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Comment by EduardoBautista | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why companies are obsessed with diversity just for the sake of it.

Edit: I am mexican, and I personally wouldn't like to be hired for diversity reasons, I would prefer to be hired on my abilities.

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> I am mexican, and I personally wouldn't like to be hired for diversity reasons, I would prefer to be hired on my abilities.

Which is all a non-sequitur, since nothing in Google's blog post or the linked diversity website suggest that Google's approaches to improving diversity include hiring people for diversity reasons rather than for their abilities.

Well, no one would ever admit that anyways.

Of course companies should only hire qualified people. Diversity is about gaining new perspectives and ensuring you're creating an environment _all_ your employees can enjoy and feel comfortable in.

Companies, rightly, don't want to stagnate by being limited to perspectives and views that don't fully reflect the world they operate in.

I hear this all the time but really, how much of an impact does "diversity" have on yet another shitty chat app or photo sharing site? They're creating utterly trivial, harmless social applications that have NOTHING to do with racial, cultural, or religious matters.

Who's talking about shitty startups? I don't live in silicon valley.

I agree. I am a Russian Jew and I never needed or wanted to be hired based on diversity needs.

And Google wouldn't hire you just because you're a minority.

The article specifically discusses Google's attempts to lure people of diverse backgrounds into computer science earlier, so that there is more diversity among the qualified candidates applying at Google.

Nobody at Google got hired to fill a diversity quota.

Well there's using it as a checkbox and then there's real diversity. No one likes being patronized. But if it's done right you would still be judged on your abilities. And therein lies the challenge. It's a worthy goal but they better stay on top of it.

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