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"There are no Black/African-American GitHubbers in management positions, which is unacceptable." Why is it unacceptable? Just by virtue of the number of differ

"There are no Black/African-American GitHubbers in management positions, which is unacceptable." Why is it unacceptable? Just by virtue of the number of different kinds of people -- race, gender, etc there's no way to have 'one of each' for every position for maximum diversity. This sort of thing is so creepy because it treats people like collectible figures ("Oh yeah? Well I added a black transgendered person to our team today! I have way more diversity points than you!") instead of actual people you judge on their merits. How is a white person supposed to feel about applying to Github management position after reading "Its unacceptable we don't have a black manager"? I'm not white and I don't want to be treated as some statistic you can show off on your diversity report card. Thats really demeaning and insulting.

cjbprime 10y ago
Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US, indicating a probable bias in their hiring, retention or promotion pipelines that they're announcing they find concerning. You're making it about individuals, not GitHub. They're comparing statistics.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- atom-morgan 10y ago
  We can determine bias simply by comparing one company's numbers to national trends?
  - cjbprime 10y ago
    I said probable bias, and yes.
    - atom-morgan 10y ago
      As you reduce geographical scope, national trends aren't as relevant or realistic.
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  > Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US Where's the data for this? Often people talk about these things as assumptions, but I've never seen credible data. Can you share a source? Furthermore, even the comparison that you mentioned is not accurate. It should start from a funnel like: "the number of qualified black applicants to GitHub with CS degrees", or something along those lines. GitHub can't hire people that don't apply.
  - ascendingPig 10y ago
    Starting from only the people who apply gives a free pass to biased recruitment.
    - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
      What, you want them to go kidnap black people and force them to apply?
      - jacalata 10y ago
        So you don't think it's a problem if their ads say "whites only"? Or if they only advertise to white people? Or are you thinking "nobody would say whites only" and just totally unaware of the many ways that language and targeting can affect who applies to a job, sometimes skewing the pool of applicants in unintended ways? A nice, nobody-meant-it way to bias your candidate pool: only hire people who know an existing employee. White Americans mostly know white Americans.
  - cjbprime 10y ago
    You're asking for a citation for zero being less than non-zero? :)
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      He's asking for a citation that the probability of seeing zero is small (p<0.05 if you want to be frequentist about it), contingent on a proper funnel analysis and no bias.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  Was that percentage equally high in 1990? Fresh grads are not qualified for management.
pedrorijo91 10y ago
I kinda have the same thinking. Saying that "we have no Black/African-American (...)" seems way more racist that don't saying anything at all. People should get hired according their skills, not race/gender/etc. If a company is focused in hiring non-white males, aren't white males in disadvantage on recruitment processes?
- antimatter 10y ago
  Agreed. These types of reports make it seem like Github cares only about skin color which to me is racist.
  - geofft 10y ago
    This viewpoint genuinely baffles me. You can only manage what you measure, and the process of monitoring a metric isn't the same thing as caring about the metric. I monitor free disk space on all my servers, but it doesn't mean I care primarily about buying more disks. In fact I don't care because I've monitored it and have determined we're okay there. However, as a result of data, if my servers were regularly running out of disk space, then I should start caring. If these reports determined that there was no evidence of something to be fixed (either the statistics were consistent with the statistics of qualified potential employees, or there were a good reason for them not to be consistent), I would expect GitHub not to care. And yes, if they continued to care about shifting the numbers further past that point, then you could accuse them of caring only about skin color when it's unjustified. But why should a technical company not measure metrics and gather data?
    - 1_2__3 10y ago
      The argument is that making decisions based on race is racism. Github isn't "monitoring" things, they're actively trying to change them, and using race (and other such factors that some people believe we should try to be blind to, or at least agnostic about) as a factor.
      - geofft 10y ago
pron 10y ago
I think that the reason you find this objectionable is because you misunderstand the goal and the premises, and therefore the statement. It is not, "universally, we need one of each", but (goal:) "we must ensure no group is marginalized" + (premise:) "blacks are marginalized" = (conclusion:) "we must reduce the marginalization of blacks" = (statement:) "it is unacceptable that there are no blacks" In general, most prescriptive feminist and anti-racist notions are not founded an a manufactured set of axioms for a hypothetical society, but with premises based on empirical observations of our real society, and so are based on the assumption that there exist marginalized groups, and we know which groups they are (or some of them, at least). You can think of it as statements not prescribing how a new society must be built, but how our existing society must be fixed. I.e., you are given a delta value, not an absolute one. You may argue with either the goal (a value statement) or the premise (a factual statement), but right now you're arguing with the wrong ones.
- ajhurliman 10y ago
  This strikes me as centralized planning for jobs. It seems like the best way to go about this is focusing on the pool of applicants and making sure everyone gets a fair shake. Making assumptions about the outcome of those hiring decisions independent of the actual applicants seems neither fair nor good for business.
  - jason_dstillery 10y ago
    If your organization's demographics don't match the demographics of the broader population of qualified candidates, there's a good chance it's because you're biased (intentionally or not) in your recruiting or evaluation. In that sense, "focusing on the pool of applicants and making sure everyone gets a fair shake" are pretty much exactly what diversity efforts are about.
    - ajhurliman 10y ago
      By their wording, it seems like they're more focused on the outcome of the hiring process. No black managers is the outcome, and they said that's unacceptable. If you look at the process instead of the outcome, it might not be the same. If the scenario was that no qualified black people applied for management positions which resulted in not having any black managers they could still come back to the public and say "We have nothing to apologize for, we tried to hire black managers but none applied" instead of "We failed, we don't have any black managers and it's our fault". It's good to be unbiased in your hiring practices, but you can only shoulder so much blame. There are many factors that play into the process and you can only accept responsibility for your own actions.
djtriptych 10y ago
Creepier than a few centuries of slavery? Creepier than a few centuries of anti-black, anti-woman laws at every level of government? Creepier than nearly universal, measurable, provable anti-black, anti-woman implicit bias today? Sure guy.
- twunacceptable 10y ago
  Discriminating by sex and race is what caused those issues in the first place.
  - djtriptych 10y ago
    lol.
tetrep 10y ago
It's awkward that all these statistics seem to focus on the output of system without any regard to the input. There's a passing comment about "improve recruiting" but there's no details presented as to who is actually applying. The hiring process/system is very complicated an difficult to reason about in an objective manner, mostly because it's humans dealing with humans, compounding our human-y traits, non-objectiveness being a hallmark. I don't see how I'm supposed to take seriously an initiative at attempting to uncover/rectify biases of a system with only the output taken into account. It just seems silly.

