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I was agreeing with you until you used the phrase "diversity hire" in your comment. I think that you could have made the same point without inferring that the h
by jasondclinton 7y ago
I was agreeing with you until you used the phrase "diversity hire" in your comment. I think that you could have made the same point without inferring that the hiring bar has been lowered for employees in underrepresented groups. That's a pretty terrible thing to say to anyone who is in one of those groups.
- mav3rick 7y agoTotally agree.
- christiansakai 7y agoIt is my anecdata, and take it as what it is. I've seen it myself a few times. Take it as what it is, downvote it all you want. A freedom of speech for everyone.
- omar_a1 7y agoAfter reading this comment, I get the sneaking suspicion that your definition of "diversity hire" means hiring any minority or female candidates, period.
- alibaba_x 7y agoThat's what companies mean by diversity as well.
- omar_a1 7y agoDiversity hire, not diversity.
- christiansakai 7y agoThat is correct. Please see my other comments. I don't have the intention to look down on people.
- omar_a1 7y ago...So you're confirming that if you hire the most qualified candidate, and they happen to be a minority, you consider it a "diversity hire"? Welp.
- christiansakai 7y agoSo if that candidate cannot even answer Easy/Medium Leetcode questions but got offer, then yes. Is that not clear enough?
- omar_a1 7y agoNo, it's actually contradicting your above answers.
- christiansakai 7y agoCare to elaborate?
- bigfoot675 7y agoYou just said that a diversity hire is anyone who is female or an under-represented minority. I think this comment is what you meant to say. Explicitly, if a candidate is a female or an under-represented minority, AND they do not stack up to standards.
- christiansakai 7y agoAh I see, so that's where the misinterpretation come from. Sorry, that's not what I meant. I meant to say that if a minority gets offer without being able to pass even Easy/Medium questions, then yes it is a diversity hire. Thanks for the clarification.
- akoumis 7y ago"I've seen it myself" - So you've sat on FAANG hiring panels that made decisions specifically based on candidates' underrepresented demographics? Or you're just inferring based on people you met while employed at a FAANG? Or...?
- christiansakai 7y agoSo basically I know a few people who can't even solve an Easy Leetcode questions. They got in as SWE L3/L4, E3/E4 and I also know one L5. Can you help me in explaining why? I don't have the intention of looking down on people. I'm just gathering data. If I can find a reasonable explanation then I want to take a look at it, and learn from it, and see where did I do wrong, so I can improve and pass the interviews next time.
- charlesu 7y agoI knew a lot of people at FAANG that were L4/L5 that couldn't solve Leetcode easies. Leetcode isn't part of the job, just the interviews. Getting an offer is not just a matter of solving a programming problem. It's about how you communicate. And, of course, if you're a brilliant jerk ability doesn't matter: you're not getting hired. If you're not getting past the interviews despite being a strong programmer, you may want to really think deeply about how you're communicating with your interviewer. Remember, the vast majority of people who are getting offers aren't women or minorities so that's probably not what's blocking you.
- christiansakai 7y agoYour experience matches my anecdote. Hence you can imagine my total confusion once I got the interview myself (Google, 2 times, phone to onsite, Amazon one time to onsite, Facebook, one phone). In my latest FB phone for example. I was asked a Medium question that I've never seen before, and nevertheless I solved it. How do I know? Because apparently that was taken straight from Leetcode, and the interviewer didn't even bother to change the question. I copy pasted my solution to Leetcode, run it, pass 100% test cases. I got rejected.... I asked for feedback from the recruiter. Apparently I needed to do 2 Medium questions in the allocated time. I solve the first Medium question in about 30 mins, and there was only 10 mins left for the 2nd one so the interviewer didn't bother to ask me the 2nd one. The scenario that I just told you above is not unique. Venture enough to cscareerquestions and Leetcode forum you'll be surprised to see many many worse experience than this.
- twomoretime 7y agoBut it undeniably has, and I've had multiple older women in management express to me that they felt their position was less respected because of the company's overt push to hire women. Sure, in theory we're correcting the injustices brought about by inequality, but what we're really doing is presuming that minorities need extra help and white men do not, without considering that all people have struggles and, frankly, it's racist/sexist to judge people by skin color and/or gender. You can easily invent a dozen ways to claim someone's life is underprivileged, but we only have a handful that are allowed in hiring considerations, and they all happen to be "not white or male." It's terrifying to see how casually acceptable this has become.
- devdas 7y agoThe presumption here is that white and Asian men get extra help by default, and the rest are penalised. This has enough evidence in favour that I would call it a theory and not a hypothesis. Making this view more public would help.
- manfredo 7y agoI won't dispute whether you think it's a terrible thing to say, but preferential treatment towards demographics categorized as "diverse" is something I've both witnessed and taken part in during my time so far in tech. At least in the San Francisco Bay Area, many tech companies are setting targets of >30% women in engineering roles despite the fact that they make up 20-25% of the tech workforce. Achieving these numbers necessitates discrimination. Note that you're putting words in the other poster's mouth when you write that "the hiring bar has been lowered". Not all forms of discrimination involve lowering the hiring bar. From my experience, the bulk of discrimination occurs before hiring event starts - recruiters extend phone interviews to diverse candidates at higher rates. The hiring bar is the same for diverse and non-diverse, it's just that diverse candidates are more likely to get a chance to attempt to pass that hiring bar.
- southphillyman 7y ago>From my experience, the bulk of discrimination occurs before hiring event starts - recruiters extend phone interviews to diverse candidates at higher rates. How is this different from any other targeted recruiting? FAANG recruits students from CMU while not even visiting my alma mater. Recruiters extend phone interviews to referrals at 100% rate no matter how bad they suck, etc. Diversity recruiting != diversity hiring, and the numbers bare that out. Unless you argue that recruiters should have zero targeted pipelines I'm not sure how it's unique for diversity initiatives
- manfredo 7y agoYou're right, it isn't. But are people offended when people say that FAANG gives more opportunity to CMU grads than community college grads? Not in my experience. Speaking as a grad from one of the universities mentioned, I can say with certainty that and education from those institutions opens up a lot of doors and that pointing that fact out is fair.
- fourmyle 7y agoIt's different because having the preferred genitalia isn't equal to having a degree from a top university.
- charlesu 7y agoWorked at FAANG. There are diversity programs because most engineers are white and Asian men with professional networks composed almost entirely of white and Asian men. Referrals are a big source of talent, so you can imagine what that does to our hiring pipeline. But there are no diversity hires. Everyone who's hired has to pass the bar.
- fg6hr 7y agoThat's not entirely true because the bar isn't deterministic. For example, diverse candidates are given two attempts to pass a phone screen.