4 ms·

Slack’s top engineer suggests that Google do “blind assessments” for hiring

11 points by hvo 10y ago

euyyn 10y ago
> “Google has such great facilities—Twitter has two or three cafes and so no one goes to spend money in mid-Market,” he said, referring to a section of downtown San Francisco where Twitter is based. > Similarly, many large Silicon Valley companies have in-house catering, daycare, and other amenities that make offices little self-contained communities that hardly require interaction with surrounding neighborhoods. > “Do we need to open up an office and have six cafes?" Obviously easier to do in the middle of San Francisco, than in zoning-nightmare Mountain View: Imagine 10k+ people trying to have lunch in the one and only pub around.
Eridrus 10y ago
I went and found Slack's diversity report and they have more white people than anyone else mentioned in the article: https://slackhq.com/inclusion-and-diversity-at-slack-e42f93845732#.caxjzqld1 https://slackhq.com/inclusion-and-diversity-at-slack-e42f938... And even Google has more Women in engineering. I'm not sure if they're really in a position to be lecturing everyone, especially considering they're burning money and running at a much smaller scale. Interestingly, in the Ars comments someone made a good point about how these companies draw from an international pool of candidates, so maybe it's not correct to compare their entire working populations to US ethnic demographics. I don't know if these companies have this info, but it would be super interesting to get these statistics for employees who were born in the US or emigrated there as children. Though the numbers on women would remain lackluster. All of this makes me much more sympathetic to Facebook's stance on this, that this is a pipeline problem. Only 18% of CS degrees are going to Women: https://ngcproject.org/statistics https://ngcproject.org/statistics Until we fix that, these companies will be fighting over the same pool of talent.
automatwon 10y ago
They created this culture where people came from certain schools and certain backgrounds. That is a very, very hard culture to change. What kind of 'background'? Economic? Social? Education? They're inter-related, yes, but for actionable initiatives to take place, the lack of diversity along these dimensions have to be isolated, acknowledged, and prioritized. Otherwise, it's just recasting the problem and expecting companies to spit out answers. If Engineering schools became more diverse, I have no doubt there will be more diversity of engineers in the workforce, too. Without establishing diversity in these earlier funnels, such that people's background are more diverse, companies will continue to have to "overcompensate" for diversity, as to avoid criticism. In the case of these particular companies having a lack of diversity, I don't think it's inherently a 'culture' that has been formed, but more so about the network. Network and compound effects makes it harder for these companies to course-correct. A person's set of friend is not a random sample. Potentially, people are more likely to form friendships with people from their own race / culture. This is not to say they are discriminating or racist. An H1B worker who went to school in Asia will likely have a greater percentage of Asian friends, and by transitivity refer more Asian people. Again, if the earlier stages in the funnel, such as education, more diverse, maybe people will have a more diverse set of friends, in the aggregate, and refer a more diverse set of friends to their employer, in the aggregate.
automatwon 10y ago
They created this culture where people came from certain schools and certain backgrounds. That is a very, very hard culture to change. What kind of 'background'? Economic? Social? Education? They're inter-related, yes, but for actionable initiatives to take place, the lack of diversity along these dimensions have to be isolated, acknowledged, and prioritized. Otherwise, it's just recasting the problem and expecting companies to spit out answers. If Engineering schools became more diverse, I have no doubt there will be more diversity of engineers in the workforce, too. In the case of these particular companies having a lack of diversity, I think it is inherently the 'culture' that has been formed, but more so about the network. Network and compound effects makes it especially harder for these companies to course correct. A person's set of friend is not a random sample. Potentially, people are more likely to form friendships with people from their own race / culture. This is not to say they are discriminating or racist. An H1B worker who went to school in Asia will likely have a greater percentage of Asian friends, and by transitivity refer more Asian people. So again, if made the earlier stages in the funnel, such as education, more diverse, maybe people will have a more diverse set of friends, in the aggregate, and refer a more diverse set of friends to their employer, in the aggregate.

