Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

http://www.fastcompany.com/3043082/most-creative-people/why-software-maker-fog-creek-is-helping-its-competitors-hire-women

by samsolomon • 11 years ago

126 151 11 years ago

fastcompany.com

protonfish4• 11 years ago

Maybe Joel needs to add another point to his "test"

13. Do you foster Junior/Mentor relationships?

onezeno2• 11 years ago

And get rid of hallway usability tests.

protonfish4• 11 years ago

Not sure why you think that. I have found getting feedback from team members before user testing finds a lot of low-hanging issues.

marrs• 11 years ago

I genuinely think you should put that to him. Not enough organisations recognise the value of junior developers imo.

mason2403• 11 years ago

What company is not going to check that box?

I've worked for a company that claimed they did and it was always talked about internally in their "look how great our culture is" corporate-speak. Some developers even had the title of "mentor," but there wasn't any actual time allocated for it and no one ever took it seriously. In my entire time there I never met with my "mentor."

s73v3r2• 11 years ago

The same can be said for just about every item on the Joel test

boothead• 11 years ago

Any softare company that has their developers working on a component called DonutCounter has my vote as an awesome palce to work! :-)

easytiger• 11 years ago

Headlines?

skywhopper• 11 years ago

I'm glad the "rigorous testing process" was mentioned. The facade of "we only hire superninja-kickass-hyperexperts and we will verify that you are such a programmer before we hire you" attracts a certain type of person, and intimidates another. And it may be that it intimidates more women than men.

But the article seems to glide past that and presents the idea that five years of experience might change someone's willingness to apply. And it probably will help, but that amount of experience is unlikely to change someone's basic perception of their ability to succeed in a high-stakes one-chance prove-yourself situation.

tghw2• 11 years ago

It doesn't draw the connection directly, but part of the training program deals with technical interviews and getting the fellows more practice, and hopefully more comfort, with them. My guess is that once people have been through some mock interviews, the intimidation factor goes down quite a bit.

mason2403• 11 years ago

attracts a certain type of person, and intimidates another. And it may be that it intimidates more women than men.

This is classic horseshoe theory, where extremists on both ends of a spectrum actually wrap around and start to sound the same. In this case they both believe that women are delicate flowers who can't handle the pressure, stress, and competition of the working world like men can.

cauterized2• 11 years ago

There's a difference between "lower self-confidence" and "can't handle pressure, stress, and competition". It's also possible that even women who have high self confidence in their abilities are less confident that they will be judged positively by others.

There's plenty of research to the effect that men will apply to a job if they meet 40% of the listed requirements, whereas women won't until they meet 90%. And when you don't meet someone's default expectations of what kind of person a "software developer" (or a "nurse" or a "CEO") is, you often have to work harder to prove that you are one.

But also, why does the working world have to be competitive rather than collaborative?

api8• 11 years ago

"And it may be that it intimidates more women than men."

I've been looking around for a developer recently, and in looking at the profiles of women vs. men at places like AngelList I noticed a few key differences in how they described themselves. We're talking about people with very similar academic backgrounds here with similar levels of experience.

Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X." Women would highlight the cooperative nature of their work, while men would give the impression that they did it all themselves. In my experience the former is typically more honest, especially if you actually were working on a team or on a team-oriented college project.

Women also tend to highlight team-oriented and non-technical skills more than men in general, which to techie-minded hacker types gives the impression that they are not strong on the technical end.

I also noted my reaction to these differences. Introspecting, I noticed that I tended to assume that "being on a team" meant riding the coattails of the other team members. If I noted this bias in myself, it's probably pretty common.

I decided to try to de-program myself of this bias by thinking of all the counter-examples I've seen.

I do believe in the "10X programmer" -- for the simple reason that there are 10X everything elses. There are 10X athletes, 10X businesspeople/salespeople, 10X artists, 10X anythings. When we look for employees or contractors we are looking for that 10X standout, or at least someone who's going to grow into one. But being really good at something is not mutually exclusive with working on a team or highlighting non-technical skills, and the inverse is also not correlated. I've met plenty of monomaniacal "closet programmers" who really aren't any good. They sit alone stewing in their huge egos and churn out crap. (But then again I've met some who are. There does not seem to be a strong correlation.)

