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Comment by adamsb6 | Hacker News Reader

> I didn’t mention my other reasons for wanting to stay in Minnesota because it wasn’t the reviewers’ business; normally, employers aren’t allowed to ask about spouses or children.

My interview training at Big Tech forbade me from even asking about the candidate's trip to campus because the answer could reveal a disadvantaged socioeconomic status.

But universities behave as if employment discrimination laws don't exist. At least they're starting to be held accountable, see this case from the University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/10/31/university-takes-...

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Just because big tech does something g does not mean it is driven by law.

It’s more likely they simply want to know less, as knowing less can limit liability.

Simply put. If you did not know x y or z about the candidate, then the candidate can’t claim z y or z is why they did not get the job, where x y z might be protected.

Most of the rules at big tech are simply not driven by laws requiring it. But by layaways limiting liability.

You're drawing a weird distinction here—"it's not about the law, it's about limiting liability should we end up in a lawsuit."

Yeah, the law doesn't require avoiding asking specific types of questions, but big tech lawyers recommend being careful because knowing that information can expose you to potential legal liability. The decision to limit how much you know about a candidate's background is a direct side effect of the law and its application, even if the law itself doesn't say you can't know this stuff.

I think it’s a very relevant distinction targeted at this statement from GP:

“universities behave as if employment discrimination laws don't exist. At least they're starting to be held accountable”

This seems to be suggesting that they are violating employment discrimination laws, but that the laws so far have not been enforced perfectly.

I think parent is saying that they are not violating employment discrimination laws, they are just less paranoid about accidentally violating them than FAANG companies are.

Universities do generally have a much smaller $$$ target on their back, so it would not be too surprising if big tech is more paranoid about lawsuits than universities.

I think "hiring process inappropriately used race as a factor" sounds a lot like "they are violating employment discrimination laws, but that the laws so far have not been enforced perfectly", actually.

I agree with your statement, I’m strictly referring to the exchange I mentioned and not to the overall topic.

The link to the UW case is literally at the end of the line you quoted? I would assume that poster meant for those things to be related.

The “at least they are starting to be held accountable” comment literally includes a link to the story of one that was violating employment laws.

Based on many anecdotes from friends and family in academia as well as many recent news reports (such as the one linked to by GP at the end of the line you quoted), I would say that universities have been violating employment discrimination laws regularly and egregiously and are only recently being held to account for it.

Big tech's methods for avoiding liability may seem silly or extreme, but they arguably also work: if you literally know nothing about someone's protected classes you cannot make decisions based on them. Academic hiring, meanwhile, seems intent on collecting as much information as possible about as many protected characteristics as possible.

It is an important distinction. Original posts implies the university is breaking the law. There is huge difference between breaking law and not doing the safestest easiest to win in court thing.

The original post doesn't just imply that universities are breaking the law, it links to a post by a university where they acknowledge they were breaking the law:

> The review was completed in September and indicates that race was inappropriately considered and used in a way that is inconsistent with University policy in the hiring process for an assistant professor position in the department. Race was inappropriately considered in the hiring process even after some faculty received guidance from College of Arts & Sciences and University leadership that such considerations are inappropriate.

So in this case the distinction is meaningless because the GP was literally saying "big tech has tons of barriers up in place, but universities seem not to care very much until someone actually calls them out for breaking the law".

Surely you mean lawyers and not layaways...?

In this case it wasn't even a university who did that. It is reviewers at the national science foundation. The largest federal funding agency in the US.

Larger than DARPA?

Funding, not funded.

From Wikipedia:

> With an annual budget of about $8.3 billion (fiscal year 2020), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities[0][1].

Note: That budget is ~$10 billion for FY24.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation

[1] https://new.nsf.gov/about

DARPA is a funding agency. It employs only admin and program management people, only about 300 of them, and spends around $4B a year, dispersing most of it to universities and third party labs.

It’s leaner than the NSF, which employs five times as many people and has a budget only twice as large. Probably NSF has a large number of small-dollar grants to track compared to DARPA.

And neither of them are the largest research funding agency. The National Institute of Health (NIH) granted $30B on a budget of $41B in FY2020.

The NSF budget is roughly double DARPA’s, at ~$8B vs ~$4B in 2022.

Yes folks, those numbers are suprisingly small.

> [..] could reveal a disadvantaged socioeconomic status.

Does Google provide any kind of "interview fund" to the applicant? Otherwise the mere fact of being there - flights, hotels, travel - says a lot about the applicants socioeconomic status. Just a 3 day trip (hotel, car, flight) to MV from my area is starting at $1500 - $3000 from a quick look around.

Is the worry they are going to reveal that they just hitchhiked or spent the last 100 hours on a Grayhound and walked to the campus from the bus stop?

I interviewed with them a few years ago and they reimbursed everything for the on-site. I can't remember if they also offered to pay up front if needed.

Thanks for the answer. Re-reading my comment I think my tone was more snarky than I intended as it was an honest question.

That is good to hear. Glad they are helping out like that.

What company doesn’t reimburse interview trip expenses?

You might be inadvertently showing your lack of socioeconomic disadvantage with this question. Maybe you meant "technology company" or "SV company" but..

Lots of companies? If you search for "interview expense reimbursement" there are tons of articles informing people of how to ask the company about reimbursement or figuring out who is paying and other general confusion to how this works for the standard person.

Or any college educated job? My dad went through his career with a two year technical degree and even when the nuclear industry imploded in the 80s, companies still paid to fly/him out to whatever nuclear plant was looking to hire. It doesn’t get cheaper than the power generation industry.

See my first sentence above.

> Does Google provide any kind of "interview fund" to the applicant? Otherwise the mere fact of being there - flights, hotels, travel

All companies will pay all expenses related to interview travel.

If you ever face a situation where a company won't, rest assured it is some kind of scam.

Red Hat's first CEO

> My interview training at Big Tech forbade me from even asking about the candidate's trip to campus because the answer could reveal a disadvantaged socioeconomic status.

I mean, candidates put their university, new grads often put their high schools, that can easily tell you whether they come from the upper class.

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