
If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools - leeny
http://blog.interviewing.io/if-you-care-about-diversity-you-should-stop-hiring-from-the-same-five-schools/
======
drewg123
When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my
alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad
school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS.
I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly
crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a
series where they had a panel of a few HR (sorry, "people ops") folks and a
SWE or two talking over Google Hangouts to auditoriums full of kids at _FIVE_
different schools which they called "Long Tail". (and UB wasn't even one of
them)

I think they are missing an incredible amount of talent this way. In my circle
of friends, there were 3-4 other people that Google would have been lucky to
have, and two of them were women They just don't understand that some people
like me, who can get into the (mostly private) elite schools choose to go to a
"long tail" school for a variety of reasons (financial, family obligations,
etc). There are lots of similar schools all over the country.

~~~
eropple
_> They just don't understand that some people like me, who can get into the
(mostly private) elite schools choose to go to a "long tail" school for a
variety of reasons (financial, family obligations, etc)._

Agreed--I was accepted everywhere I applied save one and I ended up going to
the University of Maine. I've never hurt for work and I paid off my student
loans by the age of 25. Google sniffs around now (aside: recruiters, even if
it's Google maybe you shouldn't _assume_ I want to talk to you and _tell_ me
to sign up for a phone call to talk to your sainted ass?) and I have no
interest, but the first time I interviewed, when a guy at Google gave me
_noticeable shade_ for my filthy state school degree? They could've made a
decent bit of money off of me and now that door is likely closed.

~~~
cynicalkane
Google's interviewing process is incongruously uneven compared to the rest of
the company, which is top-notch. I recommend giving it another thought.
(Disclaimer: ex-Googler.)

~~~
eropple
Google can't offer me anything I want anymore. They could have when I was less
experienced, but I have enough in my toolbox that ending up stuck in a Google
ecosystem for years and losing my edge would be a net negative.

(I guess there's always the wheelbarrow of money, but they don't really even
do _that_ anymore, at least here in Boston.)

~~~
eradicatethots
If you work at google the little shits on the internet can’t say “LuL ur just
not good enough” anymore.

------
JumpCrisscross
I went to a non-top tier undergraduate school. I made efforts--at big
companies as well as the one I founded--to recruit from my _alma mater_. I
ended up defaulting to NYU, Harvard and Stanford.

Career services at non-top tier schools are shit. Once, as a personal favor, I
offered to help a company with a well-known CEO recruit from my state school.
When I brought it up with a dean I knew, career services got mad. They said I
should have gone through them first. Guarding their gatekeeping function was
of greater concern than doing their job. They then suggested this CEO come to
their fall freshman career fair. I said no, it's a high-profile company,
they'd prefer if you curated a list for them. (MIT and NYU, amongst others, do
this.) No response.

Consider, too, that 90% of recent-college graduate recruiting (in finance, at
least) is less about finding brilliance than finding someone who won't make
dumb mistakes. The Ivy League produces a consistent product. They hold no
monopoly on genius. But the variance around others' outputs is too high for a
young firm.

All that said, I never turn down an outbound email. (It's how I broke into the
industry.) I also think it's important, as your firm develops, to keep an eye
on broadening recruiting.

Closing note: in response to recent news, I started thinking about our
workplace's gender diversity. It's bad, and it matches that of the schools we
recruit from.

~~~
sndean
> Career services at non-top tier schools are shit.

Doing my undergrad and PhD at an average large state school, I was really
lucky to get an internship (and now job), essentially by word of mouth and my
PhD advisor.

Now that I'm doing a part-time Masters at an elite-ish (top 10) school, I'm
realizing how amazing career services can be. They send out weekly emails
saying:

"James Dimon is coming to speak." "Dir. of Engineering from Exxon will be
taking questions." "Bring your resume and chat with recruiters." "Women's
Society will be hosting Barclays tonight."

My state school had nothing. All of the leg work was done by individual
students.

~~~
Tehchops
> I'm realizing how amazing career services can be. They send out weekly
> emails saying: "James Dimon is coming to speak."

Interesting, and I can see it. But then again, I have to wonder if there is
some degree of confirmation bias at play here?

It's likely the staff in Career Services at $ivyLeague are, on average, of a
higher skill than their counterparts at $stateSchool. But by how much? Sending
an email isn't exactly a massive technical accomplishment, and even being able
to send an email saying Mr. Dimon is coming to speak might say a lot more
about the name of the school they work for than it does their ability as
administrators.

A school like Harvard has a lot more clout in name, money, and connections, in
getting someone like Dimon, Blankfein, Zuckerberg etc... to speak(or even pick
up the phone) than, say, New Mexico State University.

It may be organizational skills and capability, but I'm willing to bet it's
also about name recognition, alumni connections, and availability of
resources.

~~~
adrianratnapala
My guess is that it is about political will. If people in career services want
a fief where "Guarding their gatekeeping function was of greater concern than
doing their job." \-- then it will take political capital to fight that.
Depending on their incentives, university bosses might not bother.

But the Ivy League schools know that their bread is buttered by their ability
to get students into elite positions, so they make sure their career services
department gets things right. And have been doing so for so long that these
departments do things right on their own.

------
fareesh
As an outsider in another country, my impression seems to be that the quest
for diversity seems to have turned into something of a religion in several
cultures. In principle, as a solution to the problem I am principally all in
favor of anonymous, faceless, no alma mater preference etc. interviews and
application processes, and/or whatever other measures are suggested to remove
the possibility of bias or unconscious bias or anything else that is
theorized/proven to exist and affect outcomes.

I am also all in favor of organizations taking steps to address the various
negative experiences that are somewhat typically encountered in various
demographics, e.g. harassment, etc. as well as affirmative action as a way to
attempt to correct this. Based on the fervor with which it is pursued (which
is admirable in many ways), I seem to be convinced that if these measures have
a negligible effect on outcomes, the crusade for diversity will still
continue, as if to suggest that equality of outcome is a worthy goal, as
opposed to equality of opportunity. The latter is definitely an unjust status
quo worthy of fighting, but the former seems to completely throw away the
notion of free will.

It's almost akin to a scientist who so adamantly wants to prove their theory
that they will do anything to ensure the result is consistent with the
hypothesis.

Then again I could be wrong and people will actually stop pushing for it after
these practices are instituted.

~~~
lutorm
The underlying assumption is that, if you average over a large enough
population, there should be no underlying consistent difference between
subsets selected on gender, race, or class, so a difference of outcome is
presumed to be a result of difference of opportunity.

