Hacker News Reader

Comment by peripitea | Hacker News Reader

I'm (perhaps naively) shocked at how opposed to this people are on Reddit, but especially on HN. This community was founded on startup ideals of trying radical ideas, knowing that most wouldn't succeed but some would go on to have outsized positive impact. Anyone who claims to definitively know that this idea would have problematic/racist results is kidding themselves. I've worked with and mentored a lot of minority candidates (who often have trouble with the cultural test that is getting and passing interviews), and my first thought on reading this idea was: "Sweet, I could start a little fund getting under-represented people I know jobs; I think I could probably even make it profitable. This could be transformative." Of course I don't know for sure that it would work, but to just confidently dismiss it out of hand seems about as stupid as the people who, upon first hearing about Lambda School ISAs, insisted that it was morally akin to slavery.

View on HN

> I'm (perhaps naively) shocked at how opposed to this people are on Reddit, but especially on HN

> I've worked with and mentored a lot of minority candidates (who often have trouble with the cultural test that is getting and passing interviews)

Maybe have an open, empathetic mind for those people that are so upset? Or ask a minority friend of yours what they think?

From my personal XP: Many black and brown friends of mine think that entrepreneurship is a rich kid’s game because the common first step of raising a “friends and family round” is an absurd notion to them. Most of their friends and family barely have enough money to pay the bills, so the idea of raising $100k+ from them is silly. When I read the angry responses in this thread (and see a price tag like $10k) I think about those friends. I’m sure they’d laugh at the idea of asking friends/colleagues to help them raise $10k to “skip the interview” for similar reasons.

Empathy is hard, especially over the internet and across socioeconomic bubbles, but it’s essential when seeing outrage that you don’t understand.

Damn. I know you don't know me, but this is unnecessarily condescending and off the mark. I'm very well aware of everything you mentioned. Maybe I was unclear. My confusion is about the extent of misunderstanding and willful misrepresentation of the idea, not about the resulting outrage.

Your explanation is a great example -- if you want to look at the idea exclusively in those terms, that sure sounds problematic. But do you really think that's the only way it could have played out? Keep in mind, we are living in a system that causes massive aggregate harm to underrepresented people on a daily basis. And I'm just referring to the tech industry and particularly its hiring practices, let alone society as a whole.

Killing a new idea just because you can conceive of scenarios where it might be harmful (though I would argue not even that much more harmful than the status quo in this case) is probably unwise in general, but is almost certainly so in a space where the status quo is already so fraught. I work in this space, we need more/better ideas (among many other things), and I think this idea actually had a plausible chance of putting a dent in some of the problems at the core of these systemic issues. Sure, it's a small chance, but to just throw it away? That bums me out.

Edit just to be clear: I have no idea who the people behind this site are and had never heard of it before day. I just work on some of the same problems and would love to see the system improve more quickly.

> Damn. I know you don't know me, but this is unnecessarily condescending and off the mark.

I’m truly sorry you feel that way. My intent was sincerely to provide another point of view.

No worries. You caught me at the end of a long day where I was drained from supporting people I care about through some tough situations, so the questioning of my empathy hit a little harder than you could have possibly anticipated. I appreciate the apology and understand where you were coming from, and I wish you well.

Awesome! I wish you well too. I hope today is a better day :)

If you feel it's acceptable that having money/networks of people with money would give people an advantage in the world, the shock is understandable. However, others are vehemently opposed to the world working like this and anything that contributes to such a world, like this business idea.

Also:

1) unless you think it will be very common that people with money will take up sponsoring minorities for jobs, the fact that you personally would do it doesn't counteract the disadvantage of minorities in general through this system, and

2) if you want to pay to help people from underrepresented groups get jobs, there are already plenty of ways to do so, from sponsoring education to hiring interview coaches, and more.

"having money/networks of people with money would give people an advantage in the world" is the status quo! I've worked in tech hiring for years and have seen and tried all kinds of ideas to fix that problem. With the status quo as bad as it is, we should be more willing to give radical ideas a shot; clearly the conventional ideas are not working. Is this idea a bit crazy? Sure! Do I think its odds of succeeding are well under 50%? Yup! But is it ok to kill these ideas before they even have a chance to prove themselves? No; in fact I would argue on net it's incredibly harmful, and that the people who claim to care the most about fixing this problem are causing harm by killing fledgling ideas that could plausibly help.

To your 1): I think it's at least plausible that this would become common; many crazier-sounding ideas have succeeded. There's a big disconnect between talent identification/development industries and hirers, and something like this could help to bridge that gap.

To your 2): Trust me, I have done all of that. It helps, but it is far from a panacea. That is the conventional shit that has resulted in the tech industry barely making a dent in its diversity numbers for well over a decade now. There are so many people for whom I would have so much rather just invested money in them getting a job immediately than spend yet another hour walking through their latest interview experience and explaining why something innocuous they said or did was probably incorrectly treated as a red flag by their interviewer.

> ideals of trying radical ideas

It’s hard to distinguish between radical ideas and truly stupid ideas.

There needs to be a better filter to get rid of bad ideas because some are horrible (ie, this one).

I think it’s funny that people assume that all radical ideas are worth trying and that change can only be good.

>I think it’s funny that people assume that all radical ideas are worth trying and that change can only be good.

Nobody thinks that.

if you want to be free to try radical ideas, you should also be open to the feedback when they’re terrible and foolish ideas

Feedback that's of any use is constructive, or at least "this will not work because" not silly directed outrage

Outrage is feedback. The people in that subreddit, the people in this HN thread, are all people who have had to apply for jobs and go through interviews, and thus are all potential customers. If your potential customers are outraged by the very idea of your business, that's feedback.

