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Comment by msghacq | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been hearing from friends at GitHub and MS that things are on fire internally. The GitHub employees are in semi-revolt because they think Nat is integrating too fast with MS. Many people have quit or are being pushed out. It may actually be for the best because the post-founder/pre-buyout team was pretty mediocre. Nat is also trying to crack down on some of the more overt activism in the company. They do “eq” screenings for political fit during the interview process and he’s trying to get them to stop. They also have a brand new head of product and engineering. Product was taken from Jason Warner about two months ago and placed directly under Nat. Sounds really bad and I don’t expect much turn around.

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> They do “eq” screenings for political fit during the interview process and he’s trying to get them to stop.

This sounds crazy to me. My last company would freak out if the dev team got together and discussed the person's politics and if we thought they should be hired or not based on that. I hope they do stop this.

The more i think about this the crazier it sounds. Imagine a Houston oil consultancy firm discussing a candidate who applied and asking "when we talked about lowering taxes, did the inflection in his voice sound real or feigned?". This is what an "old boys club" looks like.

"the person's politics"

I interpreted it as a how a person deals with internal politics not what their political views are. the latter would most definitely be illegal.

from the OP > It stands for “emotional quotient” and they ask you a bunch of questions about diversity, feminism... They watch your responses for tone and vocabulary and can veto your hire if they deem you insufficiently enthusiastic.

It sounds very much like your opinions on current political topics.

I don't think the latter* is illegal because it's not discrimination against a member of a protected class. That doesn't make it okay or that it couldn't lead to other trouble.

California law provides some protection from discrimination by employers based on political affiliation or activities. NY state and Washington DC have similar statutes.

But it’s not “affiliation” nor “activities.” It’s “is their stance on topic X compatible with ours?”

Still terrible. Still not illegal.

Hi. I don't know of any fires, revolts, or crackdowns. GitHub is independent of MS, and Nat has worked hard to keep it that way. We do have org changes, but I don't things get "taken" so much as "we work together to figure out an org structure that will make us most productive and build a great product".

FWIW I'm very happy at work

I know several people who have quit recently and more on the way. Can you comment on Nat wanting to do away with the EQ interviews?

>FWIW I'm very happy at work

Aaron, Serious Question; When were you ever unhappy? I am getting the sense Sadness and Unhappy don't exist in your dictionary.

And first time I see a reply without any pun. ( Or Did I miss it ? )

> They do “eq” screenings for political fit during the interview process

Wait, what? How is that even legal? Not sure what's the exact meaning of "eq screenings" but anything related to political affiliation should be out of any interview process. At least in Europe discrimination on political views or other belief is completely illegal (with some exception for the church in some countries, e.g: Germany).

It stands for “emotional quotient” and they ask you a bunch of questions about diversity, feminism... They watch your responses for tone and vocabulary and can veto your hire if they deem you insufficiently enthusiastic. The motto is: “eq > iq”. You can imagine why MS might not be keen on this.

Holy shit?

So they basically give a political Voigt-Kampff test as part of their interview process?

This sounds kinda scary. I don't want to have a racist or a misogynist in my team or company but this seems to go way too far.

I think this person is trying to make it sound scary.

Interview responses are monitored for tone and vocabulary everywhere. Insufficient enthusiasm is often a valid reason not to hire someone. It is appropriate to ask questions about diversity and feminism during an interview—those are core values of the company, the first bullet point on their Careers page, even. https://github.com/about/careers

> It stands for “emotional quotient” and they ask you a bunch of questions about diversity, feminism...

Are you saying github is asking questions about diversity and feminism in their hiring process or that an eq test has these questions ?

Because political opinions have nothing to do with eq testing (see http://myframeworks.org/testmyeq/).

Yes they ask about diversity and feminism and call that eq. As another poster linked, you can see that’s their #1 cultural bullet point: https://github.com/about/careers

Diversity and equal rights are politicized right now, but that does not mean it has anything to do with political alignment or affiliation.

> Wait, what? How is that even legal?

IANAL, and my info may be out of date.

My understanding is that political ideology isn't a protected group at the national level here in America. Although states/cities can write their own laws that effectively add to the list. It's not a protected group in Washington state either, I believe, but it is a protected class in Seattle: https://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/civil-rights#whatisaprot... .

Microsoft does have some presence in Seattle (Microsoft Store, Microsoft Reactor?) so I could see some of their lawyers being made quite nervous by even the hint of discrimination by politics, even where ostensibly legal.

Sorry but this a 2 hour old account, I think I'll take this with a pinch of salt and advise others to do the same.

Use Gitlab.

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