undefined | Better HN

0 pointsManuel_D3y ago0 comments

> If technology could be developed which masked pitch, accent

This is already possible. Idioms are more specific, but how often do you encounter an identifying idiom in a technical phone interview? I'm even struggling to think of an idiom that would distinguish, say, an Asian applicant from a white applicant. Idioms are more culturally-specific not racially specific. I encounter greater differences in idioms between urban and rural people than along racial lines.

"Patterns and approach" are part of the software development skills being measured - it's like saying a blind orchestra discriminates between people of different musical skill.

> I suspect the reason you think such technology wouldn’t improve the situation is because you’re a bigot.

Did you miss the empirical evidence to the contrary linked earlier? Regardless, let's start using anonymous hiring tools and find out who's right. I'm all for it, and if it does improve URM and women's pass rates, great! But again, for some reason, those who most ardently claim that interviews are biased against "diverse" candidates are oddly resistant to anonymization.

0 comments

etchalon3y ago

> Idioms are more culturally-specific not racially specific. I encounter greater differences in idioms between urban and rural people than along racial lines.

You need to revisit what "culture" means, and how many people of a given race share a culture.

> "Patterns and approach" are part of the software development skills being measured.

This was about speech patterns and conversational approaches, which vary greatly across cultures, both socio-economic, national and internal.

> Did you miss the empirical evidence to the contrary linked earlier?

You posted a blog post, from a startup. It was not peer-reviewed. It was not readily duplicatable. I'm not sure how to have a conversation with a person's whose standard of evidence for "genders and races are inherently inferior" is "a guy on a website said it."

Manuel_DOP3y ago

Culture is vastly variable even inside a given race. Heck even within inside a given race, inside a given country culture is highly variable. It's probably much easier to distinguish between a costal urban educated white person and a rural white person, than distinguishing between two people of different races in the same location.

You can easily test whether anonymization is working: have interviewers try to guess the identity characteristics of the applicant and if they're able to distinguish between them then it's failing. If the interviewer is unable to infer it, then the anonymization is working.

> I'm not sure how to have a conversation with a person's whose standard of evidence for "genders and races are inherently inferior" is "a guy on a website said it."

Who on earth said this? This reads like a complete no sequitur. Who is saying that genders and races are inherently inferior?

I'm not sure how to have a conversation who thinks that the mere notion that not all disparities are due to bias means "genders and races are inherently inferior." Men are vastly overrepresented among murder convictions. If someone says this is not because of bias, but because men commit more murders are you going to accuse them of sexism?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse