5 ms·

> but if we forcibly try to overrepresent every minority where do we end up? "50% black trans women speakers"? I wouldn't go to such a conference since the prob

> but if we forcibly try to overrepresent every minority where do we end up? "50% black trans women speakers"? I wouldn't go to such a conference since the probability of bad talks would be too hig\ You end up with hiring quotas in companies, where a less-than-competent candidate can be hired instead of a competent one because he/she belongs to a minority. Will the bet on minority over competence will yield greater gains in the long run? That is a question for the ages. :)

onion2k 11y ago
That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. There are hiring managers out there who won't hire a female developer because they're just outright sexist. Quotas get introduced because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they're in the minority. All that said though, I don't believe there's any actual evidence that people end up hiring less-than-competent people because of quotas. It's only a theoretic possibility that could be true if the available candidates only included one incompetent person from the minority group, but I don't think that's ever going to be the case in practise. The choice always comes down to two or three competent people, and the quota system then pushes the decision on one direction. White male programmers don't like it because it's not in their favour, but the reality is that they could be passed over even if there wasn't a quota system. While people continue to discriminate quotas will be necessary.
- dijit 11y ago
  the hiring process is completely opaque, so this can never be proven or disproven. ideally, we'd have a system where we have a balance sheet that gets tallied up- but interviewing is an important part in gauging competence and culture fit (yes, this is a real thing, I know some developers who don't wash and I would not call them culturally fitting), so it's not something that can be solved easily. We all, inherently have a bias- we can't divorce ourselves from that bias, so how do we hire? by tribunal? I certainly believe quotas to be a shitty solution.
  - azima 11y ago
    Inclusion like in speaking at tech conferences for one...
    - dijit 11y ago
      that doesn't change the fact that quotas are a shitty solution, perhaps having people vote publicly on topics that are on an agenda, while witholding the author's name?
      - azima 11y ago
        quotas lead to inclusion. and inclusion is what's important. inclusion includes being represented at conferences.
        malandrew 11y ago
        content is what is important. technical content and content of character. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." How about running conferences on a completely blind process where the identity about the potential speakers are obscured by hashing, and people instead choose which speakers will present based on abstracts of the topic they will present on and some indication that they are qualified/knowledgeable to speak on the topic. The best solution for inclusion is by eliminating the privilege through a blind process.
- mpweiher 11y ago
  >Quotas get introduced because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they're in the minority. Any evidence (other than anecdotal) for this claim? The only reason I have ever seen for quotas is that the overall distribution is skewed, and therefore it must be discrimination.
  - azima 11y ago
    Companies primarily hire out of networks/referrals. If your company is full of white guys, and their friends are very likely to be white guys, you end up hiring white guys.
  - deong 11y ago
    Common sense would tell you it does happen. It only takes one guy who'd rather hire a man than a woman and one qualified woman applying for that job. I don't think it's a meaningfully large part of the explanation for the skewed distribution. I think there are deeper systemic issues for that. However, I don't think I've seen more than a handful of people say that quotas are in place because of discrimination either. From my experiences, I think my view here is by far the dominant one -- there is overt discrimination, but the bigger factor is more subtle. It's primary and secondary education, culture, socioeconomics, marketing and advertising to kids, in short, a bunch of stuff that serve to skew the pool of people even getting to the point of wanting tech jobs. Quotas aren't aimed at getting Klansmen to have to grit their teeth and hire a black guy. Quotas are an attempt to bootstrap the system -- maybe if we just dump a larger than normal population of minorities into our little world, it'll self-propagate through more minorities seeing this as a viable option, with the hope that a generation or two from now, you'll have the distribution you want naturally.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      That's a good list, but I think you have left out subtle discrimination. Things like the IAT show that there's a great deal of implicit racial bias in the US. [1] I also have never heard of a company actually having quotas. What I have heard is people gathering statistics and saying, "Hey, this looks pretty bad. What are we doing that might cause this? What can we do to fix our [generally unconscious and unnoticed] biases in our hiring processes?" [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/08/across-america-whites-are-biased-and-they-dont-even-know-it/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/08/ac...
