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I used to work as a programmer in this field. I'm torn, on one side the "science" behind it is based on statistics and is supposed to be validated. Your view

by kemiller2002 6y ago

I used to work as a programmer in this field. I'm torn, on one side the "science" behind it is based on statistics and is supposed to be validated. Your view depends largely on whether you trust the validity of psychometrics. On the other side, someone makes a test wraps some statistics around it and says it's valid and measures what it's supposed can seem a little far fetched.

hogFeast 6y ago
How can you "validate" it? Are companies making all their staff take these tests and then measuring performance? But the people in your company isn't RCT. Are companies basing this on research that is done on random people? Okay, but skills required on most jobs aren't correlated to some "general" intelligence. How do you deal with the fact that IQ appears to be correlated to income? How you deal with the fact that IQ doesn't correlate to success? Seriously, I don't understand how this makes sense to anyone who has studied stats at all (this is taught to 16 year olds where I am). This stuff is totally out of this world crazy. I am reasonably intelligent, I did an IQ test when I was 12 and it was 130...I am extremely bad at relatively basic elements of life and work. I am good at other things but there is no way this can all be measured or, even, quantified. What is more: the main thing determining my ability is still experience, and my skills change significantly over the course of a few years. This isn't how statistics or science is really supposed to work. Slightly obviously, and contrary to what people think, this entrenches inequality. I understand why companies do this: * Hiring is hard. It is hard to get people who are actually good at hiring, there are no courses for this at university, there are no real rules outside of experience. Ironically, companies get over this by doubling down on their weaknesses. * Underemployment is massive. It used to be hard to apply for a job, everyone just shotguns apps out now, and no-one has a job they want. Employers can do whatever: I am in the UK, even for menial tasks like working in the supermarket, they are doing weird, totally unscientific tests. * Everyone is terrified of hiring. Employment lawyers get richer, laws get more complex, and the risk of being villified in the press for an interview gone bad are massive. Ironically, these totally "objective" processes just solidify inequality. They are designed with context, there is no totally abstract notion of intelligence that is relevant to the work place, they are designed to produce stratification in intelligence that likely does not translate to any real-world scenario. These approaches cause the thing they are trying to prevent because the thing has become so terrifying for companies. Just my 2c, but this stuff is, imo, one of the worst modern corporate behaviour. Whether you think it is right or wrong morally, the outcomes are not good...the solution to bad hiring processes isn't psuedoscience. It is: hiring people who can do their job (again, these are linked, I have noticed that some companies are in the death sprial...they have bad processes that hire bad people, when a company does it well they just exist totally outwith this cycle).
vsareto 6y ago
It doesn't seem like science, or it's selectively chosen science. If we must do these tests, I should be able to take one or a few of these and keep that as a record and not have to do them again. But instead, I have to repeat the process for every company that gives them (recently, Berkshire-Hathaway and it had to be done before anyone would even speak about the position). These things rarely test for job-specific skills and are supposedly generalized intelligence tests, so the skills should be widely applicable, and therefore I shouldn't have to repeat this often. Hell, I do less for a drivers license renewal and 2 tons of metal at 60 mph is more lethal than most jobs behind these tests. Typically they've been math, reading comprehension, word association, memory, personality, and abstract/spatial thinking, which, frankly, was already done through high school and college. If the goal was finding signals for successful applicants, they already have had these signals. To me, that says they're less interested in finding out how smart you are, and it's really more of a filtering tool where science is being used to give it more credibility than it deserves. And of course, referring to the article, because it's AI, there's a gray area of accountability that I don't think the legal process has caught up with yet.
- 1980phipsi 6y ago
  I would guess that if you actually dig into it, the reason why each company who does it does them differently is legal.
Bukhmanizer 6y ago
I work with a lot of psychological testing, and IMO it’s absurd to expect these kinds of tests to describe individuals. They’re fine at creating norms and viewing statistical deviations, but There’s a reason why, even in the ideal case, when you have a gold standard diagnostic test, with obvious symptoms, hundreds of thousands of previous cases to look at, few things are diagnosed solely on testing alone. And these tests likely don’t get anywhere close to any of these ideals.

