
Joblint: test tech jobs for sexism, culture, expectations, and recruiter fails - rowanmanning
https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint
======
beaumartinez
It's a good idea, but penalizing jobs for mentioning pizza, beer or ping-pong
is ridiculous. In fact calling those "hollow rewards" at all is ridiculous.
They suggest a friendly, social atmosphere, arguably one of the more important
features of a job.

They also call swearing "unprofessional", as if that's a bad thing. Again, it
suggests a laid back atmosphere, where no-one cares if you swear when you're
dealing with a particularly nasty bug.

A degree of political correctness can be beneficial, but overzealousness like
this is counterproductive.

~~~
ronaldx
Mentioning pizza, beer, ping-pong, or swearing in a job ad are all will-not-
apply conditions for me.

Pizza, beer and ping-pong in the job description suggests it's a social
requirement to be involved in those things: it's almost literally being
described as part of the job.

It indicates that there is likely a poor attitude towards work-life balance
and employee health and is probably a marker for hidden prejudices disguised
as "culture fit". Frankly, I value those rewards highly negatively.

As a philosophical exercise: consider replacing pizza with sushi, beer with
wine, and ping-pong with Zumba. Still a sensible ad for a tech job? Why/why
not?

Swearing at a bug and swearing at a potential employee are contextually
different. I have no problem working in an environment where swearing at a bug
is acceptable; swearing at an employee or colleague should be no more
acceptable than swearing at a valued client (for clarity: not acceptable under
normal circumstances).

The appropriateness of swearing is highly contextual - putting it in a job ad
likely shows that you don't know where sensible boundaries are.

~~~
lobotryas
>Mentioning pizza, beer, ping-pong, or swearing in a job ad are all will-not-
apply conditions for me.

Every job or job posting will never be everything to everyone. If I considered
those words a turn-off, then I'd be happy for job postings that lend
themselves so readily to such a quick filter.

>As a philosophical exercise: consider replacing pizza with sushi, beer with
wine, and ping-pong with Zumba. Still a sensible ad for a tech job?

Sure, if you're Google or just have a lot of money. "Pizza, beer, ping-pong"
are mentioned because they're cheap LCDs rather than a hallowed tech
lifestyle.

~~~
ronaldx
> If I considered those words a turn-off, then I'd be happy for job postings
> that lend themselves so readily to such a quick filter.

This makes filtering jobs quite easy, true. But it shouldn't - this situation
makes me unhappy about the state of the industry.

> "Pizza, beer, ping-pong" are mentioned because they're cheap LCDs

Yes, I identify that these are cheap items being passed-off as employee
benefits: my evaluation of the company is affected by that as well. "Common"
Denominators, not so much.

~~~
lobotryas
In your opinion, what should the "state of the industry" be like?

------
temphn
This is the same kind of person who would write software to find anti-Islamic
comments had he been born in Iran, or to hunt down dissidents if born in
China. The kind of person who reflexively genuflects towards the current
state-sponsored ideology, whatever it is (quick test: is Obama on your side?),
because he loves the rush of feeling holier-than-thou.

As an example, the lint checks that "bro culture" is bad, but female-friendly
(like Minted.com[1]) is assumed to be good. All animals are equal, but some
animals are more equal than others. Very predictable. Like any neo-Puritan, he
then comes after profanity, and beer, and even (god forbid) competitive-
sounding job descriptions! His vision of the startup future: an HR drone
stamping on a programmer's face, forever.

So how about thoughtlint? Avoid hiring rowanmanning, or anyone on their
helpfully provided list:

[https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint#thanks](https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint#thanks)

People like this will spend their time being Adria-Richards-esque thought
police rather than shipping code. Contrast with Max Levchin, who actually sold
a startup for a billion-plus dollars:

[http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay)

    
    
      Max Levchin:  The notion that diversity in an early team is 
      important or good is completely wrong. You should try to 
      make the early team as non-diverse as possible. There are a   
      few reasons for this. The most salient is that, as a 
      startup, you’re underfunded and undermanned. It’s a big 
      disadvantage; not only are you probably getting into 
      trouble, but you don’t even know what trouble that may be. 
      Speed is your only weapon. All you have is speed. 
    

If you want to work in an environment full of rowanmannings, that is your
prerogative. Many others will select out and find places where people who
enjoy bullying others with modern taboos on gender and the like don't self-
appoint themselves as priests. Do you really want a team member who spends
their free time getting people to upvote their new heretic-finding software to
the top of HN?

