The Most Important Job

2019 Sri Lankan Presidential Election

Many who read my medium articles think I’m a Data Scientist specialising in Elections. That, I am not. I’m not even a Data Scientist. I run a tech consultancy, specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptography. That is my “day” job.

These days, I spend a lot of time interviewing and recruiting. Software Engineers, and some related roles like Product Managers and Data Scientists. Hiring suitable people is complex and challenging. And involves an elaborate “recruitment process”.

On November 16th, I’ll be participating in another job interview. An interview for the most important job in Sri Lanka. CEO of Sri Lanka Inc. The 2019 Sri Lankan Presidential Election. So will many of you.

In this article, I compare and contrast the method I use for recruiting Software Engineers (aka SWEs), to the method we use for recruiting Presidents.

SWE resumes usually consist of Academic Record and Job Experience. Note, this is a “past” record. Few SWEs spend resume-space talking about the degrees or Nobel prizes, or the many CTO or engineering directorships they expect to get in the next five years. Or the next 100 days for that matter.

This “past” is easy to verify. If there is a ridiculous claim in a resume, a quick web search, or call will confirm or deny it.

On the other hand, “Resumes” for Presidential Candidates, almost wholly consist of the “future”. “Manifestos” manifest with all manner of amazingness and goodies the candidates expect to do as soon as they are elected. Anything from 100 day plans to 5-year plans.

Why don’t we scrutinise candidates’ past more? You might argue that both Mr Premadasa and Mr Rajapaksa (to name just two) are “first-time” candidates. They don’t have a “past record”.

But of course they do have pasts. Very colorful ones too. And even if they don’t have pasts, when we elect a President, we won’t be choosing just one candidate. We elect a vast entourage of other politicians, lackeys, groupies and goons. They all have pasts.

Most SWEs list a professor or a previous boss as a “reference”, complete with contact details. These people are usually happy to provide information on the candidate. I myself have acted as “reference” to many former colleagues. Referees are typically selected to support the candidate. A SWE won’t add a boss they hate as a referee.

Getting the Presidential Job is hard work. The campaign (probably) costs 100s of millions of rupees. And perhaps a few million dollars, dinars, and euros for good measure as well.

Like SWEs, Presidential candidates also have “professors” and bosses standing behind them. Happy to support them with rupees and dollars as required. At a modest interest rate, of course.

However, unlike SWEs, Presidential hopefuls tend not to mention these references. It would be nice to have a tabulated list of “references” complete with contact details and campaign contributions. But I’m yet to see any list. Probably the references are “very busy”.

A SWE candidate could go through up to 10 hours of interviews. By several interviewers. Some over the phone. Some in person.

These interviews are dialogues. Where both interviewers and interviewees get to take questions and give answers.

So far, most of the “interviews” of presidential candidates I’ve seen are “monologues”. They usually get on a stage and talk to a couple of thousand people. Sometimes more. These interviews are telecast over the media and are available on YouTube etc.

Why not move away from monologues to dialogues? Town-hall style? Where a bunch of voters can be picked at random, and spend a couple of hours with the candidate asking them questions? Media organisations could follow this style too.

About 30% of Sri Lankan computer science and engineering graduates are female (depending on how you count). However, only about 20% of junior SWEs are female, indicating that many female graduates opt for non-SWE jobs. The proportion drops to 10% with senior SWEs, and 5% with highly skilled SWEs, with post-graduate qualifications.

The problem is not with females, but with the industry itself. Various aspects of tech-company “Bro-Culture” from the office environment, to benefits, to work hours, are highly male-biased. Hence, tech has an enormous diversity problem and is effectively excluding 50+% of the population. Many of us are doing our best to fix the problem, but a lot remains to be done.

If you think 5% is wrong, then consider 2.8%. This is the portion of female candidates for the November 16th election. Namely, 1 out of 35. Sausage-Fest alert!

If I reviewed our Presidential Candidates (SWE interview style), I’d make the following notes:

My conclusion would be: Insufficient information and diversity. Please fix recruiting process.

If you think I’m trivialising our democracy by comparing it to tech recruiting, could you explain to me what I’m missing? Why should a more critical job have a utterly trivial recruitment process?

If you tell me that you’re not a company founder and don’t need to bother about recruiting, you’re wrong.

Every Sri Lankan citizen is a shareholder in Sri Lanka Inc. We are all part of the corporation’s decisions. Including hiring the CEO. Which is what we’ll be doing in two Saturdays.

Happy Recruiting!

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