University of Rochester computer science professor Philip Guo has written a great post, shining a light on the bias in the computer industry in favor of people who look like him (or me). In it, he explains how he has gotten the benefit of the doubt in situations simply because he looks like what people expect a computer programmer to look like. It’s a first-hand account of what John Scalzi talked about when he wrote about straight white males playing the game of life on easy mode.
Here’s a bit from the post, Silent Technical Privilege:
… people who look like me can just kinda do programming for work if we want, or not do it, or switch into it later, or out of it again, or work quietly, or nerd-rant on how Ruby sucks or rocks or whatever, or name-drop monads. And nobody will make remarks about our appearance, about whether we’re truly dedicated hackers, or how our behavior might reflect badly on “our kind” of people. That’s silent technical privilege.
He contrasts that with the challenges placed before people who are outside the demographic sweet spot that so many people associate with being a computer programmer. As he says, you don’t have to be a superhero to succeed in software development, and we shouldn’t demand that people who don’t enjoy these privileges be superheros to make it in this business.
This leads me to the theory that if you want to hire superheros, you should ditch your biases and expand your hiring pool. The people who have persisted and succeeded in this industry in the face of the inequeties that Philip documents are much likelier to be superheros than your run of the mill bro who shows up to the inteview in his GitHub T-shirt with a cool story about making money in high school by creating Web sites for local businesses. There are plenty of superheros that fall into the privileged category, but they already have good jobs because they will never, ever be overlooked in the hiring process. The awesome programmer who also seems like they’d be super fun to have around the office? They get a job offer every single time.
The enterprising hiring manager has to think outside the box a bit. You know the feeling. The person seems like they’d be great at the job, but is different enough from everyone else that you wonder a bit how hiring them would affect team chemistry. I’m not talking about personality here, but demographics. (I’d never recommend that a non-competitor hire brilliant jerks.) The hypothetical candidate I’m talking about here has to deal with these unspoken questions every single time they apply for a job. That’s not fair, and it’s incumbent on our industry to change, but in the meantime, it’s possible to exploit these widespread biases to hire the superheros that most companies won’t even consider. At least that’s the theory.
How to hire a superhero
University of Rochester computer science professor Philip Guo has written a great post, shining a light on the bias in the computer industry in favor of people who look like him (or me). In it, he explains how he has gotten the benefit of the doubt in situations simply because he looks like what people expect a computer programmer to look like. It’s a first-hand account of what John Scalzi talked about when he wrote about straight white males playing the game of life on easy mode.
Here’s a bit from the post, Silent Technical Privilege:
He contrasts that with the challenges placed before people who are outside the demographic sweet spot that so many people associate with being a computer programmer. As he says, you don’t have to be a superhero to succeed in software development, and we shouldn’t demand that people who don’t enjoy these privileges be superheros to make it in this business.
This leads me to the theory that if you want to hire superheros, you should ditch your biases and expand your hiring pool. The people who have persisted and succeeded in this industry in the face of the inequeties that Philip documents are much likelier to be superheros than your run of the mill bro who shows up to the inteview in his GitHub T-shirt with a cool story about making money in high school by creating Web sites for local businesses. There are plenty of superheros that fall into the privileged category, but they already have good jobs because they will never, ever be overlooked in the hiring process. The awesome programmer who also seems like they’d be super fun to have around the office? They get a job offer every single time.
The enterprising hiring manager has to think outside the box a bit. You know the feeling. The person seems like they’d be great at the job, but is different enough from everyone else that you wonder a bit how hiring them would affect team chemistry. I’m not talking about personality here, but demographics. (I’d never recommend that a non-competitor hire brilliant jerks.) The hypothetical candidate I’m talking about here has to deal with these unspoken questions every single time they apply for a job. That’s not fair, and it’s incumbent on our industry to change, but in the meantime, it’s possible to exploit these widespread biases to hire the superheros that most companies won’t even consider. At least that’s the theory.
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