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> If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of tha

> If gender-based diversity programs are responsible for qualified women getting jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten due to bias, then the lack of that program means those women wouldn't have gotten those jobs. This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified men. Because you have to hire women as the diversity program says. If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program. Imagine being a woman and being hired with this program, does it mean they hired me because I am a woman or because I am the best candidate for the position? (I said woman but applies to any minority group)

emmab 9y ago
> This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified women. Because you have to hire women as the diversity program says. Are you saying there are no situations in which applying a systematic adjustment as a function of gender to interview scores could result in a predictable net-fitness-increase in the resulting skill distribution of hired people? > If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program. Imagine being a woman and being hired with this program, does it mean they hired me because I am a woman or because I am the best candidate for the position? (I said woman but applies to any minority group) That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified?
- gdix 9y ago
  >That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified? It depends on if that bias existed or not. If the bias exists then of course, I would want to have that bias compensated for. The question is still: is there a bias? Many people say the disparity alone is evidence of a bias because a completely unbiased system would result in a 50/50 split which we obviously don't have. The author of the manifesto is saying that a bias doesn't exist because the disparity has another explanation with some scientific support. You might disagree or think that the science which supports this idea is faulty in some way. But come on, the reaction has been outrageous and scary.
  - tunesmith 9y ago
    The author clearly stated that he wasn't denying that sexism exists. Another example of how the manifesto is inconsistent, unless he's saying that sexism exists but somehow has no effect on hiring.
    - jorgemf 9y ago
      I think he said the ratio of women / men in the company was matching or close to the reality. That there are more men interested in tech than women and that trying to achieve a 50/50 was a mistake. Then the based the disparity of women interested in tech because of biological reasons. Sexims might exist and have and effect in hiring but for him the effect of the diversity program was bigger, and a result it could lead to hire less qualified individuals. He said that the company should hire based on skills and not in gender or other bias. And also it should change how it works internally to create a better environment for women where they can explode their skills, those one the men doesn't have.
      - tunesmith 9y ago
        This is where I don't know about Google's diversity aims in detail. The manifesto author regularly talked about 50/50, but I don't know if that is actually Google's stated goal. Regardless, even if an organization aims for 50/50, that is not the underlying objective - it's more a diagnosis to meet the real underlying objective, which is to have a hiring practice that is not subject to hidden gender biases (or seeks to make up for them in some way).
        jorgemf 9y ago
        As I said in another comment, we might need tolerance programs instead of diversity programs. We shouldn't assess anyone by their gender or other bias but for their skills for the job (where I say skills I mean also biological facts, like you have to be tall to be a basketball player o be a women to be a bikinis model, etc)
        9y ago
- jorgemf 9y ago
  > Are you saying there are no situations in which applying a systematic adjustment as a function of gender to interview scores could result in a predictable net-fitness-increase in the resulting skill distribution of hired people? Yes if you don't try to match the distribution of the pool of candidates. if the pool of candidates ratio is 10/90 and your goal in the company is 10/90, I am ok with anything that helps you to get close to the 10/90. (When both distributions are normal gaussian with similar mean and average. I don't see basketball teams hiring short people to fit the ratio or the pool of candidates) > That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified? I prefer being hired because they saw my skills. I think is better in the long term. If I am qualified for a job I will find it, it could take me more time but at some point I will find it and I will be happier than in a job where they saw me hired by a diversity program. Of course if I need the job to survive wouldn't care, but I think this is not the common case (or I might be wrong but as I said in another comment this is my personal opinion, other will think differently)
  - tunesmith 9y ago
    If the pool of candidates is 10/90, I would agree a hiring goal of 10/90 is fine assuming that the pool of candidates is not also negatively impacted by bias. The pool of candidates, however, is widely accepted to be negatively impacted by bias (which is why you see things like female-friendly coding camps, etc).
    - jorgemf 9y ago
      I don't know the reason why women are not interested in tech. I think there is an important biological component and also a cultural issue. But I am not sure of the cultural issue because in countries like Norway, one of the most equality countries, the ratios are higher than other countries, which doesn't make sense unless the biological factor is what affects the most.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
- arkh 9y ago
  Here is the problem in tech. Your have around 20% females. If any company has 30%, this means a lot of other companies will have to fight to get women there. So they have to pay a lot more for the qualified ones or accept to get token women for the sake of PR. The problem starts before the workplace: in homes and at school. Start educating minorities and women on the job opportunities in tech. Make them discover the joy of tinkering. It's not for everyone but as someone from a lower socio-economic world I experienced how you can not know what is available to you. That's a huge failing of the school system and especially guidance counselor who usually don't know shit about nothing.
tunesmith 9y ago
Assuming you're not a woman or minority, don't be so sure that's what you would prefer (unless you're saying you would prefer there were no bias at all, in which case, duh). There are women and minorities that have benefited from such programs, and absolutely do not feel guilty by it, because they believe that in the absence of those programs, the unfair disadvantage would have exceeded any "unfair advantage" the program gave them.
