You can't fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-without-fixing-the-technical-interview/ <comment><USER4> The big result there is this: _" Poor performances in technical interviewing happen to most people, even people who are generally very strong. However, when we looked at our data, we discovered that after a poor performance, women are 7 times more likely to stop practicing than men."_

On the hiring side, "For the specific case of an online job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job post, 200 will begin the application process, 100 will complete the application, 75 of those 100 resumes will be screened out by either the ATS or a recruiter, 25 resumes will be seen by the hiring manager, 4 to 6 will be invited for an interview, 1 to 3 of them will be invited back for final interview, 1 will be offered that job and 80 percent of those receiving an offer will accept it (Talent Function Group LLC)." This implies that 80% of interviews lead to rejection.

Given that level of rejection, the key here is to get women to know the odds and keep trying.

<comment><USER5> That is a pretty huge statistic, - what also pops out to me is: "stop practicing ". This seems to imply that these technical interviews are skills that you don't really gain on the job. I know that personally would 9 times out of 10 spend time on a cool / beneficial project rather than making time to practice trivia problems.

<comment><USER6> I've had 4 technical interviews in my life and passed all of them. I didn't practice for them, I just have strong foundations in CS. The most criticism of interviews comes from people who can't get past them.

<comment><USER7> You don't "just have strong foundations in CS," you also have strong foundations in interviewing, whether you consciously developed those skills or not. The problem is that those interviewing skills aren't really relevant to the job, so they shouldn't be part of the interview.

I once had a candidate who completely bombed the interview, one of the worst interviews I've ever done, but he had a great portfolio. I took the risk and hired him on instinct and he turned out to be an amazing frontend developer who just doesn't do well when he's on the spot standing in front of someone. Years later I recommended him to someone else who was hiring, with the caveat that "he's going to bomb the interview," which he did. The guy called me back and said, "I can't hire someone who did that badly on the interview" and I told him, "do it, you won't regret it, I promise you." He did make the hire, and it predictably went great.

Interviews work well for salespeople because interview skills and sales skills overlap a lot. Interviews don't work as well for engineers because interview skills and engineering skills overlap very little. It's just a large injection of noise into the hiring process.

<comment><USER8> I've always thought that if I started my own company, I probably wouldn't even interview people. I'd search specifically for the people I'm interested in, bring them in for a meeting just to make sure they aren't crazy, and then hire immediately. If someone sent me an application wanting to be hired, I would give them a work sample to be completed in one week and hire on the basis of their performance on that.

<comment><USER7> What I'd actually prefer to do is actually pay someone to do real work for the company, like an actually useful task, but there are lot of complications with that. There are costs to "hiring" someone even for a small task (Tax ID number, 1099, etc.) and there are risks about exposing your codebase to interviewees who are not bound by proprietary information agreements and invention assignment agreements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Indians of Asian descent are a minority in the US, but well represented in Software Engineering. Further, there are plenty more Indian, Chinese, and Russian female engineers, than there are American (of european, aka White) female engineers.

I am less inclined to believe there is systemic bias against women, and minorities, and instead a culture difference between groups who are well represented in engineering, and groups which are not.

<comment><USER10> That's because Indian (particularly) men consider engineering to be a safe choice (source: am Indian). Anecdotally, speaking to women (esp American), they find engineering to be categorically unsafe from a career progress perspective. You may not 'see' the bias, but they definitely feel it. The effect is measurable.

I am no expert, maybe it has something to do with maternity leave regimes or the interviews (like OP mentions)?

<comment> mark-r My wife worked as a programmer for a while. There were two aspects that drove her out. First was the cliquey nature of the guys she worked with, she just felt like she didn't fit in. Second was the rate of change, just as she felt like she mastered something the new flavor of the month would take hold and she had to start over.

<comment><USER11> What is she doing instead now?

<comment> mark-r When our first child was born she decided to take a sideline sales business and make it full time, working from home. She does very well, in her peak year she made more than I did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" We believe that technical interviewing is a broken process for everyone but that the flaws within the system hit underrepresented groups the hardest… because they haven't had the chance to internalize just how much of technical interviewing is a numbers game."_

I understand that people here hate technical interviews, but are we going to skip over the fact that the whole premise of this article is that the technical interview is awful for everybody, but minorities are more affected, because their poor little brains can't figure that out? It's ridiculous that you'd ever even propose that some "VP of Diversity and Inclusion" has anything to do with hiring of engineers. Why is this garbage being given any thought on HN is baffling to me.

<comment><USER13> Someone gets it. Funny how people who are so "moral", actually end up being incredibly immoral and biased.

Here's a question: if there's such a demand for solutions that solve a problem that the "majority" can't see, why don't women and minorities just start their own companies to solve those problems and make piles of $$$?

Reality check: building a good team is a struggle for every race, culture, gender, and individual in every industry on the planet. I get it though, it's a lot easier to mooch off of actual engineers who build solutions and then act like they had some significant impact as the "Director of Diversity".

Keep riding those coat-tails, maybe one day you will invent something on your own that isn't pseudo-scientific bullshit and actually improves people's lives. Go on, I DARE you to run your own startup and actually try to hire good help. You'll quickly find you have no time for such nonsense and only care about getting $*!@& done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is because the technical interview has completely degenerated into an arms race. It started with good intentions. It used to be just, here's a problem, try to solve it and let's discuss. And at first it was fine. But then knowing Big-O, algorithm, data structure, etc. became a way to "show off" and impress the interviewer. So everyone started to focus on those to impress the interviewer. Then the interviewers noticed and started to state they would only be impressed by more and more obscure algorithms and data structures.

And then the real downward spiral began with the publication of Cracking the Coding Interview. More books were published, a whole industry to support this. Then came the sites like leetcode and HackerRank. Now there's a lot of money supporting and pushing for continuing this stupid process. And the arms race just keeps getting worse and worse. The interviewers expect more and more obscure algorithms and data structures and justify it with "must avoid false positives". This just increases the study time for candidates and they're willing to spend time and money to do it. And the tech interview industry (all the books and sites) are happy to push this arms race since it's more money for them. Now they have enough money to go openly defend the tech interview as the "best practice".

It's not even enough to get the right answer now. You have to do it fast enough or you fail. And now they care about syntax on a whiteboard. None of this used to be true. It all started as a way to see how you approach a problem and discussing it. No expectations that you would correctly get Algorithm ABC and Data Structure XYZ. No expectation that the syntax is correct, pseudo code was ok. No expectation even on a complete working solution, the point was just to see if you can reason about the problem.

All that is gone, replaced by the tech interview arms race. Now it's just a massive speed pattern matching contest to see if you've studied enough to hopefully cover the obscure problem the interviewer will pick and if you can correctly pattern match in time based on the hundreds of questions you did on leetcode. Completely useless and against the original intent of tech interviews.

<comment><USER15> I postulate that false negatives are far more expensive, in a constricted talent pool. We keep seeing the adage that false positives are expensive but honestly if one cannot spot a false positive within 30 days of engagement with that person, then the hiring person should really contemplate their expertise in the field.

I saw a really good write up (I think on here) where they basically did a initial "are you an idiot?" round of interviews and then contracted every person that they thought might be a viable (not good just viable) candidate with a small piece of software for 2 weeks. This amounted to 3 candidates IIRC the TL;DR was that the person they thought was least likely to perform knocked their socks off. The one that crushed the interview asked for more time and then just fell of the radar. The technical code test and trick question interview is a tired fingerprint of the industry. Honestly if one cannot spot technical talent by having a 30 minute conversation with a person, they may want to reassess where they think they are in their own technical and managerial skills, because they may want to reflect the possibility that they are engaging in a weiner waving contest as opposed to an interview, to stroke their own ego.

<comment><USER16> Imagine that you passed your dream job interview, you pack you things and move to another state! 30 days into the new job you get the news, you are fired for being a low performer! You go online and post about your experiences, how horrible this company is for not looking out for their employees. You get a lot of responses saying that they have experiences the same, a large part of new hires are fired within the first month at this company!

Now tell me, do you think that said company will get many quality applicants in the future? At least I prefer harsh interviews and then being relatively safe compared to the reverse.

<comment><USER15> I did not go into deep detail about the article because I did not want to misquote it but my understanding was that they sent the prospects a VM with the entire dev environment running. Gave them a simple but real task that they needed accomplished and remote contracted them to complete that task (with compensation). They (the prospective developer) were given a full software spec, and access to the development team. They did track the time the team spent with the developer and did review the returned code. At worst it was a side gig with some income for the two week. IIRC 9K to each candidate whether completed or not. The way the process was structured was so that there was little risk to the applicant. The whole experiment was to expose their companies bias in the hiring process and the summation was they found it eye opening.

<comment><USER17> People keep talking about doing these "trial" periods but the people I want to hire are the type of people who have enough options that they wouldn't agree to do some two week trial period when they have four other companies offering them a full time job with no strings attached.

