16 ms·

>It's always going to be possible to find data that indicates discrimination, unless companies hire in exact quotas (which would also be discriminatory really).

>It's always going to be possible to find data that indicates discrimination, unless companies hire in exact quotas (which would also be discriminatory really). There already are off-the-record quotas. Who in management hasn't heard discussion at least eluding the the need for a diversity hire? Probably very few people at this point. I believe a distinction must be made: Equality of opportunity is good. Equality of outcome will lead us to the world of Harrison Bergeron's.

zo1 10y ago
>"I believe a distinction must be made: Equality of opportunity is good. Equality of outcome will lead us to the world of Harrison Bergeron's." People have been trying to hammer that distinction for a long time. For certain people, it just doesn't "stick". They believe there is a boogey man, and by golly they will make sure to get the state to punish any scenario that hints to its existence. If anything, I'd argue that they are creating a boogey man. E.g. You push an agenda that promotes certain groups or genders above actual merit, and pretty soon I'd argue that people will develop a subconscious bias against individuals in those groups. I.e. They will compensate and they will discriminate in order to fix the bias that they are seeing unfold in front of their eyes. And they will probably apply it to everyone, just like a stereotype.
- bobdole1234 10y ago
  I'd argue that most people will only pay lip service to the idea of equality until someone steps in to actually force them to walk their talk. Most of the problems I've seen with diversity hires being "less capable" has been because they've had to work with people who are poor communicators and can't get past the idea that not everyone has the same shared background they do. That means your co-worker from Taiwan doesn't recognize your carefully constructed metaphors based arounds star wars quotes, and they will likely try their best to understand what you meant, but you should have just communicated like an adult instead of an excited teenager.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > I'd argue that most people will only pay lip service to the idea of equality until someone steps in to actually force them to walk their talk. Most people don't care about anything. But apathy isn't inequality unless it's applied unequally. > Most of the problems I've seen with diversity hires being "less capable" has been because they've had to work with people who are poor communicators and can't get past the idea that not everyone has the same shared background they do. Lack of shared background is a type of being less capable. People use Star Wars metaphors because when everybody gets them, the metaphor is more engaging and takes less explaining than the non-metaphor version. And you're making this out to be a problem, but it's really only an advantage of cultural assimilation. Hang around coders for a while and you'll decide it's time to see Star Wars. Which you can do even if you're originally from Taiwan.
- garanduss 10y ago
  The idea you describe in your second paragraph is to some extent rational, too. For example, a degree from a top college means less for a black job applicant because of the heavy affirmative action advantage given to them.
  - logandavis 10y ago
    What exactly makes you think that a degree "means less" for a black job applicant than it does for a white one, when a white applicant is approximately 150% likelier to have a degree than a black one is? Are you attempting to assert causation in the absence of correlation?
    - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      I think he meant the following. Suppose that for University X, the minimal SAT requirement for white applicants was 700/700, and for black applicants was 400/400. Suppose that the SAT scores of all white students at X are uniformly distributed over (700-800/700-800), and those of the black students are uniformly distributed over (400-800/400-800). Now randomly pick one white student, and one black student. Which of them is likely to have the higher SAT score? And which do you want performing heart surgery on your child?
      - zo1 10y ago
        That is indeed what I meant. It's a whole lot more "obvious" here in South Africa. There are actual quotas, rather than "score" enhancements and juggling like there is in America. With the assumption that the "range" of ability is equal in both groups. The simple fact that you take a smaller quantity of one, rather than the other, implies that you're taking a different ability range of one group over the other. So if you have 100 black, 100 white students, and both their group scores range using a normal distribution from 500-1000. But you enforce that only 10 whites can be taken, and 40 blacks should be taken. Then you're guaranteeing that only the "top" 10 of the white students get picked, while with the blacks the top 40 get picked. This means you're going down the distribution and selecting black individuals that have lower scores.
- moduspol 10y ago
  > If anything, I'd argue that they are creating a boogey man. The concept itself perpetuates the boogey man. We see these lawsuits and each one subconsciously implies, "Yep, racism is still a big problem in the industry. Here's another big company being sued for it. It's a good thing we have the Dept of Labor watching out for stuff like this. Who knows what these companies would be getting away with without it." But it's the lawsuit itself that makes you think that, regardless of how much actual racism in the industry plays into it. It's self-perpetuating.
dmix 10y ago
I've been in software for ~10yrs now and can only count the number of engineers I've met who weren't white or Asian (Indians included) on one hand. And that doesn't say anything about anyone's particular ability to be engineers. It's just less likely to happen via the available applicants. Although I have noticed a spike in women, that doesn't seem to be the issue here. It seems to me the Dept of Labor is trying to solve a problem at the hiring level that exists at a much higher level, beyond the scope of any one company. Additionally, in that context I'm not even convinced it's a problem in itself that needs solving via state intervention. Unless there is some abstract benefit to diversity of the people behind the code in software development that I'm not seeing. Other than the fact engineers make better money than other industries and it's in demand - but that should be a sufficient incentive by itself.
