4 ms·

> Companies would routinely screen out resumes from people whose names weren't white enough or who were a bit too feminine Could you provide any details on thi

> Companies would routinely screen out resumes from people whose names weren't white enough or who were a bit too feminine Could you provide any details on this? I've been in tech for more than 20 years and never heard of anything like what you stated.

hedora 4y ago
This still happens today. The easiest way for a computer programmer to see how is to consider the problem of building a non-racially biased hiring algorithm that takes resumes as input. Heuristic one: Pick candidates with first names that are correlated with high performance. This works because certain areas have better math education, and first names help filter on parents’ incomes. It is obviously racist. Eliminate it. Heuristic 2: Look at educational experience. Public schools in the US are horribly racist/classist, so this doesn’t work either. Heuristic 3: Look at work experience. Other employers used heuristic 1 and 2, so this inherits racism from them. Also, older hires are (hopefully) less diverse, assuming the field is improving. Heuristic 4: Objective performance based whiteboard coding. People with imposter syndrome are more likely to choke in high-stress environments. Scratch this. Heuristic 5: “Cultural fit” bonus points to fix up #4. Studies show this selects for things like drinking the same brand alcohol or enjoying the same sports. Strike it too. Heuristic 6: Tailor the interview for the specific candidate. Studies show that women/minorities tend to get “softball” questions like “how did you handle this”, which accidentally puts them on the defensive. Men get alpha male planning questions “how will you grow this company”. I personally prefer #3 graded on a scale from 1-4 with 0.5 increments. I add 0.5 to nervous people’s (women, or english as second language, mostly) scores and truncate the integer. On average, this corrects the bias inherent in the interview setup and in my monkey brain. It pisses off almost everyone I know though. If I controlled recruiters, I’d add women / minority quotas to the candidate stream, but not to the interview phase. I would also track job performance vs. ethnicity/gender, and loosen standards for any group that was outperforming the team.
onion2k 4y ago
Could you provide any details on this? Not really. Nothing that can't easily be dismissed as anecdotal any way. But when lots of people have the same anecdotes you start to ask questions. People did, and now we have DEI initiatives.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Then here's my anecdote to add: I've repeatedly been instructed to favor women and URM applications over white and especially Asian men. I've also had managers that outright told me that racial and gender discrimination favoring the former is the norm, and any opposition to it would get me fired and blacklisted.
Manuel_D 4y ago
More recent studies indicate the opposite, women's resumes are preferred over men at tech companies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644

hedora 4y ago

This still happens today. The easiest way for a computer programmer to see how is to consider the problem of building a non-racially biased hiring algorithm that takes resumes as input. Heuristic one: Pick candidates with first names that are correlated with high performance. This works because certain areas have better math education, and first names help filter on parents’ incomes. It is obviously racist. Eliminate it. Heuristic 2: Look at educational experience. Public schools in the US are horribly racist/classist, so this doesn’t work either. Heuristic 3: Look at work experience. Other employers used heuristic 1 and 2, so this inherits racism from them. Also, older hires are (hopefully) less diverse, assuming the field is improving. Heuristic 4: Objective performance based whiteboard coding. People with imposter syndrome are more likely to choke in high-stress environments. Scratch this. Heuristic 5: “Cultural fit” bonus points to fix up #4. Studies show this selects for things like drinking the same brand alcohol or enjoying the same sports. Strike it too. Heuristic 6: Tailor the interview for the specific candidate. Studies show that women/minorities tend to get “softball” questions like “how did you handle this”, which accidentally puts them on the defensive. Men get alpha male planning questions “how will you grow this company”. I personally prefer #3 graded on a scale from 1-4 with 0.5 increments. I add 0.5 to nervous people’s (women, or english as second language, mostly) scores and truncate the integer. On average, this corrects the bias inherent in the interview setup and in my monkey brain. It pisses off almost everyone I know though. If I controlled recruiters, I’d add women / minority quotas to the candidate stream, but not to the interview phase. I would also track job performance vs. ethnicity/gender, and loosen standards for any group that was outperforming the team.

onion2k 4y ago

Could you provide any details on this? Not really. Nothing that can't easily be dismissed as anecdotal any way. But when lots of people have the same anecdotes you start to ask questions. People did, and now we have DEI initiatives.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Then here's my anecdote to add: I've repeatedly been instructed to favor women and URM applications over white and especially Asian men. I've also had managers that outright told me that racial and gender discrimination favoring the former is the norm, and any opposition to it would get me fired and blacklisted.

Manuel_D 4y ago

More recent studies indicate the opposite, women's resumes are preferred over men at tech companies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644