7 ms·

Donations and Women in Tech Panels Are Not a Diversity Strategy

16 points by j_s 10y ago

dongslol 10y ago
Is there a refutation to the argument that all these "diversity for diversity's sake" programs, this sort of frantic insistence upstream to achieve diversity at all costs, produces some less than qualified candidates? In every institution I've ever been at, people talked about how to recruit more women, but in practice this meant grabbing the first woman who applied and using them as a prop to show how diverse they were. Professors have blatantly admitted to my female friends that they were being used for that purpose.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Oxitendwe 10y ago
  Yes, hiring people based on their race/gender creates a perverse framework of incentives. A good example of some of the problems that arise from valuing "diversity" over actual merits is Susan Fowler. Her bosses treated her very badly because she was a woman, by refusing her requests to transfer and giving her bad marks on her performance exams, and the reason they did it was because of their incentive to appear "diverse". I don't mean to excuse their behavior, it was horrible, but maybe things would have been somewhat better if the system didn't reward her bosses for having a woman on their team (and subsequent disincentive for them leaving).
  - dllthomas 10y ago
    > the reason they did it was because of their incentive to appear "diverse" This seems to radically mischaracterize the issues in that case.
    - emiliobumachar 10y ago
      It seems to match her original blog post. "It turned out that keeping me on the team made my manager look good, and I overheard him boasting to the rest of the team that even though the rest of the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some on his team." (from https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...) That's not the worst thing she reported, but it's there, and it's definitely very bad. Would you elaborate on what mischaracterization you see?
      - dllthomas 10y ago
        A characterization that the origin of the problem was Uber paying too much attention to diversity statistics.
        Oxitendwe 10y ago
        I think it's very reasonable to say that the reason it made her bosses look good to have a woman on their team was directly because of the push for diversity and inclusion in the tech world. Why else would they value such a thing?
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Uber's problem was the workplace was toxic. In a former company, as a straight guy I've been hit on by another guy who was my team lead (and well connected). I can tell you it was not comfortable. I ended up leaving to another project as a planned transition, but my initial complaints directly to that team lead were laughed off as "I'm kidding (but I'll try again)". I bet there are a LOT of unreported such cases. Susan Fowler's case has less to do with race/gender than sexual harassment and abuse of power. I sure as hell would avoid working there if that kind of behavior goes unchecked.
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  Also, what percentage of women in tech would represent success in diversity? I don't believe it's exactly 50% in any discipline, lest we suggest the diversity of our genders has zero impact on what people want to do with their lives. So if it's not exactly 50%, what percentage is it? How can you even figure it out? A lack of diversity is one of those things that you know when you see. But as numbers improve, we are going to run into the problem where we have no idea when to stop obsessing over the numbers. It's why I feel that equality in opportunity is the more effective measure. Are people doing what they want to be doing with their lives? Something like 99.9% of midwives in Ontario are female. Is there a diversity problem? If you find men that feel like they can't become midwives for some reason, then yes. But not because that ratio feels imbalanced.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    Females in tech in front-line positions roughly match the number of those graduating with relevant education. It'd rather seem that the primary argument to 'diversity' should be 'getting more women to study the relevant things'. Though: surveys show that women in tech see the #1 issue is 'lack of role models' - ergo - a degree of feedback here, but really ... I firmly believe that if 50% of Comp Sci grads were women, that roughly 50% of Google Engs would be female. Caveat: in management positions there is a totally separate spate of issues. Also - similar issues apply to ethnicity. Tech is about 30% Asian, and very few African Americans or Latinos, which is again commensurate with the pool of graduating talent. Again there are clearly feedback issues - nevertheless - one cannot ignore this white elephant.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
Oxitendwe 10y ago
I don't understand why anyone would need a "diversity strategy". Just hire whoever seems like they would do the best job, and then spend the remainder of the apparently monumental effort that you would have spent executing your "diversity strategy" on improving your bottom line. It's ridiculous that we focus on the racial and gender makeup of applicants instead of just judging them on their accomplishments.
- grzm 10y ago
  Do you believe there are any disparities in demographics between the general population and a given field (such as tech)? What demographic do you belong to? How do you think these disparities might affect society as a whole? If there are disparities, what, if anything, do you think should be done to lessen the disparity in demographics? Edit to add: If you choose to reply, please include attempts at answering all of the questions. Note there's nothing in this comment that assumes that hiring is the appropriate (or only) place something (if anything) should be done. It's easy to dismiss this as only "yes, there are disparities, but it shouldn't be fixed here", or "equal opportunity". That's not the end of the conversation. What does a better solution look like?
  - dongslol 10y ago
    Certainly, but why necessarily at the hiring level? Why is citing the pipeline problem inherently lazy?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - teacup50 10y ago
    > If there are disparities, what, if anything, do you think should be done to lessen the disparity in demographics? Target inequality of opportunity, and do not assume that differences in outcome are prima facie evidence of differences in opportunity. In other words, the pipeline is the place to solve this.