There's probably quite a few really talented female programmers out there who are being passed over because they don't conform to the "whip it out and let me measure it" customs of technical recruitment. I also suspect that this does drive women from the field.

picks_at_nits2• 11 years ago

" Women would highlight the cooperative nature of their work, while men would highlight that they did it all themselves. In my experience the latter is typically more honest, especially if you actually were working on a team or on a team-oriented college project.

Did you mean to say the former was more honest, i.e. that saying “we did X” is more honest than “I did X?"

tie_• 11 years ago

Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X.

I find this a very interesting fact, but I see a number of other possible explanations for "I do X": - It is simply shorter. Men being used to more compact communication? - It is also more boastful - perhaps men being used to market themselves more aggressively than women? Or, put in another words, having and/or presenting bigger egos in their CVs? - Women being insecure about their personal contribution in X? Maybe the coattail-riding assumption is not always wrong.

In any case, I would withhold judgement before an interview.

tenpoundhammer4• 11 years ago

I worked with a 10x developer once, he was awful and I couldn't stand to work with him. Although he could produce an insane amount of code and functionality his presence was like throwing a grenade into the middle of the dev team everyday. He left to take a job at google and the overall team productivity went up significantly. He basically did 10X individually,but took 11x away from the team. So team work is pretty darn important.

thaumasiotes• 11 years ago

I read a book about the development of writing in mesopotamia (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674049683 , but I can't really recommend it as a general-interest book); it mentioned that a particular king had seen his city flourish under his rule and boasted accordingly, in the records we have, of how irrigation canals were dug and roads were built and generally a lot of great stuff happened on his watch.

In a parenthetical, it also noted that, as is typical for the records of the time, they actually attributed all these works to the king personally ("I dug canals in XX regions").

krschultz2• 11 years ago

That may be a men/women thing, but I actually screen for that when I'm interviewing and significantly prefer to hire people that say "we did X" rather than "I did X". It's my job as an interviewer to figure out which person on that team you were, but if you describe your work as I I I I I and never We We We We, it is pretty telling.

It also goes for managing. If my team fucked something up, I say "I fucked up Y", even if it was a report of mine. If my team did something great, it's a "We did Z" even if I did it alone.

When you put it out that plainly, it sounds hokey and stupid. But trust me, over the long run those tiny things are the difference between a good company culture and a bad company culture.

sporkenfang• 11 years ago

It's interesting that you say your bias is toward perceiving someone self-reporting as working on a team as "everyone on the team did the work but me".

Does this result from primarily working alone, or have you just been granted license to be more autonomous than most coders I know? A lot of shops both employ pair programming and have a series of pairs working on one project, or have a t the very least a bunch of people working on different aspects of the project.

Of course this could be spun as "I did y for my project, x" but I'm curious as to why "As part of the team working on x project, I did y" sounds less like accomplishing something technical to you.

Say I had a project out of which I'm submitting 3-4 conference papers to various conferences for publication, working with my advisor and another student. Would it be better to say I did it all, or to be honest and say the other student did 1/3, I did 2/3, and my advisor helped shape our vision?

Dewie2• 11 years ago

Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X."

Depending on what X is, and on context, it can be obvious that "worked on X" simply means that they worked on X, but that doesn't mean that others did not also work on it, with them. Especially if "X" is too big and complex for one person to do on ones own. In particular, researchers in CS (maybe coincidentally majority of men) tend to say that they "work on" or "are interested in" X, Y, Z - but that doesn't really mean that they don't collaborate or work with other people on those things. It's not exclusionary at all.

But this interpretation doesn't fit with the usual men-are-egotistical-narcissists-compared-to-women. So pay this comment no mind.

nulltype• 11 years ago

I'm not an athlete, but I'll run a mile against anyone who claims to be 10X faster than me.

bootload• 11 years ago

"Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X." Women would highlight the cooperative nature of their work, while men would give the impression that they did it all themselves."

Cannot emphasise this quote enough. It is the difference between, "We" and "I", the basis of any community where you put yourself second. It is also the essence of good leadership.

If you want a lone wolf programmer as a new-hire in a small startup, maybe this type isn't for you. As your company grows, the type of programmer described by @api above, the one who works in teams where your livelyhood and codebase is on the line, is the person I'd want to work with and for.

morgante• 11 years ago

Women would say things like "I worked on a team that did X," while men -- who obviously did the same kind of work -- would simply say "I did X."

