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SPECIFIC THOUGHTS: the last sentence of the first paragraph is hilarious... "We'll explain in a moment how this unsexy company has been able to outperform Googl

SPECIFIC THOUGHTS: the last sentence of the first paragraph is hilarious... "We'll explain in a moment how this unsexy company has been able to outperform Google, Facebook, and Uber....................when it comes to hiring women software engineers." I totally forgot that the main concern of a business was to push "diversity" at all costs and not to provide a service/product of value and make money. My bad. furthermore, in an era where millions of dollars are thrown around by VC's and founders at startups (that provide no real value to customers in many cases) at wildly overinflated valuations, it seems that people have forgotten the key purpose of running a business. TO MAKE MONEY. The goal isn't to make sure everyone is represented or to make everyone feel good. No one cares. This article is complete spin. The real goal of this company is to get engineers at a discounted price under the guise of, "oh you've been overlooked by these other companies, we're super female friendly, we're soooo diverse. we can't pay you as much, but we're just one big family here so it's worth it." IN GENERAL: diversity of thought is good. diversity of skin color, ethnicity, gender, etc just to tick a box saying 'yup, we support diversity!' is nonsensical. there seems to be a large disconnect in logical thinking when these two things are advertised as the same thing. hire the best candidates, regardless of the meaningless BS (like gender or race). ok, you think the hiring process skews against some candidates (I don't know if this is really true or not), then change the interview process to support that. saying that female candidates don't do well with whiteboarding exercises, so you're changing the process to something they are better at is so silly (and quite frankly insulting to those women who ARE prepared for the whiteboarding exercises). you're optimizing for female employees, not for building your business and providing value.

bigbetsbigmoney 9y ago
also, i'd just like to point out that only 1 of 14 people on their leadership page is female. majority being white male (of the ones who have photos; some don't have headshots so not completely sure). https://www.zymergen.com/leadership/ https://www.zymergen.com/leadership/
n4r9 9y ago
The point is that focusing more on female (and older) engineers may be a way to pick up talent that is traditionally missed by bigger companies. I agree though that no real measure of the success of this is provided in the article.
- toyg 9y ago
  > may be a way to pick up talent Or to lower wages by increasing the talent pool.
  - brainfire 9y ago
    Suddenly I understand why the comments on these articles tend to be so hostile.
    - jenkstom 9y ago
      I've pondered the above statement for a bit. It could go either way. From a demand side (hiring), it's very positive. "We have increased our talent pool AND lowered cost." Win-win. From a supply side (employee/contractor) it would be fantastically negative: "These jerks are lowering my rockstar wages by hiring women, ethnic minorities and old people." Lose-lose. There's a lot in what you expect to see here. I wonder how much this type of thing makes these discussions worse than they have to be?
      - toyg 9y ago
        I wouldn't put "old people" in the mix - after all, they were already around; if anything ageism restricts what was the established pool. Ageism is enacted to lower wages (young talent is cheaper), not fought. For women and ethnic minorities, the opposite is true: the more you promote them, as a simple employed worker, the more you're effectively lowering your own wage in real terms. You are effectively self-taxing out of solidarity, while your employer reaps the rewards in terms of additional productivity and profit. This is one of the problems of modern life for which progressives (including me) really have no answer beyond a generic "all will get well eventually" feelgood optimism. One quick look at statistics for male remuneration and wages in real term post-feminism doesn't really support that optimism.
lifeformed 9y ago
I think diverse hiring practices is a good thing, even if we ignore the social aspects of this discussion and just talk about the money side of things. Think about it like the movie Moneyball. By rejecting the flawed collective wisdom of baseball insiders, they were able to create a winning team on a budget by using overlooked metrics. Likewise, job interviews are notoriously unreliable and inconsistent at finding good employees. The uneven demographics in tech jobs is likely partly the result of flawed wisdom in the hiring process. If you sample more heavily from an irrationally underrepresented group, you would get on average higher value candidates than if you sampled evenly from the whole pool. Selecting solely based on merit is only effective if your selection process works properly. In practice, we see that both conscious and unconscious biases pervade the selection process, so I think this method is worthwhile.
- moomin 9y ago
  Moneyball is exactly right. We've got a situation in which everyone is chasing after the same guys. Meanwhile, most of these environments are pushing qualified people out and often they're leaving the tech workforce. Literally, you can get better people, for less money, if you can just make it a pleasant place to work if you're female, non-white or even just plain over 40. (Full disclosure: I'm only in one of the groups I mentioned above.)
  - slededit 9y ago
    You can get qualified programmers for half the price in Canada - and even cheaper in some European countries. Why so few companies do is a mystery to me.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
drewrv 9y ago
In general, diversity of skin color, ethnicity, gender, etc is a good proxy for diversity of thought and easier to measure/quantify too. That's why many business leaders who are focused on providing value and making money care about these things.
- metaphorm 9y ago
  > In general, diversity of skin color, ethnicity, gender, etc is a good proxy for diversity of thought is it really though? it seems like you are assuming it is but I'm not convinced that it actually is.

