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Comment by standy17817 | Hacker News Reader

It was a Supreme Court case, Griggs vs Duke Power, in 1970. Since then, employers cannot use IQ tests or standardized tests, since they were deemed discriminatory against minorities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

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This case says something different though. It says you can’t use a test that doesn’t relate to the job, regardless of if there’s intent to discriminate or not.

A standardized test that tests your ability to do the job is still allowable — presumably even if minorities fare worse on it.

This misses the point. The point is that the process is the punishment. The process is that these groups will sue over and over again until you give in.

That story doesn’t say that at all. You brought in your own baggage to make that claim.

This case is the whole reason the "disparate impact" phrase exists and its had a chilling effect on employment testing. If you're a large FANG company hiring programmers, you risk testing (validating someone can write code), but if you don't have the pocketbook and legal team, there is not much incentive to put your company at legal risk of being sued. This is especially true when you can just use "college degree in X required" as an extremely inefficient and costly proxy for what could have been a test. And we wonder why tuition is so high.

But even small tech companies do coding tests. I don't think its a function of large pocketbooks. Rather I think that they found tests that correlate more to the work done on the actual job.

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