While this anecdote seems to match traditional gender narratives, I'm interested in how you knew the men "obviously did the same kind of work."

You observed that women were more likely than men to emphasize teamwork and not their individual contributions. It seems that there are two hypotheses which result from that:

1. Women are more likely to emphasize team aspects and de-emphasize their contribution (less narcissistic)

2. Women are less likely to individual contribute and more likely to rely on teams for projects (less independent)

How did you differentiate between those two?

ashray3• 11 years ago

We (www.gapjumpers.me) are trying to solve the gender diversity issue in tech by using blind auditions as a first filter. Our data shows that blind auditions result in greater diversity numbers.

By using a technical challenge as the first step and fast forwarding people to an advanced interview stage, we're eliminating candidate reluctance and increasing transparency (the candidate interacts directly with the hiring manager through our platform).

In our experience, telling the candidate "Show us your skills, impress us, and you'll get an interview" is better than "Tune up your resume to pass every possible filter". Showing your skills early on also removes a lot of stress from the candidate and gives you something solid to talk about during the interview.

Edit:Our homepage shows some numbers and case studies are available on request: http://www.gapjumpers.me/#genderResults

Kalium2• 11 years ago

Do you have any numbers you can share? Do your results look significantly different from the background population?

brighteyes• 11 years ago

I wonder if you could also make the matching part of the process blind as well? That is, the article mentions that women might be less likely to apply to places like Fog Creek - but if you matched applicants to employers blindly both ways (blindly to them, of course, you the matcher would not be blind), so the applicants didn't know who they were interviewing for during the interview? Then developers with lower self-esteem but great skills might end up interviewing for high-end places, and not even be stressed during the interview, because they don't know who it's with.

colmvp• 11 years ago

Interesting that you mention gender diversity but there's no mention about racial diversity.

dreamweapon• 11 years ago

Yup. And I've always suspect that this cant was ultimately something of a foil, and that the actual messages it's intended to send are of a rather different sort. To wit:

Internal: Hoo-ray for you! You made it through the gauntlet! Aren't you just swell and awesome!

External: You know you have to invest in us / buy our products because we only hire the top 0.001 percent! And we have a rigorously testing process (as verified by the magic of survivorship bias) to prove it!

jnbiche6• 11 years ago

I agree that lack of gender diversity in tech is an obvious problem, and I laud Fog Creek for trying to address this problem.

However, I'd like to strongly emphasis the fact that one of the main problems Fog Creek identified as hindering the most talented female developers from applying to Fog Creek, is also a huge problem that prevents many of the most talented male developers from applying to Fog Creek. Ironically, these companies, with their legendarily difficult and arduous application processes, are selecting for mediocre developers:

1) We all know that the Dunning-Kruger effect is real: there's an abundance of quantified and repeatable psychological research that demonstrates that the least skilled individuals are on average the most likely to estimate their skill to be above average. Likewise, the most skilled individuals are the most cautious in estimating their skill level.

So who applies for more of these types of jobs? Well, based on what I've heard, Google, Fog Creek, and many other top employers receive a huge number of grossly unqualified applicants. And while I'm sure they'd like to think they're getting the majority of their desired candidate pool to apply, research on Dunning-Kruger, as well as anecdotes like the one on the article, all suggest that's probably not the case.

This isn't the first time I've read about a top employer asking a highly-desired employee why they'd never applied in the past, and receiving as an answer, "oh, I didn't think I'd make it through your interview process". (btw, I love watching these kinds of interactions)

2) The most qualified developers can make a nice consultant salary without ever having to go through the headache of a demeaning 5-day interview process that often treats developers like disposable commodities. Why would you want to subject yourself to that kind of process if you're making $100,000-200,000 a year as a contract software dev (which is the range my colleagues working contract tend to make, depending on their hours and expertise)? So whenever I get an email from employers like Facebook, I say thanks but no thanks.

This is not to say that these employers never get highly-skilled employees. That's obviously not the case. But they get a very specific type of highly-skilled applicant: from top CS departments, coming right out of college. They're much less likely to get a highly-skilled dev to apply who has taken an alternate route to the top of his or her profession.

