3 ms·
Ask HN: Ethics of bonuses tied to diversity targets?
Anon for this one. I'm a mid level manager at a large (10k+ people) company HQed in the SF Bay Area. Like most companies here we have a diversity issue - our proportion of women and underrepresented minorities is not inline with where we want it to be or the general population (although we're better than most).
While we're using a range of tactics to improve, one has me asking an ethical question: how ethical is it to tie our cash bonuses to improvements in our diversity numbers? Our company pays annual bonuses tied to individual performance and this year one of the performance factors is an improvement in our diversity numbers. Needless to say this leads to essentially quotas and preference for new hires and backfills. What does everyone think about tying performance incentives to improvements in these metrics?
- CurtHagenlocher 10y agoHow is this fundamentally any different than tying bonuses to any other metric where the interests of the individual and the interests of the company aren't perfectly aligned? I'm thinking in particular of sales, where there's a lot more opportunity for this kind of mismatch.
- anonSVer 10y agoTo me there's a difference between tying incentives to top line sales vs. quotas for people
- Eridrus 10y agoConsider that maybe your process is not as neutral as you think and quotas make the company more successful because otherwise the process is failing. You can still pick the best candidates from underrepresented groups. Consider that there are also whole system effects where by hiring more diverse groups, more talented people are willing to apply to your company in general, contributing a little to a virtuous cycle. Consider the fact that there is some literature showing that more diverse companies perform better, and people's diverse perspectives may be useful outside their individual contributions. Also consider that passively waiting for resumes to come in is not your only option, you could go out and explicitly engage with underrepresented groups and find people who you would like to hire.