The underlying assumption is definitely an assumption, but it seems like a
good zeroth-order assumption to me.

~~~
fareesh
Right - like I said, fighting equality of opportunity is worthy and must be
pursued relentlessly.

What seems to be happening (the impression I get) is something analogous to
this:

I have a game released on two mobile platforms - android and iOS. The iOS
players are disproportionately scoring better than the android players.

Some are suggesting that the server is bugged/programmed to give iOS players
better scores. I reject this.

Some are saying that the android user experience has conditioned those players
to be satisfied with a low score. I reject this.

Some are saying iOS players are superior because they bought an apple product.
I reject this.

My opinion that it is likely that the android release has a lot of performance
issues which impede the player's ability to get a high score on that platform.
I test this out by doing things like getting an android player to play on an
iOS device, and checking if their performance improves. I do the reverse and
check accordingly too. I do various tests on fps, input lag, etc.

If my experiment fails to show anything conclusive, I should be open to re-
evaluating some of the things I rejected, but I refuse to do it out of zealous
belief in my hypothesis. The answer must be optimization, I insist.

If my experiment succeeds, I should tweak the android code till the disparity
goes away. Instead, I just hardcode +500 to the android scores and pat myself
on the back.

There seem to be cases where the diversity disparity is "solved by
hardcoding", and other cases where the data doesn't support the hypothesis,
but there is an ardent refusal to accept it, as if it would be blasphemous to
suggest otherwise. These are pretty much the only things I take issue with.

~~~
lutorm
_If my experiment fails to show anything conclusive, I should be open to re-
evaluating some of the things I rejected, but I refuse to do it out of zealous
belief in my hypothesis._

You are arguing a straw man. The "experiments" in this case _are_ showing
ample evidence of biases, so as long as those biases exist the underlying
hypothesis can by definition not be falsified.

~~~
fareesh
Perhaps I am not very well read on the subject. My argument was rooted in the
attitude I came across when this story was trending (linked at the end of this
comment). This research might have been disproved later on, I never followed
up on the story. What I was referring to was the readiness with which some
were willing to stop pursuing this sort of trial.

My intent wasn't to strawman - if this is in fact non-existent then I concede
that point.

[http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-
recruitment-t...](http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-
trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888)

------
naturalgradient
I was an undergraduate at a no-name university for various personal reasons. A
Google, Microsoft and other big tech co offices were nearby. Throughout my
undergrad, not a single event, talk or recruiting opportunity emerged. I
understand this: the top people are the same everywhere but it does not
economically make sense to do events to potentially hire 1-2 people.

I am now at a world famous grad school and there are talks, events,
opportunities every week. I would say the best 5% at the undergraduate school
were approximately at least as good as the average undergraduate here.

Unfortunately, economically it makes sense to focus recruiting events only at
certain schools.

How could companies reach the great students at unknown schools
systematically?

~~~
dionidium
I recently moved from St. Louis to New York City. The number of recruiting
emails I receive has probably quadrupled (or more). In all things, it helps to
be where the people you want to find you are looking.

Also: protip for people in the South or Midwest who are open to relocation:
change your online profiles to say you're in the new location.

~~~
throwaway713
As a data scientist living in the South, I have no problem relocating to San
Francisco or San Jose, but how do I signal this without letting my existing
employer know? Changing my LinkedIn location from <tiny city> to San Francisco
would raise some uncomfortable questions.

~~~
eggpy
Maybe it's ok to let your employer know? It's not as if the desire to relocate
could be solved by your current company if all of their operations are local.
I suppose it depends on your manager, but hopefully if you said "Boss, I want
to move to San Francisco. The growth opportunity there is too great to
ignore." they might be supportive. Obviously if you think that conversation
could go very badly then you might have to be a bit more low-key. Maybe try to
reach out to a recruiting firm in San Francisco instead of changing your
LinkedIn.

------
gnicholas
> _No company, not even the tech giants, can cover every school or every
> resume submitted online._

Are we talking about the tech companies that hoover up all the data in the
world and analyze it for profit? I'm pretty sure they could figure out how to
cover every resume submitted online.

But making this claim was a required part of the setup for what comes next: a
sales pitch for this company's service. I stopped reading here, but wished I'd
stopped during the over-dramatized hypothetical interview stories at the
beginning.

------
w1ntermute
This is a good idea in theory, but the problem in practice is that for every
Emily or Anthony, there are a hundred students at 2nd and 3rd tier
universities who, partly through their own failures and partly due to the
unfortunate circumstances they’re in, are completely incompetent. I often find
that those who are so keen on “hiring broadly” have never worked in a company
that hires primarily from Podunk State - your expectations of your employees
have to be so much lower.

The key is not to focus on the schools (rather than to focus extra on state
schools). Instead, develop methods for identifying talent based on its own
merits, regardless of where it is or what university it went to.

~~~
leeny
That's why we're really proud of what we do at interviewing.io. All students
have to go through a series of practice interviews, so by the time they talk
to companies, we know they're great, and so far, most of the students we've
presented have gotten offers, independently of their backgrounds.

With our model, we free up companies from having to worry about exactly what
you described because we incur the vetting.

~~~
rhizome
Do I understand correctly that on the candidate side the person can go through
a sequence of interviews without the possibility of actually meeting a hiring
company? Also that you only work with students?

~~~
leeny
We have 2 pools: a practice pool and then a pool where you get guaranteed
interviews with employers. If you do well in practice, you can book real
interviews with any number of top companies who've come to trust in the
quality of our users.

This goes for both senior engineers, and more recently, students.

~~~
deskamess
Do you have stats on how many of your customers are in their 30's and 40's? I
would think that demographic would find practicing very useful since they have
been out of touch with algorithms for a while.

~~~
leeny
Median interviewing.io user currently has 6 years of experience (we don't ask
people their ages).

------
KeepTalking
This is true not just for engineering hires. I recently experienced this with
more evolved roles such as PM and PMMs.

Diversity and inclusion biases go beyond educational background. I have
noticed the big tech firms (experienced this with a social network giant) are
more biased to hire from a big consulting firm like McKinsey or Bain.

Despite having the requisite experience & education for the role, I got the
boilerplate response without even talking to anyone. Some sleuthing revealed
this big tech firm tends to recruit heavily from McKinsey. Most people at the
role had this trajectory BA at Ivy League --> 2 yrs work exp --> MBA (Top 10)
---> Big Consulting ---> Big tech.

This seems to bode well who could afford either an ivy league education and an
expensive MBA. Leaves little room for folks with street experience. On the
other side, maybe it calls for long-term gorilla marketing tactics to really
sell your personal brand.

~~~
jakelarkin
PM and PMM at big companies are effectively middle-management. Business
manager hiring leans toward the trajectory you describe because 1) its the
largest, traditional low-volatility career path for top performers out of good
schools 2) it ensures the candidate has passed through a number of relatively
rigorous admission filters on pedigree, culture, diligence and performance,
and 3) at successful large companies the senior managers/execs are mostly MBA
grads and they themselves are biased to hiring younger versions of themselves
as reports.

