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"Twitter and Facebook pages full of photos from barbaric rituals and poems about killing penguins?" Right, because that's so relevant compared to photos indica

"Twitter and Facebook pages full of photos from barbaric rituals and poems about killing penguins?" Right, because that's so relevant compared to photos indicating that the candidate is pregnant, black, or of a religion the CTO hates passionately. This sort of thing is either an irrational fear or a cover for excluding the sort of person he's not allowed to say he doesn't want. It's not that I want to force him to hire penguin murderers; it's that I find myself wondering how likely it is that some crazy will find their way into a technical interview process.

neverm0re 14y ago
The fact he's being so flippant about what it is he exactly wants with the details of someone's internet social life has me thinking he could not actually admit what his real agenda and biases are. That should be worrying.
- PaulRobinson 14y ago
  Hello, I'm Paul the author of the original piece. Pleased to meet you. Thanks for taking a few hundred words I wrote over a lunch break and extracting from them a warped inference that I must be a racist, misogynistic bigot. I actually have no such biases. I'm a leftist-liberal who reads The Guardian, I've worked in the public sector for many years which in the UK means having to know employment law inside out, and have specifically worked out of my recruitment process anything that could impede somebody getting a job in my team that other employers would secretly harbour as an excuse. My hiring strategy is a bit like Valve software's: T-shaped skillsets are gold, and I ask the three questions: What would happen if this person were to become my boss? Would I learn a significant amount from them? How would I feel if they went to work for a competitor? I just like to understand candidate's beyond a single sheet CV before they come into interview. They might spend 10 hours a day playing Minecraft. Cool, let's talk about that, and how they like to hack around with it a little. They might spend their weekends canoeing. I hate physical exertion, but cool, let's talk about the challenges canoeing provides and how they deal with them. They might be a devout Scientologist. OK, I don't get Scientology personally, but I know employment law well enough to know that's no barrier to you getting the job - I've heard Scientology is really big on clarity of communication through "auditing", so let's talk about how that's helped the candidate in the workplace, 'k? I am not a white male bigot who hires people like me. I work with women, non-white, non-atheist, non-Christian, non-liberal, non-leftist, non-English (I'm British), people all day, every day and have done so for many years. The fact you assume a potential employer who is betting a substantial amount of money on you is interested in your personal life for any other reason than to understand you better and to make sure you're going to be a great fit, is cynical, naive and misguided. It might be rooted in a truth with some employers, but I don't think those employers live in the world of technology - particularly startups. Perhaps that's naive of me. Perhaps that is a problem. So let's talk about the wider issuer of "worst-case scenario" - if somebody on discovering who you really are is prejudiced against you, wouldn't you rather they hadn't hired you - especially in a start-up environment where your legal recourse is highly limited - than for them to find out a week into employment when you've moved across a continent and now you're fucked? If somebody is a penguin-murderer, why would I want to know that as an employer other than to rule them out immediately? Because somebody who enjoys torturing animals probably has an interesting approach to teamwork that isn't going to fit into the way I like to run my teams. I'd want to spend some time in interview understanding that a little more, precisely because I don't want them turning up on day one and it being a disaster. Yes, I was being flippant, but there's an important point there, somewhere. Asserting that my "real agenda and biases" are hidden from view is wrong, and the assertion that this is therefore worrying is flawed. Hope that clears things up for you.
  - dpritchett 14y ago
    It's not that people don't trust your intentions, it's that it's psychologically impossible to be objective when you're not doing blind evaluations. Anyone who's not a member of $regional_cultural_majority is relatively better off having you evaluate their work history and skillset than they are in trusting you to pore over their Facebook feed.
    - stickfigure 14y ago
      it's psychologically impossible to be objective You should have just stopped there.
    - PaulRobinson 14y ago
      I don't want to do blind evaluations. If I'm about to give somebody £50k a year and spend 40-60 hours a week basically living and working with them, putting my job on the line on the promise they can deliver, I don't want to be blind. I want to see everything I can. It's not because I want to be nosey, it's because I want to know it's going to work.
      - dpritchett 14y ago
        Certainly the cultural compatibility will need to be evaluated eventually, it's just not in a minority candidate's best interest for that to be involved in the first-pass filter. If you'd like to know about my non-work interests we can talk about weight lifting and camping during an onsite interview. I want to be firmly cemented in your mind as a competent developer before you find out what I wore to last year's Halloween party or who I favor in the upcoming election.
        PaulRobinson 14y ago
        So fine, don't show me Facebook - it's just that's the one source of info everybody has. I'm going to be much, much more interested in your github profile, posts to mailing lists, etc. First thing I do when I get a CV is not go to Facebook - I google the email address. If there's contributions to tech mailing lists there, the rest of what I see is going to have to be pretty shit for me to rule you out for interview, to be honest.

neverm0re 14y ago

The fact he's being so flippant about what it is he exactly wants with the details of someone's internet social life has me thinking he could not actually admit what his real agenda and biases are. That should be worrying.

