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Comment by jasondclinton | Hacker News Reader

I was agreeing with you until you used the phrase "diversity hire" in your comment. I think that you could have made the same point without inferring that the hiring bar has been lowered for employees in underrepresented groups. That's a pretty terrible thing to say to anyone who is in one of those groups.

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I won't dispute whether you think it's a terrible thing to say, but preferential treatment towards demographics categorized as "diverse" is something I've both witnessed and taken part in during my time so far in tech. At least in the San Francisco Bay Area, many tech companies are setting targets of >30% women in engineering roles despite the fact that they make up 20-25% of the tech workforce. Achieving these numbers necessitates discrimination.

Note that you're putting words in the other poster's mouth when you write that "the hiring bar has been lowered". Not all forms of discrimination involve lowering the hiring bar. From my experience, the bulk of discrimination occurs before hiring event starts - recruiters extend phone interviews to diverse candidates at higher rates. The hiring bar is the same for diverse and non-diverse, it's just that diverse candidates are more likely to get a chance to attempt to pass that hiring bar.

>From my experience, the bulk of discrimination occurs before hiring event starts - recruiters extend phone interviews to diverse candidates at higher rates.

How is this different from any other targeted recruiting? FAANG recruits students from CMU while not even visiting my alma mater. Recruiters extend phone interviews to referrals at 100% rate no matter how bad they suck, etc. Diversity recruiting != diversity hiring, and the numbers bare that out. Unless you argue that recruiters should have zero targeted pipelines I'm not sure how it's unique for diversity initiatives

You're right, it isn't. But are people offended when people say that FAANG gives more opportunity to CMU grads than community college grads? Not in my experience. Speaking as a grad from one of the universities mentioned, I can say with certainty that and education from those institutions opens up a lot of doors and that pointing that fact out is fair.

It's different because having the preferred genitalia isn't equal to having a degree from a top university.

You can't really blame the companies. CMU has a great track record why wouldn't they go there.

The major difference is that both CMU and your alma is seen to welcome both women and men (and people of different colors, cultural backgrounds, religion, social economical status and so on).

Targeted recruiting from single sex schools or religious universities would be different, but there aren't many such universities in the first place.

However, targeted recruiting for high prestige university tend to create discrimination for social economical status, which discriminate against people who were not lucky enough to be born by rich parents.

It is my anecdata, and take it as what it is. I've seen it myself a few times.

Take it as what it is, downvote it all you want. A freedom of speech for everyone.

"I've seen it myself" - So you've sat on FAANG hiring panels that made decisions specifically based on candidates' underrepresented demographics? Or you're just inferring based on people you met while employed at a FAANG? Or...?

So basically I know a few people who can't even solve an Easy Leetcode questions. They got in as SWE L3/L4, E3/E4 and I also know one L5.

Can you help me in explaining why? I don't have the intention of looking down on people. I'm just gathering data. If I can find a reasonable explanation then I want to take a look at it, and learn from it, and see where did I do wrong, so I can improve and pass the interviews next time.

I knew a lot of people at FAANG that were L4/L5 that couldn't solve Leetcode easies. Leetcode isn't part of the job, just the interviews.

Getting an offer is not just a matter of solving a programming problem. It's about how you communicate. And, of course, if you're a brilliant jerk ability doesn't matter: you're not getting hired.

If you're not getting past the interviews despite being a strong programmer, you may want to really think deeply about how you're communicating with your interviewer. Remember, the vast majority of people who are getting offers aren't women or minorities so that's probably not what's blocking you.

Your experience matches my anecdote. Hence you can imagine my total confusion once I got the interview myself (Google, 2 times, phone to onsite, Amazon one time to onsite, Facebook, one phone). In my latest FB phone for example. I was asked a Medium question that I've never seen before, and nevertheless I solved it. How do I know? Because apparently that was taken straight from Leetcode, and the interviewer didn't even bother to change the question. I copy pasted my solution to Leetcode, run it, pass 100% test cases.