------
jroseattle
When we find a candidate we're interested in pursuing, we ask our recruiting
operation to do two things prior to sending us the candidate's resume.

1) Remove the candidate's name/address. Replace with local-to-office = yes|no.
Leave phone for screening call.

2) Replace the candidate's education credentials with yes|no on post-HS
attendance, and the focus of study. No other information necessary.

It's made a huge difference to us.

~~~
moftz
Is GPA included? I bombed my first two years at school due to being totally
unprepared. I took a semester off and came back to actually do well but the
damage was done. I was consistently looked over at nearly every career fair
interview. I never put my GPA on my resume and the moment the question would
come up, I already knew they weren't going to hire me despite anything else on
my resume or what we discussed in the interview. The only time I would
actually get offer letters is when no one asked my GPA. I know that
internships are competitive and I would only want to be judged on merit but
being judged solely on one number was the most frustrating thing during
school.

~~~
jroseattle
No.

We have yet to find a predictive correlation between GPA and performance
metrics for our employees and their work.

~~~
hexane360
Seeing as you've done some exploratory inference, are there any surprising
correlations you _have_ found?

~~~
jroseattle
I lead teams of software engineers, and what we have learned is that those who
bring drive and active energy in their positions excel the best. It's a
performance business, and over the long haul effort matters greatly.

It's also a marathon. Tech is constantly changing, and we all need to stay
current and avoid becoming a dinosaur. It requires a persistent drive to
always be willing to learn new things, to challenge what you've learned in the
past, and stay on top of changes in our industry.

We put our trust in those who sustain this over time.

------
southphillyman
Isn't this one of the primary reasons why those particular schools are
"elite". Because of the alumni base and "connections" you can make at these
schools? It sucks but I feel like most students enter college knowing how this
system works and therefore try their darnest to get into one of those elite
schools. I went to a school that had career fairs with 50 kids standing in
every line waiting for their resumes to be put into a trash pile. Save for
5-10 students who may have gotten professor recommendations it was a complete
waste of time. Only now am I getting reached by recruiters from the Big 4.
Honestly I can't even fully wrap my head around having that kind of
opportunity at 22-23 years old.

~~~
moftz
I went to a major state research university for engineering. During career
fairs, the big companies would always have huge lines for hours and the
unknown, smaller companies would be doing their best to grab every
uninterested kid walking past. The big companies were usually a waste of time
to talk to (and waste of time waiting to talk to). They would sort resumes by
GPA and pitch the bottom 90%. Then you would still be competing against
everyone at every other school in the region. Unless you are just looking to
name drop your previous employers, the experience is really what matters. I
would usually go right to the smaller companies and be able to have actual
discussions with an engineering manager or even a VP. Those companies would
almost always call you back and be interested for an actual interview.

~~~
wolco
If you want to one day start a startup you should stay away from big
companies, the skills and experience you get at the right startup can make the
difference.

~~~
s73ver_
If you want to one day start a startup, the huge paycheck you get from the big
companies can definitely make that a lot easier.

------
compumike
There are actually two overlapping long tail effects here: top schools and
huge companies. Only one quadrant of this 2x2 grid works well for on-campus
recruiting.

For everyone else, there’s a discoverability problem: it's hard for students
to discover exciting startups, and it's hard for startups to get in front of
and filter for the best young engineers.

It's not irrational for companies to hire from a small set of schools: there's
just no other way they can effectively allocate resources. That's why there's
opportunity for companies like Triplebyte and Interviewing.io to innovate in
new ways of screening, and as a result, get more data and insight while making
the process better for both engineers and companies. A similar example would
be what we learned about bootcamps vs. recent college grads, which other
companies couldn't have learned yet because they just reject the bootcamp
grads as a broad heuristic: [https://triplebyte.com/blog/bootcamps-vs-
college](https://triplebyte.com/blog/bootcamps-vs-college)

------
jaggederest
I would bet significant amounts of money that if you looked at people based on
their in-job performance blinded to background you'd find insignificant
contributions from education.

Not interviewing, I would bet that people from top-tier schools interview very
well, as I think Triplebyte discussed the other day. I'm talking about actual
bottom-line performance in the job, which in my experience shows little
correlation with school or even undergrad degree for people with any
experience at all.

~~~
home_boi
I can see this being true if the people work at the same company (and already
passed the same filter).

I doubt it would be true over the entire university CS populations. If the
only thing you know about two applicants is their university, then the student
from a top tier university will on average perform much better than the
student from a low tier university.

~~~
jaggederest
If the only thing you know about two applicants is their university, you
literally don't know anything about them and need to start over.

I'm like 99% sure it's zero information. Most hiring processes don't falsify
the null hypothesis :P

------
notadoc
If jobs were screened entirely by competency and personality/fit, with
interviews/resumes somehow conveying those aspects of a candidate without any
other identifying information revealed about the applicants (no school, age,
sex, name, ethnicity, etc), how different would the end result of hiring be?
That would make for an interesting study in a variety of industries and
fields, if one hasn't been done already.

~~~
johny115
That's what were trying to achieve at Vervoe. Our hiring software is designed
to assess candidates primarily via task-based simulations created by experts -
that means interview questions that help the Employer assess your skill and
judge the candidates based on their answers mostly.

When I myself was hired by Vervoe, I didn't submit any resume, because as our
CEO says, resumes are documents about past and don't necessarily show how the
candidate will perform now and in future. I only submitted the skill assessing
questions. My school (I have none), age, sex, ethnicity, location didn't
matter.

I am glad that articles and comments like this exist, shows we're not alone on
our mission to show that diversity works better :).

------
slackstation
Tech companies rightly or wrongly (the article doesn't make that strong of a
case against) are just outsourcing part of their recruiting to elite
universities.

Figuring how much investment flows from tech companies (through the companies
and the employees as alumni donators) to these elite universities, it may be a
worthwhile investment.

It probably is one of the few reliable signals at scale. Sure, you can pluck
out a few smart people from your local podunk uni who for various reasons
really are _that_ smart but, didn't get into an elite school but, if you need
to hire 200 really smart, really capable engineers this year to feed your
growth pipeline Stanford, Harvard, et al isn't that bad.

Additionally, it looks good for VCs to say that I have someone from Harvard or
Stanford or etc on the team.

------
jxramos
I recently watched part of this debate and was struck by an admission Peter
Thiel dropped about school hire diversity...