- jorgemf 9y ago
  When I said "if I were a woman" I was talking about me. My personal opinion. I know that there are people that think differently. I prefer to work for a company that was able to see my skills than other that hire me because other reasons. I think I would be happier and achieve more things this way. (Again, this is a personal opinion)
  - tunesmith 9y ago
    Respectfully, I'm still not sure my point is coming across. I agree with you; and I think everyone else does, that they'd rather work for a company that was able to see their skills. But, what if you knew there was bias that would keep them from seeing your skills, and would keep you from being hired because of it? What if your only choices were to be hired through a diversity program, or not be hired at all?
    - jorgemf 9y ago
      If it is either die or survive without choose survive, obviously. Why are you so sure the bias is there? Countries like Norway are one of the most equality countries but they have the higher ratios, which doesn't make sense because they have the less bias.
      - Kluny 9y ago
        > Why are you so sure the bias is there? Countries like Norway are one of the most equality countries but they have the higher ratios, which doesn't make sense because they have the less bias. This sentence is a little garbled so not quite sure what you're going for, but I like to point people to the example of the Danish parliament. A gender quota was established some decades ago to ensure that female members could get the job, because obviously half the population is female and so they need to be represented. Now that they have an equal number of men and women, they're getting ready to remove the quota because it served its purpose, and it's not needed anymore. There are enough qualified and experienced women with strong reputations available that they don't need the help anymore.
fatbird 9y ago
If you were a woman, you might think that being hired under a diversity initiative is okay, given that the alternative is not to get the opportunity at all due to systemic discrimination in hiring.
- xname2 9y ago
  "not to get the opportunity at all due to systemic discrimination in hiring" - this is not reality but only your imagination.
  - fatbird 9y ago
    Your denial of reality is noted. Systemic discrimination against women in hiring has been exhaustively documented and studied, including in the tech industry.
    - jorgemf 9y ago
      I think you should cite references. It will make your point stronger and I want to read them!
      - fatbird 9y ago
        I don't have a pile of references at hand since this isn't my area of study, but here's what I was able to google up: 1. http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Bertrand&Mullainathan.pdf http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Bertrand&Mullainathan.pdf This study was primarily aimed at identifying the impact of race, but incidentally showed that resumes with females names received a lower number of callbacks, in addition to the race based effect. 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970474/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970474/ "Without provision of information about candidates other than their appearance, men are twice more likely to be hired for a mathematical task than women." 3. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract "Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant." 4. http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilrreview/vol65/iss1/5/ http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilrreview/vol65/iss1/5... "the authors show that [anonymous application procedure] increased the chances of both women and individuals of non-Western origin of advancing to the interview stage." 5. http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903 http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903 Anonymization in orchestra additions (blind screening) led to women advancing out of preliminary rounds 50% more often.
nyxtom 9y ago
This is actually one of the points made here: https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tide%20Why%20Women%20Leave%20Engineering.pdf https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid... "Still getting asked if I can handle being in a mostly male work environment in interviews in 2009 - I’ve been an engineer for 9 years, obviously I can. I know when I’m asked that question, I HAVE NO CHANCE AT THE JOB. It is nice they brought me in for equal opportunity survey points but don’t waste my time if you don’t take females seriously.” The point is when you have a male dominated "bro"/"frat" culture, diversity programs are indeed just to meet labor standards - but they don't actually hold water. Which is why women end up leaving these places because people can't treat women like human beings. A diversity program becomes virtually useless if you can't keep people from leaving short of incentivizing them to deal with a company's toxic culture.
- jorgemf 9y ago
  Stupid people are everywhere. I want to think that there is a big amount of people that is not like that. As a male I was told something similar in an interview at Google: if I would mind to work in a company where most people are men? And as the girl you cite I found the question stupid. I have worked in tech I already know how is this. Instead of diversity program to hire women we should create tolerance programs for everybody.
