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on the left posted:A 20+ year old aptitude test doesn't really say much about the idea of aptitude testing in general. Companies use lots of measures that are proxies for aptitude testing (going to a selective college, grades, major), but if you explicitly use aptitude tests, you enter a legal minefield for some reason. It demonstrates that you can't assume that an aptitude test claiming to measure the subject's suitability for a job is actually measuring any such thing, nor that differences in scores between different races are just an objective measure of the underlying competence or inferiority of a certain race. You're question-begging to a ridiculous degree. You were given an explicit counterexample and you just wave it away and assume without any proof at all that aptitude tests "in general" do a good job of showing how inferior black people are.
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Apr 21, 2014 02:39
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I'm in favor of wage disclosure simply because it'll be hilarious to see all the workplace spats arise due to workers finding out that they're grossly underpaid or overpaid. I just don't think it'll solve anything.
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Apr 21, 2014 02:41
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shrike82 posted:I'm in favor of wage disclosure simply because it'll be hilarious to see all the workplace spats arise due to workers finding out that they're grossly underpaid or overpaid. It would solve many of the issues it sets out to solve. It would have solved part of the problem that led to career-spanning inequity for people like Lilly Ledbetter.
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Apr 21, 2014 03:01
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I'd like to hear more about what exactly it'll solve and how. We're 6 pages into the thread and no one seems to be able to explain whether the proposed disclosure mechanism is open to the general public with a key-name look up or whether it's only for looking up pay for employees within the same company etc.
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Apr 21, 2014 03:22
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How is more information available in the labor market a bad thing, seriously I don't understand that. A market's efficiency relies on actors having as close to perfect information as possible right? Are we really supposed to believe that labor as a class, despite all of its' defeats in the last 35 years is manipulating this inefficiency to its' advantage? To me it seems far more likely that it's the other way around and that employers are using this lack of knowledge to their advantage, like the silicon valley collusion that was discovered recently.
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Apr 21, 2014 03:22
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VitalSigns posted:You're question-begging to a ridiculous degree. You were given an explicit counterexample and you just wave it away and assume without any proof at all that aptitude tests "in general" do a good job of showing how inferior black people are. You don't have to be racist to acknowledge that any test that relies on having a decent education is going to disfavor groups that don't have equal access to education. Doubly so for a test that benefits from extracurricular classes or study.
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Apr 21, 2014 03:26
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rscott posted:How is more information available in the labor market a bad thing, seriously I don't understand that. A market's efficiency relies on actors having as close to perfect information as possible right? Are we really supposed to believe that labor as a class, despite all of its' defeats in the last 35 years is manipulating this inefficiency to its' advantage? To me it seems far more likely that it's the other way around and that employers are using this lack of knowledge to their advantage, like the silicon valley collusion that was discovered recently. Are you speaking from an econ 101 textbook? Should we also disclose the health issues and criminal records of employees to the general public?
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Apr 21, 2014 03:30
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shrike82 posted:Are you speaking from an econ 101 textbook? disclosure of relevant information -> dogs and cats living together, wake up people
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Apr 21, 2014 03:36
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Well if I had my druthers everyone would be worker-owners of whatever place they worked at so this problem would not really come up, it's your system of private capital ownership that causes these problems.  But anyways, criminal records are already a matter of public record and that information is already required to be disclosed to employers. Health issues generally shouldn't be disclosed publicly because the privacy concerns outweigh the benefits. If you want to go down that path of argument you'd have to demonstrate why the privacy concerns when it comes to wages outweigh the benefits.e: Actually if the health information was properly anonymized and restricted to job related ailments, information like that would actually be pretty helpful to a prospective employee. Higher than average levels of work related injuries would indicate a place that is not run very well, dangerous conditions would result in higher wages, etc. rscott fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 03:39
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Wait, criminal records are available to the general public? I take back my objections.
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Apr 21, 2014 03:44
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shrike82 posted:I'd like to hear more about what exactly it'll solve and how. It's almost as if the thread has multiple people with separate opinions and proposals and isn't a singularity hivemind
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Apr 21, 2014 03:53
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Criminal records aren't fully available to the public except in certain cases like child support, driving related offenses and sex offenses but employers already require employees to submit to background checks and to disclose their criminal records, I guess I should retract my previous statement somewhat.
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Apr 21, 2014 03:56
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rscott posted:Criminal records aren't fully available to the public except in certain cases like child support, driving related offenses and sex offenses but employers already require employees to submit to background checks and to disclose their criminal records, I guess I should retract my previous statement somewhat. That's not true, and you can perform a criminal background check on someone without their consent. The consent for background checks is more for education and previous employment.
