Yet Another Biased Article lacking Facts from the Washington Post| Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees

2014-02-16T18:13:29+00:00

Three categories of interview question:

What superpower would you give a friend?

This is a typical icebreaker question, that's supposed to make you drop the facade and show your real personality. People who manage techies are used to dealing with introverts, and most of them know that introverts aren't interested in playing these kinds of party games. That particular question isn't excluding - by the time you're five years old, you've probably already had a conversation with your friends about the best magical power to possess. Even if it is asked in a culture-specific way, the answer is: sorry, I don't know about Star Trek.

we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.

I'll take the word of the Google guy that the golf-ball question doesn't work, and that it's an example of an intellectual show-off culture that's gotten out of hand. But the original point of questions like that was to test the ability of potential engineers to make back-of-the-envelope estimates. In the case of Dropbox, if a potential new feature is being proposed, it's often important for a techie to make some rough calculations and be able to say that the new feature will (a) be handled perfectly well by the existing infrastructure, (b) require $1 million/$10 million/$100 million of hardware investment, (c) be impossible.

Perhaps a question on how Dropbox might be used to solve income inequality or the unaffordability of housing in San Francisco would reveal as much about someone’s creativity—and more about their character—than questions about superheroes.

Good questions if you want to hire people who prioritize social justice crusades over giving customers a good product and shareholders a return on their investment.

baskandpurr · 2014-02-16T21:53:28+00:00

Perhaps a question on how Dropbox might be used to solve income inequality or the unaffordability of housing in San Francisco...

Wait, does this person even understand what DropBox is?

Founders are looking for 'objective' measures such as school ranking, GPAs, SAT scores, but fail to recognize that these are biased.

Wait, does this person understand anything?!

DownShatCreek · 2014-02-16T23:40:59+00:00

"Perhaps a question on how Dropbox might be used to solve income inequality or the unaffordability of housing in San Francisco would reveal as much about someone’s creativity—and more about their character—than questions about superheroes.”"

_

"Could we give more money to the government?"

"Hired!"

dpape39 · 2014-02-16T21:49:36+00:00

That text read like it was supposed to be on a radfem blog instead.

SRSLovesGawker · 2014-02-16T22:35:05+00:00

TL/DR: His recommendation to fix gender imbalance in tech - replace light-hearted creativity questions in the interview with "social justice warrior" questions, eg:

"Perhaps a question on how Dropbox might be used to solve income inequality or the unaffordability of housing in San Francisco would reveal as much about someone’s creativity—and more about their character—than questions about superheroes.”

Push that agenda, sir! PUSH IT!

FerCrerker · 2014-02-17T02:17:21+00:00

I have been in college for computer science for a little over a year. I have only seen 3 females in all of my classes combined. You can't complain about lack of females in the office, if there is a lack of females with the knowledge to do the work.

arjung86 · 2014-02-17T05:56:10+00:00

FYI, this guy is not representative of Indians.

2014-02-17T06:38:56+00:00

“If someone came in right now and announced that the zombie apocalypse had just started outside, what would you do in the next hour? What is something that you’re geeky about? What is a superpower you would give to your best friend?”

They don’t lead to better hiring outcomes as Google learned.... "How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

...What? The article seems to be pretending that the former set of questions is anything like the latter set of questions. They're not even remotely similar, it's nonsensical. Does the author of the article really see any parallel at all?

Title	Yet Another Biased Article lacking Facts from the Washington Post\| Dropbox’s hiring practices explain its disappointing lack of female employees
Author	wrez
Upvotes	31
Comments	12
Date	February 16, 2014 5:06 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/mensrights/comments/1y2iqy/yet-another-biased-article-lacking-facts-from-the-/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/yet-another-biased-article-lacking-facts-from-the.1614703 https://theredarchive.com/post/1614703

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