ve55 10y ago
If you want to convince people it is in their own best interest to invest significantly in diversity, it's not likely the intro to this article will cut it for most. The first paper mentions that they only found a correlation, however contradicts themselves in attempting to turn this into causation, despite mentioning that correlation != causation: "While correlation does not equal causation (greater gender and ethnic diversity in corporate leadership doesn’t automatically translate into more profit), the correlation does indicate that when companies commit themselves to diverse leadership, they are more successful." It doesn't seem like this was checked for backwards-causation (companies may be more likely to start prioritizing diversity when they are succeeding, but not when they are failing), among many other potential confounding variables, and it seems that they were very intent on trying to prove their outcome regardless of what kind of data they had, where the article starts out with "We know intuitively that diversity matters. It’s also increasingly clear that it makes sense in purely business terms." I didn't check everything from the second link, but this appears to be a very common pattern. The third link attempts to appeal to the same sense, however goes much further, stating: "it was not “diversity” (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women." This would seem to prove far too much, and is obviously not a generalizable result unless you sincerely believe that replacing all men with women will make your company perform better. I'm unable to view the full text or data from this paper due to the paywall. If you're concerned about the proportion of groups such as women in tech, the right time to get them interested is when they are very young. Not during or after college. With a baseline of significantly more men in tech, you cannot reasonably expect to achieve figures such as a 1:1 ratio of female to male employees. With that said, the author seems to be focusing more on problems after people enter the workplace. There may be a lot of issues here, but I think solutions need to focus on deeper underlying problems such as culture, rather than single bottleneck processes such as promotions (and that which leads up to them).
poiuiop 10y ago
Reading the existing comments on this thread, if it represents an accurate sample size of the type of culture in tech: this is why as a woman I want to drop out.
- grzm 10y ago
  I don't believe it is, given there are many people who generally don't comment on forums at all. There's no reason to think commenters here are a representative sample.
- Oxitendwe 10y ago
  Ironically, I've known women who've wanted to drop out of tech culture because of the massive push for "inclusion" and "diversity". Nobody wants to be a diversity hire, and nobody likes seeing people propped up beyond their ability because of their gender or race. A lot of these people just want to be treated normally, and you don't get that by giving people special treatment.
logfromblammo 10y ago
The action points in the article: 1. Treat the women and people of color already working at your company well, including paying them equitably and preparing them for promotions. 2. Overhaul your interview process. Hire programmers that have the skills the company needs. 3. Institute onboarding. Make sure that everyone has the information they need to succeed at their jobs. None of my employers have ever prepared anyone for promotions, regardless of sex or color. Companies would have to do this at all before questioning whether they do it equitably. Most of the prospective employers I have approached regarding job openings have had a horrible interview process. And I would suggest hiring for aptitude rather than existing skills. Almost everyone focuses on "what have you already done?" rather than "what could you do if we hired you?" It's maddening. Companies can barely test for skill, and I have only seen one that even tried to assess aptitude. That would be great if companies maintained persistent records of internal collaboration. Unfortunately, I have anecdotally observed a trend of decreasing job-specific training, and less robust internal technical documentation. Some companies don't even have a stepwise guide for doing a manual build of their main software product after getting the latest source. In short, those are good suggestions, but they don't need to be specifically targeted by sexes and colors. Everyone would benefit if companies did this. So why don't they? It seems like a sane and decent company would become diverse without needing to make any specific effort to do so, whereas a dysfunctional company would see its problems manifest in many different symptoms, with monoculture being just one of them.
jza00425 10y ago
Women should not get preference because they are women.
- dang 10y ago
  That is an obnoxious way to reply to someone who expressed a personal concern. If you can't be respectful of others, please don't comment here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716297 and marked it off-topic. Edit: it looks like you've been using HN exclusively to comment on politics. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't use HN this way.
ygaf 10y ago
The first paragraph is her premise. On first read, I uncharitably dismissed it - "yeah, tech companies should be tripping over themselves to achieve diversity so they can take advantage of this.... uh, correlation with.... a hot 35% bonus....in the mission-critical field of "probability of "performing well""" (all quotes intentional). Then I charitably followed the links in the paragraph. The scientific studies are underwhelming (in terms of convincing a tech company to do something). The mckinsey article cheapens itself towards the end ("The unequal performance of companies in the same industry and the same country implies that diversity is a competitive differentiator shifting market share toward more diverse companies." That implication is terrible) It's not hard to understand how diversity in the workplace might challenge our minds more, keep us more professional (in company culture and hiring practice), improve fitness in whatever other ways. But it's all conceptual, and until there's more scientific evidence, the literature has to settle for being obnoxious - light on information, heavy on telling the reader what to think before and after said information (tabloid style).