So what happens on average? "Top" employers like Google, Facebook, and smaller "desirable" employers like Fog Creek, effectively scare off a large number of the devs they want the most, both male and female. And they simultaneously attract a large number of unqualified applicants.

Yet again I ask: maybe the software developer interview process is completely broken? Are employers in enough pain yet that they're willing to revisit their hiring process? Or does it need to get worse?

throwawayaway5• 11 years ago

I think the Dunning-Kruger thing is a nice idea but it's immediately ruined once you become aware of it, like a Heisenberg uncertainty sort of thing.

I used to think I was crap, but Dunning-Kruger, so I must be great.

I used to think I was great, but Dunning-Kruger, so I must be crap.

It just seems a bit trite to base any real world conclusions or behaviour off of.

I agree that the interview process is broken. The reason I wouldn't apply to Google/Facebook/Fog Creek is personal and nothing to do with their interview process.

wpietri5• 11 years ago

I think the Dunning-Kruger thing is a nice idea but it's immediately ruined once you become aware of it, like a Heisenberg uncertainty sort of thing.

Not at all! You're being too binary with it. Dunning-Kruger is about the relationship between discernment and capability. In particular, it's saying discernment drives capability. A great way of applying it is this Ira Glass quote:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to-...

Basically, the way I apply it is to say that if I can tell that my work isn't as good as I want it to be, that's ok: I have to use that as fuel to improve. And if I'm dealing with something where my work looks perfect to me, it's time to up my discernment.

In hiring, the way I apply it is to avoid listening much to self-assessment and related measures of competence (e.g., confidence). Instead, I go for demonstrations of competence, like short essay answers instead of cover letters, or pair programming interviews [1] over "tell me about a time when" discussions.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-programming-intervie...

tghw2• 11 years ago

You might be right on point 1, but it doesn't offer an alternative. If you state that you take mediocre developers, better developers won't want to work there either.

Point 2 is also sort of moot; if people can make it on their own in the contract world, then it doesn't really matter what hyperbolized interview process (5-days? What?) stands between them and employment. I'm in the same boat, I work contract now and don't want to go back. The interview process has nothing to do with it.

I think you're far from concluding that the process is broken, though. Some companies may want to hire top CS grads straight out of college. In fact, a small company could probably fill their ranks through that alone.

brudgers3• 11 years ago

It's a provocative thesis that Fog Creek hires mediocre developers. The evidence of their products suggests otherwise.

Of course as Atwood's friend Scott says, "We're all amateurs," so perhaps Fog Creek just hires the less mediocre on an absolute rather than relative scale.

geebee4• 11 years ago

From the context of the statement, I think the thesis is that Fog Creek's process increases the probability that mediocre developers will apply.

gaius6• 11 years ago

Does it? I don't know a single person who uses any of their products. And I don't think it is plausible that the best devs in the world are flocking to work on a website for project managers.

yequalsx• 11 years ago

I believe your interpretation of the Dunning-Kruger effect is slightly wrong. The effect is not that the least skilled estimate their skill to be above average. The effect is that the least skilled tend to overestimate their skill level greater than those with higher skill levels. Also, those at the highest tend to overestimate the least (and indeed often times underestimate).

jnbiche6• 11 years ago

You're right, your phrasing is the correct way to put it. I was writing quickly and even now am wasting time when I should be working.

outworlder• 11 years ago

Well, maybe not 'mediocre', but they have certainly self-selected their applicant pool.

protonfish4• 11 years ago

I don't know about D-K and mediocre developers, but I do know that those coming out on top of any test only proves one thing: that you are good at the test.

Let's say for argument's sake that the test is accurate (it flawlessly measures what its creators intended to measure.) This still doesn't mean that those who score highest are the "best." It only indicates congruence with the test designers.

The fact that Fog Creek has 0% gender diversity is evidence of this and indicates a underlying lack of diversity in many areas. So the question remains "Is a company that is an echo chamber full of mini-mes superior to one with a variety of opinions, habits, thinking styles, and working practices?"

I don't know the answer, but I think it's a good question.

picks_at_nits2• 11 years ago

If I understand what you are saying, we can look at the results of an interview test and say, “this test has few or no false-positives,” meaning that everyone who passes the test is competent.