cjbprime 10y ago

Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US, indicating a probable bias in their hiring, retention or promotion pipelines that they're announcing they find concerning. You're making it about individuals, not GitHub. They're comparing statistics.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
atom-morgan 10y ago
We can determine bias simply by comparing one company's numbers to national trends?
- cjbprime 10y ago
  I said probable bias, and yes.
  - atom-morgan 10y ago
    As you reduce geographical scope, national trends aren't as relevant or realistic.
Pyxl101 10y ago
> Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US Where's the data for this? Often people talk about these things as assumptions, but I've never seen credible data. Can you share a source? Furthermore, even the comparison that you mentioned is not accurate. It should start from a funnel like: "the number of qualified black applicants to GitHub with CS degrees", or something along those lines. GitHub can't hire people that don't apply.
- ascendingPig 10y ago
  Starting from only the people who apply gives a free pass to biased recruitment.
  - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
    What, you want them to go kidnap black people and force them to apply?
    - jacalata 10y ago
      So you don't think it's a problem if their ads say "whites only"? Or if they only advertise to white people? Or are you thinking "nobody would say whites only" and just totally unaware of the many ways that language and targeting can affect who applies to a job, sometimes skewing the pool of applicants in unintended ways? A nice, nobody-meant-it way to bias your candidate pool: only hire people who know an existing employee. White Americans mostly know white Americans.
- cjbprime 10y ago
  You're asking for a citation for zero being less than non-zero? :)
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    He's asking for a citation that the probability of seeing zero is small (p<0.05 if you want to be frequentist about it), contingent on a proper funnel analysis and no bias.
prodigal_erik 10y ago
Was that percentage equally high in 1990? Fresh grads are not qualified for management.