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Apr 21, 2014 04:04
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ok I guess I was right before v v
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Apr 21, 2014 04:14
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rscott posted:How is more information available in the labor market a bad thing, seriously I don't understand that. A market's efficiency relies on actors having as close to perfect information as possible right? Are we really supposed to believe that labor as a class, despite all of its' defeats in the last 35 years is manipulating this inefficiency to its' advantage? To me it seems far more likely that it's the other way around and that employers are using this lack of knowledge to their advantage, like the silicon valley collusion that was discovered recently. Because "free market" cheerleaders are actually just corporate shills or trolling 
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Apr 21, 2014 05:04
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Peven Stan posted:Because "free market" cheerleaders are actually just corporate shills or trolling They could also be true believers who slept through the econ 101 they accuse everyone else of needing to take, with an added dose of libertarian definitions of "free" as in "Freedom." Like how can a market be free if you are not free to withhold information? edit: If you ever see someone make this argument ask how they can be free if their cells are not free to reproduce as much as they like. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 05:19
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VideoTapir posted:They could also be true believers who slept through the econ 101 they accuse everyone else of needing to take, with an added dose of libertarian definitions of "free" as in "Freedom." Like how can a market be free if you are not free to withhold information? Nah you only take what you want out of those econ 101 courses and ignore the rest. It's kind of like the Bible- there's enough red meat there to justify any agenda.
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Apr 21, 2014 05:37
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on the left posted:You don't have to be racist to acknowledge that any test that relies on having a decent education is going to disfavor groups that don't have equal access to education. Doubly so for a test that benefits from extracurricular classes or study. But that's precisely one of the problems with "aptitude" testing. To the extent that the test measures general knowledge or even just test-taking ability that doesn't correlate with job performance, then it is unfairly boosting the prospects of a privileged applicant and holding back the oppressed candidate even if they would in reality be equally effective at the job. Naming something "aptitude test" doesn't mean it's actually measuring one's aptitude for a job. Just incuriously assuming that because black people don't do as well on your test that it must mean black people just aren't prepared to do the job instead of investigating whether your test is biased is actually pretty racist. Especially in the face of examples of that very thing happening. Just acknowledging that our educational system is unequal doesn't mean that you can use testing that introduces even more bias above and beyond that systemic inequality and then claim your hiring is "race-blind" because you don't actually claim black people are genetically inferior. This post was probably a waste of time because you'll just dismiss it again and say "Oh in general aptitude tests don't have that problem because  Just World" but hey you never know 
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Apr 21, 2014 05:58
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VitalSigns posted:But that's precisely one of the problems with "aptitude" testing. To the extent that the test measures general knowledge or even just test-taking ability that doesn't correlate with job performance, then it is unfairly boosting the prospects of a privileged applicant and holding back the oppressed candidate even if they would in reality be equally effective at the job. I know highly educated, extremely intelligent people who are lovely employees/co-workers, and guys with high school diplomas and nothing more that bust their rear end and do a great job. I agree with you; it should be obvious that formal education and general knowledge does not really indicate aptitude for any specific thing. An aptitude test, if employed at all, should be only a small part of the qualification process and test things that are directly relevant to the job only. Frankly, that benefits the employer as much as the employee.
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Apr 21, 2014 06:20
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One of the major problems with things like aptitude testing is that tests can be deliberately made culture-specific. One of the complaints about standardized testing in general is that they tend to favor one culture or another, especially in the case of "writing tests." America is a nation of over 300 million people with a poo poo load of different dialects, some of which are dramatically different than standard American English. America also has a poo poo load of people (I forget the number) that learned English as a second language and don't speak it all that well, which would harm their score on a standardized test. This does not make them bad workers or serve as an indicator of how much skill and knowledge they have but would serve to allow employers to discriminate against them. Carla de Salva-Ruiz, who has a master's degree but didn't learn English until she was 22 and still isn't that great at it, could be an amazing, productive worker with every skill you could want but if somebody stacks the test against her she isn't getting the job.