- bshimmin 11y ago
  There are hiring managers out there who won't hire a female developer because they're just outright sexist. Do these people actually really exist in 2015, and are there organisations that would allow them to behave like that? I've known quite a few hiring managers, and some of them have definitely made stupid comments about "how nice it'd be to have a hot girl on the team" (though equally they might also make stupid comments about hiring graduates - of either gender - to make cups of tea), but none of them, to my knowledge, would ever have not picked a female candidate who was technically up to the task purely because she was a woman. Have I just led a sheltered existence? (I guess I'm talking here about SMEs and larger companies; I suppose if you're a tiny company run by a couple of sexist pigs, then any kind of behaviour is allowed to stand.)
  - azima 11y ago
    It wouldnt be tolerated if it was spoken outright. Unfortunately its pretty easy for a hiring manager to dismiss someone officially because of something on her resume or in the interview officially, while being sexist or racist, or just having embedded biases in their head. Ive heard it often enough.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    Anecdotally, yes I've met people who won't hire a woman. Reasons vary from an assumption that they won't be as capable because they have interests outside of coding, a belief that other developers won't be as productive if there's a woman on the team because they'll be distracted, or that they won't want to be a part of the company long term because they'll want to leave to have a family.
- paulojreis 11y ago
  > That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. Yes, I know they are. My question ("Will the bet on minority over competence will yield greater gains in the long run?") was genuine; I really wish I knew if positive discrimination to counteract the existing discrimination will improve the situation. > All that said though, I don't believe there's any actual evidence that people end up hiring less-than-competent people because of quotas. Evidence? Maybe not. But believe me, there are quotas with perfidious results in large companies. I've seen it happen somewhat like this: department X has 5 vacancies to fill; due to department "demographics", company mandates that 3 of the 5 vacancies are for female candidates; due to candidates "demographics", department X ends with a pool of N candidates for 3 vacancies and another pool of 10N for the other 2. But, as you said, it's theoretical. If the candidates had a quantifiable "skill", the "no subpools" approach would yield better results - a bigger "skill" quantity for the total of vacancies. However, in practice, you can't quantify skill, and much less the impact a candidate will have in the department. The apparently sub-optimal "subpools" approach might get the 5 vacancies with "more than enough" skill; The apparently sub-optimal "subpools" might even yield better results due to e.g. diversity. That's why I said that this is a question for the ages - only cohort-like analysis of hiring practices will give us something close to a answer which isn't merely speculative.
- hamstergene 11y ago
  The choice can't possibly be "always between two or three competent". Less competent exist, and they have to pop up somewhere. With quotas, once most competent from the lesser set get taken, only less competent will remain available. It's a trivial mental exercise, not something that requires gathering evidence to figure it out.
- malandrew 11y ago
  That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. Totally agree that current hiring practices have implicit biases that can be discriminatory. What I don't get is how people can consider alternative hiring practices that are explicitly discriminatory okay, because they are discriminatory in the opposite direction. It would be nice if people applied some heuristic like the "5 whys" and tried to actually perform a root cause analysis and try to resolve the base causes instead of plastering over the problem with practices that are at best no worse than current practices. Explicit reverse discrimination is still discrimination. Quotas result in a situation where brilliant majority developers get passed over because they are in the majority. How about we try and come up with a solution where equally brilliant developers regardless of their minority or majority status don't get overlooked?