pedrorijo91 10y ago

I kinda have the same thinking. Saying that "we have no Black/African-American (...)" seems way more racist that don't saying anything at all. People should get hired according their skills, not race/gender/etc. If a company is focused in hiring non-white males, aren't white males in disadvantage on recruitment processes?

antimatter 10y ago
Agreed. These types of reports make it seem like Github cares only about skin color which to me is racist.
- geofft 10y ago
  This viewpoint genuinely baffles me. You can only manage what you measure, and the process of monitoring a metric isn't the same thing as caring about the metric. I monitor free disk space on all my servers, but it doesn't mean I care primarily about buying more disks. In fact I don't care because I've monitored it and have determined we're okay there. However, as a result of data, if my servers were regularly running out of disk space, then I should start caring. If these reports determined that there was no evidence of something to be fixed (either the statistics were consistent with the statistics of qualified potential employees, or there were a good reason for them not to be consistent), I would expect GitHub not to care. And yes, if they continued to care about shifting the numbers further past that point, then you could accuse them of caring only about skin color when it's unjustified. But why should a technical company not measure metrics and gather data?
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    The argument is that making decisions based on race is racism. Github isn't "monitoring" things, they're actively trying to change them, and using race (and other such factors that some people believe we should try to be blind to, or at least agnostic about) as a factor.
    - geofft 10y ago

pron 10y ago

I think that the reason you find this objectionable is because you misunderstand the goal and the premises, and therefore the statement. It is not, "universally, we need one of each", but (goal:) "we must ensure no group is marginalized" + (premise:) "blacks are marginalized" = (conclusion:) "we must reduce the marginalization of blacks" = (statement:) "it is unacceptable that there are no blacks" In general, most prescriptive feminist and anti-racist notions are not founded an a manufactured set of axioms for a hypothetical society, but with premises based on empirical observations of our real society, and so are based on the assumption that there exist marginalized groups, and we know which groups they are (or some of them, at least). You can think of it as statements not prescribing how a new society must be built, but how our existing society must be fixed. I.e., you are given a delta value, not an absolute one. You may argue with either the goal (a value statement) or the premise (a factual statement), but right now you're arguing with the wrong ones.

ajhurliman 10y ago
This strikes me as centralized planning for jobs. It seems like the best way to go about this is focusing on the pool of applicants and making sure everyone gets a fair shake. Making assumptions about the outcome of those hiring decisions independent of the actual applicants seems neither fair nor good for business.
- jason_dstillery 10y ago
  If your organization's demographics don't match the demographics of the broader population of qualified candidates, there's a good chance it's because you're biased (intentionally or not) in your recruiting or evaluation. In that sense, "focusing on the pool of applicants and making sure everyone gets a fair shake" are pretty much exactly what diversity efforts are about.
  - ajhurliman 10y ago
    By their wording, it seems like they're more focused on the outcome of the hiring process. No black managers is the outcome, and they said that's unacceptable. If you look at the process instead of the outcome, it might not be the same. If the scenario was that no qualified black people applied for management positions which resulted in not having any black managers they could still come back to the public and say "We have nothing to apologize for, we tried to hire black managers but none applied" instead of "We failed, we don't have any black managers and it's our fault". It's good to be unbiased in your hiring practices, but you can only shoulder so much blame. There are many factors that play into the process and you can only accept responsibility for your own actions.

djtriptych 10y ago

Creepier than a few centuries of slavery? Creepier than a few centuries of anti-black, anti-woman laws at every level of government? Creepier than nearly universal, measurable, provable anti-black, anti-woman implicit bias today? Sure guy.

twunacceptable 10y ago
Discriminating by sex and race is what caused those issues in the first place.
- djtriptych 10y ago
  lol.

tetrep 10y ago

It's awkward that all these statistics seem to focus on the output of system without any regard to the input. There's a passing comment about "improve recruiting" but there's no details presented as to who is actually applying. The hiring process/system is very complicated an difficult to reason about in an objective manner, mostly because it's humans dealing with humans, compounding our human-y traits, non-objectiveness being a hallmark. I don't see how I'm supposed to take seriously an initiative at attempting to uncover/rectify biases of a system with only the output taken into account. It just seems silly.