  - nyxtom 9y ago
    Wishful thinking unfortunately :/ Hence the exodus.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    That, or employers should up their professionalism. Bring back the 9-5 job, the clean desk policy, the grumpy boss that will chew you out if you come to work wearing shorts.
    - pas 9y ago
      How does that signal for professionalism? How does that make a healthier workplace culture? It just becomes a management minefield. People can commit crimes in suits too.
Kluny 9y ago
As a woman with a disability who got hired by a diversity program, I don't give a fuck. I just need a job. Working at McDonald's sucks balls. If I really couldn't do the job, they could have fired me at the end of my probation period. I'm quite happy to earn my position after I've got it.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  I second your sentiment. Even assuming we live in a perfect world were no-one is biased and hiring is perfectly fair based on skills etc, things like commuting time and accessibility of living spaces restricts what job people with impaired mobility can actually accept and as result they compete in a smaller job market. This applies to the majority of protected categories one way or another, but people forget it's not "just because people are biased" - while many sadly are, at an explicit or implicit level, even if they weren't there are good reason to keep certain quotas around. Edit: enlighten me naysayers, why protecting special categories with objective limitations a priory even in absence of cultural bias would be so bad?
- noisy_boy 9y ago
  At the risk of somewhat generalizing, a disability puts a person at disadvantage. Just being a women isn't a disadvantage. Regarding your employer being able to potentially firing you, the point isn't that they can fire you but that hiring you based on a diversity program for women could have excluded a more qualified man (not saying that you could not be the most qualified candidate). Firing you later doesn't fix the missed opportunity for that man or the employer.
  - nthcolumn 9y ago
    From what you've said it is obvious that there is some disadvantage to being a women. There is no such thing as the mythical better qualified man. ALL the people interviewed are qualified, they can ALL do the job. Progressive companies do not want the same old same old weird white male dominated culture. They want to attract people with different life experiences, different perspectives, they need diversity. Not a nice to have, need. If they want to attract the best engineer in the world ever and she looks into their office and sees a whole load of middle aged white men she will think 'Nope I don't fit in here'. She was more important for innovative, disruptive company than all those dudes she spied and we lost her because we couldn't manage our hiring process properly. Ugh, what is so hard to understand here??? Diverse is better. There is no lowering of the bar, get over yourselves!
puranjay 9y ago
So in my country, we have our own version of affirmative action called caste-based reservations. Basically, if you belong to a certain caste, there are seats reserved for you in every government institution (schools, universities) and public sector jobs. One of the smartest people I know belongs to one of these castes. She is brilliant at her job but constantly worries whether she got in because of her brains or because of the reservations. There is STILL a serious need for reservations and affirmative action in my country, but man does it screw with people.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  The problem here is that even a discussion about this topic is dangerous. That's unbelievable!
  - pyvpx 9y ago
    a persons humanity should not be in question. you can discuss the merits of a specific persons qualifications but to argue "women, as an aggregate, are poor coders because they care about people and not things like dudes do" isn't a discussion. it's just grade-school level sexism. for someone with a PhD in biological systems, you'd expect a person to be a little more developed in their thinking...
    - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
      Woman and men are, on average, different. Is this wrong? These differences can be in factors that impact ones desire or ability to perform certain roles. Is this wrong? This individual person, because they are a man/woman, is unfit for the role. This IS wrong. Is it wrong to say there are differences that make women, on average, worse football players? Is that inherently bad, perhaps even blasphemous, thing to say? I don't think so. So why can't one discuss this about other jobs? Perhaps they are wrong, Perhaps which ever group isn't worse on average. But even if they are wrong, then the way to respond is to say that their information is wrong, not that they are wrong for saying it. We are treating the conversation itself like it is a blasphemy that shall not be uttered aloud. Instead, we should be asking 'is this information factual or not'. And we should be taking safe guards that averages aren't assigned to individuals.
zouhair 9y ago
>If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program. Only someone who is not a woman or not from a minority could say this. People tend to dismiss other peoples problem or minimize them, even when those people are telling they are hurting.
- JSONwebtoken 9y ago
  > Only someone who is not a woman or not from a minority could say this. People tend to dismiss other peoples problem or minimize them, even when those people are telling they are hurting. Only someone who is a woman or from a minority with liberal views could say this. How can you speak for 70% of people? How are you hurting from being treated equally to the 30%?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- lawnchair_larry 9y ago
  Haha. Clearly you are not a woman. I've heard many, many women express this. Do you know how insulting it is to be a diversity hire?