"I have no words" is not feedback, its performative, commenting so others can join in in their rage against some vague concept. You can not use it, you can state why you don't want to use it, you can ignore it entirely, all those have some value. Just stating "I'm outraged" accomplishes nothing, but is somehow the favorite response now

No, it's still feedback. It indicates an extremely negative emotional response to this idea, or even in the most cynical view, it represents the fact that there is social clout to be gained by having an extremely negative emotional response to this idea. Either way, it means that lots of people don't like it. That's feedback.

Also, it's disingenuous to say that all the responses are just performative words. Tons of people on Reddit and HN have thoroughly laid bare all the problems with this proposal. Just read through the threads.

> I'm (perhaps naively) shocked at how opposed to this people are (...) especially on HN. This community was founded on startup ideals of trying radical ideas (...)

Trying radical ideas does not equate turning off your critical thinking.

Also, if you are the one with radical idea, do not look for a group of people that will approve anything. It is pretty poor way to test your idea.

> Anyone who claims to definitively know that this idea would have problematic (...) results is kidding themselves.

Oh, let me think about it. Pay couple thousand to skip couple of hours of interview to get a job that pays many times more per month.

Definitely nobody will want to exploit that.

I am (and presumably the people who created and funded this are) capable of critical thinking, and I don't share your judgment. Maybe you're right; maybe I'm right. Either way, your confidence is epistemically unjustified. That is why these ideas need room to breathe.

Effectively, by agreeing with this idea, you are arguing that a system that favors solely connections and wealth is preferable to a screening process that at least slightly qualitatively evaluates the abilities of a candidate.

At the same time, you expect that this system will provide benefit to the underrepresented from the good hearts of their supposed rich benefactors (ie. you). To me, this comes off similar to expecting developing countries to rise out of poverty through donations from western billionaires. For every underrepresented person you know, there are a thousand others who don't have such a rich benefactor.

>Anyone who claims to definitively know that this idea would have problematic/racist results is kidding themselves.

This system exclusively favors wealthy connections. Which groups are least likely to have wealthy connections?

In my opinion, in your argument, you only consider your personal position and social bubble rather than society at large. It comes off similar to a president advocating for dictatorship to do more good.

I genuinely don't mean this as a personal attack; I just find your position baffling.

I'm not quite sure how to say this but I think it's all part of the "post enlightenment" behavior that's going on, where trying new things and having different thoughts is looked on as heretical.

It's not about whether ideas are good or bad (I think this idea is bad), there are now mental gymnastics about why it never even should have been considered in the first place - see the comments about how we need a filter to identify things that should never be tried. This is the same idea as people who think there are ideas that should never be questioned, or concepts we shouldn't be allowed to talk about.

(Also, as I reread many of the responses, there also seems to be a healthy dose of people just not having read and understood the concept)

Right, I feel that once the "outrage" starts in full speed, there's no way to sit down in a middle ground and talk about the idea, how it is bad, how could it be improved, etc. It's as if someone from outside the US suggests that Healthcare should be socialized (once the outrage machine is out, there's no way to have a real argument).

From my point of view (someone who has had to interview and hire people for the last 10 years) the main idea doesn't sound completely broken. Here in HN we have discussed countless times how the interview process is broken, how it sucks for everyone (both interviewer and interviewee), etc. This person is trying a completely different angle, and that's good. I am happy to give it a chance.

The way I would implement it is more like this:

    1. Hiring Company defines, they would spend $X for a Mid level FullStack dev.
    2. Hiring company provides SkipTheInterview $X + fee. 
    3. SkipTheInterview opens the Position"bounty" .  
    4. If a candidate wants to be hired for the position, they apply and have to get enough _backers_ to get to the $X amount.
    5. Once the candidate gets enough backer money, they get hired.
   6. After a "trial" period (where the candidate is paid normally as he has bin hired), SkipTheInterview gives back the bounty money to the backers  *doubled*, and only keeps the fee.

This idea is incapable of racist results. Racists are capable of racist results. Don't conflate the two.

The people crying about this "idea" being racist or "enabling racism" are wrong.

My first idea when seeing the site, was how I can exploit it. This is the internet, where many systems can be gamed.

I actually love the idea, and feel that it is the epitome of American Capitalism, "vote with your wallet" and all that.

It feels as one of those things that will deffinitely work, but the current culture won't allow it. Similarly to how if someone today invented "firefighting" as a social good, people would be outraged of having to pay to extinguish somebody else's fire.

I can't imagine that you'd compare this idea with firefighting.

Firefighting: a public good, paid for with public tax dollars, so that you don't have to worry about paying out of pocket for fire defense. They just show up when you need them, it comes out of your taxes, done deal.

Skip the Interview: a private company which turns job openings into pay-to-play gambling and takes a cut. People with networks of friends and family that have disposable income (i.e. "rich kids") are disproportionately advantaged. People from poor backgrounds, whose friends and family can't afford to put up $50 to buy them a job, are disadvantaged. Networks of friends can easily game the system over the course of a few years and buy each other several good jobs. The existing systems of class and privilege are reinforced, and on and on.

The people who would be opposed to firefighters if they were proposed today are not the same people saying this is a stupid idea. People who would oppose firefighters now would be the financial hawk conservatives who think all public funding for anything is bad. The people saying this is a stupid idea fall into two camps; they either see how impractical, toxic, and easily gamed this system would be, or they recognize that it would entrench class and privilege even further and they don't want a new business to contribute to such a world.

/end rant

If we're comparing it with government run services, I'd have thought a better comparison than firefighting would be Bail Bonds, but for Employment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com