OpieCunningham

That is in poor taste. Or at least from a point of view that is failing to grasp the concept of racism. It wasn’t Virgos who enslaved Black people / redlined neighborhoods / segregated schools.

edited to remove analogy because it distracted from the point

a Cydia App Store

Have you met my friends and family? Oy vey.

>> Being a police officer is a ... thankless ... job

Police officers are regularly held up as heroes, and often afforded special privileges in everyday life.

If anything, they are irrationally worshipped.

They also said the same thing about time travel and dragons.

The general populace generally doesn’t pay any attention to any statements from any employees of any company. Those in the tech industry generally don’t pay any attention to statements from any employees of any company outside the tech industry. Being aware of statements from employees does not appear to be a factor in terms of trust in a company.

Definitely

That is interesting. As a generality I’ve found software developers to be some of the least open minded people. Perhaps a small bit amongst themselves (though the endless disagreements indicate it’s a very small bit), but when interacting with anyone outside the industry regarding some aspect of the industry, open mindedness is essentially non-existent. Perhaps it is the same for doctors interacting with patients.

I might suspect your source is financially wealthy, and morally bankrupt - if I could follow 1/2 of what you said. But I was definitely entertained. Upvote.

I tend not to give strangers with significant financial incentives the benefit of the doubt.

Parent comment could be his mindset. You’re just stating his mindset is what he has claimed his mindset is. I see no reason to take his word for it.

“that money got lost somewhere”

It’s a mystery.

What’s the difference between 9 of their choosing and 99 of their choosing?

Wouldn’t that mean that a company can never be responsible for the output of the company? At every level, anything is just “a couple of employees”. The headline is reasonable.

Opportunities are literally luck.

Continuing to argue that humans do not have bias. Impressive.

> Slavery did exist, but that is overwhelmingly on the basis of race. This comment chain has so far been about women. This smells like whataboutsim.

Nonsense. This comment chain is about diversity hiring practices, which involves gender and race.

> Women's disenfranchisement ended a century ago.

So was it the day after that women made up an equal share of university graduates? Or was it a progression over time, picking up more recently in the last few decades? And is that coincidental with the increase in affirmative action policies. Interesting. I suppose you could argue that women's genes have evolved towards an interest in STEM in the past few decades. I bet you could even find a link or two to share as "evidence".

> This absolutely is suggesting that the disparity in computing graduates could be due to bias in admissions. This is explicit, I'm not sure how any reasonable person can attempt to deny this.

Suggesting a thing as a possible factor and explicitly stating a thing is a factor are two different actions. I also suggested 3 or 4 other things that may be factors. And I left out 1,000 things that may be factors. It seems like a reasonable person would understand this concept - that statistics at one level are not evidence of an argument, in either direction. The questions I posed were rhetorical representations of the endless path you initial argument goes down: 38% of hires were women but only 20% of graduates were women. That doesn't mean anything on it's face.

> The onus is on you to prove that bias exists.

Numerous studies have shown that bias exists. This is not generally argued by anyone but the most ardently privileged. I mean, you do agree that bias did exist, right? Like, slavery, women disenfranchised. Those things happened and bias was the cause, right? So if it did exist, when exactly did it cease to exist? And the onus is on you to provide the widely accepted evidence that bias has ceased to exist.

> There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this is the case:

No, there is literally zero evidence. Your interpretation of various cultures and evidence that men are not genetically identical to women is not evidence that men have a genetic aptitude/predilection towards STEM.

> You're saying that there is discrimination of some kind down the line, but the person you're responding to is pointing out that, even if that discrimination does in fact exist, women are still over-represented in university education, including at engineering focused schools. How is that not strong evidence against your position?

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/...

So that's a few years old - there's a bunch of statistics there. Do those statistics mean that women get hired more than men? No. They mean the rate of women hires in STEM is increasing over time. They also mean that specific to computer science they have more recently decreased. So should we assume that affirmative action policies and general pressure on society over the last 40 years has had zero contribution towards the increase in women hires? Or should we assume that there is no possibility that the more recent decrease in women in computer science could partially be a result of workplace culture or limited advancement due to bias? Considering there is no evidence that women are less capable or interested in STEM or computer science, I can't think of any rational reason we should jump towards the conclusion that "women just don't do it well or like it". Bias existed before, it exists now, it is likely decreasing (though all we can say for certain is that over time the effect of bias has decreased - it may continue to exist at it's earlier levels while the effect is being mitigated by actions such as diversity hiring).

In a specific case, certainly. In the general case, subconscious bias plays a role.

It doesn’t seem like a real argument that, generally speaking it is unknown whether race or gender bias is more of a determinant in hiring decisions than hair color bias. Is that an argument you consider rational?

HR policies do have measurable outcomes. It's a question of what you think those measurements describe. A diversity hiring HR policy is a counter-action to the existing subconscious bias favoring white men, and a long term effort to squelch subconscious bias favoring white men by increasing exposure to diverse races/genders. Let's collect some long term data and analyze the result measurements, instead of pretending subconscious bias favoring white men doesn't exist.

