4 ms·

Let's deep dive into diversity further. Why do we want diversity? Because apparently, we want people with different perspectives and experiences. Now with "div

Let's deep dive into diversity further. Why do we want diversity? Because apparently, we want people with different perspectives and experiences. Now with "diversity", we have to specify how we split up the population into groups. We can use gender, race, country of origin, income, etc. The media and general "diversity officers" use race and gender. However, this type of group division is not efficient for the goal of different perspectives and experiences. Female Americans have very similar experiences and perspectives compared to male Americans, as do black Americans and white Americans. Differences in country of origin provide much higher differences in perspectives and experiences. A black American would have a more similar viewpoint with a white American than a black African immigrant. Dividing the groups by country of origin is MUCH more effective at satisfying the goal. When viewed through the lense of country of origin, the tech field is very diverse in comparison to every other field out there. The field has a high immigrant %, and even the Americans are generally first generation Americans with immigrant parents, providing an extra boost in diversity. Ironically, using country of origin to divide up groups shows that tech is much more diverse than fields like journalism/HR/etc. that vehemently advocate for diversity in tech.

braveo 10y ago
If we're going whole hog we also have to include the various drug users and people of differing ages. What if that 18 year old prostitute druggie has a perspective that isn't covered in our scrum standups!
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  If that druggie can code, why not?
geofft 10y ago
> Let's deep dive into diversity further. Why do we want diversity? Because apparently, we want people with different perspectives and experiences. I don't think that's all of it. People have been pitching that as a politically-correct argument for diversity, since "There are actual racists and actual sexists among us and they have successfully biased the industry" is too offensive to say out loud. But diversity of perspective isn't the fundamental reason. Absent a solid scientific reason to believe that one gender, one race, one country of origin, one level of income, etc. is truly better at the job than another (as opposed to better thanks to circumstance and existing systems of oppression), a non-diverse candidate pool is an arbitrary subset of a diverse candidate pool. This is both unprofitable for the industry, because you're skipping qualified candidates for no good reason, and unjust to the candidates whom you're skipping. So, if these candidates truly are qualified and there's no scientific reason why they're statistically worse at the job, why are they being underrepresented? Because we have racists and sexists among us and they're in power. Which is why it makes sense to look at race and sex and so forth more than other axes like viewpoint or country of origin: first, race and sex are particularly arbitrary, and second, that's what we know people have particularly discriminated on. There is discrimination on other axes, and it's absolutely also worth looking at, but it's a bit less egregious.
- FT_intern 10y ago
  > is too offensive to say out loud Not only offensive but also very hard to prove. >Absent a solid scientific reason to believe that one gender, one race, one country of origin, one level of income, etc. is truly better at the job than another (as opposed to better thanks to circumstance and existing systems of oppression), a non-diverse candidate pool is an arbitrary subset of a diverse candidate pool. This is both unprofitable for the industry, because you're skipping qualified candidates for no good reason, and unjust to the candidates whom you're skipping. There are objectively less qualified under represented minorities and females in the tech industry. Just check CS major demographics, stackoverflow demographics, etc. It's an undisputed fact. If you want to cry foul on why they are less qualified, citing unequal representation is not adequate proof of sexism or racism. Sexism, racism and discrimination are useless concepts unless properly and concisely defined before discussion because everyone's definition is different. It is very annoying to have people classify everything as "racism" or "sexism" to lazily avoid the need to justify arguments.
  - geofft 10y ago
    > There are objectively less qualified under represented minorities and females in the tech industry. Just check CS major demographics, stackoverflow demographics, etc. It's an undisputed fact. I'm not sure I understand this sentence. It is an undisputed fact that the proportions of sex, race, etc. in tech are not reflective of the population at large, yes. But I'm not sure how this means that certain groups are less qualified. > citing unequal representation is not adequate proof of sexism or racism Sure. But it is the simplest hypothesis; other hypotheses have a higher burden of proof. Serious, straightforward racism and sexism are within living memory; FORTRAN, for instance, is older than Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement. There's good reason to believe sexism and racism could cause the discrepancy we see. There is less good reason to believe an inherent biological bias; citing unequal representation is also not an adequate proof of biological differences.
    - FT_intern 10y ago
      >I'm not sure I understand this sentence. It is an undisputed fact that the proportions of sex, race, etc. in tech are not reflective of the population at large, yes. But I'm not sure how this means that certain groups are less qualified. The question you were answering was "On average, do some races/genders make better tech workers than others?". the answer is, yes some races/genders are more qualified to work in tech than other races/genders because on average, they are more likely to spend the time to become qualified (see college and CS major demographics) and to gain CS knowledge. That is why the tech field skews toward a gender or race over others. Because some races/genders are literally more qualified for tech work than others. No company is "skipping qualified candidates" because female and underrepresented minorities have not spent the time to become qualified to work in the tech field. They are, on average, literally less qualified to work in the tech field, given their current, average CS and programming knowledge. >There is less good reason to believe an inherent biological bias; citing unequal representation is also not an adequate proof of biological differences. Denying that sexism/discrimination against minorities is the cause of unequal representation is not the same as saying that the cause is biological differences. Some easy explanations for unequal representation could be society's pressure on men to make money, Asian/White parents' pressure on kids to do well, etc. Unequal representation is not enough to prove racism/sexism against females and URMs.

