5 ms·

> interviews are hard in that they have absolutely nothing to do with your day-to-day job I often wonder why this is legal, especially given the legal concept

by defen 6y ago

> interviews are hard in that they have absolutely nothing to do with your day-to-day job I often wonder why this is legal, especially given the legal concept of disparate impact. It's basically just a disguised test of some combo of IQ + free time + willingness to grind dubiously useful information

hannofcart 6y ago
TBH, pointless questions in interviews is not exclusive to programmer interviews. Pretty much any white collar job interview is an intellectual joust at best, and a mild hazing ritual at worst. We actually have it good: you at least know what the broad contours of what we'll be subjected to.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
I think it's only a matter of time until the extreme disparity between the candidates that pass this filter (mostly white and asian men below age 35) vs the applicant pool is used in a legal challenge about whether these tests are really looking for bona fide occupational requirements. Because any software person will tell you these tests are extremely detached from the requirements of the job. It seems like it would be an open and shut case if not for the army of lawyers employed by the likes of Google.
- decafninja 6y ago
  I find this interesting, because I feel every time I visit a Silicon Valley tech company’s office, I’m surprised by how diverse the employees working there are. Yes I know certain groups are still more represented than others. But it’s still more diverse in contrast to the companies I’ve worked at (non-tech old school companies in finance, etc), where the tech employees tend to fall into a much narrower stereotype.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I think such a challenge would fail in any reasonable legal system. HN seems to be talking itself into a belief that these interviews have no relationship to actual programming work, but that's not the case and plenty of experienced engineers would step up to defend algorithmic questions if it ever moved beyond bellyaching in blog posts. Of course the USA is ever more extreme and crazy when it comes to identity politics, so ago knows if the justice system is still reasonable in this regard. But I'd really enjoy watching people argue in front of a judge that working with tree structures is extremely irrelevant to programming.
  - sanderjd 6y ago
    There's some truth to this, but it's also true that when someone with many years of experience and a long history of top performance ratings and promotions has to take a week or two off to study in order to do the test, that it indicates the test is not well targeted to the job.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I often wonder why this is legal, especially given the legal concept of disparate impact “Not yet challenged” and “legal” aren’t exactly the same thing. Straight up IQ tests are probably more defensoble than leetcode for lots of positions for which leetcode interviews are used. But people have heard the popular misrepresentation of Duke Energy (“it’s illegal to use IQ tests”) more than they’ve heard the actual disparate impact rule, and that seems to be true on both sides of thr interview table.

by defen 6y ago

hannofcart 6y ago

TBH, pointless questions in interviews is not exclusive to programmer interviews. Pretty much any white collar job interview is an intellectual joust at best, and a mild hazing ritual at worst. We actually have it good: you at least know what the broad contours of what we'll be subjected to.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

I think it's only a matter of time until the extreme disparity between the candidates that pass this filter (mostly white and asian men below age 35) vs the applicant pool is used in a legal challenge about whether these tests are really looking for bona fide occupational requirements. Because any software person will tell you these tests are extremely detached from the requirements of the job. It seems like it would be an open and shut case if not for the army of lawyers employed by the likes of Google.

decafninja 6y ago
I find this interesting, because I feel every time I visit a Silicon Valley tech company’s office, I’m surprised by how diverse the employees working there are. Yes I know certain groups are still more represented than others. But it’s still more diverse in contrast to the companies I’ve worked at (non-tech old school companies in finance, etc), where the tech employees tend to fall into a much narrower stereotype.
thu2111 6y ago
I think such a challenge would fail in any reasonable legal system. HN seems to be talking itself into a belief that these interviews have no relationship to actual programming work, but that's not the case and plenty of experienced engineers would step up to defend algorithmic questions if it ever moved beyond bellyaching in blog posts. Of course the USA is ever more extreme and crazy when it comes to identity politics, so ago knows if the justice system is still reasonable in this regard. But I'd really enjoy watching people argue in front of a judge that working with tree structures is extremely irrelevant to programming.
- sanderjd 6y ago
  There's some truth to this, but it's also true that when someone with many years of experience and a long history of top performance ratings and promotions has to take a week or two off to study in order to do the test, that it indicates the test is not well targeted to the job.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> I often wonder why this is legal, especially given the legal concept of disparate impact “Not yet challenged” and “legal” aren’t exactly the same thing. Straight up IQ tests are probably more defensoble than leetcode for lots of positions for which leetcode interviews are used. But people have heard the popular misrepresentation of Duke Energy (“it’s illegal to use IQ tests”) more than they’ve heard the actual disparate impact rule, and that seems to be true on both sides of thr interview table.