4 ms·

Has any improvement been made on your guys approach to application processes? My experience with "Yellow LA" was such utter unprofessional, nepotistic, myopic,

Has any improvement been made on your guys approach to application processes? My experience with "Yellow LA" was such utter unprofessional, nepotistic, myopic, self aggrandizing bullshit. What is the compelling reason to revisit that for allocating commodity electronics?

upwardbound 5y ago
That sucks, I'm sorry to hear that. If it helps, the people reviewing these applications are different than the Yellow people, and are really nice. Also there are more of these glasses to go around than there are Yellow spots. In terms of process, Snap has during the past 12 months made a sustained and well-funded push for racial and gender equality, and that should help a lot to make nepotism impossible in the new process. Here's an important example of Snap's racial equality initiatives: https://www.axios.com/snapchat-cameras-overhaul-racism-6a01b1a0-567e-4660-b19a-7f0a00922374.html https://www.axios.com/snapchat-cameras-overhaul-racism-6a01b... Another example, which is not featured in the press but I am very proud of, is that the computer-generated voice we used in the Spectacles V4 out-of-box experience tutorial is a gender-neutral voice. We did this as the start of a journey of attempting to convince the software industry to stop making A.I. assistants be female so often. Having female A.I. assistants perpetuates the gender wage gap by creating the idea that assistant jobs are a women's role. This is a big issue that needs to be tackled and I'm proud to have helped with it in a small way. If anyone reading this works on Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or Google Assistant, please consider asking your management to adopt gender-neutral voice technology. Here is UNESCO imploring companies to do this: https://en.unesco.org/EQUALS/voice-assistants https://en.unesco.org/EQUALS/voice-assistants "[UNESCO] advises companies and governments to, among other actions: end the practice of making digital assistants female by default; explore the feasibility of developing a neutral machine gender for voice assistants that is neither male nor female"
- digitalsin 5y ago
  Well I'm glad the woke virtue signaling has been built into the price and doesn't cost extra. "The camera is, in fact, racist,.." -Snap engineer Bertrand Saint-Preux Seriously??? Also, I find female voices more soothing. My wife on the other hand prefers male voices in a Scottish accent with her digital assistants. She doesn't now associate male scots with just being an assistant. For crying out loud it's just a damn preference.
  - Seanambers 5y ago
    Ssshh.. You can't say that on HN. You might anger the WOKE mob!
    - tunesmith 5y ago
      I don't think I've ever heard a progressive use "woke" non-ironically. It's like a conservative catch phrase.
      - atatatat 5y ago
        /r/conspiracy 2001-2009
      - Jordrok 5y ago
        Exactly my experience as well. I had occasionally heard the term in passing, but it never was more than a minor blip on my radar until I was having a conversation with my outspoken conservative uncle who asked me if I was "woke". (This was years ago, I want to say around 2015 or so.) I knew vaguely that it was connected to the idea of being aware of social justice issues, but it became clear that what he was really interested in was whether I held the same set of naive, self-righteous, straw-man ideals that are so regularly pilloried in conservative media and labeled as "woke" culture. For a group that claims to hate identity politics, the right sure is quick to slap labels on everyone and put us against each other.
  - upwardbound 5y ago
    Bertrand is black and he's a really good guy who put his heart and soul into the inclusive camera project, of his own initiative, without anyone asking him to do it. What did he do to deserve your mockery?
- sam_4675 5y ago
  This seems very unresponsive and myopic. The issue does not appear to have been diversity but work life balance. What does the gender of the Ai voice have to do with reducing the stress at work ?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- an_opabinia 5y ago
  This reads to me very sincere and good, and I hope the collaborations go well. At the end of the day building an AR hardware product is extremely risky, and takes a very long time, and it's definitely exciting - it's a great contribution to computing.
qlm 5y ago
Snap was also easily my worst job application process ever. Everyone (with one exception) was dismissive and rude and arrogant. I had a interviewer literally laugh in my face when I gave a wrong answer. After the 3-4 hour long series of interviews ended I cried because I felt utterly belittled. I'm not overly sensitive either, I've been grilled and had tough interviews before at FAANG companies with no problem. They were something else. They also totally ghosted (hah) me when I requested feedback on the interview. Truly horrible experience.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  For what it's worth, we had a candidate drop out of our hiring pipeline because they got their dream job at SNAP. The candidate said the interview process was similarly brutal, but hinted that they had secured a large total comp. The candidate called me several months later asking if we had any openings. He and several of his coworkers were spontaneously laid off, presumably before his stock vesting cliff as well. I remember thinking he seemed awfully dejected on the phone call, a stark contrast to how upbeat he had been earlier. As with any company, YMMV. That experience stuck with me, though.
stikit 5y ago
“Yellow LA”?
- upwardbound 5y ago
  Yellow is Snap's incubator for small startups. I don't think that the bad experience the parent commenter had is typical, and from what I've seen of Yellow it seems very well-run. Perhaps the parent might have misinterpreted things to be different than they are and I'm sorry they had a bad experience.
sam_4675 5y ago
Explain Yellow LA and Yellow People and references to diversity below ? Confusing/disturbing.