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    Not insulting to me. I'd love to be a diversity hire. Instead I just don't get hired, and the Government tell me I'm a lying cunt and threaten to take away my benefits for not being able to find a job.
    - dijit 9y ago
      My company is all about diversity hires; please send a CV they'd love to have you aboard if you're willing to relocate. https://massive.se/jobs https://massive.se/jobs edit: not sure why downvotes, I'm being sincere. :S
- drakonka 9y ago
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
I think any company should hire diversely in terms of qualifications too, regardless of gender; there's far too many job postings out there where they ask for 5+ years of experience. Even entry-level with X years of experience. I'm glad at least that some IT employers care less about education and look more at potential and whatnot.
gambiting 9y ago
My sister was extremely put off going into CS after the career adviser at her school literally told her "you should go into CS since companies will have to hire you because you are a woman and they have quotas to fill". She was so upset by this she didn't even want to consider trying a CS degree.
wastedhours 9y ago
White male, so checking my privilege, however I know my "widening participation" status influenced certain opportunities I had access to in the run up to university, and quite likely as part of a numbers game for the university place itself. I've often thought about how I feel knowing something as simple as the postcode I grew up in affected how I got somewhere, but always arrive at it being a net positive. There are pros and cons to it all of course, and it doesn't take away from the fear that you don't deserve it. But, society needs to kickstart the fortuitous cycle of opportunity, direction and inspiration somehow. When a group of people have no role models, nobody empathetic of their route or life chances or aware of any other skills they can bring, we can't progress. When we're talking about whether someone is more or less qualified, it's not like it's a AAA+ grade male vs a CCD- female. It's (in almost all cases), very small variations of tangential achievements, most of which can be outweighed with a minority group bringing a different group of life experiences to the table.
- peak_body_yo 9y ago
  > It's (in almost all cases), very small variations of tangential achievements, most of which can be outweighed with a minority group bringing a different group of life experiences to the table. Actually, diversity initiatives can decrease cultural diversity in tech. Many diversity initiatives leave immigrants behind and mainly benefit Americans. It can be said that foreigners are considered more "culturally diverse" than Americans in USA based workplaces. Diversity programs might increase gender and racial diversity, but also decrease foreign representation as a result and make a company less culturally diverse.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
    I think male Asians and Indians are not considered as adding as much 'diversity' in tech.
jedrek 9y ago
I love how you throw around the term "qualified" as though it were set in stone. Like one person is obviously more qualified than the other, as though these people are 100m sprinters whose performance is measured within a fraction of a hundredth of a second. We're treating highly educated specialists tasked with delivering highly complex, variable and nuanced output like 19th century factory workers. How many hundreds of books have been published on just the question of measuring employee productivity, yet for the sake of this conversation we toss terms like "more qualified" around like they are law.
- lagadu 9y ago
  "Qualified" was the wrong word because it can imply that the qualifications are measurable à priori, which is what I'm assuming is your interpretation. That's not what the OP is saying though, he's saying "qualified" as seen in demonstrated performance after the hiring. It would've been clearer had he said "better at the job" (as in, leading to a greater total company value) than "qualified".
- jorgemf 9y ago
  It is a subjetive measure but still a measure. For example, the position requires knowing Python, a person with 5 years of experience in Python will probably know more than a person with 1. Yes, you can be wrong but hiring the 5 year person is the common sense, you will do less mistakes this way. Hiring the women because it is a women it is a positive discrimination. Not hiring the women with experience is discrimination, but does this really happen? Can you prove it? (Ok yes, people see a woman to hire and say +1 point because you a woman and will us pay less taxes because of the diversity balance. This shit happens too) You talk like you have written those books, enlighten me.
StargazyPi 9y ago
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about diversity programs, and their purpose. Let's use tech leadership as an example: The problem they're solving shouldn't be "we need more women in tech, so let's lower the bar for them". The problem they should be solving is "There are two candidates for this leadership position. One tends to use assertiveness and authority to get the job done. The other uses encouragement and persuasion. Who do you hire?". The default response is often to choose the person with the leadership style you've seen many times before, and thus the person who uses unfamiliar, equally effective techniques doesn't get a shot. You sure as hell shouldn't hire me because I'm female. You should hire me because the set of techniques I employ to do my job are effective, even though they might be less familiar to you. Every tech lead has a different style, and that style has been tailored to that individual. Measure the outcome, not arbitrary characteristics that contribute to the outcome.