I wish I could do paid trial periods for everyone, I just think this will filter out far more people than having a restrictive interview process that works specifically to filter out false positives.

So with a paid trial you will generally filter out the best people who have other options while a more restrictive interview process would generally filter out the worst people who couldn't make it past a difficult Skype interview and a difficult onsite two hour pair coding session.

<comment><USER15> The problem is as the company in the article articulated, they thought they where filtering for the best but found out that they where not. The guy that they all agreed would be the best selection submitted a ball of code that was not cohesive and incomplete. The one who actually made it thru was the lowest on their list. IIRC their intent was to all three if they submitted good work.

The whole intent of their experiment was to show them exactly what we are talking about, you are selecting people based on their sales skills not based on their technical skills. 99% of the time people don't develop while someone is watching them over Skype or pair coding where they know they are being graded. They develop at their machine and if they get stuck they know they can turn to a close confident and ask them a question without being graded on it. The point is how well I perform under a microscope is a huge factor in your decision making process and it is not normal. Therefore it acts a a huge bias filter and one that does not amount to a hill of beans in every day development.

I am not saying that what the company in the article did is a workable or salable solution to hiring, but I am saying that it exposes what many of us, with multiple decades in the industry have been saying and that is hiring is broken and people in the industry are very bad at hiring because they let all kinds of bias in. One is salesmanship as highlighted in the article, the best salesman usually gets the job. Another big one is developer ego and sadly it is a very real thing in our industry. I will see if I can dig up the article.

<comment><USER17> From my perspective there aren't any other methods that are less arbitrary than several interview coding sessions.

Doing no coding sessions are more arbitrary because it is far easier to BS a non coding interview than it is to BS a coding interview. Doing paid trials are more arbitrary because you are excluding anyone who can't devote two weeks of their life to a trial that may not amount to anything.

So from my perspective intensive coding sessions, although far from perfect, are the best system we have, so our effort should be placed on recognizing the weaknesses they present and working to construct your interview in a way to minimize them.

For us we very proactively (and without judgment) give advice throughout the coding process - if it is clear someone is stuck on something small or easily Google-able we will simply tell them so they can move on to actually solving the problem. If they are stuck on something bigger, we will talk through the problem with them in a way that would make certain approaches apparent to someone who is a halfway decent programmer.

I am not saying that any of the above is perfect, but I think trying to construct a programming interview that tries as hard as possible to mitigate unimportant factors that could lower interview performance (such as nervousness or getting stuck on something simple and panicking) is a better approach than any other form of vetting I've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Technical interviews are moving in the direction of more concreteness_

Herein lies the scam. (Disclaimer: It's not on purpose, they're lying to themselves too)

Just because you have a process to produce a "concrete" result, that doesn't mean it doesn't stand on a house of cards.

I'd have to sit and have a think to make a clearer explanation than by analogy, so here's an analogy. This reminds me of the way people with an insufficient anti-authoritarian streak are more willing to question a person's on the spot decision than a decision from systematic, bureaucracy or law.

Just because more time and process has gone into establishing them, doesn't necessitate that the decisions are any better founded than what some rando pulls out of their ass.

Because, at the end of the day, taking the technical portion of the interview itself too seriously is the real fraud. There is exactly one way to tell how well someone will be able to contribute to our team, with our technologies, in our environment after a few weeks of getting up to speed. And that's to hire them.

The technical portion of the interview isn't useful beyond a low-bar rule-out criteria. After that, the technical portion turns back towards the softer skills of how the interviewee handles hitting a wall at problem solving in a field where nobody knows everything.

</comment><comment><USER19> Let. us. fire. people.

The current environment in tech is as follow: Someone goes through an interview process. Depending on the result, they get brought in or not. If they are brought in, they accept an offer. Usually it will contain some kind of language about blah blah trial period 3 months blah blah, sometimes in precise terminology, sometimes vaguely.

If someone is absolutely useless right off the bat, immediately everyone's like "but but we need to coach them, they just started, they'll get better". If after 3 months they're still useless, then it's "Blah blah it's the company's responsibility to keep them around and coach them because we hired them and we failed at interview".

That can only happen so many times (and can ruin teams or entire companies) before you start getting downright paranoid when interviewing. Maybe you have a lot of false positive and false negative, but if your interview process is Google-like enough, on average you'll turn out okay-ish (source: Google/Facebook/Netflix/whatever other company with such an interview process. They have some pretty strong teams in there). But since it's so hard to get rid of a bad apple, you can't take risks (Im being told Netflix is good at getting rid of people).

Change the game a bit: make it easy to get rid of bad apples early on. You know the interview process is bad anyway. Give people a chance. If they're actually competent, they have nothing to worry about. They'll get hired, prove their worth, and stick around. If they're bad, well, bye bye. Then we no longer have to rely on excruciatingly stupid interview processes.

A lot of people think this is inhumane/heartless. That big evil corporations MUST provide people with jobs and must keep them no matter how bad they are because they have bills to pay. I say its heartless to not give people a chance to prove themselves (or to fail while at least trying).

<comment><USER20> It already happens, it's called contracting. And the results are terrible because no one gives a fuck about quality at a job the might not have in 3 months.

<comment><USER21> Small caveat - I'd say contract-to-hire is what many places are implementing if they actually want the headcount instead of just a budget expenditure. The problem is that you end up with worse candidates because most people who are really good don't want the uncertainty and stigma of a contract position if they can get a full-time one elsewhere.

<comment><USER22> I've found the supposed certainty of perm work to be something of an illusion whereas the extra money in contracting is pretty real.

<comment><USER21> Fair point, but in my experience the extra money is basically a wash when you factor in healthcare costs (I'm in the US), self-employment taxes, lack of employer-matched 401k, unpaid vacation, and the realistic utilization rate you can expect averaged out over several years. If you can keep your rate and utilization up you can definitely do better contracting, but a lot of people prefer the perm setup.

<comment><USER22> I'm in UK so healthcare isn't an issue.

The pension contributions and paid vacation is nice but it doesn't make up for the difference in income. Also contracting means that you can essentially decide the holiday/income ratio yourself.

One of the main benefits for me is that I usually get bored/sick of working at particular companies after an extended duration (the work can get repetitive). Contracting means you can job hop, gain a wider variety of experience and take extended holidays without stigma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Notice that according to the very figures cited by the article and released by Google and Facebook, as well as other uncited figures released by Yahoo, Amazon, and LinkedIn, whites are actually _underrepresented_ with respect to the general population of white Americans, not overrepresented, and minorities collectively are therefore actually _overrepresented_ , not underrepresented. This is primarily due to Asians being so overrepresented with respect to the general population of Asian Americans, by as much as a factor of ten.

Yet amazingly, the charges that tech "lacks diversity," is "too white," or even "overwhelmingly white"[1][2][3] haven't let up even as the hard data refuting them has become available, and may even have intensified. In fact, many of these critics, like the author of the linked article, actually attempt to use the very data that refutes their point to somehow support it--an indication, perhaps, of the "post-fact" era leftists so often complain we're now living in.

Little wonder is it then that Trump's white supporters despise journalists so much, considering how deeply so many journalists seem to despise white Americans.

1) [http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/29/technology/google-white- male...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/29/technology/google-white- males/index.html)

2) [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/02/googles-s...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/02/googles- staff-worldwide-still-overwhelmingly-white-and-asian-men)

3) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2015/05/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2015/05/21/why-we-should-diversify-the-overwhelming-white-u-s- teaching-force-and-how/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I agree that tech interviews are terrible, and you cannot do any sort of self- reflection on them (especially if they are these q/a and or puzzle types where they don't give you answers or feedback of what you are looking for, despite being reasonably confident you answered correctly -- even after having requested the feedback -- I had this experience at GitLab)

> We believe that technical interviewing is a broken process for everyone but > that the flaws within the system hit underrepresented groups the hardest… > because they haven't had the chance to internalize just how much of > technical interviewing is a numbers game

I just don't understand this reasoning. Can someone explain differently?

I also agree with a later point -- no firm should have a "VP of Diversity and Inclusivity" but for different reasons.

<comment><USER25> I think the next couple sentences explain it well:

> It takes a lot of interviews to get used to the process and the format and > to understand that the stuff you do in technical interviews isn't actually > the stuff you do at work every day. And it takes people in your social > circle all going through the same experience, screwing up interviews here > and there, and getting back on the horse to realize that poor performance in > one interview isn't predictive of whether you'll be a good engineer.

If you don't have friends in the industry and you don't have the time and money to go interview at 10 different places, 1 or 2 failed algorithms interviews can be very discouraging and might convince you that you're not cut out for this industry. In fact the "Poor performances hit marginalized groups the hardest" section has actual data showing that women are much more likely to stop trying after 1 or 2 failed interviews.

