Comment by jmcgough | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmcgough | Hacker News Reader

Non-binary queer woman here. I can usually get a vibe at interviews about the company culture, from the people I talk to (my questions and their general personalities).

The only team I've ever felt "normal" at was one where one of the interviewers was gay. My boss there had hired a bunch of really talented queer developers from his network, so half the team was queer. I guess I really liked the personalities of the people I interviewed with (it was a full-day pairing interview, which is a lot better for getting a feel for a company than just whiteboarding), so I figured it'd be a good group of people to work with.

The challenge is that if you're interviewing for a larger company, you might not know which team you'll end up in if you accept an offer. Try to avoid this situation, and get a feel for the people you'd be working closely with.

I think if I were to interview for a new company now, I'd reach through my network and try to work with a friend (or former co-worker). I still have never had another woman on my team (after about 5 years in tech), so in the future I'd probably look for a company that has female engineers and high-ranking women within the company.

I've also found that companies that use pair programming tend to value empathy and teamwork, because when you're working that closely with your coworkers every day, no one wants to work with a jerk.

There are some bad companies here in the sf bay area, but there are also some really great places to work. Glassdoor has saved me a few times early in the interview process.

Aren't you essentially making the argument that you are most comfortable working with people similar to yourself?

Which is not a criticism. It's completely understandable. But how, then, do we get all of us (you, me, etc...) to feel comfortable working together, despite any particular differences?

(I don't have any easy answers, and I may not even be someone whose opinion means much on this subject. I honestly got so tired of workplace politics of any flavor that I left and started working for myself about 10 years ago.)

I suspect that diversity as a virtue is itself a culture that can exist, or there's some other cultural factor that ties a team together that happens not to care about sexual orientation or race or etc, but my current thinking is that people seek out cliques.

I remember reading some of the current crop of pro-diversity research many years ago. The benefits of an ideologically diverse company were clear, and highly positive.

An important caveat, buried in the analysis, is that the researchers noted that at least some of this benefit was due to the fact that people from differing cliques were less concerned about insulting other groups, which resulted in freer speaking, and thus a wider range of ideas presented. This, I think, is a very important point that has been lost along the way in the current discussion of what, exactly diversity means.

This contrasts with a more monocultural corporate environment, where an institutional blind spot may stubbornly remain, as too many of the people involved are all locked in to similar thinking patterns.

The professionals involved kept things professional- they were able to work together effectively. But not worrying about walking on eggshells (or needing to) appears to be an important part of the formula, and, well... I think we're far from that at the moment.

I'm afraid my google skills are failing me, and I can't find the original paper I am thinking of. IIRC, it is a highly cited one, so it should be out there. Maybe someone else will be able to link it. I first read a summary of in in Harvard Business Review ~2011.

>ideologically diverse

Do you mean being a wrongthinker? I got the sense that the only diversity that mattered was skin color, genital set, and/or gender affiliation.

You might find this fascinating:

http://ncase.me/polygons/

It's an interactive thought exercise that posits:

Given a mild preference to be near similar people, segregation will occur, unless there's also an explicit desire to be near dissimilar people too.

That is interesting. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I don't think many people in tech feel "normal" at work because of high cultural diversity. Racial and gender lines are less significant compared to nationality and primary language.

Tech has massive language and nationality diversity. I would guess that > 50% of software engineers in the USA are either immigrants or 2nd generation Americans (who grew up with immigrant parents). Because of this, many people don't find many coworkers that they have much in common with.

You raise a salient point. And FWIW, I agree with you. I certainly have noticed how siloed many groups of programmers are from one another. Not out of any malicious intent, but rather the simple, subtle pressures of it being slightly easier to work with people you share more in common with, and software work being difficult under the best of circumstances.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com