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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). [

• 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.
        • flukus 10y ago
          It's in the context of hiring though, "the best" means "the best available".
          • ubernostrum 10y ago
            No, it means "the best we're willing to hire". I work in an office full of people who kick ass but wouldn't make it past the phone screen at most "hire the best" places. Their loss is our gain.
        • aantix 10y ago
          Money in Silicon Valley knows no prejudice. One of the companies that I consulted for offered 10K placement bonuses if you could recommend an engineer that stayed for just three months. This idea that there's a group of hidden engineers just waiting to discovered and included, that they just haven't been shown a company that cares, that somehow if we just went to the right unrepresented areas or schools or groups they would be there they'd be waiting to add millions to the bottom line... Just isn't true. If you're not showing off your skills, putting yourself out there with code, meetups, conferences, then no, you're not one of the best. Engineers can self-delude themselves all day in their cubicle with how clever their code is, but if you're not sharing it with the world then you're not doing enough to be included in the best.