What would you prefer? Some sort of rating or ranking system based off of objective standards?
Many participants in the game unfortunately insist on hiring and marketing by three-letter acronyms.
- People starring your GitHub repository.
- Someone following you on Twitter.
- Someone linking to a blog post you wrote.
- Someone recommending you to someone else because you did a great job on a project.
These are all examples of informal networks of trust.
I fail to see how that’s a bad thing.
I have 0 stars on Github. Don't use twitter. Don't have a blog. Only a few coworkers I even talk to.
I spend my time writing code and interacting with my family, not trying to win popularity contests. Now if you're looking to hire celebrities instead of programmers, you're maybe onto something. I'm not a self-promotion artist. If I were, I would work in advertising.
That kind of aversion towards self-promotion might be a reason why we arrived at absurd phenomena like homework assignments for interviewing processes in the first place.
With no way to draw upon previous work results or third party trust how else is someone supposed to assess a candidate’s skills?
If I come across or meet a new person from this industry and that person has a Twitter account I routinely check the follower count.
A somewhat large number says to me: “Many people seem to think that person has something relevant to say.”
Is there racial or gender-based inequality? Yes, unfortunately there is.
Should we therefore resign and stop trusting each other altogether? No, we shouldn’t.
We should rather try and extend our trust to others.
Inequality isn’t caused by trust but by a lack of it.
>Should we therefore resign and stop trusting each other altogether?
This is a strawman, that was not suggested. What was suggested was to have an interview process which doesn't involve informal/subjective trust. The best programmers don't have huge twitter networks or github stars - some might, but not all. That's no criteria for filtering.
I don’t think we can magically solve inequality by trying to fix the interviewing process or by denying there are social networks.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
”Professor Michael Hiscox, a Harvard academic who oversaw the trial, said he was shocked by the results and has urged caution.
"We anticipated this would have a positive impact on diversity — making it more likely that female candidates and those from ethnic minorities are selected for the shortlist," he said.
"We found the opposite, that de-identifying candidates reduced the likelihood of women being selected for the shortlist." The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview.
Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door.
"We should hit pause and be very cautious about introducing this as a way of improving diversity, as it can have the opposite effect," Professor Hiscox said.”
Don't be silly. GPDR is going to save the world, solve all of the internet's problems and bake you nice warm croissants in the morning.