PaulRobinson 14y ago
Hello, I'm Paul the author of the original piece. Pleased to meet you. Thanks for taking a few hundred words I wrote over a lunch break and extracting from them a warped inference that I must be a racist, misogynistic bigot. I actually have no such biases. I'm a leftist-liberal who reads The Guardian, I've worked in the public sector for many years which in the UK means having to know employment law inside out, and have specifically worked out of my recruitment process anything that could impede somebody getting a job in my team that other employers would secretly harbour as an excuse. My hiring strategy is a bit like Valve software's: T-shaped skillsets are gold, and I ask the three questions: What would happen if this person were to become my boss? Would I learn a significant amount from them? How would I feel if they went to work for a competitor? I just like to understand candidate's beyond a single sheet CV before they come into interview. They might spend 10 hours a day playing Minecraft. Cool, let's talk about that, and how they like to hack around with it a little. They might spend their weekends canoeing. I hate physical exertion, but cool, let's talk about the challenges canoeing provides and how they deal with them. They might be a devout Scientologist. OK, I don't get Scientology personally, but I know employment law well enough to know that's no barrier to you getting the job - I've heard Scientology is really big on clarity of communication through "auditing", so let's talk about how that's helped the candidate in the workplace, 'k? I am not a white male bigot who hires people like me. I work with women, non-white, non-atheist, non-Christian, non-liberal, non-leftist, non-English (I'm British), people all day, every day and have done so for many years. The fact you assume a potential employer who is betting a substantial amount of money on you is interested in your personal life for any other reason than to understand you better and to make sure you're going to be a great fit, is cynical, naive and misguided. It might be rooted in a truth with some employers, but I don't think those employers live in the world of technology - particularly startups. Perhaps that's naive of me. Perhaps that is a problem. So let's talk about the wider issuer of "worst-case scenario" - if somebody on discovering who you really are is prejudiced against you, wouldn't you rather they hadn't hired you - especially in a start-up environment where your legal recourse is highly limited - than for them to find out a week into employment when you've moved across a continent and now you're fucked? If somebody is a penguin-murderer, why would I want to know that as an employer other than to rule them out immediately? Because somebody who enjoys torturing animals probably has an interesting approach to teamwork that isn't going to fit into the way I like to run my teams. I'd want to spend some time in interview understanding that a little more, precisely because I don't want them turning up on day one and it being a disaster. Yes, I was being flippant, but there's an important point there, somewhere. Asserting that my "real agenda and biases" are hidden from view is wrong, and the assertion that this is therefore worrying is flawed. Hope that clears things up for you.
- dpritchett 14y ago
  It's not that people don't trust your intentions, it's that it's psychologically impossible to be objective when you're not doing blind evaluations. Anyone who's not a member of $regional_cultural_majority is relatively better off having you evaluate their work history and skillset than they are in trusting you to pore over their Facebook feed.
  - stickfigure 14y ago
    it's psychologically impossible to be objective You should have just stopped there.
  - PaulRobinson 14y ago
    I don't want to do blind evaluations. If I'm about to give somebody £50k a year and spend 40-60 hours a week basically living and working with them, putting my job on the line on the promise they can deliver, I don't want to be blind. I want to see everything I can. It's not because I want to be nosey, it's because I want to know it's going to work.
    - dpritchett 14y ago
      Certainly the cultural compatibility will need to be evaluated eventually, it's just not in a minority candidate's best interest for that to be involved in the first-pass filter. If you'd like to know about my non-work interests we can talk about weight lifting and camping during an onsite interview. I want to be firmly cemented in your mind as a competent developer before you find out what I wore to last year's Halloween party or who I favor in the upcoming election.
      - PaulRobinson 14y ago
        So fine, don't show me Facebook - it's just that's the one source of info everybody has. I'm going to be much, much more interested in your github profile, posts to mailing lists, etc. First thing I do when I get a CV is not go to Facebook - I google the email address. If there's contributions to tech mailing lists there, the rest of what I see is going to have to be pretty shit for me to rule you out for interview, to be honest.