<i>"The company replaced the whiteboard exercise with job talks, a practice that’s common in academic settings. Candidates now talk at length about about specific projects from a previous gig. The change has had a few benefits—interviewers now have a chance to query candidates about how they collaborated in other jobs.<p>It also turns out that coding tests aren’t as objective as they sound, says Joelle Emerson, founder and C.E.O. of Paradigm, a consulting firm that works with tech companies on diversity. By putting candidates in situations that are outside the way they normally work, Emerson says, whiteboard interviews increase the likelihood of “stereotype threat,” an anxiety among non-traditional candidates that they’ll confirm negative stereotypes about their group."</i><p>So let me understand this. Whiteboard interviews don't reflect a standard engineering work flow, but giving a series of presentations to strangers does? Writing code on a whiteboard can cause "stereotype threat", but a extremely subjective "tell me about yourself" interview wouldn't?<p>Let's be honest here, zymergen hasn't stumbled upon any great insights. They just decided that they wanted to hire a lot of women, and people with experience, and then they did just that. They got rid of any objective interview style that might get in the way, and they instead used a very subjective interview style where candidates performance can be reinterpreted to fit the results they want to see.<p>Hiring is an extremely tricky thing, and I commend these guys for actively recruiting a neglected demographic. From a moneyball perspective, it's a smart strategy. But in terms of interviewing insights, there's nothing new to see here.
I find the term "brogrammer" to be a derogatory term of abuse that ought not to be uttered in polite company. it is equally as offensive a term as something like, e.g. "feminazi".<p>that's not to say that there aren't some male programmers that have the culture and mindset of dickhead frat boys. those people do exist.<p>what I'm saying is that when a journalist uses the term "brogrammer" they generally aren't being subtle or nuanced about it and are firing a broadside against men in general.
I see that tech companies are trying to get more diverse, and diverse is good without a doubt. Isn't it likely that males are just more interested in technology than woman?<p>For example trying to diversify a ballet team.. I find it unlikely that any significant percentage of males can be reached.<p>Is tech different than ballet?
> Zymergen decided to eliminate the whiteboard interviews that are a standard part of the hiring process for software engineers and developers<p>can solve a range of issues<p>perhaps gender diversity is just one facet of this "Brogrammer" thing where collaborating to ship clean code and deliver business value breaks down due to certain social and behavioral patterns<p>lack of gender diversity in industry is definitely among the most obvious indicators, but it doesn't even capture the entire brokenness.<p>are these things unique to software development, or does pretty much every industry have analogous issues?
SPECIFIC THOUGHTS: the last sentence of the first paragraph is hilarious... "We'll explain in a moment how this unsexy company has been able to outperform Google, Facebook, and Uber....................when it comes to hiring women software engineers." I totally forgot that the main concern of a business was to push "diversity" at all costs and not to provide a service/product of value and make money. My bad.<p>furthermore, in an era where millions of dollars are thrown around by VC's and founders at startups (that provide no real value to customers in many cases) at wildly overinflated valuations, it seems that people have forgotten the key purpose of running a business. TO MAKE MONEY. The goal isn't to make sure everyone is represented or to make everyone feel good. No one cares. This article is complete spin. The real goal of this company is to get engineers at a discounted price under the guise of, "oh you've been overlooked by these other companies, we're super female friendly, we're soooo diverse. we can't pay you as much, but we're just one big family here so it's worth it."<p>IN GENERAL: diversity of thought is good. diversity of skin color, ethnicity, gender, etc just to tick a box saying 'yup, we support diversity!' is nonsensical. there seems to be a large disconnect in logical thinking when these two things are advertised as the same thing. hire the best candidates, regardless of the meaningless BS (like gender or race). ok, you think the hiring process skews against some candidates (I don't know if this is really true or not), then change the interview process to support that. saying that female candidates don't do well with whiteboarding exercises, so you're changing the process to something they are better at is so silly (and quite frankly insulting to those women who ARE prepared for the whiteboarding exercises). you're optimizing for female employees, not for building your business and providing value.
> blah... diversity... blah... brogrammers... blah<p>The usual drivel, but there is one interesting question hidden in there: This company ditched the whiteboard and replaced it with "job talks". <i>Does that work?</i><p>Apparently it does, but only(?) if you measure success in terms of duhversity.
Women work harder, collaborate better, do not have an ego problem, do not shy away from boring tasks. Just a few things I noticed in my previous company.