But the way that the industry is set up, we have very little knowledge of whether the test produces false negatives, meaning we don’t know how many of the people who failed the test turn out to be successful or even spectacular somewhere else.

thedufer4• 11 years ago

The fact that Fog Creek has 0% gender diversity is evidence of this

No it's not. Do the math - at the rate of women in the application pool, and the total number of devs Fog Creek has ever hired, it would actually be fairly surprising if they'd ever hired a woman. The internship program, on the other hand (larger sample size) runs at more or less the expected rate, if memory serves.

This seems to make it pretty clear that the applicant pool is the problem, no?

Stratoscope• 11 years ago

"oh, I didn't think I'd make it through your interview process".

I can attest to that. I was a contractor for Google for several years. I built all of their election results and voter information maps for the 2008-2012 US elections. I also did results maps for a number of international elections, both on my own and working with local teams, along with various special mapping and visualization projects.

The maps were very popular and people in multiple teams at Google really liked my work.

Of course it occurred to me several times that I ought to apply for a full-time job there, and every time I thought, "Naw, I'd never make it through a Google interview process."

This, after years of doing successful, highly visible work for them!

kyllo• 11 years ago

Exactly. And to someone who is already gainfully employed elsewhere, the opportunity cost of going through an interview gauntlet--which often consists of one or more full days of intense testing, and many more days of practice to prepare for that testing--is very real and daunting. So they will naturally tend to attract fresh college graduates who have nothing to lose and can afford to make such a huge time investment in the interview process for a particular prospective employer.

army• 11 years ago

You are wrong about the Dunning-Kruger effect - there is not a negative correlation between perceived and actual ability, just a weaker positive correlation than you might expect. There's plenty of debate about the causes of the effect in the original Dunning-Kruger paper. Moreover, if you look at the actual paper (rather than exaggerated retellings of it), you will see that perceived ability is actually positively correlated with actual ability: most people tend to think that they're above-average - the bottom quartile tends to think that they're in to 50th to 60th percentiles, while more able people tend to think they're in the 70th to 80th percentiles.

See Figure 1 at: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/77/6/1121.html

Also, $100,000-200,000 a year is the range you'd make at those companies and have more job security and income consistency, so I'm not sure what your point is.

jnbiche6• 11 years ago

I regret my initial phrasing about Dunning-Kruger, which was incorrect as you have pointed out (and as I conceded below some 3 hours before you wrote your rebuttal).

Also, my point is that if I'm making $100-$200,000 and am happy with my situation, particularly when I live in a lower cost area than the Bay Area, then I am much less likely to put myself through the pain of one of these interview processes. Unlike lots of workers, software devs actually have a choice.

mahyarm3• 11 years ago

It's not a 5 day process. This is the standard bay area interview process:

1. 15 minute recruiter call

2. 1 hour remote screener interview

3. 4-6 45m-1hr onsite interviews. They can be done all on one day or possibly split up if your local.

4. Wait 1 day to a couple of weeks to get an offer or a rejection.

The real pain in the ass part is the onsite one. But that is 1 day, not a week. And because they go for high false negative rates, and you need multiple offers for higher salaries, you need to do onsites at multiple places.

geebee4• 11 years ago

Several people have already mentioned it here, but I'm also very pleased to read this line:

"Hall asked a simple question: Why didn't Chipps, a brilliant engineer, ever apply to work at Fog Creek? Chipps said she didn't think she would make it through their rigorous testing process."

I do think that the grueling and intimidating software interview process is a very serious problem in our field. This one sentence hints at the extent of the harm.

mooreds• 11 years ago

It's tough though, because when you are a small company that expects developers to jump in and be productive, you do need some kind of process. That process can be referral based, in which case testing isn't as necessary because you can rely on past shared experience, but that obviously limits your talent pool.

When you are interacting with an unknown (or a less known) person, you have to have some kind of vetting process. And with a small company culture, typically false negatives are far less harmful than false positives.

protonfish4• 11 years ago

Only if you have a policy of not having positions for Junior programmers.

Fog Creek has the same hypocrisy as any other company that demands X years of experience from applicants but consider it somebody else's problem how they get that.

geebee4• 11 years ago

You're making fair points. I think I understand the equation you're setting up here (harm of false positive vs harm of false negative, along with probabilities for each). I'm just starting to believe that the damage of so many false negatives to avoid the occasional false positive may be harming the industry more than we realize.