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Apr 21, 2014 06:26
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the major problems with things like aptitude testing is that tests can be deliberately made culture-specific. One of the complaints about standardized testing in general is that they tend to favor one culture or another, especially in the case of "writing tests." America is a nation of over 300 million people with a poo poo load of different dialects, some of which are dramatically different than standard American English. America also has a poo poo load of people (I forget the number) that learned English as a second language and don't speak it all that well, which would harm their score on a standardized test. This does not make them bad workers or serve as an indicator of how much skill and knowledge they have but would serve to allow employers to discriminate against them. Absolutely. I think "aptitude tests" in terms of a standardized, multiple-choice affair are completely useless and actively harmful. On the other hand, in some industries, some level of testing (not necessarily standardized and preferably not multiple-choice) is a necessary part of the hiring process. Software developers, for example, will almost certainly be asked to solve a few simple puzzles during the interview, just to make sure they didn't slide through their education without learning basic concepts (sadly, it happens more often than you'd think). That's not a bad thing, especially because it gives some insight into how the candidate actually thinks, it's not completely standardized, and it's more forgiving than a MC test. If we're talking about the validity of aptitude tests, I think we have to clearly distinguish what we're talking about when we say they're bad/discriminatory.
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Apr 21, 2014 06:32
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VitalSigns posted:But that's precisely one of the problems with "aptitude" testing. To the extent that the test measures general knowledge or even just test-taking ability that doesn't correlate with job performance, then it is unfairly boosting the prospects of a privileged applicant and holding back the oppressed candidate even if they would in reality be equally effective at the job. This is a dumb criticism though because it applies to practically every metric used in the hiring process. VitalSigns posted:Naming something "aptitude test" doesn't mean it's actually measuring one's aptitude for a job. Just incuriously assuming that because black people don't do as well on your test that it must mean black people just aren't prepared to do the job instead of investigating whether your test is biased is actually pretty racist. Especially in the face of examples of that very thing happening. If discriminating on aptitude tests is bad, is it ok with you to recruit from colleges that discriminate against people with bad aptitude tests? ToxicSlurpee posted:Carla de Salva-Ruiz, who has a master's degree but didn't learn English until she was 22 and still isn't that great at it, could be an amazing, productive worker with every skill you could want but if somebody stacks the test against her she isn't getting the job. I was told by liberal arts graduates that communication skills and ability to write coherently in english is important, so maybe it's a good thing?
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Apr 21, 2014 06:39
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on the left posted:This is a dumb criticism though because it applies to practically every metric used in the hiring process. Yes it does. That's what affirmative action is for. You constantly wave inequality away with this "it's not racist because privilege means white men really are the most qualified and it's unjust not to hire the most qualified" schtick, but here, right here you don't even care about actual injustice. You refuse to question the status quo that less qualified white men get hired and promoted over more-qualified minorities. That is racist, you may as well just own it. on the left posted:If discriminating on aptitude tests is bad, is it ok with you to recruit from colleges that discriminate against people with bad aptitude tests? Sure, as long as you take this into account when weighting the resumes of different races on the left posted:I was told by liberal arts graduates that communication skills and ability to write coherently in english is important, so maybe it's a good thing? 
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Apr 21, 2014 06:52
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Just a thought, maybe discrimination is a huge issue that runs throughout society, and there's no way to keep it out of the hiring process without rebuilding society to not be based on white male supremacy, so until we can do that we have to just try to do the best we can to counteract the effects via things like Affirmative Action and aggressive attempts to collect & disseminate evidence of discrimination. Maybe lovely concern trolls about whether a given proposal will end discrimination once and for all are terrible wastes of everyone's time.
