5 ms·

So are we just going with a base assumption that interviewers can NEVER be trusted with anti-bias training and learning how evaluate people fairly? The examples

So are we just going with a base assumption that interviewers can NEVER be trusted with anti-bias training and learning how evaluate people fairly? The examples mentioned in this comment section are all blatantly intentional biases that people are choosing to use. The amazing part is that all the “standard test eliminates bias” people seem to the most ignorant to where bias helps THEM. Forcing people to study for two months is blatantly discriminatory to age and family status, at a systemic level. While “this white straight guy might explicitly choose to give the other white straight guy an easy question,” is very subjective and intentional on the individual level. Like, employees can always choose to do bad things, in any situation. That’s why we have at-will employment… Is the culture just so broken at these companies that it’s hopeless to expect people NOT to blatantly exploit the system for their friends? Why don’t people get fired for doing that?

Aunche 2y ago
> Forcing people to study for two months is blatantly discriminatory to age and family status, at a systemic level. How is this any less discriminatory than any other assessment based interview where you need to prepare? Non-assessment based interviews end up being vibes based which is much more discriminatory.
- angoragoats 2y ago
  You’ve set up a false dichotomy here; for any given position, there is typically a way to conduct an assessment-based interview that doesn’t require too much preparation for qualified candidates. For example, at my current job, we hire web developers with Rails experience. Our technical interview process consists of either a pair programming session or an async/take-home task (candidate’s choice) which requires the candidate to implement a small feature in a Rails codebase. We do have some room to improve on objective evaluation of the candidate’s performance, but there is a test suite and a rubric which we use to evaluate their work. None of this should require that the candidate study, unless they’re coming in to the interview without Rails experience.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    This may work out great if you happen to have worked on Rails for your last job. However, I doubt that everyone you interview is actually that familiar with Rails but rather is pursuing any sort of opportunity that they can get. In that case, they would actually more time to brush up multiple different tech stacks than simply on algorithms.
    - angoragoats 2y ago
      In that case, the interview question is working as intended. For most of our roles, we want several years of Rails experience, and we are clear about that fact in the job listing. If someone applies without Rails experience, they either didn't read the job listing, or are desperate to find any job. While I empathize with folks in the latter situation, our positions really do require the experience, and the job market isn't so bad right now that a smart candidate should be going a long time without finding something. If you happen to have Rails experience but it was several jobs ago, the task we give you is basic enough that you should be able to Google what you need during the task to refresh your memory fairly quickly. In fact, I did this when I applied, having not worked with Rails in a number of years. Edit: My main point is, even if you technically do have to "study" (really, just Google a few basic Rails concepts) if you're rusty, everything you do is preparing you for the actual job. Studying how to implement a hashmap, or computing the longest palindrome from a string of characters, or whatever other harebrained problem FAANG etc want to ask, is 99% of the time not really helping you prepare for those jobs.
      - emodendroket 2y ago
        This leaves those who don’t wish to limit their candidate pool by previous stack experience with no option.
        angoragoats 2y ago
        No, it doesn’t. I was just giving an example from personal experience. For any given job, I believe there’s a way to design an assessment that allows the candidate to demonstrate skills directly relevant to the job, even if the job doesn’t have requirements that are as specific as “Rails developer with a few years of experience.” I have yet to see a single job listing in several decades in the industry where I think to myself “ah yes, the only way to find qualified candidates for the job would be to ask them to implement a quadtree.”
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >any other assessment based interview where you need to prepare? because most other assessment based interviews are based on what you do on the job, likely stuff you've done at previous jobs as well. Less prep time when you spent thousands of hours already as a career.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>are we just going with a base assumption that interviewers can NEVER be trusted with anti-bias training and learning how evaluate people fairly? Yes. Because interviewing is 1. hard, but no company has proper full time proctors. So "expert interviewers" are a rarity 2. not standardized in the slightest. So your performance varies entirely by the interviewer, their style, and their mood that day. 3. some weird blind test where you hope you studied the right topics. You're not getting the best out of a candidate, you're basically hoping they read your mind and know exactly what you want them to say. >Is the culture just so broken at these companies that it’s hopeless to expect people NOT to blatantly exploit the system for their friends? Why don’t people get fired for doing that? Sure. but that's a universal problem. "It's who you know, not what you know" is advice that has spanned centuries. I can't even blame the modern tech industry for that one. That + the above issues with interviewing mean you're always going to go with a referral over a random applicant.
- bluGill 2y ago
  > 2. not standardized in the slightest. So your performance varies entirely by the interviewer, their style, and their mood that day. That isn't always true. When I interview HR gives me the exact questions I'm allowed to ask. These are vetted both to prevent me from asking something illegal, and also by research to get the type of things useful for interviews. Sometimes it is annoying - you can easially finish the interview with a great score but I have no clue if you can write code or not. However we are carefully trained on how to ask the questions and how to grade them.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    That makes sense for soft questions. But I doubt it's HR devevloping a dynamic programming problem and writing a rubric for how good a score you can give based on a response. I was mostly referring to technical tests, but I understand there are definitely some set of questions you need to ask no matter what. I don't really knock recruiters too much for repeating the usual "are you authorized to work in the US" kinda stuff even though it is the first question on their job application.
- 2y ago
emodendroket 2y ago
> Is the culture just so broken at these companies that it’s hopeless to expect people NOT to blatantly exploit the system for their friends? Why don’t people get fired for doing that? How do you catch them? Unless they’re idiots they’ll write facially plausible explanations of their hire/no-hire decisions.