[1] [http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-particular-things-
Minted-...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-particular-things-Minted-does-
to-be-female-engineer-friendly)

~~~
king_jester
> This is the same kind of person who would write software to find anti-
> Islamic comments had he been born in Iran, or to hunt down dissidents if
> born in China. The kind of person who reflexively genuflects towards the
> current state-sponsored ideology, whatever it is (quick test: is Obama on
> your side?), because he loves the rush of feeling holier-than-thou.

Ah yes, someone who writes a simple tool to check for red flags and warnings
common in job postings for their industry is totally a fascist looking to hunt
down fellow citizens for the state.

> As an example, the lint checks that "bro culture" is bad, but female-
> friendly (like Minted.com[1]) is assumed to be good. All animals are equal,
> but some animals are more equal than others. Very predictable.

Bro culture is bad, it implies the people working and doing the hiring are
looking for a very narrow type of person and aren't really open to having
different kinds of people employed. Further, being woman-friendly is a huge
plus, because usually that means women are able to access leadership roles in
various capacities, something that isn't common in our industry. Unless, of
course, you think that companies that actively look to correct that imbalance
are the problem, in which case I would pose that you are the problem.

> Like any neo-Puritan, he then comes after profanity, and beer, and even (god
> forbid) competitive-sounding job descriptions! His vision of the startup
> future: an HR drone stamping on a programmer's face, forever.

Some people don't like profanity in the workplace or highly competitive
environments, those people have a right to know that info up front when
looking at job descriptions. Nobody is forcing anyone to use this tool, there
is no censorship being applied here.

Moreover, mentions of beer and alcohol in a job post are highly suspect, as
such posts will automatically exclude people who don't drink or are
alcoholics. These types of places often base social activity around drinking
and that can be highly alienating to a wide variety of people.

> People like this will spend their time being Adria-Richards-esque thought
> police rather than shipping code. Contrast with Max Levchin, who actually
> sold a startup for a billion-plus dollars:

Ah yes, because calling people out on dick jokes at a professional conference
is exactly like the thought police. Also, that Max Levnchin has made money off
of creating mono-culture workplaces doesn't mean that is appropriate or
correct for every company or potential employee.

> If you want to work in an environment full of rowanmannings, that is your
> prerogative. Many others will select out and find places where people who
> enjoy bullying others with modern taboos on gender and the like don't self-
> appoint themselves as priests. Do you really want a team member who spends
> their free time getting people to upvote their new heretic-finding software
> to the top of HN?

If you are selecting jobs based on those companies that will tolerate your
sexism and delusions of oppression, remind me to never work anywhere you have,
ever.

~~~
nailer
> Unless, of course, you think that companies that actively look to correct
> that imbalance are the problem, in which case I would pose that you are the
> problem.

I'm not the OP, but I think it's as unethical to be biased towards any group.
A company should do it's best to ignore gender and focus on merit. Companies
that 'actively look to correct that imbalance' make things worse and reinforce
stereotypes with token hires.

> Ah yes, because calling people out on dick jokes at a professional
> conference is exactly like the thought police.

Starting a Twitter vendetta rather than approaching people who made a
schoolyard joke [http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/25/adria-richards-
fi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/25/adria-richards-fired-
donglegate_n_2948161.html) makes things worse, not better.

~~~
johrn
> Companies that 'actively look to correct that imbalance' make things worse
> and reinforce stereotypes with token hires.

Looking to correct the balance doesn't mean having some sort of quota for
hiring women. It means getting rid of the bias that exists already, not
tilting the scales in the other direction.

------
pekru
Sample test data for joblint.

    
    
        A team comprising of few Python superstars, vim gurus, emacs superstars is now looking for a software crafts(wo)man who would be interested in being part of the team to juggle a pool of challenging problems and use cutting edge tech to find solutions that are of top quality and guarantee a win over competiton.
    
        We pay better than competition, fail fast to learn early. We provide catered lunches from the best restuarants around. And inspite of tight deadlines, we would encourage a healthy work-life balance and not promise hollow benefits like beer/pingpong/nerf/dart/pool etc.

~~~
ronaldx
Your point here, as I understand, is to subvert the test by mentioning e.g.
beer specifically not being a perk.

This illustrates an interesting problem of parsing natural language, but IMHO
this should still give the same negative result anyway: why is beer an
important consideration in a job ad _at all_?

