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Comment by infinity0 | Hacker News Reader

This strategy implicitly assumes that reverse discrimination is an effective policy, i.e. that achieving 50:50 in your own organisation will somehow push the population-wide 18:82 ratio in a different direction.

This isn't justified anywhere, it's just taken as an assumption. It would be good if these implicit positions were justified rather than imposed. The Ys getting discriminated against, will understandly be angry about it, especially since only a small percentage of the Ys actually benefitted from historical discrimination against Xs, yet all of them are now eligible to be reverse-discriminated against.

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It doesn't assume that at all. Any company can choose to implement a hiring goal for (almost) any reason they choose. Maybe they wanted a broader set of perspectives on their team? The idea that Duolingo would have to justify their hiring decisions in terms of changing the demographics of the whole industry is absurd.

Also Duolingo has ~100 employees total. There's no way that the industry's demographics are somehow limiting their available talent pool. Having a policy like this sounds like a great way for a small company to attract highly talented women.

You are right, it doesn't assume that.

However if they don't assume that, then they are effectively worsening the 18:82 ratio for other organisations who will be logically and mathematically unable to reach a 50:50 ratio without leaving (82-18)/82 of Y unemployed, so they would be virtue signalling.

So either they assume that, or they are virtue signalling, or they are trying to make (82-18)/82 of Y unemployed. Q.E.D.

I was trying to Assume Good Faith in my first comment but sure, call me out for not including the "asshole options".

edit: yeah sure, downvote me for pointing out that badly-thought out ideological policies don't work mathematically

Even your moved goal posts still try to connect one small company's policies to the industry as a whole. Maybe it's worth emphasizing _your_ unstated assumption that the only reason a company would want 50:50 is to satisfy some external ideological motive rather than careful analysis of what makes for a good team.

I don't give a shit about what the "motivations" of the company are. I said:

> This strategy implicitly assumes

That is the real objective assumption that any implementation of this strategy makes (or the other "asshole" choices).

Good intentions are worthless if they can't work mathematically.

Why did you feel the need to even comment if you don't care about Duolingo's motivations for hiring people? Of course not every company could have 50:50 with the current pool of software engineers but that's a trivial point. It's true by definition.

EDIT: it's clear that you believe ideology is what's motivating this, despite your claim that you don't care about motivation.

If it's a "trivial point" why is this article hitting the front page? Why do you feel the need to turn a "trivial point" into a discussion about motivations and my supposed mis-assumptions of those motivations?

This article is hitting the front page because some people think it's impressive. I don't think it's impressive nor do I think it's solving any real issues. I pointed out in very neutral terms why it's not solving any real issues, but some people some to feel offended by my pointing out a "trivial point".

It's solving a real issue at Duolingo and it's their policy.

By making it harder to solve the issue everywhere else, yes.

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