Those are not the things I said. I specifically said that this statistic approach is an impossible debate because fundamentally it assumes everything down the chain (elementary school, parenting, society) is not prone to similar gender bias. In reality, all of those things are prone to gender bias. There is no debate here. If there is a genetic difference between genders that demonstrates aptitude/proclivity towards STEM, then statistics can be leveraged as pointers towards the result of actions taken to equalize gender opportunity. If or until such a time as that genetic evidence is discovered, I see no reason to believe that women, by nature, are inherently less capable or interested in STEM - therefore, the only useful statistic in a debate on hiring results (i.e. 38% are women) is that 50% of humans are women.

Please re-read what I have posted.

I could be misunderstanding what you are stating, but it sounds like you are saying that when you were mistaken for white, and diversity practices did not exist, everything was good. But now that diversity practices exist, you need to preemptively point out that you are not white. Now that the conscious or subconscious race pre-determinant is shifting from "this person is white, ergo good" to "this is a person of color, ergo good", you are finding you benefit from clarifying that you fit the latter category, even if it appears as though you fit the former. This may be a "best of both worlds" situation for you.

In any case, diversity hiring may mean that you will be excluded because you are mistaken for white - but that doesn't mean whomever you were excluded for wasn't more qualified than you.

> In that sense, yes, we’re in full agreement and you intentionally warping my obvious meaning to guilt me into your line of thought won’t work.

The problem with your conclusion here is that I absolutely agree that people can be incompetent regardless of race or gender. Indeed: that was the entire point of my comment you were responding to. As that was the entirety of your statement, to which I pointed out our agreement, I fail to see how I intentionally warped it. That you ALSO meant: it is therefore not necessary to take any action to counter racism, is not "obvious" in your original statement. Clearly I was unable to read your mind when I replied to you.

You missed my point, which is that none of those statistics are meaningful one way or the other.

Many might debate it in those terms, but generally I won't because using statistics such as you've provided cannot produce a definitive argument for either side. If 20% of graduates are women, is that because of subconscious bias favoring men in admissions or grading? Or because of subconscious bias favoring boys in elementary school towards STEM? Or because of subconscious bias in society saying boys work and girls take care of the home? Etc. Unless the answer is "No" to all of these, then 39% women in a workplace cannot be considered evidence of either equality or inequality. However, until we have some means of determining that women are genetically predisposed to disfavor STEM (and these genetics are clearly not confused with the impact of societal child rearing), we do have a statistic we can use: roughly 50% of humans are women.

Get back to me after 100 more years of progress towards equalizing race and gender through actions designed to fight subconscious bias, and then we can look at what your hiring percentages are vs. graduate percentages, and whether those actions are still necessary or sufficient.

> Ah, to be clear: Subconscious biases still exist to some degree.

Subconscious bias still exists to a huge degree. Studies have been done, and it is fairly obvious, that show increased diversity has a positive effect towards decreasing subconscious bias. I would propose that we give these hiring diversity goals, say, 100 years. Then we can circle back to see about making some adjustments towards a determination as to whether subconscious bias has effectively been eliminated.

> In recent years, in government and large corporations, diversity hiring goals have completely dominated the hiring process compared to subconscious biases. I don't think you agree with that statement; if you did, would you think that it is a good result?

I do agree that in recent years diversity hiring goals have increased significantly. And I do think it is a good course of action.

> I don't think the solution to past unfairness is to tilt the see-saw in the other direction, creating more unfairness.

When your vehicles steering is misaligned, do you counter steer in the other direction or do you drive around in circles all day?

> To me, equality means equality of process.

That's a lovely ideal. It doesn't exist. You've already stated that you admit subconscious bias exists "to some degree". So the process is already unequal.

With diversity hiring, more people of color will be hired, both competent and incompetent. Without diversity hiring, more white people will be hired, both competent and incompetent. There is no evidence that shows conscious bias favoring people of color results in more incompetent hires vs. subconscious bias favoring white people. That is the process: incompetent people get hired, race has nothing to do with it. In order to hire more competent people of color, diversity hiring is required (diversity is also required to, over time, progressively decrease the prevalence of subconscious bias). More people of color hired (competent or incompetent) naturally means fewer white people hired (competent and incompetent). I fail to see why that is an issue, unless you are consciously or subconsciously biased to favor white people and/or oblivious of how change is a result of action.

> To correct for subconscious bias for white males with conscious bias against them hardly seems the path towards equality.

It may hardly seem like a path towards equality, but in fact it is (see steering analogy). That it may feel "unfair", well, in regards to that all I can say is "Sorry. But think of it this way, now you know how it feels for people of color. Lack of privilege kinda sucks." If there were another method of addressing pernicious subconscious bias favoring white people I'd be all for it. Doing nothing is obviously not a solution.

> absolutely against equality since it gives preference to specific groups

Clearly we disagree significantly. But I mean, really: When reality is not equal, preference must be given to achieve equality. This is just obvious.

You were stating that "things have changed" in response to my statement that white males are often hired because of subconscious bias. That there are recent diversity hiring programs does not mean that white males are no longer hired because of subconscious bias.

Clearly, diversity hiring programs are new things that did not exist decades ago.

> This may have been the case decade(s) ago, but I think the climate is very different now.

I don't. I've met many incompetent white males in over their heads.

Subconscious bias means your concern is applicable regardless of your skin color or gender. If you’re a white male, you could easily have been hired simply because of your skin color and gender and not your abilities. Effectively, your point is moot. Maybe worry less about the thoughts and feelings of who hired you and focus on doing your best work.