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Comment by realusername | Hacker News Reader

> Can you clarify what "trying to fill quotas" has to do with believing in, encouraging, and supporting diversity on a technical team?

"supporting diversity" means absolutely nothing, it's empty buzz-speak. Either you hire people regardless of their genders/religious group/sexual orientation or you make a conscious choice to reject candidates which are not in your approved list of "diversity" (whatever that means).

In a tech world where you have probably less than 10% women, trying to achieve a "diverse" (whatever that means again) team is just putting quotas in place to reject people not in the approved whitelist of "diversity".

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There are other approaches you're leaving out. For example, outreach: make sure that you have considered all candidates, make sure that you communicate to them that you truly value them.

We made a couple cross-departmental promotions into the tech team of people who would not have taken the initiative to present themselves as candidates despite having natural aptitudes. In the absence of role models and with the rampant hostility in this industry, good people may take some convincing.

For what it's worth, another cross-departmental recruit matured to be an absolutely incredible engineer, who went from a standing start to making big bucks at Google within 5 years. He happened to be a white guy, haha -- but that's what you get when you cast a wide net.

I understand where you are coming from and there are certainly people in tech who flirt with the idea of quotas. Ignore radical ideologues for a moment, though. It's possible to take steps that increase diversity without discriminating against, say, white or Asian men.

Maybe we can start by increasing that 10%? I think a variety of approaches can be taken that don't discriminate against anyone. Introducing coding in K-12 is one small example. It helps because it exposes the possibility of a career in tech to girls and minorities. At no point, it denies that same opportunity to boys or white children.

A company may value diversity and still base their hiring decision solely on competence. You could ensure that your job posting reaches a diverse audience, for example. Instead of just posting it through your regular channels, you could reach out to, say, organizations for women in STEM. Thus increasing the number of diverse candidates who apply. The idea is to give equality of opportunity. Nobody reasonable is expecting enforced equality of outcome.

If you have 10 positions and 100 candidates who apply, and instead of the usual 5 women applying, you get 30, all things being equal, you just x6 your odds of hiring a woman. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll hire 3 women either. But you increased your chances of diversifying your team. Notice that, at no point, you discriminated against anyone or favored them in the hiring process.

That comes across as rather dismissive, black-and-white thinking, about something which people other than you care deeply and find quite nuanced, and tells me we probably have little else to say here.

Have a good evening.

I thought my argument was nuanced and progressive by supporting people regardless of their genders/sexual orientation/religious group.

I don't like much to divide people across arbitrary lines which are often artificial, especially in the modern day where we have so much sub-culture that it's difficult to find anything in common in people supposedly from the same "group".

> by supporting people regardless of their genders/sexual orientation/religious group.

Here's the thing, the position that people should be judged on their merits, and "regardless of" those things is something I completely and unreservedly agree with.

In the real world, however, that just isn't the case. The overwhelming evidence of implicit bias in, for example, blinded résumés doing better than non-blinded when the candidate is a minority or woman puts the lie to that being the case.

Then, consider the research demonstrating that one of the most effective ways to correct insular and/or incorrect ideas about another group is to interact with members of that group. We're largely operating on internalized, false narratives when we pass on a résumé with the name "Linda" on it, but say, "I want to interview this guy" if it doesn't have a name on it. Exposure to the people we have those narratives about shows us how wrong they are. We need to over-correct for the tendency, in order to encourage the exposure.

"Where a man is judged on the context of his character" (yes, MLK, gender-bias is a thing) is a wonderful world, and one in which I very much wish to live. We have some difficult, uncomfortable work to do before we get there, and all the pushback I see about encouraging the participation of women and minorities in tech tells me it's likely to be even longer and harder than I'd thought.

I agree with you on the issue (the research part), just not the way to solve it.

So first, it's not because woman or black people are discriminated against by racist or sexist people that they make a distinct "group" themselves, they probably have as much in common as two random people in the street.

Secondly, affirmative action, like you are advocating here is also creating pretty bad side-effects. If you make the criteria for hiring much more favorable for women/black people/whoever you think is discriminated against, you just give more fuel to the discrimination. People will just think "Is this women hired because she is competent or just because it's a woman?", and now they have a legitimate reason to think that because they can point to official policies. I would also add that it's pretty bad for the people benefiting from the affirmative action since they are just reduced to their gender/skin colour/disability, they are just hired to fill a quota and they probably would want to be recognised for their skills or their thoughts instead.

Then as a last point, the team can be as diverse as the field in it, if you have 10% woman in IT, you cannot achieve 50% woman everywhere, it's just basic maths. The efforts should be concentrated in tech school.

I said "over-correct for the tendency", you heard "affirmative action."

As another follow-up to another comment of yours suggests, there are probably many ways to accomplish that end without quotas, or any number of other similar approaches. Asserting the problems with those doesn't negate the principle. "The crude, tip-the-scales-a-bit approach we've tried so far has some problems. I guess we shouldn't try to fix this stuff..."

Huh?

But the specific thing I, personally, want to see people do about this stuff is simple: to question their own narratives about it.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." — Feynman

He made a point. You answered by avoiding the point. Instead you relied on dismissiveness, miscategorization, appeal to emotions and a little bit of passive-aggressiveness.

As per HN guidelines : "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

This subject appears dear to you, so perhaps you want to try again?

"Either you hire people regardless of their genders/religious group/sexual orientation or you make a conscious choice to reject candidates which are not in your approved list of "diversity" (whatever that means)."

You'll pardon me if I find someone's saying of a thing which I think matters a great deal things like, "means absolutely nothing", "empty buzz-speak", and "whatever that means" to be dismissive of that thing.

Please see my follow-up to 'realusername's comment, which is sibling to yours, for an elaboration of my position.

No, I won't pardon your non-apology. He explicitly told you that diversity is an empty term and explained why. You even demonstrated it yourself in your other comment: you don't care about diversity, you care about people being judged on their competence alone.

You -say- you care about diversity, but that's not the explanation you've given. At best diversity is a tool to be used in the very particular case where it would help competence representation. By your comment, it would be in the case of untrue stereotypes.

"Exposure to the people we have those narratives about shows us how wrong they are."

The problem is that studies have shown that most stereotypes are true. (Really!)

This brings me to the next point : you somehow fail to mention the cases where it would be counterproductive to push for diversity, even if they are most cases. (At least for your stated goal.)

So which is it? Do you pursue diversity, or competence representation? If it's competence, will you accept to openly fight against diversity?

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