<comment><USER24> But this can be literally true for anyone. I tried re-reading it again and again and I am not seeing the distinction. Different people have different reactions to things. In other fields, it's not uncommon for people to submit resumes to 10, 15, even 20 firms and go through 5 to 10 interviews before landing their first "real" job. I think we forget how good we have it in tech relative to the rest of the economy. It's either that, or work for shit wages and awful benefits. But we don't hear about the diversity problem for a position like, an "analyst" for example. This lends me to believe it really is a pipeline issue.

<comment><USER25> Can you think of a different explanation for why women quit so much earlier than men?

<comment><USER24> See my edit, I said I think I agree with the premise the author was trying to rebute -- maybe it actually is a pipeline issue. (Side note, I don't think this article is specifically about women, but underrepresented groups in general: women, african americans, hispanics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I consider myself a competent developer, but I have no academic background as I am self-taught. While I have had a steady supply of work, because of this, I will most likely never get to work for a big company like Microsoft, Google or Facebook because I wouldn't pass their technical interview. I lack the understanding of core computer science principles and I am okay with admitting that, I don't think it makes me a bad developer or inferior to my peers who have computer science degrees. Most developers I know envy the fact I have no student debt and said if they could do it over again, they would go the self- taught route.

Technical interviews are broken because they favour developers fresh out of college or with academic backgrounds. Not every development task is a coding problem or puzzle, rarely do you ever need to write your own algorithm implementation in real world situations. The times you do, most developers (even the intelligent ones) will Google. My problem solving ability is decent enough I am at a senior level and always complete what is asked of me, but give me a code golf/coding puzzle and unrealistic constraints like only being able to solve it on a whiteboard? I will fail. Ask me to solve problems on sheets of paper as quick as possible? I will fail.

Give me a laptop, an IDE and ask me to build something. Better yet, sit me down with one of the developers in your team, give me a simple Jira task and ask me to help solve it pair-programming style. I would rather hire a developer who can get things done opposed to being able to solve a non-real world programming puzzle I found on Google. Interviews seem to forgo the highly acknowledged fact that developers rely on Google/StackOverflow than companies care to admit.

Problem solving is one percentage of the hiring equation, being a great developer also requires patience, cooperation, understanding and communication. I think above anything else, a developer who is a good communicator is a dream combination. I would take communication skills over coding puzzle solving skills any day of the week.

Even the much beloved FizzBuzz test is a scam. Any developer can memorize a FizzBuzz implementation 10 minutes prior to the interview. I never understood how this was a valid metric for determining suitability of a candidate, when candidates have come to expect a FizzBuzz test coming up. Maybe it worked in 1999, but not in 2016.

<comment><USER27> I'm one of the people who ask those algorithm/white board questions. I've read a lot criticism on this topic, here're my reasons to stil keep asking these questions:

1) Working on algorithm problem requires very little in common between interviewer and interviewee. I'm C++/C#, I won't be able to give Ruby dev a real world task and evaluate it properly. Algo/data structure problems are universal and looks similar in any language. In my practice I completely failed to make any conclusions by talking about previous experience. It was not clear to me what person actually did vs what was already on the project, may as well just fixed couple UI bugs on the complex project. This part might be might personal failure as interviewer, but it was it is, and I've seen enough developers with years of experience who barely code. So unfortunately having great resume doesn't prove anything.

2) Everyone knows that big tech companies ask these questions. Knowing that you didn't take to prepare, says one of two things to me: you don't find it interesting topic/usefull or you don't have enough grit to go thru that. When I prepared for the interview I went thru two algo books, it took some time but it was easy for me, I did enjoy the learning part, yes it's not something I use every day. But learning things is a trait of good developer, knowing fundamentals if part of that. Some folks found it useless, but since it's known fact that's being asked on interiewes, motivated developer would spend time and learn it. Over the years at work, we have to learn things that are not interesting and that I'd rather choose not to know at all, same as algorithms to some people. If you can't make yourself learn algorithms to pass interview, likely you wont learn things for the work too.

<comment><USER28> Your first point suggests these questions have some value for you in identifying people's skills. Fair enough.

Your second argument admits that this is basically a hazing ritual. Of course you will have to learn some things you don't intrinsically care about in the course of your work. The difference is, that isn't part of a process that we intentionally designed to be that way. Admitting that your hiring process requires useless knowledge that people just have to learn to get through the process means you admit your process doesn't measure what matters and is just a hazing ritual. You're putting up hoops just to see who will jump through them.

<comment><USER27> You can't make conclusion just from second argument alone. It's not hazing ritual because my first point. But I also think knowing them is useful, but I see a lot of people arguing it not needed at all. So what I tried to say in second, that regardless of what one thinks on usefulness of Algo knowledge,there's no excuse to ignore algorithm and expect to pass interviews.

<comment><USER28> If you think it's not necessary for the job but it's necessary for the interview, then at least we can agree the interview process isn't so great.

Of course, knowing how to play the system is part of getting a job, but we can still point out that the system is broken. After all, these are systems we set up ourselves.

<comment><USER27> Agree process isn't great, if I knew better practical approach I'd use it instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Honestly, the more I read about all those "diversity initiatives", "outreach campaigns" and "pushes to increase H1B" caps - the more I wonder about the intent and motivation of the people pulling the strings and funding the groups fighting so hard to further those causes. My comment is only tangentially related to hiring practices.

Maybe age has turned me into a cynic, you can never know for sure, but this seriously starts to look like an organized campaign to 1/ increase the supply of engineers in the valley 2/ increase competition for access to a limited supply of jobs 3/ maintain engineers as a inexpensive, replaceable and unorganized workforce (in the face of increasing demand).

To address the diversity numbers of Facebook, I wonder what are they exactly suggesting when they mean that it is not "diverse"? At the risk of sounding like a white supremacist (I am Vietnamese) that very much sounds like a code word for "too many white people" or "too many asians". To clear that out and maybe find out that I am mistaken, I want to know with what kind of demographic breakdown would proponents of diversity be pleased. Should it follow the US racial distribution? Or have equal proportions of people from each race?

Finally, I think that a breakdown according to class would be much more interesting than this document. Since race is only skin deep, I do believe that having people from all walks of life would be a better optima than having people of different colors (that are all upper middle class).

<comment><USER30> Expanding the hiring pool is valuable to these companies. Many companies also feel like they'll perform better with a more diverse group of employees. I sure felt like that about my company.

They probably _also_ feel like it's right. This is one of those social problems where both the business need and moral need match up.

My guess is that people who want racial diversity want class diversity, diversity of thought, cultural diversity, etc. These are not exclusive problems. In fact, if we got to a world state where race played no part in someone's job opportunities, I expect it would be easier to tackle the others.

<comment><USER31> I feel the same way. I want teams that are diverse and inclusive, because I think that's how you get both the best business results and the best society.

One good historical example is labor force inclusion of women. For centuries, women were excluded from most professions. Circa 1970, women got only 10% of law and medicine degrees. They hit parity in the mid-aughts. Are doctors or lawyers making less? No. The expanded pool of applicants means as a society we're getting either more or better doctors and lawyers, so as a society we're wealthier. And things are undeniably fairer. Economic and social incentives coincide.

<comment><USER32> > because I think that's how you get both the best business results

I don't think this has ever been proven, especially not in a field as technical as software engineering.

<comment><USER31> Very few human practices in software engineering have been proven to any level of rigor. But still, you have to make choices. There is usually no neutral position. You have to pick a particular language, a particular platform, a particular process, a particular team.

For me, the theory's pretty clear. The hard part about software is not the typing; it's the thinking. It's my experience that thought monocultures are less effective, so I always hire for diversity along many axes. I like having somebody with ops experience. Somebody else who loves the details of front-end work. Somebody else who has wrestled with deep optimizations. Young and old, functional and OO, careful and bold, etc, etc. I take as much variety as I can get, because the more diversity you have, the more problems you can spot and solve quickly.

An especially hard part about software is thinking about users. Good developers are always imagining the effect their choices have on the people they serve. But our imagination is limited by our experiences. Our empathy comes most easily for people like the ones we know. The more diverse your team, the more likely you are to spot and solve human problems.

So sure, it's not scientifically proven to be optimum. But the default isn't either. If we only question the things that seem novel, that's just a fancy way of arguing for a sort of generic orthodoxy.

<comment><USER32> I agree that diversity in software perspectives/technologies/experiences is important. However I don't see how racial or gender diversity plays a role in that.

<comment><USER31> Ok. I believe you don't see it. Many people don't. How can I help you with that?

<comment><USER32> You didn't give any examples of it. I completely agree with the 2nd paragraph about technological/software diversity advantages.

<comment><USER31> I'm glad to try. What sort of example would you find helpful?

<comment><USER31> Looks like you've lost interest. If you get curious again, feel free to email me; I'm glad to talk further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [Disclaimer: I run [http://Interviewkickstart.com](http://Interviewkickstart.com)]

Thanks Aline. Excellent article, as always.