"""Peter Thiel: Thank you. Let me actually just start with that question. You
know, I went to Stanford undergrad, Stanford law school. Throughout the '90s,
I had a belief that education was absolutely paramount. We should only hire
people that went to the best schools. And - and we discriminated on this basis
very aggressively in hiring at PayPal. And I use this -- and I used to -- I
thought this was the most important thing in our society. And over the last
four or five years, I've gradually come to shift my views on it for a number
of different reasons. The narrow technology context in Silicon Valley, that I
saw so many very talented people who had not gone through college tracks and
who had still done extraordinary well. In some ways, they were also more
creative.""" Too Many Kids Go To College- Intelligence Squared U.S.
[https://youtu.be/7VTQ-dBYSlQ?t=468](https://youtu.be/7VTQ-dBYSlQ?t=468)

------
tiggybear
Honestly, I think the socioeconomic status of your parents should be more
heavily waited in "diversity" measures than skin color.

~~~
TuringNYC
Totally agree, but as another commenter suggested it is difficult to measure
socioeconomic status. I think the bigger issue is -- why are negative points
applied to Asian applications on my affirmative action schemes, rather than
negative points evenly distributed against the entire non-preferred pool? Is
anyone seriously arguing that Asian applicants have it easier than caucasians?

Having grown up quite poor in NYC, I was always dismayed by not being able to
take advantage of affirmative action programs...but getting selective
_negative_ points is just plain unfair.

~~~
vilmosi
>>> Is anyone seriously arguing that Asian applicants have it easier than
caucasians?

Statistically speaking, don't they? Isn't that the reasoning for these
"penalties"?

~~~
TuringNYC
I imagine this is a huge can of worms, there is no one answer, and any answer
I give will be a broad and imperfect generalization. That said, i'll provide
my viewpoint as an Asian-American born and raised in NYC. I'm comparing to
others in NYC (obviously there is the broader USA where poverty abounds and
knows no color.)

No, most asians of my generation did not have it easier. We rarely had an
uncle at a hedge fund or lawfirm suddenly drop an internship in the middle of
Junior year high school to beef up our college applications. Few had legacy
connections or friends at the investment bank who could write a great
recommendation. I went to a top-3 science high school in NYC and by and large,
the Asians I saw succeed did it through sheer, soul-crushing hard work. In
many cases we had slave masters (our mothers usually, see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_mother](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_mother))
ensuring success at any cost.

 _Sure, most of my friends and I got into ivy league schools in droves, but in
many cases it was almost a pyrrhic victory._ I honestly wish I could have
normal fun and social development in high school. Instead I was forced to
maximize _one and only one objective function_ \-- getting into an Ivy League
school.

 _So to answer your question: No, we Asian-Americans dont have it easier, most
of us simply overcompensated at great personal cost._

These are all gross generalizations circa 1994-1997 based on my highly diverse
high school graduating class of ~800 and another thousand people I know from
my neighborhood, civic organizations, summer jobs, etc. I'd value other
perspectives.

~~~
vilmosi
>>> No, most asians of my generation did not have it easier

Again, statistically. On average, people of all colors don't have an uncle at
a hedge fund...

>>> So to answer your question: No, we Asian-Americans dont have it easier,
most of us simply overcompensated at great personal cost.

In NY... The irony...

And that's if you're anecdotes are true.

~~~
TuringNYC
>> Again, statistically. On average, people of all colors don't have an uncle
at a hedge fund...

Huge numbers of people I went to undergrad with had uncles at hedge funds or
big law firms. Those are the people I was competing with for entrance. You're
absolutely right, I was never competing with many people in the Midwest (of
all races) who had it worse than me because large populations amongst the Ivy
League schools come from ~2 dozen high schools. My high school was proud to
produce 71 (i think, something around that) students who proceeded into Ivy
League schools from our graduating class (for whatever that is worth.) It is
even more with 5 other NYC schools and a couple on Massachusetts.

Finally, You dont need to believe my anecdotes -- you can read hundreds of
first-hand accounts online. When the "Tiger Mom" NY Times article and book
came out, you chould see the outpouring of condemnation of some of this NY
(and broader) Asian subculture -- a lot of it was from Asians like myself.

I encourage you to read the comments section of that famous article as well as
the dozens of offshoot conversations and heated debate that ensued over the
persoanl/emotional/psychological cost of success at any cost mentality.

~~~
vilmosi
>>> Huge numbers of people I went to undergrad with had uncles at hedge funds
or big law firms.

Yes, in a top school in NY.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not for "penalising" or "rewarding" anyone for their
skin color. I hope you didn't get that message from me.

I am way more into personalised life experience reward/penalty system. And
that should be limited to scholarships based on socio economic situation, not
test scores.

~~~
TuringNYC
>> Yes, in a top school in NY.

Well that is sort of my point...When Asians compete for spots at top
universities, they arent really competing against the entire united states,
they are competing against the _applicant pool._

Ivy League schools get more valedictorian applications than there are seats.
Some get more perfect SAT scores than there are seats, so they end up using
other factors like sports, well-rounded-ness, speaking ability, unique
experiences, etc.

A lot of the folks in that applicant pool have all sorts of unique experiences
-- summar safaris in africa, a performance at Lincoln Center, summer
internship at a major law firm, internship at some Congressperson's office,
etc, etc.

Those types of non-academic admissions factors disfavor most minorities (they
_espcially_ disfavor those of African descent given the lack of diversity in
most of those fields, which is why i can appreciate affirmative action for
clearly underpriviledged groups.)

Now, things are getting better for Asians, Indians, etc and are certainly
better than what they were in 1996 when I applied to college. People always
tend to point at Nadella, Pandit, Pichai -- but seriously -- how much of the
real power base in the US is actually diverse?

 _Looking beyond technology into the broader economic, cultural, media, and
political base of the US, can anyone really argue that Asians are so well
represented that they deserve Negative application points relative to all
others?_

------
vthallam
>interviewing.io evaluates students based on their coding skills, not their
resume. We are open to students regardless of their university affiliation,
college major, and pretty much anything else (we ask for your class year to
make sure you’re available when companies want you and that’s about it).
Unlike traditional campus recruiting, we attract students organically (getting
free practice with engineers from top companies is a pretty big draw) from
schools big and small from across the country.

Sweet pitch and of course a genuine problem. But companies have very limited
resources and they use them at elite schools which have already stringent
requirements to get in. Alternatively, I now see most companies are giving a
hackerrank test as a start irrespective of your school. I guess this is a
starting point to avoid the bias towards top schools.

~~~
Manishearth
"stringent requirements"

like "oh, one of your parents was a student here? here, you're in".

Harvard is _one-third_ legacy[1].

> at five Ivy League schools, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown, as
> well as 33 other colleges, there are more students from families in the top
> one percent than from the entire bottom 60 percent.

stringent requirements, sure, but certainly not the right kind.

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/harvards-incoming-class-
is-o...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/harvards-incoming-class-is-one-third-
legacy.html)

~~~
vthallam
That alone doesn't get you an admission. When 2 students has equal test
scores, GPA and everything else, your family association definitely helps.
This doesn't mean, they accept not so smart people because their parents went
to the same school.

~~~
hyperhopper
Exactly, the argument is that it shouldn't matter.