Let's not forget, we're an industry where employers very consistently claim a serious and economically harmful shortage of talented developers. At the same time, we're an industry that accepts an interview process they open acknowledge will result in the rejection of good candidates because they feel that the damage of a false positive is so high.

Is there a chance that there is a strong "negativity bias" at work here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

In other words, is it possible that the bad memories of a false positive is masking the thousand paper cuts that are inflicted on the high tech workforce though grueling interviews? What overall harm does it do to an industry when a programmer who would have been successful gets rejected from a promising job due to a poor performance on a one hour data structures problem at a white board? I think there's the harm you see, and then the harm you don't.

This one line suggests the harm may be serious and extensive. I'm not making any particular prescription here, I'm just saying that when developers experience repeated rejections due to repeated false negatives, this may be vastly more harmful in a global sense than people currently realize.

EDIT: false positive/negative switch (vonmoltke mentioned below).

ForHackernews2• 11 years ago

I'm a big fan of looking at developers' github contributions. It's a good way to see that they can actually write code and it doesn't involve a high-pressure whiteboard test.

On the other hand, it can be a negative for somebody working for a company that discourages or forbids open sourcing their work. Or people who don't have free time to spend on FOSS projects.

moron4hire6• 11 years ago

Don't confuse activity for productivity. Most of the activities people engage in when searching for a new employee are complete wastes of time, at best.

I personally find it is net-better to stop wasting that time, just try people at essentially random, and get back to my own work.

jerf2• 11 years ago

"I do think that the grueling and intimidating software interview process is a very serious problem in our field."

I'd have to agree. The interview process is irreducibly stressful, but that doesn't mean we have to go out of our way to make it worse. It isn't even good for hiring most men either, after all! It's just a bad idea.

I've personally had fairly good success hiring people who happen to be women, and I suspect a good part of that is that my interview attitude is that I'm there to find out what you can do, not to find out what you can't, which seems to be the unexamined default of a lot of interviewers. You don't start at "perfect" and get marks off for failure... you start at essentially zero and work your way up. "Starting at zero" may sound superficially harsh when I put it into English, but in practice this produces a much friendlier interview environment, I think, because we're discovering positive aspects instead of negative ones.

(Another reason to prefer this is that in practice this also helps avoid the problem of the senior candidate being thrown softballs, or the junior candidate being asked to design a cloud infrastructure. It really doesn't take that long for me to key in on where your most likely "knowledge frontier" is and probe for details there. As opposed to just going through a rote set of questions looking for demerits. It is a harder style of interviewing, though, precisely because you can't just go through a rote set of questions... even the standard question set I use has a lot of ways of approaching them and several "levels of detail" I can get into depending on experience and skill level.)

The end result is still, frankly, stressful. It's a big deal, and the interviewee would have to be outright irrational to forget that. But it helps if you as an interviewer remember that, too, and have some compassion.

jnbiche6• 11 years ago

my interview attitude is that I'm there to find out what you can do, not to find out what you can't,

Have you ever considered trying to find out and confirm what the candidate has done in the past, instead of the almost impossible task of finding out what they "can do" in a few short hours? Barring some major new life issue, a developer's past performance is highly predictive of their future performance.

Edit: Removed longish rant.

Spooky23• 11 years ago

I agree.

Personally, I can handle all sorts of adversarial situations, but I've never done well with "rigorous" interviews. I think I was raised to be humble and that's built into my DNA, but the business world embraces overpromise/underdeliver.

At the same time, I've successfully managed large teams, budgets, interfaced with super-high level people and negotiated hard-nosed deals. I gotten myself into these roles by other means -- 90% of interviews that I have done have been formalities.

IMO, that's a symptom of a bigger problem, as what you do has more to do with where you are and who you know than any other factor.

dominotw2• 11 years ago

i can only imagine people who work at Google are some sort of interview ninjas.