Not that any interview process is perfect, but another reason why the current process is not going away, is sheer _convenience_ , especially for the fast growing core tech companies that don't have a pipeline problem. When you have hundreds of people applying for any open role, and you're under pressure to deliver products quarter after quarter, your incentive is to stick to a process that gives reasonable results, fast enough.

e.g. Google has estimated 40K engineers. With a 10 year average time on job (it's probably less), G is hiring 40K engineers every 10 years just to sustain itself. That's a massive operation and the incentive of any company at that scale, is to design a multi-layer, fast process. They are looking for 40K engineers that pass that process, not necessarily 40k best engineers from their pipeline.

Considering diversity with that little attention span is possible, but very hard to do. And like you said, technology is possibly the only way diversity hiring can be encouraged/enforced.

<comment><USER34> Actually, I remember reading that Google and Amazon engineers have an average time on the job of about 1 year. It seems most people just want to work there so they can put it on their resume, or maybe once they pass the interview process, they are confronted with the reality that not all jobs there are so glamorous--e.g. people probably imagine they'd be working side by side with Jeff Dean and his likes, but then they actually end up maintaining some internal system that keeps track of the stock in the Google cafeterias. I wonder if after ten years or so, a short stint at Google or one of the other big five would become a requirement to be taken seriously in the field...

<comment><USER35> Without a doubt that stat is because these companies have grown so fast. It's not that people leave after a year, it's that they have added tons of engineers in the last year (and have done so repeatedly for the last few years).

I worked at Google. Turnover was really low. 10 year average stay doesn't sound unreasonable for me if you select only the employees that have left.

<comment><USER34> Maybe I misunderstand the metric, but isn't turnout calculated as the average tenure of people who leave? If the companies just add more engineers, this shouldn't affect the metric (unless you also count the tenure of people who are actually still working there, but that doesn't sound like a good way to estimate churn rate...)

If that's the case, it seems there is quite a bit of confusion about this: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-07-29/why- are-g...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-07-29/why-are-google- employees-so-disloyal-)

<comment><USER35> You didn't quote turnover figures, you quoted average time on the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the conversation about diversity in tech often overlooks a key metric, which is the percentage of tech companies that are founded by and/or employ a majority of minorities.

For example, if its accurate to say that over 88% of US tech companies are founded by white people and employ mostly white people, then a diversity issue exists in the number of tech companies founded by black people and employing mostly black people.

As a black american, it's interesting that the approach to tech diversity so often revolves around the concept of hiring minorities to help fulfil the goals of existing (mostly white) companies.

An approach that feels more altruistic to me would be to empower minorities to build their own tech companies to solve their own types of problems, and hire people who are a good 'culture fit.'

Instead of diversifying employees, diversify the companies and let them naturally attract diverse employees.

<comment><USER37> Yeh, I'm not sure that's a great idea. Companies fail a LOT - <USER2> especially. We look at the successes and think "this is the way to do it", but I wonder if the failures would be felt most starkly by the poor. If Zuckerberg failed at FaceBook, he was still Ivy league educated from a middle class family. That safety net really helps take that risk.

I'm not saying stop people doing it, but I'm not sure encouraging more high risk taking amongst the most vulnerable is wise.

But I agree with your central idea - diversity of options, beacuse diversity, to me, is not forcing every environment to be as diverse as possible, it is about a diversity in the cultural landscape. As a reductio ad absurdum analogy, diversity isn't forcing mosques to server beer and bacon and forcing pubs to have alcohol and pig free sections, it is having a world where there are both Mosques and pubs, and we can all choose what we prefer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interviews in general have a lot of problems: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gv/statistical_prediction_rules_out...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gv/statistical_prediction_rules_outperform_expert/)

>Unstructured interviews reliably degrade the decisions of gatekeepers (e.g. hiring and admissions officers, parole boards, etc.). Gatekeepers (and SPRs) make better decisions on the basis of dossiers alone than on the basis of dossiers and unstructured interviews. (Bloom and Brundage 1947, DeVaul et. al. 1957, Oskamp 1965, Milstein et. al. 1981; Hunter & Hunter 1984; Wiesner & Cronshaw 1988). If you're hiring, you're probably better off not doing interviews.

The "make candidate solve puzzles" technical interview sounds like a very poorly designed IQ test. Just replacing it with more objective standardized IQ tests would help a lot.

<comment><USER39> The link you cited is talking specifically about "unstructured interviews", the sort where you're judged based on handshake firmness and questions like "What is your greatest weakness?" It shouldn't be too surprising that these are poor predictors of job performance.

Programming technical interviews are not supposed to be like that. They're supposed to be some mixture of a relevant-ish skills test and a plausibly- deniable IQ test. (One constraint here is that anything which is _overtly_ an IQ test will make the company's lawyers get twitchy and start nervously trying to remember the details of the Supreme Court decision in _Griggs v. Duke Power Co._ )

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why diversity is needed to be fixed in the first place? Pizza business is dominated by italians and kebap by turkish, and nobody tries to fix diversity issues in those industries. Somehow every industry finds its own best people and the balance, I don't understand the need of fixing it. Nursery is dominated by women and men are underpresented there, should we also fix it?

<comment><USER41> Tech is hip, trendy and a desirable sector now - unlike, say, logging or mining. Some people feel like they are not only owed a seat at the table, but that there was a grand conspiracy in keeping them out of a field that not long ago only a certain group of people was interested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of- required...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of-required- ability-act-as-a-proxy-for-actual-required-ability-in-explaining-the-gender- gap/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I've seen a number of tech interviews where the interviewer has played down candidates that were better than them (consciously or not). I've also been a interviewee many times and sensed a one-upmanship from the interviewer(s), and subsequently avoid those companies. I could easily see this also being another factor if someone isn't in tune with the norms of the industry to call BS and walk.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's more than fixing the technical interview process. Bottom line is western culture does not raise daughters to succeed in tech. From my own experiences 80% of the chemists I've worked with (including leadership) are female - <USER3> it's not a total failure in STEM education.

<comment><USER45> The culture around software development is unfortunately very misogynistic and/or off-putting and exclusionary toward women, so they find themselves pushed away from the dev education/career track from an early age and onward. It wasn't always this way, it used to be that women made up a larger percentage of software engineers, but the culture changed over time. Not that dudes in tech are willing to accept this, for them everything about the culture is part of its charm, and the industry is a perfect meritocracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We believe that technical interviewing is a broken process for everyone but > that the flaws within the system hit underrepresented groups the hardest…

Turns out, people who are bad at technical interviews, are underrepresented at companies who use technical interviews to hire employees.

<comment><USER46> This is their point exactly.

"Being good at technical interviews" is not the same thing as "being a good programmer". You can be bad at interviews but good at programming. You can be good at interviews but bad at programming. Turns out that there's a correlation between the former set and certain demographics, because of unconscious biases in the interview process.

<comment><USER47> Doesn't have to be the same thing, it just has to be correlated enough.

<comment><USER46> Of course it doesn't. I talk about this in my other comment ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12859833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12859833)), many companies are okay with false negatives. And false negatives are okay. Sad, but okay.

However, if your metric for hiring is _also_ correlated with favoring a particular demographic, you shouldn't be using it. False negatives are not okay when you disproportionately target one group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've been in software tech for nearly 30 years. Never had a "technical" interview, puzzle solving, or anything like that. I would not take a job that screened candidates that way.

If references and credentials and track record aren't enough, I would look elsewhere.

<comment><USER49> Flip side -- I view it as a strong negative if a company has what I consider a weak interview or vetting process.

The interview doesn't have to be all whiteboard coding but I want to at least feel like the person got some grasp of my technical ability. If the entire thing is basically a "personality interview" I start to think that it is very possible technically weak people may have been able to schmooze their way into a place in the company and I'd prefer to not work with a high ratio of bozos.

<comment><USER50> Wouldn't simply taking an IQ test, or submitting your SAT score along with your resume serve the same purpose then? If the goal is to reveal "technical ability" this would save a lot of time.

<comment><USER51> I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. IQ and SAT score show nothing about your coding abilities.

<comment><USER50> I'm not being sarcastic at all, but I can see how my comment could be interpreted that way.

I don't have evidence (though I'm sure I could find it) but I think IQ and SAT scores are probably very highly correlated with coding abilities. Coding is just analytical problem solving after all.

So I honestly do think IQ and SAT score have almost as much predictive power of your ability as a software engineer as a simple coding exercise.

Honestly, I'd bet the only extra predictive power comes from the fact that correctly solving fizzbuzz reveals an underlying motivation and interest in software engineering.

"Coding abilities" aren't innate. Writing a for loop in Java isn't something you're born knowing how to do. Everybody learns it at some point.

Think about it this way. Take two people with the same IQ test result. One of them can solve fizzbuzz, and one of them can't. How much would you be willing to bet that the other one won't be able to solve fizzbuzz if you or I teach them about Java for two weeks?