onion2k 11y ago

That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. There are hiring managers out there who won't hire a female developer because they're just outright sexist. Quotas get introduced because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they're in the minority. All that said though, I don't believe there's any actual evidence that people end up hiring less-than-competent people because of quotas. It's only a theoretic possibility that could be true if the available candidates only included one incompetent person from the minority group, but I don't think that's ever going to be the case in practise. The choice always comes down to two or three competent people, and the quota system then pushes the decision on one direction. White male programmers don't like it because it's not in their favour, but the reality is that they could be passed over even if there wasn't a quota system. While people continue to discriminate quotas will be necessary.

dijit 11y ago
the hiring process is completely opaque, so this can never be proven or disproven. ideally, we'd have a system where we have a balance sheet that gets tallied up- but interviewing is an important part in gauging competence and culture fit (yes, this is a real thing, I know some developers who don't wash and I would not call them culturally fitting), so it's not something that can be solved easily. We all, inherently have a bias- we can't divorce ourselves from that bias, so how do we hire? by tribunal? I certainly believe quotas to be a shitty solution.
- azima 11y ago
  Inclusion like in speaking at tech conferences for one...
  - dijit 11y ago
    that doesn't change the fact that quotas are a shitty solution, perhaps having people vote publicly on topics that are on an agenda, while witholding the author's name?
    - azima 11y ago
      quotas lead to inclusion. and inclusion is what's important. inclusion includes being represented at conferences.
      - malandrew 11y ago
        content is what is important. technical content and content of character. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." How about running conferences on a completely blind process where the identity about the potential speakers are obscured by hashing, and people instead choose which speakers will present based on abstracts of the topic they will present on and some indication that they are qualified/knowledgeable to speak on the topic. The best solution for inclusion is by eliminating the privilege through a blind process.
mpweiher 11y ago
>Quotas get introduced because there are brilliant minority developers who get passed over because they're in the minority. Any evidence (other than anecdotal) for this claim? The only reason I have ever seen for quotas is that the overall distribution is skewed, and therefore it must be discrimination.
- azima 11y ago
  Companies primarily hire out of networks/referrals. If your company is full of white guys, and their friends are very likely to be white guys, you end up hiring white guys.
- deong 11y ago
  Common sense would tell you it does happen. It only takes one guy who'd rather hire a man than a woman and one qualified woman applying for that job. I don't think it's a meaningfully large part of the explanation for the skewed distribution. I think there are deeper systemic issues for that. However, I don't think I've seen more than a handful of people say that quotas are in place because of discrimination either. From my experiences, I think my view here is by far the dominant one -- there is overt discrimination, but the bigger factor is more subtle. It's primary and secondary education, culture, socioeconomics, marketing and advertising to kids, in short, a bunch of stuff that serve to skew the pool of people even getting to the point of wanting tech jobs. Quotas aren't aimed at getting Klansmen to have to grit their teeth and hire a black guy. Quotas are an attempt to bootstrap the system -- maybe if we just dump a larger than normal population of minorities into our little world, it'll self-propagate through more minorities seeing this as a viable option, with the hope that a generation or two from now, you'll have the distribution you want naturally.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    That's a good list, but I think you have left out subtle discrimination. Things like the IAT show that there's a great deal of implicit racial bias in the US. [1] I also have never heard of a company actually having quotas. What I have heard is people gathering statistics and saying, "Hey, this looks pretty bad. What are we doing that might cause this? What can we do to fix our [generally unconscious and unnoticed] biases in our hiring processes?" [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/08/across-america-whites-are-biased-and-they-dont-even-know-it/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/08/ac...
bshimmin 11y ago
There are hiring managers out there who won't hire a female developer because they're just outright sexist. Do these people actually really exist in 2015, and are there organisations that would allow them to behave like that? I've known quite a few hiring managers, and some of them have definitely made stupid comments about "how nice it'd be to have a hot girl on the team" (though equally they might also make stupid comments about hiring graduates - of either gender - to make cups of tea), but none of them, to my knowledge, would ever have not picked a female candidate who was technically up to the task purely because she was a woman. Have I just led a sheltered existence? (I guess I'm talking here about SMEs and larger companies; I suppose if you're a tiny company run by a couple of sexist pigs, then any kind of behaviour is allowed to stand.)
- azima 11y ago
  It wouldnt be tolerated if it was spoken outright. Unfortunately its pretty easy for a hiring manager to dismiss someone officially because of something on her resume or in the interview officially, while being sexist or racist, or just having embedded biases in their head. Ive heard it often enough.
- onion2k 11y ago
  Anecdotally, yes I've met people who won't hire a woman. Reasons vary from an assumption that they won't be as capable because they have interests outside of coding, a belief that other developers won't be as productive if there's a woman on the team because they'll be distracted, or that they won't want to be a part of the company long term because they'll want to leave to have a family.
paulojreis 11y ago
> That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. Yes, I know they are. My question ("Will the bet on minority over competence will yield greater gains in the long run?") was genuine; I really wish I knew if positive discrimination to counteract the existing discrimination will improve the situation. > All that said though, I don't believe there's any actual evidence that people end up hiring less-than-competent people because of quotas. Evidence? Maybe not. But believe me, there are quotas with perfidious results in large companies. I've seen it happen somewhat like this: department X has 5 vacancies to fill; due to department "demographics", company mandates that 3 of the 5 vacancies are for female candidates; due to candidates "demographics", department X ends with a pool of N candidates for 3 vacancies and another pool of 10N for the other 2. But, as you said, it's theoretical. If the candidates had a quantifiable "skill", the "no subpools" approach would yield better results - a bigger "skill" quantity for the total of vacancies. However, in practice, you can't quantify skill, and much less the impact a candidate will have in the department. The apparently sub-optimal "subpools" approach might get the 5 vacancies with "more than enough" skill; The apparently sub-optimal "subpools" might even yield better results due to e.g. diversity. That's why I said that this is a question for the ages - only cohort-like analysis of hiring practices will give us something close to a answer which isn't merely speculative.
hamstergene 11y ago
The choice can't possibly be "always between two or three competent". Less competent exist, and they have to pop up somewhere. With quotas, once most competent from the lesser set get taken, only less competent will remain available. It's a trivial mental exercise, not something that requires gathering evidence to figure it out.
malandrew 11y ago
That point you've apparently missed is that current hiring practises among some companies can be discriminatory. Totally agree that current hiring practices have implicit biases that can be discriminatory. What I don't get is how people can consider alternative hiring practices that are explicitly discriminatory okay, because they are discriminatory in the opposite direction. It would be nice if people applied some heuristic like the "5 whys" and tried to actually perform a root cause analysis and try to resolve the base causes instead of plastering over the problem with practices that are at best no worse than current practices. Explicit reverse discrimination is still discrimination. Quotas result in a situation where brilliant majority developers get passed over because they are in the majority. How about we try and come up with a solution where equally brilliant developers regardless of their minority or majority status don't get overlooked?