16 points by j_s 10y ago

Is there a refutation to the argument that all these "diversity for diversity's sake" programs, this sort of frantic insistence upstream to achieve diversity at all costs, produces some less than qualified candidates? In every institution I've ever been at, people talked about how to recruit more women, but in practice this meant grabbing the first woman who applied and using them as a prop to show how diverse they were. Professors have blatantly admitted to my female friends that they were being used for that purpose.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Oxitendwe 10y ago
Yes, hiring people based on their race/gender creates a perverse framework of incentives. A good example of some of the problems that arise from valuing "diversity" over actual merits is Susan Fowler. Her bosses treated her very badly because she was a woman, by refusing her requests to transfer and giving her bad marks on her performance exams, and the reason they did it was because of their incentive to appear "diverse". I don't mean to excuse their behavior, it was horrible, but maybe things would have been somewhat better if the system didn't reward her bosses for having a woman on their team (and subsequent disincentive for them leaving).
- dllthomas 10y ago
  > the reason they did it was because of their incentive to appear "diverse" This seems to radically mischaracterize the issues in that case.
  - emiliobumachar 10y ago
    It seems to match her original blog post. "It turned out that keeping me on the team made my manager look good, and I overheard him boasting to the rest of the team that even though the rest of the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some on his team." (from https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...) That's not the worst thing she reported, but it's there, and it's definitely very bad. Would you elaborate on what mischaracterization you see?
    - dllthomas 10y ago
      A characterization that the origin of the problem was Uber paying too much attention to diversity statistics.
      - Oxitendwe 10y ago
        I think it's very reasonable to say that the reason it made her bosses look good to have a woman on their team was directly because of the push for diversity and inclusion in the tech world. Why else would they value such a thing?
- r00fus 10y ago
  Uber's problem was the workplace was toxic. In a former company, as a straight guy I've been hit on by another guy who was my team lead (and well connected). I can tell you it was not comfortable. I ended up leaving to another project as a planned transition, but my initial complaints directly to that team lead were laughed off as "I'm kidding (but I'll try again)". I bet there are a LOT of unreported such cases. Susan Fowler's case has less to do with race/gender than sexual harassment and abuse of power. I sure as hell would avoid working there if that kind of behavior goes unchecked.
Waterluvian 10y ago
Also, what percentage of women in tech would represent success in diversity? I don't believe it's exactly 50% in any discipline, lest we suggest the diversity of our genders has zero impact on what people want to do with their lives. So if it's not exactly 50%, what percentage is it? How can you even figure it out? A lack of diversity is one of those things that you know when you see. But as numbers improve, we are going to run into the problem where we have no idea when to stop obsessing over the numbers. It's why I feel that equality in opportunity is the more effective measure. Are people doing what they want to be doing with their lives? Something like 99.9% of midwives in Ontario are female. Is there a diversity problem? If you find men that feel like they can't become midwives for some reason, then yes. But not because that ratio feels imbalanced.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Females in tech in front-line positions roughly match the number of those graduating with relevant education. It'd rather seem that the primary argument to 'diversity' should be 'getting more women to study the relevant things'. Though: surveys show that women in tech see the #1 issue is 'lack of role models' - ergo - a degree of feedback here, but really ... I firmly believe that if 50% of Comp Sci grads were women, that roughly 50% of Google Engs would be female. Caveat: in management positions there is a totally separate spate of issues. Also - similar issues apply to ethnicity. Tech is about 30% Asian, and very few African Americans or Latinos, which is again commensurate with the pool of graduating talent. Again there are clearly feedback issues - nevertheless - one cannot ignore this white elephant.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

Oxitendwe 10y ago

I don't understand why anyone would need a "diversity strategy". Just hire whoever seems like they would do the best job, and then spend the remainder of the apparently monumental effort that you would have spent executing your "diversity strategy" on improving your bottom line. It's ridiculous that we focus on the racial and gender makeup of applicants instead of just judging them on their accomplishments.

grzm 10y ago
Do you believe there are any disparities in demographics between the general population and a given field (such as tech)? What demographic do you belong to? How do you think these disparities might affect society as a whole? If there are disparities, what, if anything, do you think should be done to lessen the disparity in demographics? Edit to add: If you choose to reply, please include attempts at answering all of the questions. Note there's nothing in this comment that assumes that hiring is the appropriate (or only) place something (if anything) should be done. It's easy to dismiss this as only "yes, there are disparities, but it shouldn't be fixed here", or "equal opportunity". That's not the end of the conversation. What does a better solution look like?
- dongslol 10y ago
  Certainly, but why necessarily at the hiring level? Why is citing the pipeline problem inherently lazy?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- teacup50 10y ago
  > If there are disparities, what, if anything, do you think should be done to lessen the disparity in demographics? Target inequality of opportunity, and do not assume that differences in outcome are prima facie evidence of differences in opportunity. In other words, the pipeline is the place to solve this.