I got rejected....

I asked for feedback from the recruiter. Apparently I needed to do 2 Medium questions in the allocated time. I solve the first Medium question in about 30 mins, and there was only 10 mins left for the 2nd one so the interviewer didn't bother to ask me the 2nd one.

The scenario that I just told you above is not unique. Venture enough to cscareerquestions and Leetcode forum you'll be surprised to see many many worse experience than this.

Keep trying. I hate to say it, but luck is a factor. The process is by no means objective. Sometimes it's just a matter of getting the right interviewer.

Thank you. I am currently pivoting to learning other things that are more practical in the job. I did enough Leetcode that I started to like it (Stockholm's syndrome).

I've sat at company hiring panels, and have taken part in discriminatory policies first hand. At career fairs, Dropbox recruiters had us mark candidate resumes with a star for diverse candidates, two starts for "double diverse" candidates (female + URM), and "ND" for Asian male candidates. It turns out "ND" stands for "negative diversity". Literally the first thing we did was bucket candidates by the desirability of their demographics. Recruiters also got higher bonuses for recruiting diverse candidates, along with bonuses for more experienced candidates. The diverse bonus was equal to the difference between hiring an entry level IC1 and an IC6 (senior staff engineer).

Usually discrimination doesn't take place in the hiring panels. Rather it's done by the people given incentives to discriminate, usually recruiters. Recruiters can infer candidates' race and gender with census data on names, and advance diverse candidates to phone screens more often than non-diverse candidates.

I can also detail the company's "opportunistic hiring" plans if you want to hear more.

I would like to hear more, but maybe HN doesn't want to. If you don't care about the risk of downvoting and this being on HN, please write so. But if not, it is ok.

This is the part of the document that described the motivation:

> The Problem Statement

> Based on 177 like tech companies in Silicon Valley (market research and EOO-1 Diversity Statistics data), the percentage of diverse engineering talent is sparse. In short, 4.7% are latino, 2.1% are African American, and 19.2% are female. These candidates are being targeted with all of our top competitors with white gloves tactics, strategic outreach, and engagement strategies, while Dropbox has yet to systematically establish any of these practices to compete for this top talent and showcase our uniquely inclusive, dynamic, and thoughtful culture.

> Opportunity to market DBX [Dropbox] more broadly:

> Moreover, diverse engineers are the most sought after group of individuals on the market today. While the average response rate to engage is high (37%) the rate at which they are interested in moving forwards is quite low (11%). We interpret this in two ways: > First, due to the small pool and scarcity of diverse talent, companies are motivated to keep their diverse talent happy, well-compensated, and engaged; prospects are rarely on the market, and when they are, it is a highly calculated and careful search based on existing relationships. > Second, traditional sourcing engagement methods (email, LinkedIn) do not adequately showcase what makes Dropbox special, and because these candidates are so highly sought-after, it would serve us to highlight our culture early on, and to take a more long term approach to courting them.

And here's the proposed solution

> Opportunistic Hiring

> As the business needs shift and open roles become more narrow, it will become difficult to find a home for diverse candidates that we're able to engage and who pass our bar. Wee feel like it would be a disservice to use in the long-term if we miss out on hiring critical talent for Dropbox because of current headcount constraints. To this end, we propose that Eng VP's withhold 20 heads to hire opportunistically. > When a diverse/URM candidate is interested in interviewing, regardless of headcount, we will put them through the process. If they pass the TPS [technical phone screen] we will bring them onsite and evaluate based on their skillset. * If the candidate goes to HC [hiring committee], we will proactively find a sponsor/team home for the candidate, and that team would receive a preciously withheld headcount for that hire.

This was announced April of 2019. I've transcribed parts of the document that announced this policy above. I can't speak as to whether or not this is still in place as I have since left Dropbox.

Interestingly, Dropbox already 23% women in tech roles[1] at the time that this was announced - larger than the figure of 19% shown above.

