[throwcommonsns]

While I certainly understand bad PR (a surprising number of people lack critical thinking skills), what is wrong or biased about hiring for coding positions based on merit-based performance on an objective coding test? Anybody regardless of background or group membership that passes will be hired, meaning it is fair and unbiased, by definition -- that is the diversity program, and if there is some lack of objectivity, that is what needs to be addressed. If that is not the case, then yes, I agree with you, the hiring process would be biased.

[wpietri]

You really need to interrogate "merit" and "objective". Nominally objective standards have long been used to advance racial discrimination in the US. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

You should also look up the extensive critiques of meritocracy as a concept. There's a lot of literature there.

Further, I know of no major tech company who uses a nominally "objective coding test" as the only criterion for hiring. And they shouldn't, because being good at taking coding tests is not the job and not what we should be hiring for.

[throwcommonsns]

No, coding tests are not the "literacy tests" you have described, and if they were, why would some minorities be performing even better than Caucasians on them?

Coding tests examine the type of work actually required to be done on the job (as coders), and they have been correlated with post-hire performance successfully. Someone who is not familiar with efficient data structures will not write scalable code and will end up creating a burden on their teammates during on-call, for example. Asking someone to solve an engineering problem with a provably correct answer is an objective test for hiring engineers, and I will have a difficult time continuing to engage with anyone who counteracts this basis of reality and truth.

When I was hired there were three coding test rounds and one interpersonal round. You might argue that the latter is where racial discrimination seeps in, as well as the recruiter outreach step itself, but somehow I am optimistic that a bunch of tolerant Californians have moved past applying a Literacy Test here already by hiring a majority immigrant / minority workforce. In my situation, my recruiter was also an Asian-American minority.

[wpietri]

I didn't say coding tests were literacy tests. You also seem a lot like somebody who has not hired people, which would explain your poor understanding of how hiring actually works.

Since my comments here don't seem to be making any sense to you, I'm not seeing the point in trying again.

[throwcommonsns]

Why are you assuming that I haven't hired anyone before? And any reasonable observer would agree that you are falsely equivocating the literacy tests of yester century with the modern day objective hiring practices of FAANG companies.