You should rather spend the space telling me more specifically about what the
job entails. You get a pass for talking about beer if the job involves
classifying craft beers.

~~~
pekru
>> should rather spend the space telling me more specifically about what the
job entails.

hmm. based on my experience, I can say that not every team/firm that is hiring
would know for the fact as to what is the exact thing the recruit would be
doing once on the job. In smaller organizations, there would anyway be lots of
confusion on this. Bigger organization, it would be HR drones adding to the
incoherence and drama.

So, said simply, "We need folks who are smart and who could get things done.
Prior knowledge of alphabus-betabus-gammabus-deltabus --- zettabus would be a
definite advantage but is no way a mandatory requirement. Look us up, get to
know what we do and if interested, write back so we can talk!" could be one
simple template that could be used by just about anyone. Isn't it?

~~~
ronaldx
A fair point, thanks, but I still think the company would be better served by
nailing down what they need in employees rather than nailing down whether or
not there is beer.

------
mathattack
My first thought is that this is a great filter.

My second thought is how is this any better than the automated resume screens
that companies use on candidates?

~~~
Kliment
It's not any better. It's fighting back.

~~~
mathattack
The challenge is I can't think of anything better. It just seems like if one
complains about too many guns in their neighborhood, there are better
solutions than mounting a machine gun on the roof.

Perhaps I have sympathy because I'm a "Take the entire of resumes from HR"
type of person. When I was job hunting, I thought that the screening
mechanisms for jobs were all pretty bad, so I don't have a "Go to site X for
better." I wonder if the net effect of this will be people sanitizing their
offerings to hide their culture. Or will it be like attracting like?

------
dawkins
I would move "frontpage" to its own warning category, not just "notice".

------
nraynaud
Creating a new working environment straight jacket are we?

It's in diversity that we strive, we need bro companies, black tie/white shirt
companies, and everything in between. Moreover I'm pretty sure that the
boringnest job posting would have a very good score with this.

------
eksith
The bubble rules are definitely in order :

[https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule...](https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule/bubble.js)

I'd argue that the _var temptations_ array is applicable to the "bro-culture"
rules as well.

It's good there's one for tech :

[https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule...](https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule/tech.js)

For the life of me, I never understood why any mention of an editor was even
necessary most of the time. If there's a local copy of the codebase you're
working on, how in the world does that have any bearing on what someone else
on the same project is using? If it's major, that's what source control is
for. If it's minor and nitpicky (I.E. tabs vs. spaces) plenty of editors can
be configured for substitution on whatever standard that's adopted.

~~~
ig1
There's perfectly reasonable reasons to mention IDE, for example some
companies have propriety Eclipse (or Emacs) extensions to support their code
base or use collaborative work capabilities that are integrated with IDEs.

Environmental setup also has an impact, a company might use project files that
automatically setup the environment and set common standards. Sure you can
come in and rewrite all of those things in your favourite IDE which you then
have to manually sync when things change, but that's a lot of overhead.

There's also some people who will only work at companies that use their
favourite editor (particularly common in Java with IntelliJ) and will ignore
job ads which mention Eclipse.

It can also act as signalling (i.e "we're willing to pay for you to have the
best-of-breed development tools") much like jobs ads which specify developer
monitor sizes or hardware (Macbooks, SSDs, etc).

~~~
rowanmanning
I agree with a lot of what you're saying actually, it's why this rule emits a
notice rather than an error or warning. Considering that some of the rules are
a little polarising, it would probably make sense to allow people to ignore
certain rules. Thanks for the feedback

------
mduerksen
This tool might be useful for quickly sifting heaps of job descriptions, but
it is easy to fall victim to attaching too much meaning to its results.

Putting anyone into a category because of the wording of his statement is
generally only of limited use.

You'll get a lot of false negatives - in this case, it won't save you from
wasting time interviewing with an abusive employer who was smart enough to
game political correctness and legal.

And some false positives - There is no employer without issues, but some
issues weigh much heavier than others. I would rather work for an employer who
is clinging to some sacred technology than under a devious manager. If I would
rely on the wording, I could detect the former, but not the latter.

That said, this filter still can be useful, as soon as the rules become more
sophisticated (they will, as the author is aware of this). But if it does, and
becomes popular, be certain that this will also used by the other side,
creating a race similar to spam vs. spam filters.

------
mrgoldenbrown
I think this is a great project even if no one ever actually runs it against a
real job description. By listing and categorizing the various rules, rowan has
spurred a great amount of discussion on what makes a good job application.