------
amorphid
Hey Aline!

Regarding diversity, have you needed to steer away from any particular
anonymous interviewing techniques because that technique heavily favored a
particular demographic? A silly example would be that you no longer allow
people to do tests at 8:30 a.m. GMT on Tuesdays because only a certain
demographic did disproportionately well in that timeslot. If yes, can you give
an example?

Side note, I really liked the interview you gave Software Engineering Daily.
That was the first time in a long time I heard about an attempt to make
technical recruiting better that actually sounded better to me! [1]

[1]
[https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/10/19/interviewing...](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/10/19/interviewing-
io-with-aline-lerner/)

------
thearn4
I've worked on a few teams at my job that only seemed to hire from GA Tech,
MIT or Purdue (engineering), though I was the odd one out in coming from a
non-engineering background (math) from a state school. Intellectual inbreeding
is a big problem in some areas. New ideas tend to emerge when folks with
separate (or even seemingly disparate) perspectives find ways to address a
common problem. This can describe multidisciplinary teams, but also teams with
folks who learned the same subject in different ways.

That said, I do agree that I've always been impressed with prospective hires &
the students we've mentored from top-tier schools. But I also know that a
great student could come from anywhere, and if they also happen to be local it
can be a real value multiplier.

------
gumby
This article is about first jobs out of school (interesting to me b/c my kid
just started university).

How much does it matter after that first job? I couldn't tell you were _any_
of my co-workers went to school -- in hiring the work a candidate did
previously and what people I know say about their work matters.

However I am quite conscious that people give me the benefit of the doubt
based on where _I_ went to school (I hope it's obvious I mean people who can
look me up on LinkedIn, not random people). I've had some absurdly far-fetched
ideas, some of which turned out to be quite lucrative and some of which turned
out to be stupid. I doubt I would have gotten the time of day without that
brand name.

~~~
toast0
For those company where school names open the door, it's still going to open
the door for later jobs. Your previous employer names may also open the door.
But many companies that hire only from top schools also hire only from top
companies, or at least well known companies.

------
lambda_lover
Agreed. As someone who recently graduated from a relatively good (2100 median
SAT score) school that ISN'T a top five CS school, it was absolutely insulting
how often I was completely ignored by companies like Google, Facebook, and
Amazon. I understand that the median of talent is probably worse at my school
than at, say, MIT or Stanford, but the top quarter of my CS year was full of
brilliant people who had an unnecessarily difficult time getting hired by top
tier tech companies for no good reason.

These companies could definitely improve their hiring quality by drawing top-
tier students at lesser schools instead of hiring below-median talent from
target top schools.

~~~
azinman2
My experience is that there’s almost always some top tier talent no matter
what school you’re in. Particularly when young, the school one goes to is
often more a choice of circumstance and randomness than of deliberate thought
and Oracle-like forsight on the school’s behalf.

------
zulrah
If you care about diversity stop interviewing on these stupid algorithmic
questions! Getting a job literally depends on buying the cracking the coding
interview book and solving these stupid problems. I know some of my course
mates who worked on very interesting projects but couldn't get a job because
they couldn't white board a tree balancing problem :D

~~~
dsacco
I agree that whiteboard coding interviews that assess mastery of algorithms
and data structures with low applicability to the role are not optimal for
hiring.

However, I don't really agree that this is a "diversity" problem, except
perhaps weakly so in that it optimizes against people who don't want to study
algorithms for interviews. But interviews by definition optimize against some
subset of the general population; unless you're defining diversity so loosely
that it can be satisfied by the sets `{studies algorithms for interviews}` and
`{doesn't study algorithms for interviews}` (and in that case, how are they
different)? That's sort of like saying a tech company shouldn't optimize its
interviews for people who like to watch baseball versus people who don't -
they absolutely shouldn't do that, but that's meaningless as a diversity
metric, in my opinion.

How are you defining diversity?

~~~
lutorm
The article touched on this a bit. If you have a nonstandard background, you
are less likely to have prepared for these kinds of situations because it's
less likely you have parents, mentors, or peers to learn these things from.

------
CodeSheikh
Sending alums back to top tier schools is also part PR too for the companies.
"Hey look Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple are on our campus today. Great
companies at great colleges gets great news coverage".

------
ggg9990
Interesting, but I don't actually care about diversity. The Silicon Valley
giants, often criticized for their low diversity, are among the most
successful companies of all time. Apple, the least diverse of them, is the
most successful. Forgive me for following the example of the Usain Bolts and
not the findings of sprinting researchers.

------
trgn
Went to no-name school. My career's been just fine, similar to peers who
attended top-tier schools.

It works both ways. Kids who grow up in families who push them to attend big-
name universities, will grow up to be adults who find it important to work for
big-name companies.

There's a lot of opportunity outside that track too though.

------
chiefalchemist
Further proof that SV use of the word diversity is closer to a euphemism for
assimulation. That is, diversity isn't a source for different backgrounds and
experiences; but a biological signal to be optimized in order to maximize
public perception, while ideas remain essentially the same.

~~~
gt_
Precisely. And how could SV be blamed for treating it as such? "Diversity" is
not even contextually correlated with class consciousness, and we are only
confusing each other when we attempt using it this way.

If enough political pressure is placed on SV over class concerns like this,
where would the measurement come from? It took statistical evidence to get
movement on the more biological concerns, but I'm not sure anecdote alone
could have done that. Either way, the result will be little more than a
website and some youtube videos.

------
chrisco255
Another point on diversity: It's never going to happen to the extent that
people want so long as most of the jobs are in Silicon Valley. For many women
and minorities and older men (with children), it is difficult to make that
move, away from their families. We can't pretend like this isn't a factor. I
recently moved to Austin from south Florida and my last company had a very
high Hispanic ratio, because it was located in south Florida, where the local
population ratio is quite high. I knew many talented developers who couldn't
or wouldn't make the move to one of the tech hubs because family. Without
spreading out tech jobs over more of the country, you'll never see great
representation.

------
teirce
This isn't even a problem that's limited to hiring out of schools. I went to a
pretty small school in flyover country, and (much as the article outlines) the
hardest part about getting a job was certainly not the interviews, it was
getting attention from anyone.

Now I'm working at a local tech company near where I went to school, because I
only had local connections from internships etc. Recently I've been looking to
move on to a new position and, despite having friends inside of multiple
companies (Google, Apple, MSFT) refer me, I've gotten exactly one interview.

If anyone is open to suggestions on how to get more attention, I'm all ears.
Until then I suppose I get to shotgun application pages endlessly.

~~~
vamin
I had a slightly different issue (non-traditional major for the field I was
trying to get into), but I found that it significantly improved my response
rates to put my education section at the bottom, instead of the top, of my
resume. It made it less likely that a recruiter would dismiss me out of hand
based on my education before forming an opinion based on my skills and
experience.