Apocryphon• 11 years ago

I disagree. How many people actually do the bare minimum and work their way through Cracking the Code Interview, and make sure they know all of the material covered by those questions? I think having that would do a long way towards proving oneself in the tech interviews.

psionn• 11 years ago

It's why I switched to a PM role. I miss programming every day, but I hate the thought of doing another stupid technical interview.

gaius6• 11 years ago

As I often say, interviews based on the final year algorithms and datastructures exam are just a way to sneak ageism under the HR radar.

billmalarky• 11 years ago

Not all companies require them if you have decent experience. My friend interviewed with several companies and flat out told them "I don't do code tests anymore, my experience should speak for itself." Obviously your milage will vary but he ended up in a good position at a large well known company.

Edit: Also if you have a connection into the company that can vouch for you, that will work as well. The best coding test that can be administered is "yeah I've worked with this guy before and he's a good developer."

matart• 11 years ago

As a younger male about to finish his software engineering degree and start applying I agree with these points. I am intimidated at the rigorous testing some companies use. I don't have the confidence that others might have in there ability.

I am ultimately looking for a mentoring workplace ( just to start) where I can build my confidence quickly and start producing for the company.

marktangotango• 11 years ago

>just to start

One place I worked at had a senior dev slash architect who really enjoyed mentoring green developers. This company did tend to hire people straight out of college, and this guy was really good at bringing them up to speed. It was really quiet nice to behold.

The problem was, the hires that were 'good' tended to leave after a year or two, leaving the less talented and motivated to muddle along. I think this is why you rarely see this nowadays.

dripton• 11 years ago

I don't think that has anything to do with mentorship. I think it's just that most companies don't give most young programmers big enough raises to reflect their increased value on the open market.

Lots of companies don't want to hire new grads, so there's a significant price premium for hiring someone with a couple years of experience. The companies that are willing to hire new grads aren't always willing to give annual raises that reflect that price premium. So lots of programmers with a couple of years of experience see that they can get a 20% raise by switching jobs. So they switch jobs.

(This happens with programmers later in their career too, but the difference between 8 and 10 years of experience is much less dramatic than the difference between 0 and 2. If a company gives the same annual raise to all its programmers in the same performance band regardless of experience, that raise may be too small for the newest ones, even if it's just right for the middle ones.)

png_hero• 11 years ago

30 person engineering team, and no junior devs?

LunaSea• 11 years ago

Chhht it's only ageism if it concerns older people.

Paying older people arbitrarily more without any real reason is not an issue.

dominotw2• 11 years ago

There is a war for Women Dev's in silicon valley. Google's HR head mentioned in a podcast that they are simply poaching female devs' from smaller players to get their diversity numbers up. This puts smaller players at a major disadvantage as VC's have started tying their funding with diversity numbers. There is no way a startup can compete directly with Goog for the female dev's who are in major short supply.

This diversity madness is putting SV at a major disadvantage.

ForHackernews2• 11 years ago

This diversity madness is putting SV at a major disadvantage.

On the contrary, evidence suggest Silicon Valley is putting itself at a disadvantage by failing to attract talented women. Other non-SV technology markets do far better: http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/women-tech-problem-silico...

im2w1l• 11 years ago

If it's not too much trouble, could I ask for sources on 1)

Google's HR head mentioned in a podcast that they are simply poaching female devs' from smaller players to get their diversity numbers up.

and 2)

VC's have started tying their funding with diversity numbers.

tomjen33• 11 years ago

If VC do anything but focus on getting investment in the best companies they are not fulfilling their fiduciary duty to their investors - even if that anything is saving starving children in Africa.

moron4hire6• 11 years ago

I have a very small consulting company. Both of my employees right now were non-traditional students when they finished their CS degrees. Actually, I'm not even sure the one guy has finished his degree yet. Regardless, neither of them had their degrees when they started working for me.

And honestly, I didn't really even know. I never asked them for a resume and they never provided one.

I don't really test the people I hire. I get to know them on a personal level. I meet them at parties, at meetups, conferences, etc. I then ask if they'd like to make a little side money with a freelance gig. We talk about the work, and if the person says they can do it, I give them a task. A real task, it goes right into the project I'm working on. It usually takes about a week or two.

And if they do a good job, I ask them to do more. If they don't, I pay them for the work they did, thank them, and don't mention they were ever interviewing for a more long-term relationship.

This has been so incredibly much better of an experience than the hiring processes I was involved with as a working stiff. Resumes that don't say shit. Stupidly simplistic coding tests. Interviewing anxiety. All of it, a nightmare.