upwardbound 5y ago

That sucks, I'm sorry to hear that. If it helps, the people reviewing these applications are different than the Yellow people, and are really nice. Also there are more of these glasses to go around than there are Yellow spots. In terms of process, Snap has during the past 12 months made a sustained and well-funded push for racial and gender equality, and that should help a lot to make nepotism impossible in the new process. Here's an important example of Snap's racial equality initiatives: https://www.axios.com/snapchat-cameras-overhaul-racism-6a01b1a0-567e-4660-b19a-7f0a00922374.html https://www.axios.com/snapchat-cameras-overhaul-racism-6a01b... Another example, which is not featured in the press but I am very proud of, is that the computer-generated voice we used in the Spectacles V4 out-of-box experience tutorial is a gender-neutral voice. We did this as the start of a journey of attempting to convince the software industry to stop making A.I. assistants be female so often. Having female A.I. assistants perpetuates the gender wage gap by creating the idea that assistant jobs are a women's role. This is a big issue that needs to be tackled and I'm proud to have helped with it in a small way. If anyone reading this works on Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or Google Assistant, please consider asking your management to adopt gender-neutral voice technology. Here is UNESCO imploring companies to do this: https://en.unesco.org/EQUALS/voice-assistants https://en.unesco.org/EQUALS/voice-assistants "[UNESCO] advises companies and governments to, among other actions: end the practice of making digital assistants female by default; explore the feasibility of developing a neutral machine gender for voice assistants that is neither male nor female"

digitalsin 5y ago
Well I'm glad the woke virtue signaling has been built into the price and doesn't cost extra. "The camera is, in fact, racist,.." -Snap engineer Bertrand Saint-Preux Seriously??? Also, I find female voices more soothing. My wife on the other hand prefers male voices in a Scottish accent with her digital assistants. She doesn't now associate male scots with just being an assistant. For crying out loud it's just a damn preference.
- Seanambers 5y ago
  Ssshh.. You can't say that on HN. You might anger the WOKE mob!
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    I don't think I've ever heard a progressive use "woke" non-ironically. It's like a conservative catch phrase.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      /r/conspiracy 2001-2009
    - Jordrok 5y ago
      Exactly my experience as well. I had occasionally heard the term in passing, but it never was more than a minor blip on my radar until I was having a conversation with my outspoken conservative uncle who asked me if I was "woke". (This was years ago, I want to say around 2015 or so.) I knew vaguely that it was connected to the idea of being aware of social justice issues, but it became clear that what he was really interested in was whether I held the same set of naive, self-righteous, straw-man ideals that are so regularly pilloried in conservative media and labeled as "woke" culture. For a group that claims to hate identity politics, the right sure is quick to slap labels on everyone and put us against each other.
- upwardbound 5y ago
  Bertrand is black and he's a really good guy who put his heart and soul into the inclusive camera project, of his own initiative, without anyone asking him to do it. What did he do to deserve your mockery?
sam_4675 5y ago
This seems very unresponsive and myopic. The issue does not appear to have been diversity but work life balance. What does the gender of the Ai voice have to do with reducing the stress at work ?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
an_opabinia 5y ago
This reads to me very sincere and good, and I hope the collaborations go well. At the end of the day building an AR hardware product is extremely risky, and takes a very long time, and it's definitely exciting - it's a great contribution to computing.

qlm 5y ago

Snap was also easily my worst job application process ever. Everyone (with one exception) was dismissive and rude and arrogant. I had a interviewer literally laugh in my face when I gave a wrong answer. After the 3-4 hour long series of interviews ended I cried because I felt utterly belittled. I'm not overly sensitive either, I've been grilled and had tough interviews before at FAANG companies with no problem. They were something else. They also totally ghosted (hah) me when I requested feedback on the interview. Truly horrible experience.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
For what it's worth, we had a candidate drop out of our hiring pipeline because they got their dream job at SNAP. The candidate said the interview process was similarly brutal, but hinted that they had secured a large total comp. The candidate called me several months later asking if we had any openings. He and several of his coworkers were spontaneously laid off, presumably before his stock vesting cliff as well. I remember thinking he seemed awfully dejected on the phone call, a stark contrast to how upbeat he had been earlier. As with any company, YMMV. That experience stuck with me, though.

stikit 5y ago

“Yellow LA”?

upwardbound 5y ago
Yellow is Snap's incubator for small startups. I don't think that the bad experience the parent commenter had is typical, and from what I've seen of Yellow it seems very well-run. Perhaps the parent might have misinterpreted things to be different than they are and I'm sorry they had a bad experience.

sam_4675 5y ago

Explain Yellow LA and Yellow People and references to diversity below ? Confusing/disturbing.