------
muratmutlu
If someone made this into a cut and paste tool online, it'd be pretty
successful I think

~~~
rowanmanning
Absolutely. I was planning to, but would happily endorse someone else if they
were to build it – the command line presents a barrier to entry for less
technical folks. Thanks for the feedback!

------
jachwe
Nice job, funny idea!

Mentioning Dreamweaver should be handled as an error rather then a notice. :-)

------
reginaldjcooper
If you haven't yet, you should do machine learning on actual job postings from
companies that typify certain undesirable traits–assume Oracle is synonymous
with "hates freedom"; one could find common words and phrases from Oracle job
postings and add them to a "hates freedom" rule.

------
cottonseed
This is great. I've been thinking about the reverse idea lately: a site for
gender, cultural and educational-blind job searches and first-round
interviews. At the very least, resumes, cover letters and initial skill
evaluations could be "linted" and sanitized.

~~~
drakeandrews
I was thinking about this recently too and was wondering if one could perhaps
set up a service where you would hire a set of ghost writers to rewrite and
manually sanitise all of the applications etc. for a job opening for a company
(ideally one writer per job opening).

------
seanhandley
It's a fun idea but you'd have to be sifting through a lot of jobs to make
automating the task worthwhile. I'd be worried a decent job would slip through
the cracks because of being filtered out.

I'd suggest the best way to find jobs you're interested in would be to filter
things with an inclusive filter, rather than an exclusive one. After running
joblint, you'll end up with a list of jobs that survived, rather than ones
that stood out.

I can't see this ever being genuinely useful during the next time I'm job
hunting. I can see it being useful for recruitment companies who want to
sanitise their listings, though. Maybe commercialise a site that can handle
that as a service and aim it at them?

------
mrcactu5
how about checking for racism?

[http://www.inc.com/vivek-wadhwa/face-of-success-blacks-in-
si...](http://www.inc.com/vivek-wadhwa/face-of-success-blacks-in-silicon-
valley.html)
[http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf)

"According to U.S. Census Bureau data, in 2008, blacks and Hispanics
constituted only 1.5% and 4.7% respectively of the Valley’s tech population
—well below national tech-population averages of 7.1% and 5.3%. You hardly
find any blacks in positions of leadership in Silicon Valley companies. There
is at least an unconscious bias."

~~~
etfb
An intriguing idea! Can you suggest some language that would set off alarms
for you?

Related: Douglas Hofstadter's satirical article on exactly that topic, which
you reminded me of and which I'm glad I could remember enough of to find:
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html)

------
sequoia
Cool! One feature suggestion: a .joblintrc file or configuration option. Some
people are very proficient with Eclipse or Vim & would actually prefer to work
with it for example. Nice tool- I hope recruiters & HR authors use it!

------
lsc
the problem is that you are evaluating the recruiter, not the job.

There are many places, most famously google, which have shitty recruiters, but
are actually decent places to work. (Google is legendary for it's poor taste
in recruiters. I've known a few people who didn't like it an left, but most of
the people I know there seem to think it's pretty good. The weird part, to me,
is that it seems like the time between "I don't think google is great" and no
longer working for google seems to be... shorter than at most companies.)

Really, it's a lot like the problem employers have; resumes and interviews are
a shitty way to evaluate potential employees... but what else do you have?
This is an example of the same thing in the other direction. The style of the
recruiter is a shitty way to evaluate company culture... but what else do you
have?

Either way, if you know someone on the inside? that's going to be your best
channel for evaluation, really, in both directions. But... that has all sorts
of other problems, many of them having to do with only being able to move
within your existing social group.

------
bowlofpetunias
This is as useful is the filters recruiters use on candidates.

You can make up your own mind as to whether that is negative or a positive
comment.

------
frozenport
git page would benefit from an example run.

------
marsvskittens
Does anyone know what font that is in the screenshot? It's rather nice
(disregard the fact that all fonts look nice at that size).

------
telephonetemp
Would using the expression "guys and girls" in a job ad be sexist? Joblint
would catch it.

~~~
JackC
Yeah, this is something to avoid in general. There are some people who hear
"girls" the same way you do, so "guys and girls" translates as "men and
women." But there are also some people who hear "girls" to mean, well, girls,
so this translates as "men and girls" and sounds very weird. As people get
older (say, from 20-year-olds to 30-year-olds), the balance shifts more and
more toward the latter and more and more of the women you talk to will think
there is something wrong with you if you call them girls, even if you also
call men guys.

