Sure there are. The standard rationale is that when hiring, the cost of a false negative is far lower than the cost of a false positive.
I guess it's also true that the cost of a false negative is unknown and not felt. It would be a really extreme case to be forced to say, "Hey, remember that woman we didn't hire two years ago? She went off and founded Company Y that's now eating our lunch." With a false positive, you feel the pain of cleaning up their messes until after they're gone.
Finally, sad to say, the majority of job applicants are not competent to do serious engineering work. A negative bias is right most of the time.
Finally, sad to say, the majority of job applicants are not competent to do serious engineering work.
I've often heard this claim. I have no data for denying it.
However I have a suspicion that when people make this claim the observation that it is actually based on is that "the majority of job applicants aren't very good at answering programmer interview questions.". They are hence making an implicit assumption that not being good at interview questions implies not being competent to do serious engineering work. I think this assumption is highly suspect, because of the extreme differences in stress levels, time scales and general context between interviews and actual work situations.
Strongly encourage applicants to contribute to any open source project. Reviewing this code will tell you more than any stupid programming question. This takes less time and can be done asychronously. An interview can be used to determine if the qualified applicant will fit in your culture.
And if they haven't contributed any open source code, then whack them with stupid programming questions.
I guess it's also true that the cost of a false negative is unknown and not felt. It would be a really extreme case to be forced to say, "Hey, remember that woman we didn't hire two years ago? She went off and founded Company Y that's now eating our lunch." With a false positive, you feel the pain of cleaning up their messes until after they're gone.
Finally, sad to say, the majority of job applicants are not competent to do serious engineering work. A negative bias is right most of the time.