Aunche 2y ago

> Forcing people to study for two months is blatantly discriminatory to age and family status, at a systemic level. How is this any less discriminatory than any other assessment based interview where you need to prepare? Non-assessment based interviews end up being vibes based which is much more discriminatory.

angoragoats 2y ago
You’ve set up a false dichotomy here; for any given position, there is typically a way to conduct an assessment-based interview that doesn’t require too much preparation for qualified candidates. For example, at my current job, we hire web developers with Rails experience. Our technical interview process consists of either a pair programming session or an async/take-home task (candidate’s choice) which requires the candidate to implement a small feature in a Rails codebase. We do have some room to improve on objective evaluation of the candidate’s performance, but there is a test suite and a rubric which we use to evaluate their work. None of this should require that the candidate study, unless they’re coming in to the interview without Rails experience.
- Aunche 2y ago
  This may work out great if you happen to have worked on Rails for your last job. However, I doubt that everyone you interview is actually that familiar with Rails but rather is pursuing any sort of opportunity that they can get. In that case, they would actually more time to brush up multiple different tech stacks than simply on algorithms.
  - angoragoats 2y ago
    In that case, the interview question is working as intended. For most of our roles, we want several years of Rails experience, and we are clear about that fact in the job listing. If someone applies without Rails experience, they either didn't read the job listing, or are desperate to find any job. While I empathize with folks in the latter situation, our positions really do require the experience, and the job market isn't so bad right now that a smart candidate should be going a long time without finding something. If you happen to have Rails experience but it was several jobs ago, the task we give you is basic enough that you should be able to Google what you need during the task to refresh your memory fairly quickly. In fact, I did this when I applied, having not worked with Rails in a number of years. Edit: My main point is, even if you technically do have to "study" (really, just Google a few basic Rails concepts) if you're rusty, everything you do is preparing you for the actual job. Studying how to implement a hashmap, or computing the longest palindrome from a string of characters, or whatever other harebrained problem FAANG etc want to ask, is 99% of the time not really helping you prepare for those jobs.
    - emodendroket 2y ago
      This leaves those who don’t wish to limit their candidate pool by previous stack experience with no option.
      - angoragoats 2y ago
        No, it doesn’t. I was just giving an example from personal experience. For any given job, I believe there’s a way to design an assessment that allows the candidate to demonstrate skills directly relevant to the job, even if the job doesn’t have requirements that are as specific as “Rails developer with a few years of experience.” I have yet to see a single job listing in several decades in the industry where I think to myself “ah yes, the only way to find qualified candidates for the job would be to ask them to implement a quadtree.”
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>any other assessment based interview where you need to prepare? because most other assessment based interviews are based on what you do on the job, likely stuff you've done at previous jobs as well. Less prep time when you spent thousands of hours already as a career.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>are we just going with a base assumption that interviewers can NEVER be trusted with anti-bias training and learning how evaluate people fairly? Yes. Because interviewing is 1. hard, but no company has proper full time proctors. So "expert interviewers" are a rarity 2. not standardized in the slightest. So your performance varies entirely by the interviewer, their style, and their mood that day. 3. some weird blind test where you hope you studied the right topics. You're not getting the best out of a candidate, you're basically hoping they read your mind and know exactly what you want them to say. >Is the culture just so broken at these companies that it’s hopeless to expect people NOT to blatantly exploit the system for their friends? Why don’t people get fired for doing that? Sure. but that's a universal problem. "It's who you know, not what you know" is advice that has spanned centuries. I can't even blame the modern tech industry for that one. That + the above issues with interviewing mean you're always going to go with a referral over a random applicant.

bluGill 2y ago
> 2. not standardized in the slightest. So your performance varies entirely by the interviewer, their style, and their mood that day. That isn't always true. When I interview HR gives me the exact questions I'm allowed to ask. These are vetted both to prevent me from asking something illegal, and also by research to get the type of things useful for interviews. Sometimes it is annoying - you can easially finish the interview with a great score but I have no clue if you can write code or not. However we are carefully trained on how to ask the questions and how to grade them.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  That makes sense for soft questions. But I doubt it's HR devevloping a dynamic programming problem and writing a rubric for how good a score you can give based on a response. I was mostly referring to technical tests, but I understand there are definitely some set of questions you need to ask no matter what. I don't really knock recruiters too much for repeating the usual "are you authorized to work in the US" kinda stuff even though it is the first question on their job application.
2y ago

emodendroket 2y ago

> Is the culture just so broken at these companies that it’s hopeless to expect people NOT to blatantly exploit the system for their friends? Why don’t people get fired for doing that? How do you catch them? Unless they’re idiots they’ll write facially plausible explanations of their hire/no-hire decisions.