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Apr 21, 2014 06:55
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on the left posted:I was told by liberal arts graduates that communication skills and ability to write coherently in english is important, so maybe it's a good thing? Communication skills are completely separate from language skills. Someone who is bilingual probably has better communication skills than someone who doesn't even if their ability in the language in question is not quite to the level of a native speaker. As well, second language learners can very easily be skilled in one area of communication while not being skilled in others depending on the area of expertise. So the person may be able to interact well enough to do a job in question if given the chance, but not come off well in the interview due to not being familiar with style of speech in interviews. With native speakers of languages you can assume lack of other knowledge based on a lack of some other knowledge. Those patterns don't work the same way for non-native speakers of a language because they tend to be not as good at edge cases due to those edge cases being very rare. People in interviews would assume that a lack of knowledge of an edge case would be a sign of the person's ability in other more common situations such as ones involved in their day to day job. So, as in the programming example, an evaluation of the person actually doing the thing the person is being hired for is the best way to evaluate. Role-playing and puzzle solving are good for this. Conversations unrelated to the job at hand serve no purpose other than maybe evaluating the person's ability to bullshit and make small talk. If you're interviewing for your company softball team or kicking the tires to evaluate in-group/out-group then having an interview filled with unrelated bullshit is fine. If you actually want to evaluate ability at a job then you need to watch the person do sample tasks you will be asking them to do in their actual job. ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 06:58
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ErIog posted:Communication skills are completely separate from language skills. Someone who is bilingual probably has better communication skills than someone who doesn't even if their ability in the language in question is not quite to the level of a native speaker. No no, see if you can't make your way through a timed test with no opportunity to look up unfamiliar words then that just proves that white men are better at everything. Maybe weeding out "the wrong kind of people" is a good thing.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:00
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Heh, bilingual typically means native or close-to-native level proficiency with the second language. It's a white/American person thing to say bilingual and mean being able to speak a second language brokenly.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:02
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shrike82 posted:Heh, bilingual typically means native or close-to-native level proficiency with the second language. Thinking bilingual means native or close-to-native level proficiency with a second language seems like a white/American person kind of thinking to me. Bilingual adults all seem to characterize language learning as a continuum with "native level proficiency" being a nebulous goal that shifts depending on the task in question. The only people who don't think this way are usually the ones who were raised bilingual who don't realize the kind of advantage that confers in language acquisition. ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 07:11
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Nah, to give an example, my firm was recruiting for bilingual English/Japanese speakers to launch an office in Tokyo last year. We pretty much had to filter out all the American candidates who put "bilingual" or "native Japanese" on their CVs because they couldn't use Japanese in a business setting even on a phone screen. Japanese on the other hand are much more hesitant about putting bilingualism unless they're actually fluent in English. Cultural differences I guess.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:17
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Not to mention, there are different jobs in pretty much every company with different requirements as to "communication." If you're hiring someone to issue PR releases and handle social media, I'd recommend a native speaker of whatever language you're working with. If they are, for example, an accountant, the only important thing is that they are effective enough at communicating in the common office language to be able to perform their job duties and generally get along with their co-workers.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:17
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shrike82 posted:Nah, to give an example, my firm was recruiting for bilingual English/Japanese speakers to launch an office in Tokyo last year. I think the cultural difference in question is that the Americans were lying, not that North Americans have a vastly different outlook on what bilingualism is.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:19
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That could very well be the case. It's pretty clear that Americans tend to really spin their CVs relative to Europeans or Asians.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:21
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shrike82 posted:Nah, to give an example, my firm was recruiting for bilingual English/Japanese speakers to launch an office in Tokyo last year. Do you know why those American resumes are filled with half-truths or lies? It's because they know that the requirements list for most jobs, at least in the US, has no connection to the actual job they will be asked to do. Which gets back to the problem of discrimination in hiring and using crude screens to filter candidates. It has nothing to do with Americans thinking that "bilingual" means "not proficient." There's a lot of jobs in America that can be yours if you can demonstrate you're in the in-group at that employer. Getting through the resume screen is the first step, and has become kind of a game. It's rigged game, though, because the interview then weeds out all the candidates that don't fit the proper stereotype of being white or being male. ErIog fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 07:27
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I think we're in agreement then. Your point about resumes being half filled with lies is well taken.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:33
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shrike82 posted:I think we're in agreement then. The American employment system actually most strongly benefits liars in quite a lot of ways. Bottom-rung, unskilled labor jobs often have little personality test questionnaires as a requirement to even get to a proper interview. They have questions like "have you ever stolen anything?" or what have you. Generally speaking, those are more or less useless for their intended purpose as the people who do the best on them read the questions and give them the answer they want rather than the honest one. Then once you get to the interview the best bullshitter is the one most likely to get the job. PT6A posted:I think the cultural difference in question is that the Americans were lying, not that North Americans have a vastly different outlook on what bilingualism is. I think it's more likely that you have a lot of resumes coming from people that studied a bit of Japanese because they like to watch anime but having never actually being confronted with, you know, speaking actual Japanese think they're more proficient than they are.
