“Why Google fired me- their MOST successful diversity recruiter”

The last place where I did any significant interviewing, a fairy large, successful SF Bay Area startup, 100% had a huge blind spot for diversity hiring. What do I mean by that? That I had ample reason to believe that a Black candidate from an HBCU would walk into the interview room with a point penalty. The whole point of interviewing a candidate is to get an unbiased read from them that you can then add to your other impressions of them! If you think the candidate is subpar before they ever open their mouth, you're wasting your own time!

To begin with, employees had a common mantra that "it's just a pipeline problem." They had examined themselves, decided that they are pure, logical, and unbiased, and concluded that the dramatic shortfall in Black and Latino hires had to be explained entirely by external factors. Something was wrong, either with society or with the candidates themselves, but it certainly wasn't anything with our interview practices or, god forbid, ourselves. This was the starting position of literally every non-Black employee at the company that I had spoken to about the issue of hiring over my multiple years of working there. "It's obviously a pipeline problem." Everyone, including people who would gladly call themselves open-minded bleeding heart social progressives.

Second, our HR was a viper's den of absolutely the most knee-jerk bias and spite imaginable. When making small talk with other employees, HR people would constantly talk trash about candidates and make fun of their academic institutions and accomplishments. Many of the software engineers had a sneering attitude about the competence of people in HR roles, and HR people were on average eager to demonstrate that they had power over candidates. It was a toxic environment, but I doubt that it was an unusual environment. HR people circulate between companies pretty constantly, and I hear very similar impressions from my friends at other startups.

Pressures like this translate pretty clearly into an inherent penalty for minority candidates. I obviously don't know what got @RealAbril fired from Google, but I was starting to earn a reputation for calling people out when they reflexively said "we'd love to have more diverse hires... but not at the cost of lowering the bar!" See how much Black talent you manage to identify when you start with the belief that diversity candidates are less talented.

She didn't go into why she was fired. She hinted a bit that she was fired because she called out Google on some issues.

I'd like to learn more, but it doesn't seem possible since firing is a sensitive issue.

Compared to Timnit's situation, I'm somewhat convinced Timnit was fired due to bad relationship with her managers, especially when she implied Jeff Dean supported white supremacist. https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1278571537776271360

From her comments, she comes across as a person that uses her sexuality and ethnicity to justify her own agenda.

Providing equal opportunities makes you a great recruiter, not positive discrimination in the name of diversity. Such behaviour undermines people and has a negative effect on diversity and equality.

> When I started at Google, I quickly became aware of all the racist shit put in place to keep black and brown students out of their pipeline. I routinely called out shady recruitment practices such as “screening out” resumes of students with “unfamiliar” school/university names.

This seems to be the crux of the thread.

In my opinion that is not strictly a race problem, but a class one. I think it's disingenuous that the poster is assuming to speak about another group's marginalization and present their issues as being strictly race related.

i don't understand how this is something to be proud of.

I don't know this person and can't vouch for them, but at the least it's a good list of recruiting/hiring fails.