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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

> More importantly, it will reinforce your organization's demographics. If your trusted referrers are white and male, their networks will be overwhelmingly white and male and it's just putting up another block toward those not already in the system.

I'm not entirely convinced of this in the general case. I'm white and male, but probably a minority of the people I would recommend (in the sense of personally vouching for their technical ability) are also white and male.

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It is a widely and repeatedly observed fact in social sciences that one's friend group is on average biased towards demographics similar to their own. This is true along a wide array of protected demographics relevant to hiring including age, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. For some simple examples, a randomly selected gay person tends to have a significantly higher percentage of gay friends than a randomly selected straight person. Similarly, while 12% of the country is black, a randomly selected black person has way more than 12% black friends, whereas people of other ethnic groups on average have less than 12% black friends. It goes on and on.

People cluster by demographics. Good on you for being an exception, but the rule holds in general.

I'm not talking about friends, and the article isn't talking about friends, either. What's being discussed is people that a referrer has worked with and whose qualifications can be vouched for.

People tend to refer their friends. Even if you're not friends outside of work, you're more likely to refer people you were friendly with at work.

Sure. And most of that happens in the context of "refer anyone and we will vet them with our hiring process". If you change that to "only refer people whom you personally vouch for because we will trust your judgment to replace parts of the hiring process", there will (or can) be incentives to refer people who are really good, not just people you personally like and would like to help out. If you combine that with hiring people who've worked in diverse environments, that might counteract the natural referral biases.

That's a good point, the demographics of my coworkers are nothing like the demographics of my friends. Most people are probably more likely to refer people who are both friends and coworkers though.

But a monetary incentive based on performance might be able to change that.

Slightly unrelated, but I recently received a survey from my high school asking if I would recommend an African American high school graduate pursue college/university at an HBCU(Historically Black University or College) or a PWI(Predominately White Institution).

How would you answer this question?

(Not a loaded question by the way, I know tone is hard to convey on the internet but you seem informed on this subject and I’m genuinely curious as to your opinion, if you have one.)

Thanks!

I'm definitely not qualified to answer this question as I didn't go to an HBCU and I'm not black. Sorry.

On a related note, black enrollment at my alma mater is plummeting in recent years (in favor of HBCUs), so going to an HBCU is a decision increasingly being made by black college-goers. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/higher-...

Isn't that trend a bit worrying? I'm not an American but it reminded me of (the little I know about) the segregationist policies before the Civil rights movement.

Yes, it's very worrying. Racists are increasingly being emboldened in the current political climate, and minorities are withdrawing further into their own groups for protection in response.

Yes, I was thinking it also on the other side? Why are minorities withdrawing (pretty much the opposite attitude they took in the 60's no?)?

Gotcha. Thanks for the information. I also went to UMD and was not aware of this trend.

Yeah, it's bad for everyone involved.

How do you know this?

I would say you are a relatively rare case though. Most people I've seen primarity socialize with people of the same race. Not strictly, obviously, but in general. Like in tech circles in the Bay Area, you have the white, indian, east asian groups and they, in general, tend to hang out with the same races. And by this I mean most of the friend groups I see are typically mostly of one race.

It doesn't really matter who I socialize with--it matters who I've worked with and whose skills I can vouch for.

There is a tendency that this will lead the demographics of a field to pretty much stay the same over time. If you work in a field that is 90% men, only 10% of the people you have worked with are women, which means in the long run only 10% of people you'd end up referring would be women. This is definitely true in my case--the number of women whose technical skills I can vouch for went up considerably once I started working with more women.

That said, the Bay Area is weird and I've never lived there.

Also, admittedly, specifying "white males" was a misstep on ebiester's part. Whatever narrative there is about diversity in tech breaks down unless you stipulate that South and East Asians don't count as underrepresented minorities.

I guess you're getting downvoted because this is anecdotal evidence? But honestly this is my (admittedly anecdotal) experience as well.

Or perhaps those doing the voting simply don't share that experience?

Race is so strongly correlated among friends (in the US, anyway) that it's unbelievable that people won't have observed this.[0] Average demographics:

* White Americans: 91% of social network are white; 8% black.

* Black Americans: 83% of social network are black; 1% white.

[0] https://www.prri.org/research/poll-race-religion-politics-am...

Some of that is normal population percentages - expected with random friends. Self-reported 'black' citizens are around 1-in-10 across the US.

And in Silicon Valley its different - the mix of international people of high education and achievement make it a skewed sample.

The vast majority of programming jobs in the US are not in Silicon Valley, though. It's a lot more homogenous outside the major cosmopolitan cities.

Not everyone visiting HN is from the USA.

You're right I should have alluded to that as well. But my point was maybe it wasn't worthy of a downvote is all.

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