7 ms·

Expanding the hiring pool is valuable to these companies. Many companies also feel like they'll perform better with a more diverse group of employees. I sure fe

by mrkurt 10y ago

Expanding the hiring pool is valuable to these companies. Many companies also feel like they'll perform better with a more diverse group of employees. I sure felt like that about my company. They probably _also_ feel like it's right. This is one of those social problems where both the business need and moral need match up. My guess is that people who want racial diversity want class diversity, diversity of thought, cultural diversity, etc. These are not exclusive problems. In fact, if we got to a world state where race played no part in someone's job opportunities, I expect it would be easier to tackle the others.

pj_mukh 10y ago
This is mostly empirically provable [1]. Diverse teams come up with better ideas that apply to a larger swath of markets (an immediate payoff for companies). [1]: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/is-there-a-payoff-from-top-team-diversity http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...
- elgenie 10y ago
  The results on this are quite wishy-washy. And the applicability of studies of the value of diversity in an executive team attempting to strategically position themselves in a market to a team building a compiler is questionable to say the least.
  - moduspwnens14 10y ago
    Even making your product appeal to a wide market often isn't recommended for small companies. We often see posts here about focusing on a specific winnable market and going from there. In a vacuum, I'd imagine that having likeness between the customer and the developers to be far more effective than general cultural diversity. A team making a compiler is programmers making a tool for programmers, so it's an excellent fit. I could see cultural diversity becoming more effective once you're trying to reach the general public or niche markets.
- aantix 10y ago
  Maybe the larger the body of employees, this becomes more and more the case. But if you're hiring your second engineer on the team? Hire the absolute most productive engineer. Even if that turns out to be a white male. And don't feel guilty.
  - mark-ruwt 10y ago
    Sadly, this is the crux of the problem. If you equate increasing diversity with lowering the bar, you're missing the point. https://42hire.com/the-big-lie-tech-companies-and-diversity-hiring-f52fb82abfbf https://42hire.com/the-big-lie-tech-companies-and-diversity-...
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive", because there is no reading of your comment which makes sense without the assumption that you believe this. Congratulations, you've exposed yourself as possessing irrational biases and allowing them to influence how you'd hire, while showing no desire to eliminate, overcome or compensate for those biases. As a result you are unqualified to ever make a hiring decision.
    - flukus 10y ago
      > Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive" How on earth did it imply that?
      - ubernostrum 10y ago
        In the context of "diversity", which is taken to imply increasing the population of currently-underrepresented groups in the industry, responding with "just hire the best" only makes sense if one believes those groups do not by definition contain "the best", since otherwise everyone who already claims to "hire the best" would have hired from those groups.
wpietri 10y ago
I feel the same way. I want teams that are diverse and inclusive, because I think that's how you get both the best business results and the best society. One good historical example is labor force inclusion of women. For centuries, women were excluded from most professions. Circa 1970, women got only 10% of law and medicine degrees. They hit parity in the mid-aughts. Are doctors or lawyers making less? No. The expanded pool of applicants means as a society we're getting either more or better doctors and lawyers, so as a society we're wealthier. And things are undeniably fairer. Economic and social incentives coincide.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  It's important to remember that doctors and lawyers have professional organizations that try to ensure competence and limit supply.
  - acdha 10y ago
    Or enforce preconceived views about who belonged in the field and discourage others — you don't have to go back very far to find those groups setting quotas on the number of Jewish doctors, for example: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26quot.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26quot.html
- FT_intern 10y ago
  > because I think that's how you get both the best business results I don't think this has ever been proven, especially not in a field as technical as software engineering.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    Very few human practices in software engineering have been proven to any level of rigor. But still, you have to make choices. There is usually no neutral position. You have to pick a particular language, a particular platform, a particular process, a particular team. For me, the theory's pretty clear. The hard part about software is not the typing; it's the thinking. It's my experience that thought monocultures are less effective, so I always hire for diversity along many axes. I like having somebody with ops experience. Somebody else who loves the details of front-end work. Somebody else who has wrestled with deep optimizations. Young and old, functional and OO, careful and bold, etc, etc. I take as much variety as I can get, because the more diversity you have, the more problems you can spot and solve quickly. An especially hard part about software is thinking about users. Good developers are always imagining the effect their choices have on the people they serve. But our imagination is limited by our experiences. Our empathy comes most easily for people like the ones we know. The more diverse your team, the more likely you are to spot and solve human problems. So sure, it's not scientifically proven to be optimum. But the default isn't either. If we only question the things that seem novel, that's just a fancy way of arguing for a sort of generic orthodoxy.

