7 ms·

There's a fascinating study on orchestra auditions, where it was found that performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interv

by candu 6y ago

There's a fascinating study on orchestra auditions, where it was found that performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact-%E2%80%9Cblind%E2%80%9D-auditions-female-musicians https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... IMHO, if the tech industry wants to live up to its narrative of meritocracy, this is one obvious improvement over existing processes. No, it won't take care of pipeline problems; no, it won't solve the "tipping point" problem (i.e. where candidates of underrepresented groups are dissuaded by a lack of pre-existing representation, making it very hard to go from zero to one, so to speak). That said, we're uniquely positioned as an industry to do this - technical interviews are similar to auditions in that they hinge on skill-based performance - so why not? It can't be any less arbitrary than asking random questions about manhole covers and light bulbs. I'd posit that even the "show your thinking process" parts could be done in this way - e.g. via text chat, or inline comments, or maybe even using voice obfuscation and/or neutral avatars.

jefftk 6y ago
> performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation There has recently been quite a bit of pushback on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition... > It can't be any less arbitrary than asking random questions about manhole covers and light bulbs. Asking random questions about manhole covers and lightbulbs doesn't work very well! Don't take that as your comparison.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  Well of course the people who want to hire by race want to get rid of blind auditions!
in3d 6y ago
You may want to read https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-orchestra-auditions-really-benefit-women/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-... “One of the more interesting findings of the study that I have not often seen reported: overall, women did worse in the blinded auditions.”
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  This happens all the time, the media will find one aspect of a study and blast it from on high while ignoring any parts that hurt their agenda. A particularly infamous example of this is studies of drug use by race: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quickconfig.do?34481-0001_all https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quickconfig.do?34481... You'll see news outlets claiming that black and white drug use rates are the same, but they're going off of the "Have use ever used X?" questions while completely ignoring the ones about how often they've used X, which shows a clear racial discrepancy. That's before you get into issues like the study being based on self reporting, or the vast majority of drug crimes that result in jail time being ones related to dealing and not mere use, etc.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
monoideism 6y ago
To believe that blind applications would help increase female representation presupposes that they're being discriminated against right now, when TFA shows that women are getting preferential callbacks. That completely jives with my experience: most female candidates are highly, highly sought-after, and are quickly hired by top tech companies (leaving smaller companies looking bad in the process, despire their equal desire for female candidates). Blind applications would probably hurt female representation. It's possible it would help minority representation.
- dimitrios1 6y ago
  It seems to me that if you choose something that is completely equitable in who is able to participate, then the rest of it sounds like manufacturing dissent by companies or corporations that want a "leg up" on the competition in the D&I category, which is all the rage these days in terms of marketing. Maybe there are other reasons women don't want to enter these fields, but prefer to wholly dominate others, and maybe that we should turn the conversation to this being OK. We've spent so many cycles trying to "figure this out" when there is research after research that just shows women don't prefer the "rat race" as much as men, and gravitate towards roles that focus on helping, nurturing, and community, hence why they dominate roles where those are highlighted: teachers, administrators, nurses, psychologists, etc. There's never going to be a feeling of "service" or caring when you are writing ad-tech for a FAANG. It's just not going to happen, no matter how many D&I articles you write.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I agree. There has been research on demographics pertaining to college majors and their career opportunities in the context of why some demographics make less money than others after graduating with a 4 year degree. One of the main factors that came up in the interviews was, like you said, the lower earning demographics wanted to have a bigger community impact, but that those jobs simply paid less money (like social workers).
  - benjaminjosephw 6y ago
    I once went to a members-only hackerspace that was very open and equitable, at least in theory. To join, you had to get a recommendation from another member and support from one more. They held regular open days and were very welcoming but definitely had an established subculture that didn't include much diversity. Joining really meant being the friend of a member or possibly a friend of a friend. If you were an outsider, you'd really need to show them you were already a part of their sub-culture before they'd consider you. Openness to diversity really meant openness to conforming to an existing culture before joining. Diversity and inclusion is an extremely hard thing to get right or even to agree on what "right" means. I don't think anybody would agree that diversity issues are fixed now and so it can't be "time to turn the conversation to this being OK". As I pointed out in my story above, lots of people can't even see that there is a present and persistent problem despite the good intentions around fixing it. That's exactly why we need to pay more attention to studies like this. You seem keen to switch to a conversation about nature instead of having one about nurture/culture (there were a few historical arguments about race that took a similar approach). Perhaps these two are so intimately bound that it's not helpful to make observations about one in the abstract. Instead, should we not simply focus on those things we can change and try our best to ensure the inequalities of the past aren't reflected in the culture of today? It's not about some set of absolute outcomes, its about the absence of bias - an outcome I'd hope we were all on-board with.
