Hacker Bits, August 2016

for technical ability, it appeared
that men who were modulated
to sound like women did a bit
better than unmodulated men,
and that women who were modulated
to sound like men did
a bit worse than unmodulated
women. Though these trends
weren’t statistically significant,
I am mentioning them because
they were unexpected and definitely
something to watch for as
we collect more data.
On the subject of sample
size, we have no delusions that
this is the be-all and end-all of
pronouncements on the subject
of gender and interview
performance. We’ll continue to
monitor the data as we collect
more of it, and it’s very possible
that as we do, everything we’ve
found will be overturned.
I will say, though, that had
there been any staggering gender
bias on the platform, with
a few hundred data points, we
would have gotten some kind
of result. So that, at least, was
encouraging.
So if there’s no
systemic bias,
why are women
performing worse?
After the experiment was over,
I was left scratching my head.
If the issue wasn’t interviewer
bias, what could it be? I went
back and looked at the seniority
levels of men vs. women on the
platform as well as the kind of
work they were doing in their
current jobs, and neither of
those factors seemed to differ
significantly between groups.
58 hacker bits