> but making an assumption that someone does not have skills based on their race, gender, sexual preference, or credentials is where he takes issue.
This is answered entirely in my original post. Adequately testing for the presence of skills might take weeks or months of testing, which is a prohibitive cost. Fortunately, a huge portion of the potential employees I have to interview already took those tests throughout their coursework, and I can pretty well trust the quality of the tests they took based on the institution they went to (unlike SAT/credential/GRE-style tests, which are too easy to game). Why should I blow thousands of dollars in my time testing the others? How is that fair to me? And why would I assume someone who never took a math course after highschool is going to be able to work on my linear-algebra-heavy software library?
Also, lopping university degrees and other credentials into a list of protected classes is insulting. A degree is something that is earned and requires time and effort on the part of the student. It's expensive sometimes, but it's also a lot of work (assuming it's a good university)
> Adequately testing for the presence of skills might take weeks or months of testing
So it is not trivial to test for the presence of a CS degree? I'm left confused as this contradicts your earlier post.
> A degree is something that is earned and requires time and effort on the part of the student.
On the flip side, is it not insulting to someone who put in that time and effort via non-traditional means to be passed over because you metaphorically "didn't like the color of their skin"?
> So it is not trivial to test for the presence of a CS degree?
It is trivial to test for the presence of a CS degree. The bulk of a CS degree can be a necessary but not sufficient qualification for a job. Testing for just the extra stuff is far easier than testing for everything.
This isn't rocket science.
(And no, discriminating based on credentials is not tantamount to racism. I would have hopes the problems with this analogy were fairly obvious...)
I'm sure I'm just misunderstanding you, but the logic doesn't seem to follow. If you can trivially test for a CS degree then you already have all the other testing that comes with a CS degree by association. Why would you take weeks or months to test everything in a CS degree when you already know a CS degree is present via your trivial test?
> And no, discriminating based on credentials is not tantamount to racism.
You are, however, judging someone's abilities on their outward appearance even though in our hypothetical situation the person is equally skilled as anyone else. It may not be racism exactly, but still morally wrong for many reasons. That should be fairly obvious.
@randomdata -- "trivial" isn't "free". The test I proposed adds an extra hour of in-person interview time per candidate, and also substantially increases the number of viable candidates.
> It may not be racism exactly, but still morally wrong for many reasons. That should be fairly obvious.
Comparing discriminating based upon whether someone did four years of audited work with racism is... a somewhat extreme position, to say the least.
You may not think that college is "real work". You're welcome to your opinion. But I assure you that a university degree at many universities does require a lot of work, and that this work is difficult enough and audited well enough that it warrants consideration in hiring decisions.
A degree is NOT something anyone is born with. It is something many people work very hard to earn.
To put a finer point on it: is it OK to discriminate based upon prior industry experience? Because I consider a degree from a top uni better preparation "work" preparation for many jobs than X years writing web apps.
Is it OK to discriminate against doctors who don't have MDs?
Or am I supposed to give everyone who submits a job application the benefit of an interview, and sink my business in the process?
> A degree is NOT something anyone is born with. It is something many people work very hard to earn.
But, again, you are automatically discounting everyone who worked equally hard to acquire their skills just because they don't have the right piece of paper. That is exactly the same as rejecting a female candidate on the assumption that because she is female, she probably doesn't have the necessary skills – and statistically speaking, in this case you'd be right – the number of female CS graduates is significantly lower than men.
So, if you're just playing the numbers game like you suggested at the beginning of your post, then why not reject all women?
Because there is often a CAUSAL link between the degree and the set of qualifications relevant and related to the job at hand. The link between skill and gender is not CAUSAL.
You're pretending like there's no causal link between education and capability. You are wrong. Period. Hiring someone based upon degree is absolutely no different from hiring someone based upon whether they have prior work experience.
Need someone to work on a team? Deliver some production-quality CRUD? You could test these directly for every single candidate in an interview. Or you could hire someone with prior web dev experience and a letter from the previous employer or a portfolio that directly and immediately witnesses the requisite knowledge and skills. Everyone does the latter (or uses some other signal to weed out who they interview) because the former is a stupid waste of resources.
Need someone who can model a system using some ODEs (this afternoon, not in 6 weeks after wasting you money taking a MOOC on company time)? Making tweaks to a library for processing large matrices? You could give every single candidate a pop quiz on ODEs or Linear Algebra. Or you could hire someone with a degree and high grades in those courses that directly and immediately witnesses for requisite knowledge.
Another way of saying this: Degrees are direct witnesses of relevant skills, not merely signals or correlated values.
Of course there are other direct witnesses. But there is never anything remotely morally questionable about taking into account the presence or absence of any direct witness of capability during hiring. Including degrees.
> The link between skill and gender is not CAUSAL.