- mulmen 10y ago
  State intervention depends on the cause(s). Direct intervention against the employer like this would make sense if there was deliberate discrimination in violation of the law. I agree the state should be acting at a much higher level to solve these problems. This could take the form of education incentives to get a more diverse workforce or do something about income inequality that prevents some demographics from pursuing certain career paths.
  - pm90 10y ago
    I agree with this comment. I don't think the DOL would act unless it had information that goes beyond just over representation of certain races in the company's labor force. Anecdotally, a friend who was interviewing with Oracle was given a lowball offer by a Oracle recruiter of the same ethnicity and told that it was "a very good offer for a person like you". At the time I believed it was just a rogue interviewer, but it sounds like this may have been more widespread.
    - mulmen 10y ago
      I don't doubt your friends perception but as a white male if someone said "a person like you" to me in reference to an offer I would think they were referencing my education or work experience, not my gender or race. That may be privilege talking, I honestly don't know. Maybe I'm just naive.
Frondo 10y ago
You know what, though? If we actually had equality of opportunity, it doesn't seem like we'd see the kind of disparity we do. Certainly not at a big corporation where there should be enough of an employee pool to have it at least somewhat reflect the general population of the region. But then, when I listen to the stories women in tech (for example) tell, and they do tell a LOT of the same stories, it's clear we're pretty far from equality of opportunity. And I won't even get into those experiments people've done with sending out identical resumes, some with "white"-sounding name, some with "black"-sounding names... guess who doesn't get called in for an interview. So I just don't buy that most people even give a shit about equality of opportunity, even those who pay lip service to it. I think most people don't want to be challenged on anything that makes them the slightest bit uncomfortable (like having unconscious biases or structural racism pointed out).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mulmen 10y ago
  I completely agree with you but I'm not sure that we should tackle this problem by targeting employers alone, I think it is a much wider reaching social problem. Discriminatory hiring practices are but one of many symptoms of the disease.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    Interestingly, someone pointed out in another discussion that women are more apt to be found in careers that have educational barriers to entry. Women also obtain college degrees at a rate that is meaningfully higher than men, presumably in part because they want access to those restricted professions. Is the social problem that the discriminated are pushed to 'over achieve' while the rest have no expectations placed on them and are more likely to fall into whatever work is available? I think this definitely holds true for the tech profession where for many of us the jobs appeared as extension to hobbies, not something we actually sat down to plan to do. If we were pressured to go to school and get a good, well respected, job above all else – which I think we can say certain segments of the population are – the path into tech would have been far less obvious. Especially when you go back several years ago, before tech was 'cool', but even now doctor or lawyer sounds better than programmer.
logandavis 10y ago
1) Don't you believe that equality of opportunity would lead to equality of outcome (plus or minus random variation)? If not, what alternative result would you predict would arise from equality of opportunity, and why? 2) Don't you see how taking steps to correct towards equality of outcome leads towards equality of opportunity (by increasing the networking / financial / inspiration opportunities for disadvantaged groups)? If you think that such correction has social disadvantages, why do they outweigh that social benefit?
- wallace_f 10y ago
  1) Equality of opportunity will never lead to equality of outcome. Our current politics around equality are fraudulent. Different people have different attributes. It doesn't mean one group is better. It just means people are different. For example, the NBA will never be dominated by players of Asian descent. Another: you will never see women asking for equal opportunity for jobs like working in the north sea on offshore oil rigs. 2) We can use words until the end of time to weigh the merits of state-forced equality. Same could be said about anything else that is non-scientific in nature: i.e. we could also argue about the relative merits of state-forced equality in communism vs capitalism in the same way. You can never prove anything this way in non-scientific fields, and at best all that can be done is hope to convince the other person that your reasoning is superior. However, before we got to that point, I'd even reject it on moral principle: it is immoral for government to enforce racist or sexist policies that discriminate against certain groups of people. Yes, it's in the name of moral outrage (equality), but note government-sanctioned use of force always comes with an argument of moral outrage, even if it is almost undeniably immoral, i.e: (America funding Jihadists in the Syrian War, Vietnam, Nazi Germany, the Opening of Japan, the Inquisition, etc., etc.). Further on #2, one of the insights of modern economic theory has been that it can many times be actually better to make adjustments to free market outcomes ex post rather than use heavy handed regulation to force an arbitrary result ex ante. If I were king, I'd much rather see everyone with free access to healthcare, housing, transportation, and education than focus on how many women are working in male-dominated roles like offshore oil drilling in the north sea (or coding, whatever arbitrary field it happens to be).
  - 10y ago
hogrammer 10y ago
The opposite of "quality" is "equality."