1. https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/an-update-on-diversi...

Thanks for the update. It is an interesting read.

I used to think naively that checking these boxes does nothing: - "I prefer not to disclose my sexual preference" - "I prefer not to disclose my race/ethnicity" - "I prefer not to disclose whether I'm a veteran or not"

Anyway, it is a sad read for people like me who don't get preferential treatment. It seems like I'm being salty, but it is just the reality. People like me studied hours and hours doing Leetcode and sacrificing other things, even sacrificing things that should have helped our career better, such as learning relevant skills like techniques, libraries, etc. It is what it is. Naively think about meritocracies.

If I can just write a huge *sigh here, it is what I'm currently doing right now. I don't care about downvotes. I just need to rant.

Anyway thank you for the replies! I really appreciate it.

> Anyway, it is a sad read for people like me who don't get preferential treatment.

Yup, we marginalized groups get all the breaks. /s

"preferential treatment"????? your baseline is privileged. diversity hiring is attempting to negate reduced or lack of privilege.

your competition is not women or minorities. it's other majority groups, because more of them are interviewed and hired.

I'm not sure why pointing out the fact that this forces members of the same race or gender to compete against each other for a limited number of spots is justification. The fact that we're allocating some hiring slots for certain races and genders, while others have to compete for a more limited number of slots is the problem.

Furthermore, this policy announced when the company's tech workforce was already higher than the industry's representation in the metro area. So they were using discrimination to increase an already existing overrepresentation.

Well that's generalizing isn't it? Not every Asian male sounding name person actually have a good track record in their family, free of abuse, loving both dad and mom, good education, know how to do math to the point of memorizing the entire Pi numbers.

There are people who are outside of the normal as well. Why not give them privilege by hearing their stories as well?

Or better, why not discard the preferential treatment and do it based on meritocracy? I know this can't be done in today's world, just hoping.

Not every white person comes from a rich, educated family either. I'm very familiar with this being a white, uneducated, disabled female from the Midwest US with an uneducated, abusive, lower-middle class family.

Meritocracy does literally nothing to aid less privileged people to get ahead. It primarily helps those who started with privilege in the first place which is mostly limited to select groups.

Were you required to remove stars already on the resume? If not, then I know just what to do.

Where on my resume should I put the two stars? Are those the traditional hand-written style, with the lines crossing to make a pentagon in the middle? What sort of pen or pencil should I use?

We wrote the stars ourselves - normal 5 point star style. If you wrote the stars yourself recruiters would probably cross them out and write in the stars that correctly reflect your diversity status.

But it undeniably has, and I've had multiple older women in management express to me that they felt their position was less respected because of the company's overt push to hire women.

Sure, in theory we're correcting the injustices brought about by inequality, but what we're really doing is presuming that minorities need extra help and white men do not, without considering that all people have struggles and, frankly, it's racist/sexist to judge people by skin color and/or gender.

You can easily invent a dozen ways to claim someone's life is underprivileged, but we only have a handful that are allowed in hiring considerations, and they all happen to be "not white or male."

It's terrifying to see how casually acceptable this has become.

The presumption here is that white and Asian men get extra help by default, and the rest are penalised. This has enough evidence in favour that I would call it a theory and not a hypothesis.

Making this view more public would help.

Worked at FAANG. There are diversity programs because most engineers are white and Asian men with professional networks composed almost entirely of white and Asian men. Referrals are a big source of talent, so you can imagine what that does to our hiring pipeline. But there are no diversity hires. Everyone who's hired has to pass the bar.

That's not entirely true because the bar isn't deterministic. For example, diverse candidates are given two attempts to pass a phone screen.

Many non "diverse" hires are also given two attempts.

Let's put it straight: most diverse candidates are given 2 attempts; while most regular candidates are given 1 attempt.

This is far from the truth.

Candidates from well represented backgrounds are also given two attempts. It depends. In general, most candidates aren't given two attempts irrespective of background.

Totally agree.

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