I'm not sure it is relevant to the discussion. The question was asked in the context of your concern about the overhead of interviewing people. You are using a degree as a simple filter, and gender is equally applicable in that regard. Statistically, for our aforementioned example, a suitable candidate will be found in the male population of applicants due to the reasons we already discussed.
So, why bother wasting your time and associated costs also interviewing women when you can be reasonably confident that the male candidates will provide someone suitable? It is very possible that a great employee lies in that group of women, and it is very possible that a great employee lies in those without degrees, but you have made it clear that you don't have time to evaluate them all.
> You're pretending like there's no causal link between education and capability. You are wrong. Period.
I'm getting a distinct impression that you haven't fully understood my comments. That may very well be my failing, but this becomes a completely pointless discussion if that persists.
> Hiring someone based upon degree is absolutely no different from hiring someone based upon whether they have prior work experience.
Absolutely not true. What you are essentially saying is that even among those who have prior experience, you will only hire those whose experience came from Google or Microsoft. There are a number of practical reasons why a perfectly suitable candidate is unable to work at either of those companies before working for you, even though they do come with relevant experience from somewhere else.
I understand from your point of view why hiring from only past Google and Microsoft employees is desirable, but what about the people who were unable to work at those places? You really don't see the problem with that?
I don't see a moral or ethical problem with it, no.
And the democratic consensus in most western countries agrees.
Choosing one applicant over another because of prior work history or education is just making informed decisions. Choosing on applicant over another because of their gender is illegal discrimination.
I understand you feel like people who don't have degrees deserve equal footing in the job market. But they don't, and business don't have any moral, ethical, or legal obligation to forego their own best interest and take bets on higher risk hires.
Basically your entire argument boils down to: "It is the status quo", which is not a very good reason for why we should avoid change.
There was a time when it was considered moral, ethical, and legal to hire based on gender and race. Can we assume you have no qualms going back to that so long as the democratic consensus agrees?
No, that is not my entire argument. (However, ASIDE: when every advanced nation disagrees with your view on morality or pragmatism, it does not mean you a wrong, but it does mean you should closely examine your line of reasoning for both pragmatism and consistency with reasonable and well-grounded moral standards. Of course the democratic consensus of all of these countries can be wrong, but it's worth taking pause. That's all. END ASIDE.)
Here is the argument that I have been expressing in various forms and you don't seem to understand or provide cogent counter-points to:
PRAGMATIC CLAIM: Employers are allowed to "discriminate"/select based upon non-intrinsic signals of characteristics relevant to the job at hand.
WARRANT: This is necessary for society/businesses to function because otherwise, it would be prohibitively expensive to hire people using anything other than coin-flips.
MORAL STANDARD I: In order to use a signal as the basis for a hiring decision it should be both a) non-intrinsic, and b) signal something relevant to the task at hand.
EDUCATION MEETS THIS MORAL STANDARD:
a) CLAIM: Education is non-intrinsic
WARRANT: It is something you seek out and work to earn, not something you are born with. (The issue of ensuring universal access is entirely separable (and something I support, btw).)
b) CLAIM: Education signals something relevant to the task at hand
WARRANT 1: Technical background is assured through testing in relevant coursework -- testing that you would have to (at great and impractical expense to the business) reproduce in order to make informed hiring decisions.
WARRANT 2: Education can also serve as a signal of necessary problem solving ability, communication skills, etc.
MORAL STANDARD II: Any moral constraints placed on the set of available signals should not make it prohibitively expensive for business to function.
EDUCATION MEETS MORAL STANDARD II: Because it's a cheap signal to use as an initial filter.
BANNING THE USE OF EDUCATION WOULD FAIL TO MEET MORAL STANDARD II: It would require companies to essentially require a comprehensive examination that is well-proctored etc, which is a pretty huge burden for the company and -- besides -- basically would amount to credentialing anyways because any reasonable firm would outsource this.
Other relevant claims:
CONSISTENCY CLAIM: There exist signals that meet both standards.
WARRANT: Education can be used to select a small number of applicants, and the cost for choosing among those should be marginal wrt the value-added by the employee.
CLAIM: These moral standards preclude the use of race/sex/age discrimination.
WARRANT: these are all intrinsic features that are explicitly forbidden
This is answered entirely in my original post. Adequately testing for the presence of skills might take weeks or months of testing, which is a prohibitive cost. Fortunately, a huge portion of the potential employees I have to interview already took those tests throughout their coursework, and I can pretty well trust the quality of the tests they took based on the institution they went to (unlike SAT/credential/GRE-style tests, which are too easy to game). Why should I blow thousands of dollars in my time testing the others? How is that fair to me? And why would I assume someone who never took a math course after highschool is going to be able to work on my linear-algebra-heavy software library?
Also, lopping university degrees and other credentials into a list of protected classes is insulting. A degree is something that is earned and requires time and effort on the part of the student. It's expensive sometimes, but it's also a lot of work (assuming it's a good university)