly rare and haven't seen one yet tbh. It's the majority who are genuinely borderline/just above average who will never get a pass/given benefit of the doubt that are given to others.
azn_coder 7y ago
Pretty common in this industry. I worked at a few major companies( check article below). Not only was racism widespread, you were looked badly at for not helping your race. https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2019/01/28/what-might-racism-cost-oracle-400m/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2019/01/28/what-mig... It's actually very complicated, because there were a lot of backroom deals between the two major races to make it not look like racism.

stebann 7y ago

Maybe unwise and short-sighted. Human beings aren't perfect, even who fight racism. I think his legacy goes far beyond that point.

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago

He passed them on to promising(!) applicants. That means he was substituting his judgement of applicants' skills for those applicants' interviewers. Assuming (somewhat fairly) that racism was a factor in IBM's hiring decisions at the time, it's reasonable to believe his judgement to be better. Since he would never have a chance to influence more than a small fraction of IBM's many hires, any "reverse racism" he might exhibit in his judgement would still fall short of tipping the balance. And, of course, several factors would moderate any pro-black bias: he has a clear interest to only promote competent candidates able to change people's minds. The candidates would still need to be able to convince their interviewers, etc.