------
akhilcacharya
This article hit home for me because I see it _all the time_. I go to a large
state school where a 2-3 of the Big4 show up to recruit, but undergrads rarely
get offers. We don't pass technical screens (partly on us, partly on the focus
of our DS&A classes), and very often we don't even get interviews.

I think about this all the time and it concerns me. I'll never get into a top
school now but I do have a big4 internship on my resume on an in-demand ML
team - yet, I'm still going to be looked down upon compared to someone that
goes to UIUC or Duke _at minimum_ , not even considering people at HYPSM.

Sometimes I wondered if there's a point in trying if I'm already so far
behind.

------
jsonne
I guess I'm just speaking for myself here, but it's depressing that according
to many folks in this thread my life path was essentially decided for me by
the time I was 18. That being said this is far from the first time I've heard
this argument, and largely a reason I decided to get into entrepreneurship. I
didn't have the pedigree, my parents went to an even worse state school than I
did, and my family largely had no industry connections. If I'm going to jump
classes I'll have to do it of largely my own merit. Luckily the public at
large doesn't care if a Harvard grad or a state school grad built the
company/product they love.

------
j7ake
I feel there are money ball like opportunities worth millions of dollars per
year here. You essentiall have tons of presumably similarly skilled workers
who are not getting the attention from big companies. A smart company that
knows about hiring should be able to pick from this overlooked group of
workers and find the ones that would make their company punch "beyond their
weight class".

That is to say, a purely capitalist solution is to hire all of these
overlooked workers at a discount and have their output be competitive with the
big companies.

------
fnwx17
> Mason, the Harvard student, attends an event on campus with Facebook
> engineers teaching him how to pass the technical interview.

> Emily’s school has an informal, undergraduate computer science club in which
> they are collectively reading technical interviewing guides and trying to
> figure out what tech companies want from them. She has a couple interviews
> lined up, but all of which are for jobs she’s desperate to get. They trade
> tips after interviews but ultimately have a shaky understanding of they did
> right and wrong in the absence of post-interview feedback from companies.

This pains me every.single.time.

Being part of a specialized recruiting agency, I want to double down on how
much preparation and insight before the actual interview matters.

Devs spend most of their time developing, not sitting in interviews, so every
recruiter should spend at least a few minutes with every candidate giving them
some heads-up.

Not like "for question 1, the answer is b", but like how to carry themselves
through the interviews and generally what to expect.

------
marcoperaza
Universities are allowed to base their entrance on intelligence tests[1],
while companies face a strong legal presumption that using such tests is
illegal discrimination. The easy way to get around that problem is to hire out
of the highest ranked universities.

[1] Tests like the SAT correlate very strongly with IQ, and are designed to
minimize the value of preparation.

~~~
fshaun
This was my thought as well. I recall reading that IQ/"G" and work products
were the dominant predicative factors for good hires. Can anyone help with a
source that confirms/refutes? Since new grads wouldn't have many past work
products, it would make sense if employers use university admissions as a
proxy for general aptitude testing, which are legally difficult to use.

------
eric_arrr
Business Town's take on this point is as colorful as it is succinct:
[http://welcometobusinesstown.tumblr.com/post/115950267726/bu...](http://welcometobusinesstown.tumblr.com/post/115950267726/businesstown-24-businesstown-
is-pretty-darn)

------
avenoir
10 years ago I graduated from a school that's not even in the top 100 CS
schools. But it was super-duper cheap and i got my foot in the door with
hardly any student debt. While I never interviewed at big companies like
Google, Amazon and Microsoft, I have been invited to all 3 for interviews at
various times throughout my career (sometimes more than once) and I know a lot
of my colleagues have as well. So in my experience the choice of school i went
to wasn't in any way detrimental to my career. However, I think the story
would've been different if i were an entrepreneur and wanted to have access to
the same network that someone in MIT or UC Berkley would have access to. That
in my mind would be the biggest benefit of attending a top-tier school, but I
don't know how important it is to a lot of people.

------
dba7dba
I've recently gone through a few rounds of interview with some of these
startups (not google or facebook or apple) and I've come to conclusion, that
EVEN THOUGH they interview you, they had already rejected you due to your
age/school. If you don't fit a certain diversity goal they are pursuing, too
bad too.

They are just interviewing you because if they don't interview, it looks bad
on them. It doesn't matter because the people ops team are paid for it.

After spending hours/weekends doing the coding/projects tests, on my own time,
and not getting offers at the end, AND realizing yah they never wanted you in
the first place, it's very disheartening. I was nothing more than a decoration
in the hiring musical chair game.

Diversity isn't just about gender/race. It's about age/school too.

------
vita17
As a senior at a public university who couldn't afford to go anywhere else but
made the most of his opportunities earning a good GPA, participating in clubs,
going to hackathons, working in research, learning extracurricular subjects,
etc. this topic is devastating.

I've done my best to learn the skills that companies think I should have when
I graduate. But it appears many companies will reject me because of who I am
not because of what I've done or what I can do if given the opportunity.

Maybe I lack some skills that you only find in candidates from the top
universities. It's not from a lack of effort. Why not advertise what those
skills are and give everyone an opportunity to learn them and demonstrate
them?

Why play this game where you pretend I am some enemy trying to infiltrate your
company with ignorance?

------
maruhan2
But doesn't this fall into economics? It could be that they are just biased,
but giving them benefit of the doubt, they might have done the math and said
"nope the cost to make the recruiting effort to these schools are not worth
it"

------
perl4ever
It doesn't seem shortsighted to me to recruit only from top schools, because
companies that hire graduates of Stanford or MIT or wherever can and do hire
people after they've been in the workforce for a few years to prove
themselves. I went to SUNY Albany and didn't even manage a 3.0 GPA, (missed it
by _that_ much) and after a few years of working for a local company got
contacted by recruiters from both Google and Amazon. They quickly realized I
wasn't the sort of person they wanted, but there was no artificial barrier if
I had been a genius who was tragically unable to attend a world-renowned
school.

------
ebogart
This article strikes a particularly strong chord with me. I am a student,
probably in between the second and third examples, and it is so unbelievably
hard to get an interview. I wasn't even aware it was so easy for students at
top schools. This is frustrating because college admission for many
essentially comes down to the first year or two of high school. That can't be
a good indicator of developer performance.

Maybe we need better career services for students at mid-level schools or
lower, or maybe we need a company to step in between the gaps. Either way the
system is broken right now.