<comment><USER52> I don't know. I went to an Ivy league college, and though I ended up pivoting and only getting a minor in CS, I was in and around the CS department for a long time. There were a lot of absolutely brilliant people there, in the CS department, that couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag, even after ostensibly studying computer science and programming for years.

I don't know what it is, but there appears to be something intrinsically different in people that really grok computers and those that can't. Flying spaghetti monster knows, there were people that could run intellectual circles around me, but their brains just locked up and started stuttering trying to understand pointers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> They have a big figure labelled "People Can't Gauge Their Own Interview Perfomance", which shows that when the interviewer and interviee rated the perfomance on a 1-4 scale, 46% of candidates guessed their exact score, and another 45% were off by one.

That seems pretty good to me. Can you really expect any more agreement than that?

<comment><USER54> 1 and 4 are probably reserved for people who lied on their resume and the rare stellar candidate, so either 2 or 3 would be a very safe guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The diversity figures could be worse. They could have included a breakdown based on age and compared Facebook vs national norms and firms doing US government/military software contracts.

Age is not required for the EEO-1 filings:

"EEO-1 reports filed by employers with more than 100 employees provide data based on race, color, sex and national origin,but do not report data on age or disability. We are aware that both groups are underrepresented in the tech workforce, suggesting the need for research to understand the causes and potential solutions."

[https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/reports/hightech/upload...](https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/reports/hightech/upload/diversity- in-high-tech-report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER56> I think it makes more sense to hire people you like who you think can do the job. Then train those individuals to be the employees you want. That is where your diversity will come in. What happened to businesses and people investing in and training other people? Sure they may walk in a dud in your eyes but there is no reason why they should stay that way.

Secondly, many companies can take a good engineer, not use them correctly, run them off or turn them into a bad engineer for your company. There is too much emphasis on what a candidate already is and not enough emphasis on what you can mold your candidate to be after they are hired.

Training people on the job is where your diversity will come from. I noticed that many people got in the door with less skill than the people they are hiring.

<comment><USER21> From a purely utility-maximizing perspective, it's easy to see what happened. Training people costs time and money, both in non-productivity of the new person, and lost productivity from the people training them. Also, there's a fair to good chance that once you train a new person and they get a couple years of experience, they will jump ship and leave you in the same position as when you started. If you look at it this way, it's better to hire a person who can already do the job than it is to hire someone who _might_ be able to do it with a lot of training. (And yes I know it's a chicken and egg problem of who betrayed whom first with respect to long-term employee retention over the last few decades).

The notable exception to this thinking is in established firms where there is a specific methodology and persona they wish all employees to have. Ex. the major consultancies, law firms, investment banks, etc. For them, it's generally best to pick a completely fresh person (new grad) and mold them into exactly what the company wants without having to "undo" things they may have learned elsewhere.

<comment><USER56> I can certainly see where you are coming from. As you stated, it is a chicken and egg problem somewhat.

However, if the person has no background whatsoever that's actually different than someone who has some verifiable experience but just isn't what you would like initially.

Wouldn't it make sense to take in someone who has some experience then train them. Sure they may leave but they may not if you treat them well. An employee leaving in the tech world is always a risk. I notice many companies spend all of their efforts hiring but very little effort is exerted to retain people.

At the end of the day the tech world could stand to give back to the community in some way. If it means taking on a bit more hiring risk, its a small service to the communities they've taken so much from.

<comment><USER21> Completely agree with you - there is a happy medium with respect to experience and training that the vast majority of hiring completely misses out on today. I think the problem is that's it easier for hiring managers to keep a position open for longer while telling themselves they need a unicorn than it is for them to actually put in the effort to train a new person properly.

And yes, employee retention is a constantly debated topic that most companies only pay lip service to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I believe that the problem with a lot of these tech interviews is that they reflect a deep-seated belief on the part of the interviewer, that there exists such a thing as absolute intelligence, that it is immutable, and it is the most important factor in hiring. When you think in these terms, racism seems almost inevitable: after all, if intelligence is a measurable, absolute, and immutable quantity, akin to height or skin color, then shouldn't it also be hereditable?

Instead of administering thinly-veiled intelligence tests, interviewers should hire based on two factors: technical skill, and more importantly, the ability to acquire it (i.e., learn). You don't want to hire (or be) a person who believes in the fiction of genius. You want to be and hire the kind of person who believes and demonstrates that ability is a deterministic function of practice, not genes.

</comment><comment><USER58> The easiest way to fix "diversity in tech" would be to reduce the number of H1B visas, which in the tech sector overwhelmingly go to overwhelmingly overrepresented Asians.

But in practice, "diversity" is ~exclusively used as an anti-white & especially anti-white-male cudgel, so of course that will not happen.

</comment><comment><USER11> If interviewing was the problem, it would imply that there are a lot of unemployed female developers (thousands and thousands - if they all were hired, we would expect a huge increase in percentage of female devs, so the number of unemployed female developers has to be a huge percentage of the number of all developers). Is that the case? How many unemployed female developers are there?

The other premise, that "diverse people" get less chance to practice interviewing, also seems bogus to me. I don't think good developers go through that many interviews and/or job applications before they get hired.

It may well be that interviewing is broken, what with the unreliable outcome, but it would be broken for everybody in the same way.

</comment><comment><USER58> What indicates "diversity in tech" is broken? Are there notable examples of wildly successful companies that credibly attribute their success to "diversity", in the same way they attribute it to low overhead, technological innovation, economies of scale, etc?

There have been historical examples of companies that became successful by tapping into cheaper sources of labor (notably in the agricultural sector). Is this what is meant by "diversity"?

</comment><comment><USER59> There is a significant pipeline problem. Recently there was an article on HN that women are doing reasonably well these days except in the top suite. Again a pipeline issue. Some countries are further ahead like e.g. Scandinavia and India.

Pipeline issues are solved in kindergarten, school by teachers and parents. Role-models and incentives can help. Interviewing is too late. Actually considering that almost all CS grads are employed it is totally ridiculous to assume interviewing will fix anything. A woman can only be hired once.

Making the hiring process 100% objective is dangerous and I'm looking at these instrumented technical interviews as a step in the wrong direction. Of course we can reduce all observations to a single measure and then line everyone up against it. Any yes, that is happening in the end somehow in any case. But there is a huge difference in letting machine (or rigid scheme) do it.

Letting algorithms decide is convenient. It avoids taking responsibility. It allows avoidance of accountability. And more often than not it allows unaccountable manipulation of the process - as particularly the unscrupulous will know and not stop putting a thumb on the scale.

</comment><comment><USER60> I don't think that first diagram really supports the OP's point. If you look at the top performing interviewees, the ones with a mean of 4, you can see that the majority seems to have scored no less than 3, even in their sub-par interviews. There's a steep drop in standard deviation at that end of the curve. It seems that the people who do best at interviews do so pretty consistently indeed.

The OP makes this point: they say that the tech interview is a game that can be learned, and that the problem is that people may drop out before they have the chance to learn it. That certainly rings true, but I don't see that their (scarce) data shows that employers want to reform their practice.

For one thing, employers may conclude that if consistency is higher for the best performers that's a sign that the tech interview is indeed a good proxy of skill. And if it causes lots of people to drop out, well that's probably a bonus: fewer applications to sift through, fewer people hired that shouldn't be and overall less uncertainty and _churn_ [1].

______________

[1] Managerese for not having a clue how to manage.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is not about rejection and going on about the process. Yes, it is somewhat a numbers game, but what leads to rejection?

For a person of color to even get to the interview process, you have to be lucky. Now that you have a PoC in the room with other people, thay same PoC has to prove beyond their subconcious biases and prejudices that they are indeed, better than anybody else in the world for that job, including the interviewers. BUT at the same time, that PoC has to deal with the bias and not be too good, lest they offend the people conducting the interview, and not get offended by the blatant racist, misogynist, xenophobic comments that are going to show up in that interview.

Some examples? "Do you know ho to read email?". "So you are an expert, and you proved solving all these technical problems and your resume, but how exactly can you prove that you are an expert?". "You have an accent". "Our clients want someody more like them, white". "You are too exotic for our group".

Yes, all of those have happened.

</comment><comment><USER62> some people just aren't good at technical interviewing but on the other hand there are a lot of bad interviewers.

I work with a guy I interviewed that gave one of the worst interview performances I had done. He couldn't answer many of the technical questions correctly or only had a surface understanding of them. But, from asking him the soft skill questions I knew he would work well with our team. Then we gave him two simple programming assignment that many of the more senior developers we interviewed couldn't do. He didn't know the syntax of the language well, but you could tell from his thought process, the questions he asked, and how we solved the problem that he was as Joel Spolsky said "smart and gets stuff done".

I along with my manager fought to get him hired. We were right about him. He's very effective, diligent, and if I ever got my own team at another company, I would fight to bring him on to work with me.

