4 ms·

I'm sorry but I gave the wrong impression. Someone who is highly competent, is deserving of merit, never want to work for a firm that doesn't hire on the basis

I'm sorry but I gave the wrong impression. Someone who is highly competent, is deserving of merit, never want to work for a firm that doesn't hire on the basis of merit. So those firms that don't hire on the basis of merit are turning these people away. There is a shortage of people with competence and merit in computing, so that person will find a job and with a firm who values that person for their abilities. Just as the case with antisemitism, no need for diversity programs. Physics Nobelist Richard Feynman was turned away from Columbia University because of the Jewish Quota. He went to MIT instead. MIT wanted someone like him and didn't care whether he was Jewish or not. The fact that MIT accepted him and Columbia did not demonstrated that MIT was the better school.

ubernostrum 10y ago
In a world where every market participant was perfectly informed and perfectly rational, and always acted in perfectly enlightened long-term self-interest, then you might have an argument. We do not live in such a world. Your Feynman anecdote is a rare exception rather than a norm. Tech companies and software engineers will give up their racial and gender biases only when absolutely forced to, and at the moment nothing in the market is forcing them to -- you might not become the most profitable company in the world, but you can have major bias and still do well enough that it's simply not perceived as a problem for the companies which do it.