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A diversity of technical perspectives can be helpful, but there's no reason to suppose that 1) gender diversity correlates to a diversity of technical perspecti

A diversity of technical perspectives can be helpful, but there's no reason to suppose that 1) gender diversity correlates to a diversity of technical perspectives, or that 2) to achieve a diversity of technical perspectives, we need to force the demographics of programmers to match that of the population. If you want to increase diversity of thought, you'd be better off recruiting from schools other than Stanford and the ivys.

wutbrodo 11y ago
Seriously, with even a cursory amount of thought (which is far more rigor than proponents of diversity tend to give policy proposals) it's clear that much of the ideas coming out of tech these days caters to the problems of young urban fairly affluent users, which is in large part due to the tendency to want to solve problems that you're familiar with (and to be fair, the fact that it's harder to monetize low income users). Diversity of perspective across class lines makes way more sense than just assuming that more women of the same social and educational background will magically open up an appreciably wider set of technical perspectives.
- mcguire 11y ago
  As an aside, comments such as "which is far more rigor than proponents of diversity tend to give policy proposals" tend not to make your arguments more persuasive.
  - wutbrodo 11y ago
    Yea it's pretty late in my timezone and I'm typing on a phone, but it did occur to me that that could be misinterpreted. Contrary to what my overly succinct comment may have suggested, I think that diversity initiatives are critical, both for a society and a company. Companies need to stay vigilant for potential sources of bias in hiring and retention and deal with issues aggressively when identified. My comment about proponents of diversity wasn't intended to malign everyone who recognizes the importance of diversity initiatives (which as I said, includes myself), but rather, a particular philosophical strain that I've encountered as the dominant force amongst diversity initiatives in the companies I've experienced (including within the "big 4"). What frustrates me specifically is precisely what I mentioned: an often unqualified rejection of rational consideration of facts when they even resemble an unpalatable conclusion. In the example we're talking about: there are less women than men in company X. Either the company is discriminating, women are somehow innately less suited to work there, or there's upstream discrimination so that hiring reflects an equal assessment of the candidate pool. The evidence pointed strongly to the latter situation (ie the proportion of women cs majors was equal to the proportion of women technical employees, and non technical employees broke down 50/50). And yet, any suggestion that the company wasn't explicitly discriminating (and that the problem existed upstream) was shouted down with "If you think we're not discriminating then you must think women are innately unsuitable and will be reported to HR for creating an unwelcome misogynist work environment"[1]. So when I talk about proponents of diversity lacking rigor, it was shorthand for "IME, in places that are quite reasonably considered the mainstream, the prevailing school of thought with respect to diversity initiatives focuses more on appearances and social signaling than actual progress". [1] note that I was smart enough to stay out of these conversations so I wasn't ever actually the victim of this sort of lunacy.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

wutbrodo 11y ago

Seriously, with even a cursory amount of thought (which is far more rigor than proponents of diversity tend to give policy proposals) it's clear that much of the ideas coming out of tech these days caters to the problems of young urban fairly affluent users, which is in large part due to the tendency to want to solve problems that you're familiar with (and to be fair, the fact that it's harder to monetize low income users). Diversity of perspective across class lines makes way more sense than just assuming that more women of the same social and educational background will magically open up an appreciably wider set of technical perspectives.

mcguire 11y ago
As an aside, comments such as "which is far more rigor than proponents of diversity tend to give policy proposals" tend not to make your arguments more persuasive.
- wutbrodo 11y ago
  Yea it's pretty late in my timezone and I'm typing on a phone, but it did occur to me that that could be misinterpreted. Contrary to what my overly succinct comment may have suggested, I think that diversity initiatives are critical, both for a society and a company. Companies need to stay vigilant for potential sources of bias in hiring and retention and deal with issues aggressively when identified. My comment about proponents of diversity wasn't intended to malign everyone who recognizes the importance of diversity initiatives (which as I said, includes myself), but rather, a particular philosophical strain that I've encountered as the dominant force amongst diversity initiatives in the companies I've experienced (including within the "big 4"). What frustrates me specifically is precisely what I mentioned: an often unqualified rejection of rational consideration of facts when they even resemble an unpalatable conclusion. In the example we're talking about: there are less women than men in company X. Either the company is discriminating, women are somehow innately less suited to work there, or there's upstream discrimination so that hiring reflects an equal assessment of the candidate pool. The evidence pointed strongly to the latter situation (ie the proportion of women cs majors was equal to the proportion of women technical employees, and non technical employees broke down 50/50). And yet, any suggestion that the company wasn't explicitly discriminating (and that the problem existed upstream) was shouted down with "If you think we're not discriminating then you must think women are innately unsuitable and will be reported to HR for creating an unwelcome misogynist work environment"[1]. So when I talk about proponents of diversity lacking rigor, it was shorthand for "IME, in places that are quite reasonably considered the mainstream, the prevailing school of thought with respect to diversity initiatives focuses more on appearances and social signaling than actual progress". [1] note that I was smart enough to stay out of these conversations so I wasn't ever actually the victim of this sort of lunacy.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]