zo1 10y ago

>"I believe a distinction must be made: Equality of opportunity is good. Equality of outcome will lead us to the world of Harrison Bergeron's." People have been trying to hammer that distinction for a long time. For certain people, it just doesn't "stick". They believe there is a boogey man, and by golly they will make sure to get the state to punish any scenario that hints to its existence. If anything, I'd argue that they are creating a boogey man. E.g. You push an agenda that promotes certain groups or genders above actual merit, and pretty soon I'd argue that people will develop a subconscious bias against individuals in those groups. I.e. They will compensate and they will discriminate in order to fix the bias that they are seeing unfold in front of their eyes. And they will probably apply it to everyone, just like a stereotype.

bobdole1234 10y ago
I'd argue that most people will only pay lip service to the idea of equality until someone steps in to actually force them to walk their talk. Most of the problems I've seen with diversity hires being "less capable" has been because they've had to work with people who are poor communicators and can't get past the idea that not everyone has the same shared background they do. That means your co-worker from Taiwan doesn't recognize your carefully constructed metaphors based arounds star wars quotes, and they will likely try their best to understand what you meant, but you should have just communicated like an adult instead of an excited teenager.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > I'd argue that most people will only pay lip service to the idea of equality until someone steps in to actually force them to walk their talk. Most people don't care about anything. But apathy isn't inequality unless it's applied unequally. > Most of the problems I've seen with diversity hires being "less capable" has been because they've had to work with people who are poor communicators and can't get past the idea that not everyone has the same shared background they do. Lack of shared background is a type of being less capable. People use Star Wars metaphors because when everybody gets them, the metaphor is more engaging and takes less explaining than the non-metaphor version. And you're making this out to be a problem, but it's really only an advantage of cultural assimilation. Hang around coders for a while and you'll decide it's time to see Star Wars. Which you can do even if you're originally from Taiwan.
garanduss 10y ago
The idea you describe in your second paragraph is to some extent rational, too. For example, a degree from a top college means less for a black job applicant because of the heavy affirmative action advantage given to them.
- logandavis 10y ago
  What exactly makes you think that a degree "means less" for a black job applicant than it does for a white one, when a white applicant is approximately 150% likelier to have a degree than a black one is? Are you attempting to assert causation in the absence of correlation?
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    I think he meant the following. Suppose that for University X, the minimal SAT requirement for white applicants was 700/700, and for black applicants was 400/400. Suppose that the SAT scores of all white students at X are uniformly distributed over (700-800/700-800), and those of the black students are uniformly distributed over (400-800/400-800). Now randomly pick one white student, and one black student. Which of them is likely to have the higher SAT score? And which do you want performing heart surgery on your child?
    - zo1 10y ago
      That is indeed what I meant. It's a whole lot more "obvious" here in South Africa. There are actual quotas, rather than "score" enhancements and juggling like there is in America. With the assumption that the "range" of ability is equal in both groups. The simple fact that you take a smaller quantity of one, rather than the other, implies that you're taking a different ability range of one group over the other. So if you have 100 black, 100 white students, and both their group scores range using a normal distribution from 500-1000. But you enforce that only 10 whites can be taken, and 40 blacks should be taken. Then you're guaranteeing that only the "top" 10 of the white students get picked, while with the blacks the top 40 get picked. This means you're going down the distribution and selecting black individuals that have lower scores.
moduspol 10y ago
> If anything, I'd argue that they are creating a boogey man. The concept itself perpetuates the boogey man. We see these lawsuits and each one subconsciously implies, "Yep, racism is still a big problem in the industry. Here's another big company being sued for it. It's a good thing we have the Dept of Labor watching out for stuff like this. Who knows what these companies would be getting away with without it." But it's the lawsuit itself that makes you think that, regardless of how much actual racism in the industry plays into it. It's self-perpetuating.

dmix 10y ago

I've been in software for ~10yrs now and can only count the number of engineers I've met who weren't white or Asian (Indians included) on one hand. And that doesn't say anything about anyone's particular ability to be engineers. It's just less likely to happen via the available applicants. Although I have noticed a spike in women, that doesn't seem to be the issue here. It seems to me the Dept of Labor is trying to solve a problem at the hiring level that exists at a much higher level, beyond the scope of any one company. Additionally, in that context I'm not even convinced it's a problem in itself that needs solving via state intervention. Unless there is some abstract benefit to diversity of the people behind the code in software development that I'm not seeing. Other than the fact engineers make better money than other industries and it's in demand - but that should be a sufficient incentive by itself.

