Top all-time · #1421
interviewing.io blog
Company blog · blog.interviewing.iocareerdataprogramming
interviewing.io blog is the company blog at blog.interviewing.io, writing about career, data and programming. Since 2015, 50 different Hacker News readers have linked it 103 times, most often “We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its hiring data, including analysis of thousands of technical interviews and a voice-modulation experiment that masked gender in interviews.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Data-driven insights about technical interviewing and hiring, based on 100k+ interviews.
Most-linked posts?
- We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2016-06-29
- We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews (2016)12 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2016-12-27
- After a lot more data, technical interview performance is still arbitrary4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-10-13
- Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-12-28
- You can’t fix diversity in tech without fixing the technical interview2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-11-02
- Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-10-30
- We looked at how a thousand college students performed in technical interviews2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-02-13
- No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback (2020)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-02
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-01
- No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-02-06
What Hacker News says?
At least for phone interviews, the bias doesn't exist or goes the other way: From http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas... : After running the experiment, we ended up with some rather surprising results. Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would adv…
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo”Submitted Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews as a story · 692 points
HN discussionPeople have tried that... specifically to show that women were being discriminated against, but guess what happened when it was implemented? They found that contrary to their initial hypothesis, women with voices modulated to sound like men were still not getting hired at the same rate as the men masked to sound like women. Not only that, but they found women modulated to sound like men did worse than unmodulated wo…
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity”Submitted If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools as a story · 631 points
HN discussionSo masking the interview... doesn't mean women will do better. You might be surprised why if your disposition leans towards social conspiracy theories. http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity”Submitted No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback as a story · 527 points
HN discussionI always end up linking this piece in response to people like you, and here I am again. These folks have real data on lots of interviews, and have done some analysis on them: http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-w... The takeaway that's relevant to you is the section titled "Interview outcomes are kind of arbitrary". Specifically, things like: As you can see, roughly 25% of interviewees are con…
Comment linking /you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-without-fixing-the-technical-interview/
on “The latest trend for tech interviews: Days of unpaid homework”Submitted Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews as a story · 456 points
HN discussionThis graph is goofy: http://blog.interviewing.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/thres... If I'm reading it right, the X-axis is backwards from normal convention (origin in lower-left), but the axis isn't really labelled.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2017/10/threshold-4.png
on “If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools”Submitted What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes? as a story · 433 points
HN discussionExcellent question. There was an article a few years ago about an interviewing platform that tried using voice modulation to play with the gender of candidates: "Contrary to what we expected (and probably contrary to what you expected as well!), masking gender had no effect on interview performance with respect to any of the scoring criteria (would advance to next round, technical ability, problem solving ability).…
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “Google Moves to Address Wage Equity, and Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men”Submitted Data on the uselessness of LinkedIn endorsements as a story · 354 points
HN discussionOftentimes, blind interviewing produces results opposite what people expect: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination”Submitted Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews as a story · 349 points
HN discussionOr even if the number of women just stays the same. Is the effort to level the playing field then deemed a 'failure' if the results don't change in the way they're expected to? That's the important question here, especially since there have now been preliminary experiments in tech interviews suggesting such an outcome is not implausible: http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas...
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “Outraged about the Google diversity memo?”Submitted We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews as a story · 331 points
HN discussion> many men have a sexist bias towards men. Proof? Gender neutralized experiments find a great variety of results, with sometimes a bias in favor of women and sometimes a bias in favor of men. There is no consistency here that can be seen as proof that men are always biased towards men. I'm not aware of any scientific studies in the tech field, but this layman experiment in tech with voice masking for phone interview…
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “The Kolmogorov option”Submitted What to say when recruiters ask you to name the first number as a story · 330 points
HN discussioninetrviewing.io | Software Engineer | San Francisco | Onsite | Full-Time interviewing.io is looking for a back-end engineer. We give great engineers like you free, anonymous technical interview practice, and if things go well, you can book on-demand anonymous technical interviews with companies like Uber, Twitch, Lyft, and more. Our numbers are kicking the ass of traditional, resume-based hiring metrics, and we're g…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2017)”Submitted We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring as a story · 327 points
HN discussionWe built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews. https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination”Submitted We analyzed thousands of interviews on everything from language to code style as a story · 261 points
HN discussioninterviewing.io is looking for a back-end engineer. We give great engineers like you free, anonymous technical interview practice, and if things go well, you can book on-demand anonymous technical interviews with companies like Uber, Twitch, Lyft, and more. Our numbers are kicking the ass of traditional, resume-based hiring metrics, and we're growing like crazy. With where we are and where we want to be, we need a r…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2017)”Submitted Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary as a story · 260 points
HN discussionMomentary blackouts happen - rarely. Funny thing -- these folks have, y'know, actual data on this stuff: http://blog.interviewing.io/you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-w... Choice quote: As you can see, roughly 25% of interviewees are consistent in their performance, but the rest are all over the place. And over a third of people with a high mean (>=3) technical performance bombed at least one interview.
Comment linking /you-cant-fix-diversity-in-tech-without-fixing-the-technical-interview/
on “How to Interview Engineers”Submitted How much have tech layoffs affected engineers vs. other departments? as a story · 249 points
HN discussionTo the page author: if you adjust the following link (logo) to be the https variant, the site should read as fully secure: http://blog.interviewing.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/just-... Also, maybe add a redirect from http to https?
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2016/07/just-logo.png
on “Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews”Submitted We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews (2016) as a story · 244 points
HN discussionYou can alter the audio signal to mask gender: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma... Similar tech could be used to mask accents. I suspect the real reason people are so hesitant to anonymize interviews is that the disparities will persist - or even grow larger - and it'll be more difficult to ascribe it to racism or sexism.
Comment linking /we-built-voice-modulation-to-mask-gender-in-technical-interviews-heres-what-happened/
on “What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft”Submitted What do the best interviewers have in common? as a story · 237 points
HN discussion