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Apr 21, 2014 07:49
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I think it's more likely that you have a lot of resumes coming from people that studied a bit of Japanese because they like to watch anime but having never actually being confronted with, you know, speaking actual Japanese think they're more proficient than they are. People who would actually make it to a phone interview after a resume screen probably aren't of the "just likes anime" variety. The anime fans tend not to be dedicated enough to end up actually applying for a job in Japan. They peter out somewhere around beginner level usually because they tend to be more dedicated to anime than real studying. So that's probably not a factor in shrike82's situation. He's probably getting people who probably can read alright, can speak some casual and daily Japanese, have a language certification of some sort, but then can't do business or formal Japanese for the interview. Business Japanese, in particular, is almost like its own dialect in a lot of ways and it's easy for Japanese learners to overlook. It also can be tough for Japanese people themselves sometimes, but a lot of them pick it up via osmosis or can fake it okay. The Japanese language certifications are also really bad or not available outside of Japan very easily at all. So most places use the certifications as just a makework screen for the resume, and then give a more rigorous language evaluation during the interview or application process. ErIog fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 07:55
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Holy poo poo dude, I mean ya there's issues with aptitude tests being skewed because of cultural familiarity, but you can't have a racial disparity in access to education and training and not have a racial disparity is job qualification. The only way one of those things doesn't de facto follow the other is if you argue that training/education have no impact on job qualification, which I think is a ridiculous position to take despite all the amusing anecdotes about your friend named William who's wicked smart. I also highly doubt anyone in this thread would take the position that racial disparity in education isn't a big problem that needs addressing. edit: In regards to language chat, communicating with people with whom you share limited language is a skill. Communicating in a learned language with someone who possess this skills is a whole different ballgame then someone who does not. Jarmak fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 16:19
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Jarmak posted:Holy poo poo dude, I mean ya there's issues with aptitude tests being skewed because of cultural familiarity, but you can't have a racial disparity in access to education and training and not have a racial disparity is job qualification. The only way one of those things doesn't de facto follow the other is if you argue that training/education have no impact on job qualification, which I think is a ridiculous position to take That would be a ridiculous position to take, which is why I never took that strawman position. Aptitude tests certainly correlate to job performance, but to the extent that they are influenced by other factors, they tend to entrench privilege and disqualify minorities over and above the inequities that already exist. Direct examples of that have already been posted, which is why I take such exception to on-the-left's almost religious insistence that any racial skew in test results must be revealing the underlying merit, and that anyone worried about bias is just strangling business with political correctness. Look: on the left posted:This probably is true though, and doesn't rely on any genetic argument that any race is inferior to others. You can't simply complain that a test is wrong if it creates results that reflect societal divides. Bask in the shameless question-begging  Jarmak posted:despite all the amusing anecdotes about your friend named William who's wicked smart. I haven't posted a single anecdote  Are you just imagining posts I've made that you would like to take down?Jarmak posted:I also highly doubt anyone in this thread would take the position that racial disparity in education isn't a big problem that needs addressing. Hey if he wants to discuss how he would correct for those disparities I would love that, but so far all I've seen from on-the-left is him using our broken educational system as an excuse for why white men really deserve the jobs and promotions along with whining about how every suggestion put forward to remedy this is unfair to the beneficiaries of our purely meritocratic job market.
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Apr 21, 2014 17:49
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Jarmak posted:Holy poo poo dude, I mean ya there's issues with aptitude tests being skewed because of cultural familiarity, but you can't have a racial disparity in access to education and training and not have a racial disparity is job qualification. The only way one of those things doesn't de facto follow the other is if you argue that training/education have no impact on job qualification, which I think is a ridiculous position to take despite all the amusing anecdotes about your friend named William who's wicked smart. Training is different from education, and, yes, to the extent that education can be measured on a pre-employment standardized aptitude test, it's probably got very little to do with job qualification. What's the point of having diplomas and degrees if we don't trust them to mean anything? People go to school for years to get these qualifications, be it a high school diploma or a university degree, so maybe we should take them (possibly in combination with transcripts) as sufficient evidence of general education, and restrict pre-employment testing to more detailed things as I described earlier.
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Apr 21, 2014 18:07
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VitalSigns posted:That would be a ridiculous position to take, which is why I never took that strawman position. Aptitude tests certainly correlate to job performance, but to the extent that they are influenced by other factors, they tend to entrench privilege and disqualify minorities over and above the inequities that already exist. I'm not straw-manning you, I was just giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were responding to the things on the left actually said and not some ridiculous strawman you had constructed of his position VitalSigns posted:I haven't posted a single anecdote I was preemptively responding to a line of argument I thought you might take while referencing a post PT6A made in support of you. Sorry if that wasn't clear VitalSigns posted:Hey if he wants to discuss how he would correct for those disparities I would love that, but so far all I've seen from on-the-left is him using our broken educational system as an excuse for why white men really deserve the jobs and promotions along with whining about how every suggestion put forward to remedy this is unfair to the beneficiaries of our purely meritocratic job market. Do you guys have some sort of secret slap fight you'd like to let the rest of the class in on or something? He didn't say anything of the sort
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Apr 21, 2014 18:08
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