ve55 10y ago

If you want to convince people it is in their own best interest to invest significantly in diversity, it's not likely the intro to this article will cut it for most. The first paper mentions that they only found a correlation, however contradicts themselves in attempting to turn this into causation, despite mentioning that correlation != causation: "While correlation does not equal causation (greater gender and ethnic diversity in corporate leadership doesn’t automatically translate into more profit), the correlation does indicate that when companies commit themselves to diverse leadership, they are more successful." It doesn't seem like this was checked for backwards-causation (companies may be more likely to start prioritizing diversity when they are succeeding, but not when they are failing), among many other potential confounding variables, and it seems that they were very intent on trying to prove their outcome regardless of what kind of data they had, where the article starts out with "We know intuitively that diversity matters. It’s also increasingly clear that it makes sense in purely business terms." I didn't check everything from the second link, but this appears to be a very common pattern. The third link attempts to appeal to the same sense, however goes much further, stating: "it was not “diversity” (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women." This would seem to prove far too much, and is obviously not a generalizable result unless you sincerely believe that replacing all men with women will make your company perform better. I'm unable to view the full text or data from this paper due to the paywall. If you're concerned about the proportion of groups such as women in tech, the right time to get them interested is when they are very young. Not during or after college. With a baseline of significantly more men in tech, you cannot reasonably expect to achieve figures such as a 1:1 ratio of female to male employees. With that said, the author seems to be focusing more on problems after people enter the workplace. There may be a lot of issues here, but I think solutions need to focus on deeper underlying problems such as culture, rather than single bottleneck processes such as promotions (and that which leads up to them).

poiuiop 10y ago

Reading the existing comments on this thread, if it represents an accurate sample size of the type of culture in tech: this is why as a woman I want to drop out.

grzm 10y ago
I don't believe it is, given there are many people who generally don't comment on forums at all. There's no reason to think commenters here are a representative sample.
Oxitendwe 10y ago
Ironically, I've known women who've wanted to drop out of tech culture because of the massive push for "inclusion" and "diversity". Nobody wants to be a diversity hire, and nobody likes seeing people propped up beyond their ability because of their gender or race. A lot of these people just want to be treated normally, and you don't get that by giving people special treatment.

logfromblammo 10y ago

The action points in the article: 1. Treat the women and people of color already working at your company well, including paying them equitably and preparing them for promotions. 2. Overhaul your interview process. Hire programmers that have the skills the company needs. 3. Institute onboarding. Make sure that everyone has the information they need to succeed at their jobs. None of my employers have ever prepared anyone for promotions, regardless of sex or color. Companies would have to do this at all before questioning whether they do it equitably. Most of the prospective employers I have approached regarding job openings have had a horrible interview process. And I would suggest hiring for aptitude rather than existing skills. Almost everyone focuses on "what have you already done?" rather than "what could you do if we hired you?" It's maddening. Companies can barely test for skill, and I have only seen one that even tried to assess aptitude. That would be great if companies maintained persistent records of internal collaboration. Unfortunately, I have anecdotally observed a trend of decreasing job-specific training, and less robust internal technical documentation. Some companies don't even have a stepwise guide for doing a manual build of their main software product after getting the latest source. In short, those are good suggestions, but they don't need to be specifically targeted by sexes and colors. Everyone would benefit if companies did this. So why don't they? It seems like a sane and decent company would become diverse without needing to make any specific effort to do so, whereas a dysfunctional company would see its problems manifest in many different symptoms, with monoculture being just one of them.

jza00425 10y ago

Women should not get preference because they are women.

dang 10y ago
That is an obnoxious way to reply to someone who expressed a personal concern. If you can't be respectful of others, please don't comment here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716297 and marked it off-topic. Edit: it looks like you've been using HN exclusively to comment on politics. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't use HN this way.

ygaf 10y ago

The first paragraph is her premise. On first read, I uncharitably dismissed it - "yeah, tech companies should be tripping over themselves to achieve diversity so they can take advantage of this.... uh, correlation with.... a hot 35% bonus....in the mission-critical field of "probability of "performing well""" (all quotes intentional). Then I charitably followed the links in the paragraph. The scientific studies are underwhelming (in terms of convincing a tech company to do something). The mckinsey article cheapens itself towards the end ("The unequal performance of companies in the same industry and the same country implies that diversity is a competitive differentiator shifting market share toward more diverse companies." That implication is terrible) It's not hard to understand how diversity in the workplace might challenge our minds more, keep us more professional (in company culture and hiring practice), improve fitness in whatever other ways. But it's all conceptual, and until there's more scientific evidence, the literature has to settle for being obnoxious - light on information, heavy on telling the reader what to think before and after said information (tabloid style).