Hacker News Reader

Comment by enkid | Hacker News Reader

I mean, why make people do a phone call if it doesn't actually help with the interview process?

It does help with the interview process. A lot of communication lies in body language and tone of voice. Taking that out of the equation, absent a good reason, is going to eliminate useful information.

Some people might exhibit behaviors that are problematic in a professional environment. To go into a hiring decision without that information would be a mistake, in my opinion.

I think that's very true in the context of sales jobs, or more generally anything that requires the same action of frequent, mission-critical person-to-person communication.

I'm not so sure it applies in the context of a remote SWE.

That's kind of a tone-deaf thing to say, _especially_ given the recent allegations surrounding Activison-Blizzard (https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019293032/activision-blizzar...).

It absolutely applies and is important.

I don't see how those allegations are related to voice/face-to-face interviews or what's tone-deaf about the parent comment.

I'm very skeptical that someone who's likely to sexually harass people will be any more likely to exhibit those signs in a voice or in-person conversation than in a written conversation. Someone trying to hide it will probably successfully hide it across all three forms of communication.

(When you have to attack something as tone-deaf, it's useful to ask whether their comment was mistaken. In this case, I don't think your reply offers a counterargument.)

I would need to see some sort of evidence that a phone call can identify problematic behaviour in a systematic way before I would by into this.

It's well established that tone of voice conveys a lot of information when communicating.

If a candidate says something during a phone call that makes the interviewer uncomfortable or have reservations, that's absolutely a legitimate reason not to hire someone.

Yes, tone provides a lot of information, but can someone accurately ascertain whether that tone will lead to problematic behaviour? I don't know. I would want to see some sort of research before accepting that this does what you say it does.

Certainly, if someone were to say something sexist or racist in an interview, that would be a red flag. But I doubt most people would do that. So maybe you are able to weed some people out, but probably not very effectively, and you will likely still have to have other mitigations in place. In additions, you will have "false positives" in the form of people being misread. For example, they could be saying something genuinely and the interviewer thinks they are lying or being sarcastic. Are the false positives worth the true positives? I don't know. That's why I would want to see actual evidence.

I think the most useful context for tone would be to weed out people who display anger, irritation, or snark. Especially when the situation doesn't call for it.

> In additions, you will have "false positives" in the form of people being misread. For example, they could be saying something genuinely and the interviewer thinks they are lying or being sarcastic.

Text alone makes this far more ambiguous. You're going to have _way_ more trouble gauging someone's actual intent via words alone than vs words + tone of voice.

That's the point I was making. Tone of voice is a ton of information. Don't take my word for it, feel free to Google it and you will find pages and pages outlining just how important it is.

This sounds analogous to phrenology. The tone of someone's voice when they answer a question about web application architecture will convey information about the likelihood that they may sexually harass people?

I don't think it'd make sense to ask a question like "how do you feel about sexual harassment in the workplace?", but if hypothetically such a question were asked, I also doubt even in that case that tone of voice would uncover a sexual harasser in a way that writing wouldn't.

Voice tone does provide a lot of information, but I don't see how it's related to these points.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com