secondcoming 6y ago
> where candidates of underrepresented groups are dissuaded by a lack of pre-existing representation I don't understand this persepective from candidates. The job market must be really good if they can use this as a metric for pursuing a job opportunity. I was the only person from my country when I joined my current employer. It never even crossed my mind that it could be an issue. There was also a post on HN a few months ago that said asking minorities to attend things like recruiting fairs in order to show the diversity of the employer was unfair. It's a chicken and egg situation for employers.
- giantg2 6y ago
  At my company, you have a leg up if you fit one of the diversity metrics and are applying for a job. I've worked on teams where I'm the only one of my race. I've been on group projects where I'm the only one of my gender. Based on the conversations I've heard on some of the teams I've been on, I have a minority political view and culture/lifestyle as well. It's almost never a problem unless you believe or think it is a problem. There can be rare cases where you get someone who is actively trying to make it a problem, but that tends to be rare. So I don't see it as a chicken or egg issue, I see it as mindset problem.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    By 'chicken and egg' I meant that employers can't really do much about minority candidates not accepting a job offer because there aren't any/enough of that candidate's gender/race already employed.
  - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
    Thank you. Your experience in not suffering from discrimination clearly invalidates all of the millions of people who do. It's clearly all in their head. It boggles my mind on people's basic inability to realize that not everyone has the same experiences in life as them. And rather than accept other peoples experiences as valid, it's always the same argument of "I haven't had to deal with this therfore they don't either." Yes they want to be in a situation where they can just ignore it and it won't be an issue, the problem is they don't have that luxury. It's great that you do, but that doesn't change their circumstances.
dalbasal 6y ago
We talk a big game about merit, capability, qualifications and such. Ultimately though, nearly all actual selection processes are are subjective or ilegible... depending on how you see these things. How an interviewer feels about you intuitively matters a lot, maybe the most. Actual tests of skill are usually intuitive as well. An interviewer tries to gauge your skills, but it's rarely designed to be an objective test of skill. If it is an objective test of skill, it's rarely the primary decision driver. Blind auditions enforce a certain kind of objectivity. But, I think we can read into the fact that musicians "audition" while employees "interview." You perform an audition. Blind auditions would be a radical change to hiring/selection. The big advantages/disadvantages of the approach are like those of standardised testing. They measure the easily measurable, and bury everything else.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > an objective test of skill Other industries/careers have exactly this: a professional licensing exam. Most programmers vehemently oppose any sort of standardized testing.
  - jdrek1 6y ago
    I'm curious, what do you want to test? The classic "memorize how to bubblesort" interview questions which so many people complain about because they don't show anything except that someone has prepared? Isn't it better to just look over the code of applicants and check if they are aware of general structures etc? Obviously some familiarity with algorithms etc is required and it should be checked if that's there, but with tests you can't really test if someone understands the bigger picture and did not just memorize the answer. I know more than enough people who can solve problems just fine but their code is absolutely atrocious and I'd never hire them. Interviews where one can ask them why they write code the way they do are probably far more effective.
laurieg 6y ago
Here's an article detailing an experiment with voice gender changers in online interviews: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...
cambalache 6y ago
Get on with the times friend, we need to eliminate blind auditions now.They discriminate: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  "Blind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy" Damn, how did we get here?
  - thu2111 6y ago
    By saying nothing years ago when "diversity" became popular and people started arguing there weren't enough women in computing. I'm as guilty as anyone, in the beginning it all seemed harmless enough. It wasn't, it was based on sexism from day one, and now we see the consequences: proven and massive bias towards women at an institutional level. And good luck trying to fix it.
ralusek 6y ago
California Prop 16 just attempted to overturn bans on racial/gender discrimination when hiring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_... The people advocating for more representation almost invariably are not interested in removing discrimination on arbitrary characteristics, which is a near universally laudable objective, but rather work backwards from the demographic representation they'd like to see. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition... If you think that the diversity and equity initiatives within companies are currently working towards anything resembling a blind hiring process, I get the impression that you're not particularly up to date on the objectives of the modern left.

by candu 6y ago

jefftk 6y ago

> performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation There has recently been quite a bit of pushback on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition... > It can't be any less arbitrary than asking random questions about manhole covers and light bulbs. Asking random questions about manhole covers and lightbulbs doesn't work very well! Don't take that as your comparison.

travisoneill1 6y ago
Well of course the people who want to hire by race want to get rid of blind auditions!

in3d 6y ago

You may want to read https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-orchestra-auditions-really-benefit-women/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-... “One of the more interesting findings of the study that I have not often seen reported: overall, women did worse in the blinded auditions.”

HideousKojima 6y ago
This happens all the time, the media will find one aspect of a study and blast it from on high while ignoring any parts that hurt their agenda. A particularly infamous example of this is studies of drug use by race: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quickconfig.do?34481-0001_all https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quickconfig.do?34481... You'll see news outlets claiming that black and white drug use rates are the same, but they're going off of the "Have use ever used X?" questions while completely ignoring the ones about how often they've used X, which shows a clear racial discrepancy. That's before you get into issues like the study being based on self reporting, or the vast majority of drug crimes that result in jail time being ones related to dealing and not mere use, etc.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

monoideism 6y ago

To believe that blind applications would help increase female representation presupposes that they're being discriminated against right now, when TFA shows that women are getting preferential callbacks. That completely jives with my experience: most female candidates are highly, highly sought-after, and are quickly hired by top tech companies (leaving smaller companies looking bad in the process, despire their equal desire for female candidates). Blind applications would probably hurt female representation. It's possible it would help minority representation.

dimitrios1 6y ago
It seems to me that if you choose something that is completely equitable in who is able to participate, then the rest of it sounds like manufacturing dissent by companies or corporations that want a "leg up" on the competition in the D&I category, which is all the rage these days in terms of marketing. Maybe there are other reasons women don't want to enter these fields, but prefer to wholly dominate others, and maybe that we should turn the conversation to this being OK. We've spent so many cycles trying to "figure this out" when there is research after research that just shows women don't prefer the "rat race" as much as men, and gravitate towards roles that focus on helping, nurturing, and community, hence why they dominate roles where those are highlighted: teachers, administrators, nurses, psychologists, etc. There's never going to be a feeling of "service" or caring when you are writing ad-tech for a FAANG. It's just not going to happen, no matter how many D&I articles you write.
- giantg2 6y ago
  I agree. There has been research on demographics pertaining to college majors and their career opportunities in the context of why some demographics make less money than others after graduating with a 4 year degree. One of the main factors that came up in the interviews was, like you said, the lower earning demographics wanted to have a bigger community impact, but that those jobs simply paid less money (like social workers).
- benjaminjosephw 6y ago
  I once went to a members-only hackerspace that was very open and equitable, at least in theory. To join, you had to get a recommendation from another member and support from one more. They held regular open days and were very welcoming but definitely had an established subculture that didn't include much diversity. Joining really meant being the friend of a member or possibly a friend of a friend. If you were an outsider, you'd really need to show them you were already a part of their sub-culture before they'd consider you. Openness to diversity really meant openness to conforming to an existing culture before joining. Diversity and inclusion is an extremely hard thing to get right or even to agree on what "right" means. I don't think anybody would agree that diversity issues are fixed now and so it can't be "time to turn the conversation to this being OK". As I pointed out in my story above, lots of people can't even see that there is a present and persistent problem despite the good intentions around fixing it. That's exactly why we need to pay more attention to studies like this. You seem keen to switch to a conversation about nature instead of having one about nurture/culture (there were a few historical arguments about race that took a similar approach). Perhaps these two are so intimately bound that it's not helpful to make observations about one in the abstract. Instead, should we not simply focus on those things we can change and try our best to ensure the inequalities of the past aren't reflected in the culture of today? It's not about some set of absolute outcomes, its about the absence of bias - an outcome I'd hope we were all on-board with.