bigbetsbigmoney 9y ago

also, i'd just like to point out that only 1 of 14 people on their leadership page is female. majority being white male (of the ones who have photos; some don't have headshots so not completely sure). https://www.zymergen.com/leadership/ https://www.zymergen.com/leadership/

n4r9 9y ago

The point is that focusing more on female (and older) engineers may be a way to pick up talent that is traditionally missed by bigger companies. I agree though that no real measure of the success of this is provided in the article.

toyg 9y ago
> may be a way to pick up talent Or to lower wages by increasing the talent pool.
- brainfire 9y ago
  Suddenly I understand why the comments on these articles tend to be so hostile.
  - jenkstom 9y ago
    I've pondered the above statement for a bit. It could go either way. From a demand side (hiring), it's very positive. "We have increased our talent pool AND lowered cost." Win-win. From a supply side (employee/contractor) it would be fantastically negative: "These jerks are lowering my rockstar wages by hiring women, ethnic minorities and old people." Lose-lose. There's a lot in what you expect to see here. I wonder how much this type of thing makes these discussions worse than they have to be?
    - toyg 9y ago
      I wouldn't put "old people" in the mix - after all, they were already around; if anything ageism restricts what was the established pool. Ageism is enacted to lower wages (young talent is cheaper), not fought. For women and ethnic minorities, the opposite is true: the more you promote them, as a simple employed worker, the more you're effectively lowering your own wage in real terms. You are effectively self-taxing out of solidarity, while your employer reaps the rewards in terms of additional productivity and profit. This is one of the problems of modern life for which progressives (including me) really have no answer beyond a generic "all will get well eventually" feelgood optimism. One quick look at statistics for male remuneration and wages in real term post-feminism doesn't really support that optimism.

lifeformed 9y ago

I think diverse hiring practices is a good thing, even if we ignore the social aspects of this discussion and just talk about the money side of things. Think about it like the movie Moneyball. By rejecting the flawed collective wisdom of baseball insiders, they were able to create a winning team on a budget by using overlooked metrics. Likewise, job interviews are notoriously unreliable and inconsistent at finding good employees. The uneven demographics in tech jobs is likely partly the result of flawed wisdom in the hiring process. If you sample more heavily from an irrationally underrepresented group, you would get on average higher value candidates than if you sampled evenly from the whole pool. Selecting solely based on merit is only effective if your selection process works properly. In practice, we see that both conscious and unconscious biases pervade the selection process, so I think this method is worthwhile.

moomin 9y ago
Moneyball is exactly right. We've got a situation in which everyone is chasing after the same guys. Meanwhile, most of these environments are pushing qualified people out and often they're leaving the tech workforce. Literally, you can get better people, for less money, if you can just make it a pleasant place to work if you're female, non-white or even just plain over 40. (Full disclosure: I'm only in one of the groups I mentioned above.)
- slededit 9y ago
  You can get qualified programmers for half the price in Canada - and even cheaper in some European countries. Why so few companies do is a mystery to me.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

drewrv 9y ago

In general, diversity of skin color, ethnicity, gender, etc is a good proxy for diversity of thought and easier to measure/quantify too. That's why many business leaders who are focused on providing value and making money care about these things.

metaphorm 9y ago
> In general, diversity of skin color, ethnicity, gender, etc is a good proxy for diversity of thought is it really though? it seems like you are assuming it is but I'm not convinced that it actually is.