11 points by hvo 10y ago

euyyn 10y ago

> “Google has such great facilities—Twitter has two or three cafes and so no one goes to spend money in mid-Market,” he said, referring to a section of downtown San Francisco where Twitter is based. > Similarly, many large Silicon Valley companies have in-house catering, daycare, and other amenities that make offices little self-contained communities that hardly require interaction with surrounding neighborhoods. > “Do we need to open up an office and have six cafes?" Obviously easier to do in the middle of San Francisco, than in zoning-nightmare Mountain View: Imagine 10k+ people trying to have lunch in the one and only pub around.

Eridrus 10y ago

I went and found Slack's diversity report and they have more white people than anyone else mentioned in the article: https://slackhq.com/inclusion-and-diversity-at-slack-e42f93845732#.caxjzqld1 https://slackhq.com/inclusion-and-diversity-at-slack-e42f938... And even Google has more Women in engineering. I'm not sure if they're really in a position to be lecturing everyone, especially considering they're burning money and running at a much smaller scale. Interestingly, in the Ars comments someone made a good point about how these companies draw from an international pool of candidates, so maybe it's not correct to compare their entire working populations to US ethnic demographics. I don't know if these companies have this info, but it would be super interesting to get these statistics for employees who were born in the US or emigrated there as children. Though the numbers on women would remain lackluster. All of this makes me much more sympathetic to Facebook's stance on this, that this is a pipeline problem. Only 18% of CS degrees are going to Women: https://ngcproject.org/statistics https://ngcproject.org/statistics Until we fix that, these companies will be fighting over the same pool of talent.

automatwon 10y ago

They created this culture where people came from certain schools and certain backgrounds. That is a very, very hard culture to change. What kind of 'background'? Economic? Social? Education? They're inter-related, yes, but for actionable initiatives to take place, the lack of diversity along these dimensions have to be isolated, acknowledged, and prioritized. Otherwise, it's just recasting the problem and expecting companies to spit out answers. If Engineering schools became more diverse, I have no doubt there will be more diversity of engineers in the workforce, too. Without establishing diversity in these earlier funnels, such that people's background are more diverse, companies will continue to have to "overcompensate" for diversity, as to avoid criticism. In the case of these particular companies having a lack of diversity, I don't think it's inherently a 'culture' that has been formed, but more so about the network. Network and compound effects makes it harder for these companies to course-correct. A person's set of friend is not a random sample. Potentially, people are more likely to form friendships with people from their own race / culture. This is not to say they are discriminating or racist. An H1B worker who went to school in Asia will likely have a greater percentage of Asian friends, and by transitivity refer more Asian people. Again, if the earlier stages in the funnel, such as education, more diverse, maybe people will have a more diverse set of friends, in the aggregate, and refer a more diverse set of friends to their employer, in the aggregate.

automatwon 10y ago

They created this culture where people came from certain schools and certain backgrounds. That is a very, very hard culture to change. What kind of 'background'? Economic? Social? Education? They're inter-related, yes, but for actionable initiatives to take place, the lack of diversity along these dimensions have to be isolated, acknowledged, and prioritized. Otherwise, it's just recasting the problem and expecting companies to spit out answers. If Engineering schools became more diverse, I have no doubt there will be more diversity of engineers in the workforce, too. In the case of these particular companies having a lack of diversity, I think it is inherently the 'culture' that has been formed, but more so about the network. Network and compound effects makes it especially harder for these companies to course correct. A person's set of friend is not a random sample. Potentially, people are more likely to form friendships with people from their own race / culture. This is not to say they are discriminating or racist. An H1B worker who went to school in Asia will likely have a greater percentage of Asian friends, and by transitivity refer more Asian people. So again, if made the earlier stages in the funnel, such as education, more diverse, maybe people will have a more diverse set of friends, in the aggregate, and refer a more diverse set of friends to their employer, in the aggregate.