~~~
wolco
College brand means very little for developers.

~~~
sgwae
At my company, students at target schools (vt, umd, etc) are offered 20k more
than non target.

------
Jach
The same top tier schools claim to value diversity very much. Are you going to
do better? If you decide to pull from another college at random to counteract
only going to the same top five, chances are that college doesn't value
diversity as much, and you'll get a less diverse candidate.

If you're focusing on good hires and not necessarily diverse ones, then yeah
it's not smart to aggressively filter by school. Talent (even amazing talent)
is not exclusive to any member of such a broadly defined set classification.

------
SQL2219
Hmmmm. "tech worker shortage"

------
throwaway2016a
There are some schools that break the mold. Particularly in Boston. Maybe not
completely breaking the mold but the tail is quite longer. I went to a top-100
school and many of my class mates are at companies like NASA, Tesla, Google,
Twitter and iRobot.

At the same time, as someone who has tried, the name definitely doesn't get
you in the door like a top 5 school might. You need to work harder to prove
yourself. (a LOT harder) And Google sure as heck has never gone to my alma
mater's career fairs.

------
programminggeek
Someday, people will realize that diversity on its own doesn't solve anything
and that people are people. Some are capable problem solvers and some aren't.
Some have great technical or leadership skills and some don't.

Hitting some kind of magic ratio won't on its own create better outcomes. If
it did, you could just fire your entire company, hire based on gender and
ethnicity ratios and performance would improve.

It turns out that companies aren't taking that approach...

------
aarohmankad
Love the article, really hit home for me. I attend UCR, which while being a
UC, doesn't get nearly enough attention for its engineering program.

If your company would like to put the practices of this article into use, I
would be happy to help you diversify your recruiting process! (I'm on the
board for many of our engineering orgs.)

UCR has a surplus of _extremely_ qualified students that don't get internships
because of the lack of active recruiting happening on campus.

------
johnwalker
A friend told me about their big company's interview process for interns from
Ivy Leagues, which was getting flown out to a party and then getting an
internship. The candidates weren't asked any technical questions, since they
were assumed to be smart enough to learn how to code in bootcamp. It made me
feel confused about myself for a while, since I didn't have a job or much
experience and it was hard enough getting a phone screen.

------
1290cc
From what I understand a certain large UK pharma company has already been
running an AI based, video conference only recruiting program. So far its been
a massive success as the pool of applicants they recruit from grew from just 3
top tier UK universities to about 30. They also noted that the applicants
stayed longer in the firm, were a better fit and were marked as a success
within the first year of employment.

------
dlwdlw
Wouldn't this require at least implicit acknowledgement that top tier schools
are not diverse? Subsequently all existing people already at companies need to
acknowledge this as well. (Since they are from those schools) It would require
breaking the illusion that's it's those "others" who are the "real" problem,
both by schools and companies.

------
ForHackernews
This graph is goofy: [http://blog.interviewing.io/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/thres...](http://blog.interviewing.io/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/threshold-4.png)

If I'm reading it right, the X-axis is backwards from normal convention
(origin in lower-left), but the axis isn't really labelled.

~~~
leeny
You're right! Will fix.

------
ken47
I've witnessed the imperfection of using the brand name of a degree as a
measure of ability. Numerous times throughout my career as an engineer, I've
seen someone from [INSERT WELL-KNOWN DEGREE HERE] outperformed by [INSERT
LESSER-KNOWN DEGREE HERE], or in one case by an engineer without a college
degree.

I've also witnessed the corruption of the college admissions process first-
hand. I went to a high school where many of the students came from privileged
families. I've witnessed a student cheat on multiple exams, including an AP
exam, get caught multiple times, and have nothing happen to her -- only to
later be admitted to an Ivy League. I've seen students who could barely pass
AP Calculus get into Stanford and other Ivy Leagues, because their parents had
the right name / connections. The bright students also got into good colleges,
but the ratio was shockingly close to 50/50\. Unsurprisingly, one of the
college admissions counselors for the high school was later caught fabricating
admissions materials, and was fired, but only because he became extremely
brazen in his lies. If he had been less lazy, he probably would never have
been caught. And who knows how many admissions counselors are out there that
are just a bit less lazy than he was...

I'm not the only person who feels this way. Look at this Quora thread about
MIT admissions: [https://www.quora.com/If-MIT-only-admits-people-
with-a-4-0-u...](https://www.quora.com/If-MIT-only-admits-people-
with-a-4-0-unweighted-gpa-and-2300+-test-scores-why-doesnt-everyone-
with-a-4-0-get-in-and-why-do-people-with-low-GPAs-get-in). An admissions
counselor admits to rejecting students who have higher GPA's and test scores.
The reasons for doing so may or may not be valid, but that's not the point.
The applicants who got rejected in this manner have the potential to become
better engineers than many of those who were accepted. And all the brand name
universities suffer from this same problem.

The university one attends is a noisy signal that can and should be improved
upon. That's why I respected Google's Foobar initiative. It is an unbiased
measure of a prospective engineer. The Foobar test doesn't know what college
you went to. All it knows is whether you can handle some pretty tough
engineering problems. But I think Foobar is only the beginning. In the age of
MOOC's, increasingly comprehensive, unbiased tests of this nature should only
become more prevalent.

------
colmvp
Not CS/Engineering related, but I went to a pretty mediocre design program in
my country (top of my country but compared to others world wide, not that
exceptional), yet studying with designers who ended up being far better than
some of the designers I worked with in NYC who graduated from notable (and
more expensive) institutions like RISD and Parsons.

------
erobbins
So maybe I'm missing something, but the graph of the "distribution of school
tiers on interviewing.io" is nearly identical to the 1% line in the "where 25
year olds went to school" chart.

Not sure how this is really any different than just sourcing from top schools?

------
beiller
The reason they are hiring from top schools, is to raise the barrier to entry
into their field. If founder came from school X, they see any future grads
from there as a threat. Why not buy all the top talent, to prevent
competition? Given unlimited cash (unicorn) why not?

------
chrisBob
The problem is that it is hard to hire, and if you can pick a criteria up
front that makes at least some sense then it can help a lot. Justice Scalia
explained why he only takes people from the Ivys:

“I’m going to be picking from the law schools that basically are the hardest
to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach
very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. If they come in
the best and the brightest, they’re probably going to leave the best and the
brightest.”

In this way you are just taking advantage of the hard work that some college
admissions committee put in to sorting your candidates.

Of course my current employer has even less diversity. Out of the 50 people in
the IT department here I am one of two that didn't go to school here. When I
pointed out that fact my boss defended herself and said that she doesn't
consider herself to be from here either because she didn't come to to U-M
until grad school. That is what qualifies for an outside hire here.

~~~
dsr_
Except, of course, for the legacy admissions.

------
davesque
I feel all I can offer to this discussion is the revelation of my own sense of
hopelessness that I'll likely never pass the watch of the statistical
gatekeepers and be permitted entrance to the Kingdom of Success.

------
nischalsamji
Might be off track, Is there anyone who used interviewing.io and landed a job?

How was the experience using interviewing.io?

I tried signing up some 2 years ago, it said they are in a private beta and
they have been there ever since.