by mrkurt 10y ago

pj_mukh 10y ago

This is mostly empirically provable [1]. Diverse teams come up with better ideas that apply to a larger swath of markets (an immediate payoff for companies). [1]: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/is-there-a-payoff-from-top-team-diversity http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-...

elgenie 10y ago
The results on this are quite wishy-washy. And the applicability of studies of the value of diversity in an executive team attempting to strategically position themselves in a market to a team building a compiler is questionable to say the least.
- moduspwnens14 10y ago
  Even making your product appeal to a wide market often isn't recommended for small companies. We often see posts here about focusing on a specific winnable market and going from there. In a vacuum, I'd imagine that having likeness between the customer and the developers to be far more effective than general cultural diversity. A team making a compiler is programmers making a tool for programmers, so it's an excellent fit. I could see cultural diversity becoming more effective once you're trying to reach the general public or niche markets.
aantix 10y ago
Maybe the larger the body of employees, this becomes more and more the case. But if you're hiring your second engineer on the team? Hire the absolute most productive engineer. Even if that turns out to be a white male. And don't feel guilty.
- mark-ruwt 10y ago
  Sadly, this is the crux of the problem. If you equate increasing diversity with lowering the bar, you're missing the point. https://42hire.com/the-big-lie-tech-companies-and-diversity-hiring-f52fb82abfbf https://42hire.com/the-big-lie-tech-companies-and-diversity-...
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive", because there is no reading of your comment which makes sense without the assumption that you believe this. Congratulations, you've exposed yourself as possessing irrational biases and allowing them to influence how you'd hire, while showing no desire to eliminate, overcome or compensate for those biases. As a result you are unqualified to ever make a hiring decision.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > Your statement to "hire the absolute most productive" implies that no woman or black or hispanic person can be "the absolute most productive" How on earth did it imply that?
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      In the context of "diversity", which is taken to imply increasing the population of currently-underrepresented groups in the industry, responding with "just hire the best" only makes sense if one believes those groups do not by definition contain "the best", since otherwise everyone who already claims to "hire the best" would have hired from those groups.

wpietri 10y ago

I feel the same way. I want teams that are diverse and inclusive, because I think that's how you get both the best business results and the best society. One good historical example is labor force inclusion of women. For centuries, women were excluded from most professions. Circa 1970, women got only 10% of law and medicine degrees. They hit parity in the mid-aughts. Are doctors or lawyers making less? No. The expanded pool of applicants means as a society we're getting either more or better doctors and lawyers, so as a society we're wealthier. And things are undeniably fairer. Economic and social incentives coincide.

nitrogen 10y ago
It's important to remember that doctors and lawyers have professional organizations that try to ensure competence and limit supply.
- acdha 10y ago
  Or enforce preconceived views about who belonged in the field and discourage others — you don't have to go back very far to find those groups setting quotas on the number of Jewish doctors, for example: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26quot.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26quot.html
FT_intern 10y ago
> because I think that's how you get both the best business results I don't think this has ever been proven, especially not in a field as technical as software engineering.
- wpietri 10y ago
  Very few human practices in software engineering have been proven to any level of rigor. But still, you have to make choices. There is usually no neutral position. You have to pick a particular language, a particular platform, a particular process, a particular team. For me, the theory's pretty clear. The hard part about software is not the typing; it's the thinking. It's my experience that thought monocultures are less effective, so I always hire for diversity along many axes. I like having somebody with ops experience. Somebody else who loves the details of front-end work. Somebody else who has wrestled with deep optimizations. Young and old, functional and OO, careful and bold, etc, etc. I take as much variety as I can get, because the more diversity you have, the more problems you can spot and solve quickly. An especially hard part about software is thinking about users. Good developers are always imagining the effect their choices have on the people they serve. But our imagination is limited by our experiences. Our empathy comes most easily for people like the ones we know. The more diverse your team, the more likely you are to spot and solve human problems. So sure, it's not scientifically proven to be optimum. But the default isn't either. If we only question the things that seem novel, that's just a fancy way of arguing for a sort of generic orthodoxy.