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>IMHO, it doesn't matter. The goal is to predict who will perform well on the job, and if having a large favorite number does this, it should be incorporated.

>IMHO, it doesn't matter. The goal is to predict who will perform well on the job, and if having a large favorite number does this, it should be incorporated. What if it was skin color, how ethnic your name is, or your gender? Did you know the majority of developers are men? Should we throw all the female applications in the trash because they're statistically not as likely to be developers? Yeesh. Sorry if I sound hostile but... jeez. Correlation is not causation, etc etc.

wiseowise 5y ago
How is skin color, ethical or gender are related to their point? > Should we throw all the female applications in the trash because they're statistically not as likely to be developers? What do you mean?
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  The point is that top level comment talks about something being predictive of job performance. In this case, leetcode. What if skin colour, ethnicity or gender were highly predictive of job performance? It doesn't seem very ethical to judge candidates like this. I believe the GP is not convinced by the "all that matters is that it's predictive of job performance" idea.
  - wiseowise 5y ago
    Anything else aside from whataboutisms?
adamzerner 5y ago
Things like skin color are different from things like leetcode ability. Looking through a veil of ignorance, I definitely would not want hiring decisions to be made based on the former. But looking through the same veil of ignorance, I would be ok with hiring decisions being made based on the latter. Well, actually, thinking about it again now, I'm not so sure. But this now becomes an ethical question. Which is certainly important. But I want to be clear that the ethical question is a different question from the question of what a purely self-interested company should do. To that self-interest question, I think the OP and lots of people argue that the answer is "leetcode-style questions having nothing to do with the job and are thus a bad idea". My claims are that 1) this is the wrong way to think about that self-interest question. The right way is to ask whether it is predictive of job performance. And 2) although I also suspect that leetcode-style questions aren't predictive, it's hard to be confident in that without good data.

wiseowise 5y ago

How is skin color, ethical or gender are related to their point? > Should we throw all the female applications in the trash because they're statistically not as likely to be developers? What do you mean?

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
The point is that top level comment talks about something being predictive of job performance. In this case, leetcode. What if skin colour, ethnicity or gender were highly predictive of job performance? It doesn't seem very ethical to judge candidates like this. I believe the GP is not convinced by the "all that matters is that it's predictive of job performance" idea.
- wiseowise 5y ago
  Anything else aside from whataboutisms?

adamzerner 5y ago

Things like skin color are different from things like leetcode ability. Looking through a veil of ignorance, I definitely would not want hiring decisions to be made based on the former. But looking through the same veil of ignorance, I would be ok with hiring decisions being made based on the latter. Well, actually, thinking about it again now, I'm not so sure. But this now becomes an ethical question. Which is certainly important. But I want to be clear that the ethical question is a different question from the question of what a purely self-interested company should do. To that self-interest question, I think the OP and lots of people argue that the answer is "leetcode-style questions having nothing to do with the job and are thus a bad idea". My claims are that 1) this is the wrong way to think about that self-interest question. The right way is to ask whether it is predictive of job performance. And 2) although I also suspect that leetcode-style questions aren't predictive, it's hard to be confident in that without good data.