~~~
leeny
Shoot me an email, and I'll gladly get you an account. aline@interviewing.io

~~~
eksu
Just tacking a question on here - when creating a student account, should I be
setting my location to where I’m attending school or where I’m planning on
being after graduating?

Looks like interviewing.io is tackling a big issue. :-)

~~~
leeny
Please put your current location. We'll be asking about where you want to work
later in the flow.

------
curtisblaine
If they miss a lot of talent doing this, there sure is someone smarter hiring
all this lost talent! I bet they're going to be billionaires in a few years!

------
amalfra
This issue is most particularly in India. Here most tech companies even post
job ads which specify tier 1 college degree as requirement

------
pfschell
This article treats "CS graduates" as interchangeable cogs, where the only
variables are race, parents' income, and where they grew up. The reality is
that particular tech companies have very specific needs around the _kind_ of
training someone has. CS curricula vary widely in terms of technologies and
depths covered, and applicability to real world problems.

A company like Apple has litte use for someone who has only ever worked on IT-
focused Java development. A company seeking the latest AI talent will never
find it at a school that trains students on the latest web middleware. And
once companies realize they're getting a lot of well- _prepared_ candidates
from a particular program, of course they're going to focus on those schools.
It would be a waste of time and scarce resources to do otherwise.

~~~
keepper
Im sorry, but this is where you need to check your own biases at the door.

For example, your statement "A company like Apple has little use for someone
who has only ever worked on IT-focused Java development.".

Actually, Apple has a need for people like these. Their whole web/it/retail
infrastructure is a Java backend ( i believe webobjects moved to Java, then
was deprecated as an outside project, but kept for internal use, my knowledge
is dated on this). Take a look at their jobs site[1]

Now my point wasn't about apple and java. But our own biases that we bring, at
every level. We all have biases, but most direct way to effect biases in
hiring, is to close your pool down. You need a really wide opening at the
beginning of your sourcing funnel to have diversity ( and i mean diversity at
every level ).

I work at one of the "big 4" and went to an ivy, but guess what, some of the
smartest people I have ever met, had to go to schools based on what their
parents could afford. Thats a HUGE selection bias.

So yes, widen your funnel, and recognize your biases ( that we all have, and
that basically boil down to having less knowledge ).

[1]
[https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=112907897&openJobId=112...](https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=112907897&openJobId=112907897#&ss=java&t=0&so=&pN=0&openJobId=112907897)

~~~
akhilcacharya
> Actually, Apple has a need for people like these. Their whole web/it/retail
> infrastructure is a Java backend

Not only this, but most new grads are hired in a pool and not for specific
skills.

------
ryan-allen
The truth is they don't really care about diversity, it's all a PR exercise.

------
willhslade
Which five schools are they talking about? Harvard, MIT, Stanford,???

------
__abc
What if they are 5 highly diverse schools?

------
Animats
This is an ad. "We built a better way to hire."

------
dogruck
In my experience, major companies are aware of this problem, and would love to
find a solution.

Frankly, the problem is that, ultimately, they want to hire the best people.
Most of the time, the best people are sourced from the top-tier schools.

On the other hand, in my experience, they pride themselves on finding great
people from outside of that small circle. When they do find such a person,
it's not uncommon for he or she to excel.

~~~
s73ver_
Define "best".

~~~
dogruck
What's your definition?

~~~
obstacle1
This seems like a deflection.

It's totally legit to ask you what your definition of the 'best' candidate is,
because you made a claim: that the best people come from the top schools.

How are we to conclude that your argument has any worth whatsoever when you
aren't able to even define the components of the claim you are making?

~~~
Scea91
Asking OP to define 'best' is a red herring and it would steer the discussion
away from the topic. Deflection is the correct response.

~~~
s73ver_
No, it isn't. Their entire argument was predicated on "these companies need to
hire the best." So they need to define what "best" means in this context.
Cause so far, for the likes of Google, it's "Went to an expensive school, and
can do whiteboard problems."

~~~
dogruck
That's an unfair characterization of Google's hiring process.

------
hasenj
> While enjoying a nice free meal in Harvard Square, he has the opportunity to
> ask these successful engineers questions about their current work. If he
> likes the company, all he has to do is accept the company’s standing
> invitation to interview on campus the next morning.

What? That sounds almost comical. It seems obviously false, but just in case I
will ask:

Is that really what happens at Harvard?

> Anthony goes to a state school near the town where he grew up. He is top in
> his class, as well as a self-taught programmer, having gone above and beyond
> his coursework to hack together some apps.

Are these "todo list" apps or legit impressive feats? If the former, it almost
has no value. If the latter, they will have absolutely no problem getting
hired.

~~~
Mangalor
> Is that really what happens at Harvard?

Yes.

> If the latter, they will have absolutely no problem getting hired.

The whole point of the article is they _won 't_.

~~~
hasenj
The whole point of my comment is the article is _wrong_.

------
gt_
Wait, what's all this talk about how I could learn all the software
technologies and get a job without a degree? I'm 32, highly skilled at
algorithmic thinking, and studying to go into the tech industry. After reading
this stuff, I want to just go back to doing 3D art. These people sound
insufferable.

------
eradicatethots
Everyone resents these guys. I don’t blame you. There’s some serious hatred
from ivy leaguers. Serious hatred.

------
whipoodle
Seems like an obvious point, and yet. And yet.

------
PatientTrades
The only solution is a government mandate. LAW: No American company can employ
more than 5 individuals that graduated from the same university. Problem
solved.

Herein lies the beauty of government.

~~~
kazagistar
So a company with 100,000 employees would have to find 20,000 different
universities?

------
drraid0
What if I don't care about "diversity" as measured by the number of
"underrepresented" minorities, and instead care about the fiduciary
responsibility I have to maximize value for stock holders?

~~~
vonmoltke
Then you would be objectively wrong, because there is no fiduciary
responsibility to _maximize_ anything for shareholders.

------
jeffdavis
Real diversity is like fine art: you hold some attributes constant and vary
other attributes.

For instance, you can keep a similar texture and color palette and use
unexpected patterns and geometries; or keep the structure of a symphony but
use unexpected instrumentation.

If you stick to expectations too much you will be boring. If you vary too many
attributes, it will be chaotic and meaningless.

Similarly, if you choose a random collection of people from around the world
and try to make a business, it won't go anywhere. But if you hire all people
who followed a prescribed life path, you probably won't be very innovative.

Interestingly, even a single person can be diverse in their ideas. Consider
Steve Jobs or Elon Musk.

"Diversity" is such a loaded political word now and lost all meaning. It's
just cover to whitewash lazy thinking in political correctness. It's common
now, in the same breath, to want both diversity and equality of outcomes,
which shows how ridiculous our politics have become.