And it didn't seem to make any difference. We would put more and more effort into hiring, to the point I was spending 10 to 15 hours interviewing and reviewing candidates a week, for weeks on end. It was having a detrimental impact on my performance, without any correlated impact on the performance of the people we hired.

So when I went independent, I decided that, if the results are really, actually random, then that means the inputs have no impact. So I threw away the interviewing process. I just ask people, "can you do this job"?

And really, I don't need to know anything else. That's what it all boils down to. They can lie on their resume just as much as they can lie to the question. They can cram on interview questions the night before. They can be really good at regurgitating academic theory but complete crap at thinking creatively. So I just ask, "can you do this job?"

And then I let them prove it.

pkaye• 11 years ago

I think this method doesn't work in all situations. For example in embedded programming. First there are not many of those who actually work in this field so unlikely to just meet up with them. Most are stabily employed. Secondly, there is lots of proprietary hardware and knowledge. Third, hard to work on a trial job when you are already working. Lastly there are a good number of people who are just not skilled enough and will waste your time during the trial period.

moron4hire6• 11 years ago

Actually, one of them does do some embedded programming for me.

Granted, my sample size is small, but traditional hiring practices are completely ineffective, so you shouldn't waste your time thinking you have any influence over the process.

xigency• 11 years ago

I applied for a job at Fog Creek Software in 2012 where I was accepted for an internship, and I would have to say the application process was difficult, but fair. I was told that there were hundreds of applicants, so being one of five interns selected seemed rather prestigious at the time, but it was still just an opportunity to work on my skills as a developer.

I don't think there is anything that would preclude women from getting technical jobs at a company like Fog Creek except maybe, as was said in the article, a self-selecting attitude. These companies are looking for well-rounded individuals and people who are competent with their skills. It's nothing beyond impossibility to get a job there, it just takes determination.

NotOscarWilde• 11 years ago

I applied for a job at Fog Creek Software in 2012 where I was accepted for an internship

Does this mean you applied for a position but you were offered an internship instead?

gecko• 11 years ago

No; they don't do that. He means he applied for an internship and got an internship.

ripb2• 11 years ago

There are more women than men in employment in the US, where is the daily articles on that? And the effort to tackle that? And the constant shaming of companies that employ more women than men?

There are 1.4x the amount of women graduating college than men. Where are the daily articles on that massive issue? Where is the effort to do something about that? Where is the constant headlines on how many more women are graduating than men, put in a very negative light as the lack of quote underlined "diversity" in the tech industry is?

This absolute, unrelenting and incredibly transparent (tech = money, status currently) narrative being sharted at everyone in the tech industry on a daily basis is driving me toward getting out of it altogether.

But hey, lets ignore some massive issues on the table in favour of constantly debating why women who never showed an interest in the industry can't pick and choose the finest and most well paid positions in that industry and see where that gets society in 10 years' time.

krschultz2• 11 years ago

It's not being thrown at the tech industry. It's people within the industry calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the industry as a community under siege.

ripb2• 11 years ago

It's not being thrown at the tech industry. It's people within the industry calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the industry as a community under siege.

Actually, the vast majority of it is being carried out by people on the fringe of the industry in roles as "journalists" and similar who've never spent a day working within it.

And yes, I see the tech industry as being under siege.

Fomite• 11 years ago

There have been a vast slew of articles on the problem of male unemployment, and particularly the problem of the unemployment rate in minority males, who got hit particularly hard by the recession and have not seen those jobs come back. Around the recession this was all over the news.

Higher education has also been tackling the issue of getting men into college, and keeping them there until graduation. As has primary and secondary education, asking questions like what it takes to get boys to read more, and the effects of having mostly female teachers.

That you have to ask where they are suggests to me that you haven't looked very hard.

And the assumption that you cannot tackle multiple issues at the same time, worrying about both diversity in tech and unemployment in men, is simply false.

tempestn• 11 years ago

Fog Creek doesn't get any immediate benefits

I'd say articles like this one are pretty significant benefits. I doubt they overlooked the PR benefits of this program. (Which of course doesn't mean it isn't still a great thing. Just that "no benefit" is a bit of a stretch.)

Why Software Maker Fog Creek Is Helping Its Competitors Hire Women

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