Hacker Bits, April 2016

I don't mean to be critical
of anyone I've quoted. I love
Joel, we founded Stack Overflow
together, and his advice
about interviewing and hiring
remains some of the best in the
industry. It's hardly unique to
express these sort of opinions
in the software and startup field.
I could have cited two dozen
different articles and treatises
about hiring that say the exact
same thing: aim high and set
out to hire the best, or don't
bother.
This risk of hiring not-thebest
is so severe, so existential a
crisis to the very survival of your
company or startup that the
hiring process has to become
highly selective, even arduous.
It is better to reject a good applicant
every single time than
accidentally accept one single
mediocre applicant. If the interview
process produces literally
anything other than unequivocal
"Oh my God, this person is
unbelievably talented, we have
to hire them", from every single
person they interviewed with,
right down the line, then it's an
automatic NO HIRE. Every time.
This level of strictness always
made me uncomfortable.
I'm not going to lie, it starts with
my own selfishness. I'm pretty
sure I wouldn't get hired at big,
famous companies with legendarily
difficult technical interview
processes because, you know,
they only hire the best. I don't
think I am one of the best. More
like cranky, tenacious, and outspoken,
to the point that I wake
up most days not even wanting
to work with myself.
If your hiring attitude is that
it's better to be possibly wrong
a hundred times so you can be
absolutely right one time, you're
going to be primed to throw
away a lot of candidates on pretty
thin evidence.
Perhaps worst of all, if the
interview process is predicated
on zero doubt and total confidence
… maybe this candidate
doesn't feel right because they
don't look like you, dress like
you, think like you, speak like
you, or come from a similar
background as you? Are you
accidentally maximizing for
hidden bias?
One of the best programmers
I ever worked with was
Susan Warren, an ex-Microsoft
engineer who taught me about
the People Like Us problem, way
back in 2004:
I think there is a real
issue around diversity
in technology (and most
other places in life). I tend
to think of it as the PLU
problem. Folks (including
MVPs) tend to connect best
with folks most like them
("People Like Us"). In this
case, male MVPs pick other
men to become MVPs. It's
just human nature.
As one reply notes, diversity
is good. I'd go as far as
to say it's awesome, amazing
and priceless. But it's
hard to get to the classic
chicken and egg problem
if you rely on your natural
tendencies alone. In that
case, if you want more
female MVPs to be invited,
you need more female
MVPs. If you want more
Asian-American MVPs to
be invited, you need more
Asian-American MVPs, etc.
And the (cheap) way to
break a new group in is via
quotas.
IMO, building diversity via
quotas is bad because they
are unfair. Educating folks
on why diversity is awesome
and how to build it
is the right way to go, but
also far more costly.
hacker bits
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