hogFeast 6y ago

How can you "validate" it? Are companies making all their staff take these tests and then measuring performance? But the people in your company isn't RCT. Are companies basing this on research that is done on random people? Okay, but skills required on most jobs aren't correlated to some "general" intelligence. How do you deal with the fact that IQ appears to be correlated to income? How you deal with the fact that IQ doesn't correlate to success? Seriously, I don't understand how this makes sense to anyone who has studied stats at all (this is taught to 16 year olds where I am). This stuff is totally out of this world crazy. I am reasonably intelligent, I did an IQ test when I was 12 and it was 130...I am extremely bad at relatively basic elements of life and work. I am good at other things but there is no way this can all be measured or, even, quantified. What is more: the main thing determining my ability is still experience, and my skills change significantly over the course of a few years. This isn't how statistics or science is really supposed to work. Slightly obviously, and contrary to what people think, this entrenches inequality. I understand why companies do this: * Hiring is hard. It is hard to get people who are actually good at hiring, there are no courses for this at university, there are no real rules outside of experience. Ironically, companies get over this by doubling down on their weaknesses. * Underemployment is massive. It used to be hard to apply for a job, everyone just shotguns apps out now, and no-one has a job they want. Employers can do whatever: I am in the UK, even for menial tasks like working in the supermarket, they are doing weird, totally unscientific tests. * Everyone is terrified of hiring. Employment lawyers get richer, laws get more complex, and the risk of being villified in the press for an interview gone bad are massive. Ironically, these totally "objective" processes just solidify inequality. They are designed with context, there is no totally abstract notion of intelligence that is relevant to the work place, they are designed to produce stratification in intelligence that likely does not translate to any real-world scenario. These approaches cause the thing they are trying to prevent because the thing has become so terrifying for companies. Just my 2c, but this stuff is, imo, one of the worst modern corporate behaviour. Whether you think it is right or wrong morally, the outcomes are not good...the solution to bad hiring processes isn't psuedoscience. It is: hiring people who can do their job (again, these are linked, I have noticed that some companies are in the death sprial...they have bad processes that hire bad people, when a company does it well they just exist totally outwith this cycle).

vsareto 6y ago

It doesn't seem like science, or it's selectively chosen science. If we must do these tests, I should be able to take one or a few of these and keep that as a record and not have to do them again. But instead, I have to repeat the process for every company that gives them (recently, Berkshire-Hathaway and it had to be done before anyone would even speak about the position). These things rarely test for job-specific skills and are supposedly generalized intelligence tests, so the skills should be widely applicable, and therefore I shouldn't have to repeat this often. Hell, I do less for a drivers license renewal and 2 tons of metal at 60 mph is more lethal than most jobs behind these tests. Typically they've been math, reading comprehension, word association, memory, personality, and abstract/spatial thinking, which, frankly, was already done through high school and college. If the goal was finding signals for successful applicants, they already have had these signals. To me, that says they're less interested in finding out how smart you are, and it's really more of a filtering tool where science is being used to give it more credibility than it deserves. And of course, referring to the article, because it's AI, there's a gray area of accountability that I don't think the legal process has caught up with yet.

1980phipsi 6y ago
I would guess that if you actually dig into it, the reason why each company who does it does them differently is legal.

Bukhmanizer 6y ago

I work with a lot of psychological testing, and IMO it’s absurd to expect these kinds of tests to describe individuals. They’re fine at creating norms and viewing statistical deviations, but There’s a reason why, even in the ideal case, when you have a gold standard diagnostic test, with obvious symptoms, hundreds of thousands of previous cases to look at, few things are diagnosed solely on testing alone. And these tests likely don’t get anywhere close to any of these ideals.