secondcoming 6y ago

> where candidates of underrepresented groups are dissuaded by a lack of pre-existing representation I don't understand this persepective from candidates. The job market must be really good if they can use this as a metric for pursuing a job opportunity. I was the only person from my country when I joined my current employer. It never even crossed my mind that it could be an issue. There was also a post on HN a few months ago that said asking minorities to attend things like recruiting fairs in order to show the diversity of the employer was unfair. It's a chicken and egg situation for employers.

giantg2 6y ago
At my company, you have a leg up if you fit one of the diversity metrics and are applying for a job. I've worked on teams where I'm the only one of my race. I've been on group projects where I'm the only one of my gender. Based on the conversations I've heard on some of the teams I've been on, I have a minority political view and culture/lifestyle as well. It's almost never a problem unless you believe or think it is a problem. There can be rare cases where you get someone who is actively trying to make it a problem, but that tends to be rare. So I don't see it as a chicken or egg issue, I see it as mindset problem.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  By 'chicken and egg' I meant that employers can't really do much about minority candidates not accepting a job offer because there aren't any/enough of that candidate's gender/race already employed.
- BoiledCabbage 6y ago
  Thank you. Your experience in not suffering from discrimination clearly invalidates all of the millions of people who do. It's clearly all in their head. It boggles my mind on people's basic inability to realize that not everyone has the same experiences in life as them. And rather than accept other peoples experiences as valid, it's always the same argument of "I haven't had to deal with this therfore they don't either." Yes they want to be in a situation where they can just ignore it and it won't be an issue, the problem is they don't have that luxury. It's great that you do, but that doesn't change their circumstances.

dalbasal 6y ago

We talk a big game about merit, capability, qualifications and such. Ultimately though, nearly all actual selection processes are are subjective or ilegible... depending on how you see these things. How an interviewer feels about you intuitively matters a lot, maybe the most. Actual tests of skill are usually intuitive as well. An interviewer tries to gauge your skills, but it's rarely designed to be an objective test of skill. If it is an objective test of skill, it's rarely the primary decision driver. Blind auditions enforce a certain kind of objectivity. But, I think we can read into the fact that musicians "audition" while employees "interview." You perform an audition. Blind auditions would be a radical change to hiring/selection. The big advantages/disadvantages of the approach are like those of standardised testing. They measure the easily measurable, and bury everything else.

commandlinefan 6y ago
> an objective test of skill Other industries/careers have exactly this: a professional licensing exam. Most programmers vehemently oppose any sort of standardized testing.
- jdrek1 6y ago
  I'm curious, what do you want to test? The classic "memorize how to bubblesort" interview questions which so many people complain about because they don't show anything except that someone has prepared? Isn't it better to just look over the code of applicants and check if they are aware of general structures etc? Obviously some familiarity with algorithms etc is required and it should be checked if that's there, but with tests you can't really test if someone understands the bigger picture and did not just memorize the answer. I know more than enough people who can solve problems just fine but their code is absolutely atrocious and I'd never hire them. Interviews where one can ask them why they write code the way they do are probably far more effective.

laurieg 6y ago

Here's an article detailing an experiment with voice gender changers in online interviews: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/ https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...

cambalache 6y ago

Get on with the times friend, we need to eliminate blind auditions now.They discriminate: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition...

0-_-0 6y ago
"Blind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy" Damn, how did we get here?
- thu2111 6y ago
  By saying nothing years ago when "diversity" became popular and people started arguing there weren't enough women in computing. I'm as guilty as anyone, in the beginning it all seemed harmless enough. It wasn't, it was based on sexism from day one, and now we see the consequences: proven and massive bias towards women at an institutional level. And good luck trying to fix it.

ralusek 6y ago

California Prop 16 just attempted to overturn bans on racial/gender discrimination when hiring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_... The people advocating for more representation almost invariably are not interested in removing discrimination on arbitrary characteristics, which is a near universally laudable objective, but rather work backwards from the demographic representation they'd like to see. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition... If you think that the diversity and equity initiatives within companies are currently working towards anything resembling a blind hiring process, I get the impression that you're not particularly up to date on the objectives of the modern left.