</comment><comment><USER63> Man. Why not just accept folks who might not yet be so good and train him/her. Of course determine if he/she is genuinely willing to learn. Looking at hobby projects should be an indicator that he/she is passionate on programming.

But of course, capitalism compels a company to hire only the best worker to get the most out of the usurped-capital.

What I wanna point out is. It would be great if it was common for companies to help out less skilled programmers. Helping others is more important than making profit.

The next time somebody asks me for help. I'll do my best use any surplus value out of the meager salary I get working here in a third world country.

</comment><comment><USER64> technical interviews are asinine.

they make ya feel pretty good but cmon anyone with half a brain knows it's all bullshit. Like seriously this is the best idea we have as software engineers? tell me the big o of an algorithm that can reverse a string? a lil quiz

Dustin muskovitz helped build FB he learned php from a perl for dummies book in one weekend. there's 1000's of these stories all over the world but just replace billions with thousands and millions of dollars but u get it

referrals are preferential because we don't wanna hire someone we can't immediately fire if they suck.

how about how badly do you want this job or how eager are you to learn

</comment><comment><USER65> I found the article interesting and it sync'd with my experience in one significant way. When I started doing interviews after nearly a decade at the same job I was way out of practice. I blew an interview at Google, I still feel embarrassed thinking about it. But then I upped my game, by taking Coursera classes on algorithms, hacker rank, etc. I really worked on it. I ended up getting so much better. Got a good job. As for the article, it is interesting to me that women are 7x more likely to give up after blowing an interview. Obviously they don't realize how much practice makes perfect.

</comment><comment><USER66> So, you have no evidence that this "problem" is actually a problem. You have no evidence that your solution to this "problem" actually solves it. And in fact, the only evidence you present indicates that the thing you are blaming ("technical interviews" which you present as a strawman of puzzles) has nothing to do with the diversity "problem". But we should buy your solution anyways?

</comment><comment><USER67> Why not try unorthodox solutions: cap engineering salaries so men no longer rush to fill the jobs.

<comment><USER68> Not unheard solution. Russia did something similar in the 1920s, but it turned out to be an epic fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> diversity in tech is not a problem. The problem is tech attitude in these diverse groups.

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm surprised that "people of color" is the preferred term for racial diversity.

<comment><USER71> I believe it is to emphasize that they are people first, not "colored" people. I'm not big into political newspeak but that one makes sense to me.

<comment><USER72> From what I've read, it's more that "colored people" mostly only referred to black people in the United States, whereas "people of color" refers to all non-whites (except asians may or may not be included in "people of color" depending on whatever is more convenient at the time).

"People of color" has always sounded bad to me. It follows the <noun> <preposition> <noun> pattern, with "people" and "color" being both nouns. It sounds to me as if it emphasizes the group, not the individual. To emphasize the person, rather than the group, I think <adjective> <noun> is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> This is one of the reasons why I dislike anti-discrimination laws. For example, one of the methods used to enforce them (particularly in things like hiring) is statistics, most of which assumes employees are interchangeable commodities. They were designed back in the 1960s for things like manual labor jobs. I am willing to suggest a compromise to limit them to these kinds of jobs.

</comment><comment><USER74> The percentage of woman working in Google is actually above the percentage of woman with an IT degree. So there is absolutely nothing to fix in the technical interviews. At most it's slightly biased towards woman, not against them.

</comment><comment><USER75> Or maybe these "diverse" people often don't want to go into tech, and we should be so eager to point to the racism spook, lest racism it's meaning (if everybody is racist, nobody is)

</comment><comment><USER76> Article implies that the pipeline isn't the main problem. However flawed interviewing is lack of diversity in tech is 99% a pipeline problem. It's really easy to see why.

All you need to do is look at the number of minorities with Tech degrees. Boom problem solved.

(Keep in mind that tech encompasses many things and is not exclusively localized to the software world. While in software many people can get a job without a degree, in general, all tech jobs require a degree. )

</comment><comment><USER77> Want diversity? Teach diverse people to start companies.

</comment><comment><USER78> And you can't fix technical interview without fixing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)

</comment><comment><USER79> I'm waiting with great anticipation for the politically correct outcry to solve the problem of not enough women being represented in the mining, construction, sanitation, logging, or deep sea fishing industries, or for there be a popular movement to get more men into teaching or nursing where they're also dramatically underrepresented there.

Let's see if there's any intellectual honesty here, or maybe there's something else behind this politically correct movement?

Gee, I wonder why certain people are trying to pu$h this so hard? You can ea$ily gue$$ what thi$ expan$ion of the labor $upply i$ really about if you think long and hard about it.

<comment><USER80> Personally I'm happy to make an argument that given a lack of evidence that gender plays a negative roll, we have a moral imperative to eliminate unfair and discriminatory barriers to entry _because its the right thing to do_.

But lets say that isn't a compelling argument for you. Our industry has a disastrous success rate. Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, or on budget. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to fill positions with qualified applicants.

Given that, there is a pretty strong argument that we should change the way we hire software developers and an obvious way to change it is to be more inclusive. If the current population isn't getting the job done, lets open the population up to others.

<comment><USER81> > Something is wrong. Most software is not getting written correctly, on time, > or on budget. On top of this, it is nearly impossible to fill positions with > qualified applicants.

True.

> Given that, there is a pretty strong argument that we should change the way > we hire software developers and an obvious way to change it is to be more > inclusive.

What is this 'strong argument'? Your conclusion "be more inclusive" is based on nothing more than an assumption that change will be good. There are any number of changes that could be made. You need to expand on your reasons for asserting that 'being more inclusive' will fix the problem. It could just as easily make it worse.

You could possibly argue that increasing the pool of candidates by not excluding people based on irrelevant factors (such as gender, race, or age) will mean that we have a better chance of finding qualified candidates. The danger here is if we confuse increased diversity in the hiring process (opportunity) with increased diversity amongst employees (outcome). The first fits your assumption. The second doesn't and could lead to worse outcomes (from a business perspective).

<comment><USER80> The argument is we could hardly be worse. I'm not convinced we know what _qualified_ even looks like. We certainly can't tell in any objective way.

Given that a purely random inclusion of more applicants is likely to improve the situation. Thats before arguing for the merits of a diverse work force or relying on moral imperatives.

<comment><USER82> "Diversity" and "inclusiveness" isn't about adding more randomness to a selection, it's about introducing an explicit and deliberate bias. Special outreach programs favor candidates with lower _distribution_ in the available populace. Not only is it discrimination by itself, against the current majority, but it's self-defeating measure, in that every diversity hire skews the remaining pool of candidates more towards the biased majority it's trying to eliminate. This is usually combined with a concerted effort to ignore the actual sources of skew in the first place, because the implications go against ideas of blank-slatism and politically correct thought.

If you want to bring moral imperatives into it, one would think a basic commitment to truth and statistical literacy would be included, but it very rarely is. You'd also imagine diversity of thought would be included as a point of intellectual honesty, but in practice, it is the exact opposite.

As for software projects routinely failing, that has numerous possible explanations. One is that it's one of the most abstract forms of engineering around, in the sense that the material we manipulate and the arrangements we construct cannot be seen or touched, and hence are invisible to outsiders. It must rely entirely on explicit and deliberate communication, unlike more practical fields. The onus is entirely on the engineer to make himself understandable, and it is rare to find people gifted both in abstraction and verbal thinking.

Another is the recurring observation that schools are particularly bad at teaching the practical skills required to deliver software projects, being taught by people with little to no industry experience. It goes beyond basic project and code management skills and goes into product design and usability: people learn to build code when they should be learning to craft tools. But just because currently applications focus more on theory than practice, doesn't mean we'd get better results by turning to people who lack the theory entirely.

<comment><USER80> Women have a lower distribution in the populace?

<comment><USER20> No one is hiring from the population at large, they're hiring from the population of software developers.

<comment><USER83> This is tautological.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> There's nothing to "fix" here. If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly congregate elsewhere and create success. If that's not happening, then it's a supply issue. And really it's no issue at all since people have free will and certain demographics just aren't choosing to be engineers. There's nothing wrong with that, we should stop trying to force them into our line of work.

<comment><USER45> > _" If there were good candidates being passed up, they would certainly > congregate elsewhere and create success."_

BS, that's a dodge. I've seen plenty of people (regardless of their background, ethnicity, or gender) who've been screwed by the system and have spent way too long in crappy jobs where they were unable to make much of a difference. Some people get lucky and early on they find jobs where their talent can shine through and they get on a train that just keeps going up. Other folks may have things line up for them that way only much later in their career, yet others maybe not at all. And if the less lucky decide to switch careers instead of continue struggling and getting frustrated with their ambitions being constantly thwarted then you may never know the potential that was lost from that change of careers. I've also known many extremely talented developers who happened to stumble into the career by accident, and if even some small thing had been different along the way they would have been doing something else.

<comment><USER84> That's not been my experience at all. I've generally seen good people get ahead. Sure everyone has personal setbacks but en mass it's definitely not an issue.