mulmen 10y ago
State intervention depends on the cause(s). Direct intervention against the employer like this would make sense if there was deliberate discrimination in violation of the law. I agree the state should be acting at a much higher level to solve these problems. This could take the form of education incentives to get a more diverse workforce or do something about income inequality that prevents some demographics from pursuing certain career paths.
- pm90 10y ago
  I agree with this comment. I don't think the DOL would act unless it had information that goes beyond just over representation of certain races in the company's labor force. Anecdotally, a friend who was interviewing with Oracle was given a lowball offer by a Oracle recruiter of the same ethnicity and told that it was "a very good offer for a person like you". At the time I believed it was just a rogue interviewer, but it sounds like this may have been more widespread.
  - mulmen 10y ago
    I don't doubt your friends perception but as a white male if someone said "a person like you" to me in reference to an offer I would think they were referencing my education or work experience, not my gender or race. That may be privilege talking, I honestly don't know. Maybe I'm just naive.

Frondo 10y ago

You know what, though? If we actually had equality of opportunity, it doesn't seem like we'd see the kind of disparity we do. Certainly not at a big corporation where there should be enough of an employee pool to have it at least somewhat reflect the general population of the region. But then, when I listen to the stories women in tech (for example) tell, and they do tell a LOT of the same stories, it's clear we're pretty far from equality of opportunity. And I won't even get into those experiments people've done with sending out identical resumes, some with "white"-sounding name, some with "black"-sounding names... guess who doesn't get called in for an interview. So I just don't buy that most people even give a shit about equality of opportunity, even those who pay lip service to it. I think most people don't want to be challenged on anything that makes them the slightest bit uncomfortable (like having unconscious biases or structural racism pointed out).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mulmen 10y ago
I completely agree with you but I'm not sure that we should tackle this problem by targeting employers alone, I think it is a much wider reaching social problem. Discriminatory hiring practices are but one of many symptoms of the disease.
- randomdata 10y ago
  Interestingly, someone pointed out in another discussion that women are more apt to be found in careers that have educational barriers to entry. Women also obtain college degrees at a rate that is meaningfully higher than men, presumably in part because they want access to those restricted professions. Is the social problem that the discriminated are pushed to 'over achieve' while the rest have no expectations placed on them and are more likely to fall into whatever work is available? I think this definitely holds true for the tech profession where for many of us the jobs appeared as extension to hobbies, not something we actually sat down to plan to do. If we were pressured to go to school and get a good, well respected, job above all else – which I think we can say certain segments of the population are – the path into tech would have been far less obvious. Especially when you go back several years ago, before tech was 'cool', but even now doctor or lawyer sounds better than programmer.

logandavis 10y ago

1) Don't you believe that equality of opportunity would lead to equality of outcome (plus or minus random variation)? If not, what alternative result would you predict would arise from equality of opportunity, and why? 2) Don't you see how taking steps to correct towards equality of outcome leads towards equality of opportunity (by increasing the networking / financial / inspiration opportunities for disadvantaged groups)? If you think that such correction has social disadvantages, why do they outweigh that social benefit?

wallace_f 10y ago
1) Equality of opportunity will never lead to equality of outcome. Our current politics around equality are fraudulent. Different people have different attributes. It doesn't mean one group is better. It just means people are different. For example, the NBA will never be dominated by players of Asian descent. Another: you will never see women asking for equal opportunity for jobs like working in the north sea on offshore oil rigs. 2) We can use words until the end of time to weigh the merits of state-forced equality. Same could be said about anything else that is non-scientific in nature: i.e. we could also argue about the relative merits of state-forced equality in communism vs capitalism in the same way. You can never prove anything this way in non-scientific fields, and at best all that can be done is hope to convince the other person that your reasoning is superior. However, before we got to that point, I'd even reject it on moral principle: it is immoral for government to enforce racist or sexist policies that discriminate against certain groups of people. Yes, it's in the name of moral outrage (equality), but note government-sanctioned use of force always comes with an argument of moral outrage, even if it is almost undeniably immoral, i.e: (America funding Jihadists in the Syrian War, Vietnam, Nazi Germany, the Opening of Japan, the Inquisition, etc., etc.). Further on #2, one of the insights of modern economic theory has been that it can many times be actually better to make adjustments to free market outcomes ex post rather than use heavy handed regulation to force an arbitrary result ex ante. If I were king, I'd much rather see everyone with free access to healthcare, housing, transportation, and education than focus on how many women are working in male-dominated roles like offshore oil drilling in the north sea (or coding, whatever arbitrary field it happens to be).
- 10y ago

hogrammer 10y ago

The opposite of "quality" is "equality."