So yeah -- seeing "girls" in a job ad would make me guess the workplace
consisted mostly or solely of young men who weren't used to being around
women, and I would only apply if that was what I was looking for. Whether you
think that's a problem is up to you. (I happen to think there are good reasons
that some women don't like being called girls, even in the "guys and girls"
context, but it's sort of beside the point in terms of writing a job ad,
right?)

~~~
aestra
Let me ask you a question (assuming you are a man)

Would you like to be called a boy?

Imagine being addressed like this (in a group of 90% women)

"Hello ladies and boys"

Wouldn't that feel insulting? And weird?

~~~
theorique
Speaking as a man, if I were in a mixed group and addressed in various ways:

 _guys and girls_ \- OK. Very casual.

 _ladies and gentlemen_ \- OK. Somewhat more formal.

 _men and women_ \- Weird. Sounds stilted.

 _boys and girls_ \- OK, depending on tone. Would work better with an ironic
tone when addressed to adults. Would sound stupid if expressed in kindergarten
teacher tone.

 _ladies and boys_ \- seems a bit forced. Also, it makes me think of
"ladyboys" (e.g. transgendered Thai prostitutes)

------
sameerg
whatever job spec i pipe, it tells "No issues found with the job spec!"

------
Suresh-Urs
nice idea.

------
static_typed
Seems overly simplistic - an advert from a girls school would appear under the
sexism ruleset, an advert mentioning that they have a pool of company cars
that you drive would fall foul of bubble ruleset.

~~~
icebraining
_an advert from a girls school would appear under the sexism ruleset_

I'm not sure if that's actually a bug.

------
sally888
Mentioning gender is the biggest sin? Wow.

~~~
rowanmanning
Hi sally. A sin? Definitely not. The reason gender mentions is an error is
because it's actually illegal for a job spec to discriminate either way in
terms of hiring. If you're getting false negatives with this rule, please let
me know and I can revise it :)

~~~
potatolicious
Mentioning gender != discrimination.

"We are looking for smart men and women to join our team" isn't sexism. In
fact, it may be the opposite - deliberately mentioning that the company
welcomes women, which in your system would achieve the opposite effect.

"We don't believe in typical tech industry culture and strive to create
friendly environments for both males and females." will also trip your filter.
As an error to boot - not even a warning.

or perhaps even more benignly:

"We are an online retailer for women's fashion."

This isn't full of shit either, consider the following excerpts from real job
postings:

"As a top ten defense contractor we take our responsibility very seriously,
and we are privileged to support our customers and the men and women who get
the job done."[1]

"Accenture is committed to providing veteran employment opportunities to our
service men and women."[2]

"Shopbop is the premier online shopping destination for what’s new and what’s
next in fashion and style, offering women around the world the best selection
from both established and emerging designers."[3]

"We are an Equal Employment Opportunity/Drug-Free employer; we encourage
veterans, minorities and women to apply for job vacancies."[4]

"The University of Massachusetts Amherst is an Affirmative Action/Equal
Opportunity employer. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to
apply."[5]

"Since 1901, Our Enterprise customer who is a Retail giant has offered a wide
variety of quality apparel, shoes and accessories for men, women and children
at our stores across the country."[6]

I'm sorry, but keywording on generic nouns and pronouns is _not at all_ a good
idea.

[1] [http://jobview.monster.com/Engineer-Sr-Test-20-Job-
Alpharett...](http://jobview.monster.com/Engineer-Sr-Test-20-Job-Alpharetta-
GA-125235734.aspx)

[2] [http://jobview.monster.com/Federal-Virtualization-
Engineer-J...](http://jobview.monster.com/Federal-Virtualization-Engineer-Job-
Washington-DC-126083355.aspx)

[3] [http://jobview.monster.com/Sr-Software-Development-
Engineer-...](http://jobview.monster.com/Sr-Software-Development-Engineer-Job-
Madison-WI-126066197.aspx)

[4] [http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Altoona-
PA-...](http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Altoona-
PA-126004034.aspx)

[5] [http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Amherst-
MA-...](http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Amherst-
MA-125965776.aspx)

[6] [http://jobview.monster.com/Senior-Software-Engineer-
Enterpri...](http://jobview.monster.com/Senior-Software-Engineer-Enterprise-
Job-Redmond-WA-124636558.aspx)

------
andyl
Political correctness, enforced by a software busy-body. Mind your language
people - neo-puritains are watching!