<comment><USER45> How diverse would you say your friend/acquaintance group is? Are they from the same background as you? Do they have similar life stories? If not, how can you possibly imagine that you're not just soaking in confirmation bias?

Don't like my opinion? How about someone else's opinion? [https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring- post/](https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/)

There are countless examples of talented people who have been ill-served by the hiring environment and tech culture we have today. For every one of them that gets lucky and finds success through non-traditional hiring practices at a great company (for example) you have to wonder how many others (others who live where there is less opportunity, etc.) are just passed by and left behind by the system.

Your attitude is very much a "let them eat cake" attitude. You look around and you say "everyone I know is successful, what are all these other people's problems?" Trust me, there are poor people out there, there are disadvantaged people out there, and partly because of unfairness built into the economy and our culture. And that extends even into the tech world. There are tons of talented people who are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise disadvantaged simply because they don't match the traditional model of what a talented tech person looks like.

<comment><USER84> > Trust me, there are poor people out there, there are disadvantaged people > out there, and partly because of unfairness built into the economy and our > culture.

What makes you think that I'm not one of those people? Did you ever think the reason I don't feel there's a problem is because I come from a disadvantage non-majority background and haven't had it used against me?

Real talent excels period. Yes, I've seen it and it's been from a diverse background. If you write great code, you will do well. I see a ton of people wanting success handed to them without the hard work, but no one owes them that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What colleges out there have good web design degrees? - <AUTHOR>

First of all, I want lots of answers.<p>Second of all, I'm graduating high school this year and I want to continue my love of web design and pursue a web design degree.  I've looked around and haven't found many schools that have a good degree.  Anyone out there with experience have any tips or advice? And what is a good average salary for a web designer? <comment><USER2> Wow, such a good question.

First things first, specific to design, almost no one cares about your degree in design. Almost everyone cares about your portfolio. Very, very few clients that I've done design work for even asked for a resume. Almost all ask for a portfolio right after the "hello".

I think if you do a real study of the best designers, you'll find that very few have a degree that has "web design" in it. A lot of the designers I know from school had a journalism/ad degree with a media concentration.

About pay - your average web designer does not make much. I do a lot of contract work for design and programming and when I quote the same rate for design as programming, clients balk at it. One prospective client said how he is paying about 20/hr to a local designer. I simply cannot compete with that and probably wasn't a best fit for his project.

Now, what do I mean? I think the designers who do pull dough transition into UX/product. Now you are no longer being hired to convert psds into html but figure out what you can do to the design to increase conversion or engagement etc. Some may argue that doing that job is no longer design. May be or may be not...it's mostly semantics.

So if you are into design, also play with the idea of learning programming(jquery?) and marketing(seth godin, ab testing etc.). The two complement design very well and make you stand out from the run of the mill designers.

Also, a warning about simply picking a program based on your hobby. My hobby was programming all through high school but I hated comp sci-related stuff in college. That says more about me - I enjoyed the freedom that came from self- learning programming on projects I enjoyed. I did not enjoy programming in a specific textbook order full of theory. Note, I do believe if you do want to pursue a serious programming career, a degree in comp sci can help you more than hurt you. But just know what you are signing up for by reading through the curriculum and talking to alums!

Similarly, most design programs would want you to develop drawing and other artistic skills that may have little to do with _your_ interest in design. Be sure you can slog through it and not let that make you hate design(the worst case scenario).

</comment><comment><USER3> My advice: don't get a degree in web design. DO go to college and learn about something you're interested in (or just go to figure out what you're interested in!). College should not be vocational training, no matter what your parents or counselors imply. Take the time to think really hard about things that have no bearing on the 'real world'. Keep designing websites (there will be plenty of opportunities) and build a portfolio. The best people practicing what you're interested are working and sharing what they learn online - not through academic institutions.

Some of the interactive design programs out there do look pretty good (SVA, for one - though that's postgrad).

(PS - I struggled with this 10 years ago and ended up getting degrees in computer science and graphic design. Anything I learned about 'web design' was totally useless by the time I was working, and I had taught myself basically everything I used day to day. However, the fundamentals of graphic design and CS do not change.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've never done a degree in web design, but in my opinion they're not at all valuable. Design is one of the very few things where your portfolio matters, not your qualifications. I mean sure a degree in design won't hinder you, but I would personally spend the time and money on building up a portfolio, unless you believe you will learn enough to justify the cost.

A degree in web design will not make or break you, web design is a skill that can't be "made" with a degree, unlike some professions.

<comment><USER5> True that design cannot be "made" with a degree, but I hope by saying that you're referring to having "the eye." There is a great deal of philosophy, conceptual thinking, and larger design research that goes into successfully completing a design degree and being a good designer. Yes, you might be able to find it on your own -- but going to a good design school will really strengthen your ability to form your perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple of my friends were in a similar situation as you. After a lot of research, they realized that it's not terribly important to attend a web design course per se.

Both these guys are pursuing their college degrees in arts, and using the almost inexhaustible inspiration they receive from the art world.

<comment><USER7> This. I know a few people who have done this -- and have done something similar myself.

Most colleges have an Art department that offers something like Graphic Design. I would personally suggest concentrating in something like Studio Art, rather than Graphic Design specifically. You'll still pick up the same tools, but it will come from a different angle.

Also, Communications departments (and/or Journalism, specifically,) are very good at being up to date at technology; advertising relies on technology to work nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never even heard of such a thing as a degree in web-design, so I don't know if that's a real thing or not. I'd probably suggest focusing on design in general rather than "web" design. Maybe even things like product design. Things that you could apply in an artistic and aesthetic context to any career choice.

The technical aspect is something you can probably pick up on your own, though it's a bit more of a chore today than a decade ago when you could truly teach yourself 90% of what was out there in a few months.

Of course, this is all assuming you're talking about being the artistic guy. If you're talking about infrastructure -- from hardware planning to databases to writing the engine for sites on the back-end, I'd go for a more CS-flavored education.

I think the big problem today remains what it was ten years ago, however. And the same problem fields like the video game industry suffer. Everyone wants to get into them. That drops your marketability and power of negotiation. Unless you're a truly top-tier individual who has something to bring that almost nobody else in the industry can and you can really make a niche for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER5> You should really check out some of the up and coming (and highly supported) Interactive Design degrees being developed and offered up at some of the top design schools. Interactive Design is the greater study of how both product, UX, and visual communications design all factor into the development of technologically based products. One of the ones that has been getting a lot of attention recently is the Interactive Design undergraduate major being newly offered at California College of the Arts (CCA) - great school. Some info:

About the Interaction Design Program CCA's Interaction Design Program will prepare students to create meaningful and innovative designed experiences in the realms of work, lifestyle, and play—from computers and mobile devices to interactive physical spaces, games, and social networks.

By learning investigative research, systemic thinking, creative prototyping, and hands-on building, Interaction Design students will be prepared to succeed and lead in this exciting field. Students develop technical skills (wireframes, flows, visuals, motion) for interactive canvases such as mobile, desktop, car, game console, film, sculpture, clothes, and buildings. The possible applications extend to numerous industries, from business to entertainment, education, and health.

Program Leadership Dr. Kristian Simsarian, cofounder of the Software Experiences Practice at IDEO and adjunct professor in CCA's Graduate Program in Design, has been tapped to chair the new program. He commented, "Surprisingly, there is not yet a consistent source for talent in this field. CCA, with its interdisciplinary environment, impressive facilities, and great location at the hub of the digital world, is the ideal place to build a world- class interaction design program. I am thrilled to be leading this effort. My passion in education is to be a guide for students to create the future from their own insightful, well-informed, and personally inspired visions."

Silicon Valley Connections CCA's Interaction Design Program was created with input from thinkers at Google, YouTube, Apple, Intel, Nokia, and IDEO. Such companies, as well as nonprofit organizations, will take part in vibrant exchanges with students through sponsored studios and other project-based courses. Students will also have internship opportunities, enabling them to gain professional work experience and contacts, and to define their individual pathways to their future careers.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are a couple CAD schools you can choose from SCAD and MCAD are the most well known. Other art schools include RISD, Ringling and SVA. I'd also consider MICA simply because of their awesome study abroad program.

Its slightly tricky with private colleges that offer BFAs, because they may label a course as Interactive Media or Multimedia, when it really means New Media Art as opposed to strictly web design. A lot of schools offer a mix of motion graphics and graphic design as well.

Other schools you can consider are the unaccredited Art Institute, and Full Sail. I've heard nothing but bad things about the latter so I would avoid it. If your looking for strictly trade learning and no conceptual new media nonsense Ai might be good to consider. Keep in mind though that you won't be able to transfer credits earned there anywhere else.

If you aren't interested in unaccredited schools you should also check out your local community colleges offerings the credits you earn there will transfer to private art colleges if you change your mind later and find one that you like.