braveo 10y ago

If we're going whole hog we also have to include the various drug users and people of differing ages. What if that 18 year old prostitute druggie has a perspective that isn't covered in our scrum standups!

Apocryphon 10y ago
If that druggie can code, why not?

geofft 10y ago

> Let's deep dive into diversity further. Why do we want diversity? Because apparently, we want people with different perspectives and experiences. I don't think that's all of it. People have been pitching that as a politically-correct argument for diversity, since "There are actual racists and actual sexists among us and they have successfully biased the industry" is too offensive to say out loud. But diversity of perspective isn't the fundamental reason. Absent a solid scientific reason to believe that one gender, one race, one country of origin, one level of income, etc. is truly better at the job than another (as opposed to better thanks to circumstance and existing systems of oppression), a non-diverse candidate pool is an arbitrary subset of a diverse candidate pool. This is both unprofitable for the industry, because you're skipping qualified candidates for no good reason, and unjust to the candidates whom you're skipping. So, if these candidates truly are qualified and there's no scientific reason why they're statistically worse at the job, why are they being underrepresented? Because we have racists and sexists among us and they're in power. Which is why it makes sense to look at race and sex and so forth more than other axes like viewpoint or country of origin: first, race and sex are particularly arbitrary, and second, that's what we know people have particularly discriminated on. There is discrimination on other axes, and it's absolutely also worth looking at, but it's a bit less egregious.

FT_intern 10y ago
> is too offensive to say out loud Not only offensive but also very hard to prove. >Absent a solid scientific reason to believe that one gender, one race, one country of origin, one level of income, etc. is truly better at the job than another (as opposed to better thanks to circumstance and existing systems of oppression), a non-diverse candidate pool is an arbitrary subset of a diverse candidate pool. This is both unprofitable for the industry, because you're skipping qualified candidates for no good reason, and unjust to the candidates whom you're skipping. There are objectively less qualified under represented minorities and females in the tech industry. Just check CS major demographics, stackoverflow demographics, etc. It's an undisputed fact. If you want to cry foul on why they are less qualified, citing unequal representation is not adequate proof of sexism or racism. Sexism, racism and discrimination are useless concepts unless properly and concisely defined before discussion because everyone's definition is different. It is very annoying to have people classify everything as "racism" or "sexism" to lazily avoid the need to justify arguments.
- geofft 10y ago
  > There are objectively less qualified under represented minorities and females in the tech industry. Just check CS major demographics, stackoverflow demographics, etc. It's an undisputed fact. I'm not sure I understand this sentence. It is an undisputed fact that the proportions of sex, race, etc. in tech are not reflective of the population at large, yes. But I'm not sure how this means that certain groups are less qualified. > citing unequal representation is not adequate proof of sexism or racism Sure. But it is the simplest hypothesis; other hypotheses have a higher burden of proof. Serious, straightforward racism and sexism are within living memory; FORTRAN, for instance, is older than Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement. There's good reason to believe sexism and racism could cause the discrepancy we see. There is less good reason to believe an inherent biological bias; citing unequal representation is also not an adequate proof of biological differences.
  - FT_intern 10y ago
    >I'm not sure I understand this sentence. It is an undisputed fact that the proportions of sex, race, etc. in tech are not reflective of the population at large, yes. But I'm not sure how this means that certain groups are less qualified. The question you were answering was "On average, do some races/genders make better tech workers than others?". the answer is, yes some races/genders are more qualified to work in tech than other races/genders because on average, they are more likely to spend the time to become qualified (see college and CS major demographics) and to gain CS knowledge. That is why the tech field skews toward a gender or race over others. Because some races/genders are literally more qualified for tech work than others. No company is "skipping qualified candidates" because female and underrepresented minorities have not spent the time to become qualified to work in the tech field. They are, on average, literally less qualified to work in the tech field, given their current, average CS and programming knowledge. >There is less good reason to believe an inherent biological bias; citing unequal representation is also not an adequate proof of biological differences. Denying that sexism/discrimination against minorities is the cause of unequal representation is not the same as saying that the cause is biological differences. Some easy explanations for unequal representation could be society's pressure on men to make money, Asian/White parents' pressure on kids to do well, etc. Unequal representation is not enough to prove racism/sexism against females and URMs.