Before applying for schools check and see whether or not they require a portfolio, I think a lot of the private art colleges do. Your portfolio is very important in the case that one is required; at the college I attend each prospective student is rated, and accepted, based on a 5 point scale; portfolio is worth 3pts, letter of interest 1pt and SAT/ACT scores are worth 1pt.

Edit: I'm going to disagree with people who are saying that you should learn design on your own. Good graphic design needs to be taught you need to understand grids, hierarchy and be able to create intelligent systems that accurately convey your information. Unless you're actively involved in these sort of discussions where you're learning from a peer-group you won't get the kind of knowledge a design professor with an MFA can give you.

</comment><comment><USER10> Like many others have said here, majority of the best designers I've personally had the pleasure of working with or encountering were all self- taught and had little to no formal design education. The few people I've known that did go to design school, weren't very good. Of course that's not to say that people who go to design school can't be extremely good. That's just personal observation from those I've work with (which isn't representative of designers everywhere).

Having said that, I've always been impressed with the Design School each time I've been there (don't actually know if its related to what you're looking for): <http://dschool.stanford.edu/>

Disclaimer: I am not a design major, my design skills are self-taught, and I'm a former Stanford student.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have the same question, except the only difference is that I'm in at a community college in Souther California right now and I will be transferring and about a year. Right now I'm on a path to go to some UC and get probably a B.A. in Computer Science. I don't want to go into programming necessarily because my passion is really design, especially web related design, UX, and web development.

I just figured Computer Science would be the best path because I find it interesting and it will open up more opportunities for me in the future. However recently I've been discouraged because of all the math I'm going to have to get through.

I'd love to hear some insight about what would be the best way to get into the field. What school is best? What major? I'd preferably like to stay in California.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it depends on whether you want to be more of a "design-y" designer or a "UX-y" designer.

If you want to be a "design-y" web designer, I would say go for a degree in graphic design, take as many web development courses as you can get, learn a lot of stuff online, and start building sites in your spare time (after the first few, you can probably get paid for it).

If you want to be a "UX-y" web designer, I would say get a liberal arts degree (or even a CS degree if you're feeling bold), take as many CS and web development classes as you can get, learn a lot of stuff online, and team up with a programmer buddy to start building web applications in your spare time (after the first few, you can either get paid to make them or you can get people to pay you to use them).

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://daap.uc.edu/academics/design/bs_graphic_communication...](http://daap.uc.edu/academics/design/bs_graphic_communication.html) <http://www.design.cmu.edu/>

Two very good programs. They aren't "web design" programs, but will be a more well-rounded design education.

</comment><comment><USER14> Others have already conveyed much of what I wished to repeat. Just to add to that -

Don't get a degree in web design, this is a thing that evolves and you can learn on your own. If creating illustrations has been a pain for you, go for a degree that adds on the missing slices, like a course in fine arts.

</comment><comment><USER15> Life University + off course some dribbble, webcreme, smashingmagazine, etc... :D

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the closest you're going to come to a web design degree is a graphic design degree. Some art institutes (KCAI is the only one I'm familiar with) offer a web design track for graphic design majors; I'd look at individual departments and find one that suits you.

That's for design, though. If you're interested in development, information technology degrees are going to be the most substantial, although you can learn most web development on your own (it took me about 6-8 months to become comfortable enough with html/css/javascript to do freelance work, although I am taking computer science courses).

In the end, most of what you need for web development you can find online.</comment>


Feature Bias, or Rethinking the Blub Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonathanturner.org/2016/01/rethinking-the-blub-paradox.html <comment><USER2> Uncle Bob recommends in "Make the Magic go away" that programmers do some programming in assembler to help demystify languages and language features that seem foreign. I know it has helped me.

[https://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2015/08/06/let-the- magic...](https://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2015/08/06/let-the-magic- die.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> A follow-up to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957740)</comment>


Homan Square, Chicago police's off-the-books interrogation warehouse - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square-chicago-police-disappeared-thousands?CMP=twt_gu <comment><USER2> This says it all:

      "Not much shakes me in this business – baby murder, sex assault, I've done it all," said David Gaeger, an attorney whose client was taken to Homan Square in 2011 after being arrested for marijuana. "That place was and is scary. It's a scary place. There's nothing about it that resembles a police station. It comes from a Bond movie or something."

Chicago PD: Constitution? What constitution?

      According to an analysis of data disclosed to the Guardian in late September, police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only 0.94% of the 7,185 arrests logged over nearly 11 years.

<comment><USER3> Shockingly, the lawyer visit rate at Homan is still 3 times the 'average' rate: "The 2014 citywide total at declared police stations...was 0.3%."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The use of the word "disappeared" is completely inappropriate. This is where people were held for a few hours, not shoved off to a Stalin-esque gulag or summarily executed.

I also don't understand the race baiting conclusion at the end. What percentage of Chicagoans perform crime? Blacks are the poorest group by far and the largest ethnic group in the city, recently pushing out non-Latino whites from number one. If there's a conspiracy to let Whites perform crime without arrest, I'd like some proof other than "wink, wink, nod, nod" race baiting "stats." I pass as White and live in Chicago and the cops have never given me or my friends or family a free pass on anything.

Also Homan Square isn't a "secret black site." The CPD openly acknowledges it. Hell, its where one of the evidence lockers are and they tell people to come on by and pick up their stuff when its no longer needed. What kind of black- site is listed on google maps? It also houses a SWAT group and a ballistics lab. You can pull up into the parking lot anytime you like and walk right in. The CPD just doesn't advertise it explicitly with signs:

"the base of operations for officers working undercover assignments. These men and women dress in plain clothes and work to disrupt gang activity and clear drug markets out of neighborhoods. Advertising their base of operations could put their lives at risk, which is why Homan Square features little signage."

[http://abc7chicago.com/news/cpd-releases-fact-sheet-on- homan...](http://abc7chicago.com/news/cpd-releases-fact-sheet-on-homan-square- facility/539346/)

From what I can tell there's been one death there and the CPD claims it was from a heroin overdose. If the CPD was constantly "disappearing" people there would be a lot more evidence than one guy who died who was a known addict. What's the use of setting up a torture and murder center when after decades of use you just get one kill? Its pretty clear the tinfoil and anti-cop crowd control the narrative here.

I'm sure its an unpleasant experience for arrested gang members, but any worse than being in another other facility or city seems questionable. In Illinois you can be held without charges for 48-72 hours, depending on what case law you're looking at. Nor do I see any law about notifying anyone during this period. The credible Homan stories fit this legal framework.

<comment><USER5> > This is where people were held for a few hours ...

... to a few days. And the purpose of holding them _without making it known where they were_ (which is repugnant) was so that they could sweat the arrestee without the annoyance of a lawyer present and the arrestee understanding his rights.

Depending on who you believe, of course.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't take some shady secret black site to find cops who will knowingly keep an arrestee in the dark about his/her rights for the purposes of obtaining information. This is completely standard practice at _every_ precinct in America.

<comment><USER7> That's awful.

If this is so common, why is nothing being done about it? Is there really no accountability at all? Nobody checking to see if cops are playing by the rules?

I liked to believe that despite all the awful news about police behaviour, it was still only a few bad apples. But if it's standard practice at every precinct, are there actually any good cops left?

<comment><USER5> > Nobody checking to see if cops are playing by the rules?

Other cops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be great if someone on HN is in law enforcment and could explain that perspective. I think it is hard for outsiders, seeing something like this, to understand how people in law enforcment view their relationship with the law.

To be clear: Personally I'm not interested in speculation by people with no expertise; we have had more than enough of that.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here are some articles from the local Chicago press from the last time this came up:

[http://www.wbez.org/news/chicago-polices-so-called-black- sit...](http://www.wbez.org/news/chicago-polices-so-called-black-site- mischaracterized-111629)

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct- homan-s...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-homan-square- chicago-police-met-20150227-story.html)

Not trying to defend CPD here, but the guardian seems to be alone in trying to dramatize this into a story about the Homan Square facility being sort of black ops detention facility.

<comment><USER10> Big city newspapers are highly dependent on access to police department official information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > He is among 19 people identified among the 7,185 arrests who turned > themselves into police at the warehouse

Who do you contact if you find a typo?</comment>


Two Pizza Team, a Design Definition - <AUTHOR> https://zurb.com/word/two-pizza-team <comment><USER2> Either Jeff Bezos is really stingy or pizzas must be ginormous in the USA two pizzas does not feed 5 - 7 people.

Two large pizzas would feed 3 people at most.</comment>


How the Immigrant Dream Died in an Automotive Shantytown - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/18/nyregion/willets-point-development-queens.html <comment><USER2> The immigrant dream is the native nightmare.</comment>


Real-time sentiment analysis of the debate - <AUTHOR> http://election.memsql.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting! I wonder how well VADER handles tweets. Is there a lot of sarcasm in 140 characters? Reminds me of the vector space mathematics post from a a couple of days ago. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12714406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12714406)</comment>