- jorgemf 9y ago
  > You sure as hell shouldn't hire me because I'm female. You should hire me because the set of techniques I employ to do my job are effective, even though they might be less familiar to you I couldn't agree more with it. And I think it is one of the points of the infamous memorandum. We should change how the companies works internally so we can use other skills in our benefit. I am not sure the diversity programs work like this, because if they worked like this the focus should be more inside the internal culture than in the hiring process. They would say something like we need to teach people in the company to increase the tolerance and assess diversity skill instead of increasing the diversity. Increasing diversity should be an emerge feature not a goal.
saturdaysaint 9y ago
"If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program." This is like saying "I'd enjoy my success more without the Mortgage Interest Deduction unfairly advantaging me financially". Theoretically feasible, but in practical reality, uh no. If you're hacking it in a competitive environment and you have a life, you most assuredly have 1,000 more important/interesting things on your mind.
- jorgemf 9y ago
  You have to strive for the things you want in live, nothing is easy for anyone. Do I want a better salary? a better job? yes. But I want a quality of life, I don't want to work long hours. So I wont have something better because I have other preferences in life. And I am ok with it.
  - saturdaysaint 9y ago
    Cool.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  Completely inaccurate analogy. The MID is in the tax code available and given blindly to everybody who wants to apply for a house, not part of any human judgment on merit or ability. A more relevant one would be whether brokers are now showing houses or discussing financing options differently to people based a perception of the person's identity group.
  - saturdaysaint 9y ago
    Apparently it's your hobby horse, but there's no reason an analogy has to adhere to the topic of identity politics. Few people give active thought to the advantages they're born into or receive throughout life - that the GP thinks people advantaged by hiring preferences would prefer to have been hired some other way is just a failure to comprehend human psychology. Unless they're writing a blog on the topic, most people are more busy with their jobs and lives to care about their hiring process.
roguecoder 9y ago
Why do you assume the men being hired are more qualified than the women who were passed over? The hiring process is subjective, not fair. There is extensive evidence that just having a name that is assumed to be female makes a candidate less likely to get hired. Without diversity programs, less qualified men are hired over more qualified women, producing the skewed results we observe. Women are on average more qualified than the men in the same jobs they hold because of these social forces, so your assumptions make you particularly systematically wrong.

emmab 9y ago

> This is a double sword thing. With the program you might hire more qualified women, but also more less qualified women and you might prevent of hiring more qualified women. Because you have to hire women as the diversity program says. Are you saying there are no situations in which applying a systematic adjustment as a function of gender to interview scores could result in a predictable net-fitness-increase in the resulting skill distribution of hired people? > If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program. Imagine being a woman and being hired with this program, does it mean they hired me because I am a woman or because I am the best candidate for the position? (I said woman but applies to any minority group) That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified?

gdix 9y ago
>That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified? It depends on if that bias existed or not. If the bias exists then of course, I would want to have that bias compensated for. The question is still: is there a bias? Many people say the disparity alone is evidence of a bias because a completely unbiased system would result in a 50/50 split which we obviously don't have. The author of the manifesto is saying that a bias doesn't exist because the disparity has another explanation with some scientific support. You might disagree or think that the science which supports this idea is faulty in some way. But come on, the reaction has been outrageous and scary.
- tunesmith 9y ago
  The author clearly stated that he wasn't denying that sexism exists. Another example of how the manifesto is inconsistent, unless he's saying that sexism exists but somehow has no effect on hiring.
  - jorgemf 9y ago
    I think he said the ratio of women / men in the company was matching or close to the reality. That there are more men interested in tech than women and that trying to achieve a 50/50 was a mistake. Then the based the disparity of women interested in tech because of biological reasons. Sexims might exist and have and effect in hiring but for him the effect of the diversity program was bigger, and a result it could lead to hire less qualified individuals. He said that the company should hire based on skills and not in gender or other bias. And also it should change how it works internally to create a better environment for women where they can explode their skills, those one the men doesn't have.
    - tunesmith 9y ago
      This is where I don't know about Google's diversity aims in detail. The manifesto author regularly talked about 50/50, but I don't know if that is actually Google's stated goal. Regardless, even if an organization aims for 50/50, that is not the underlying objective - it's more a diagnosis to meet the real underlying objective, which is to have a hiring practice that is not subject to hidden gender biases (or seeks to make up for them in some way).
      - jorgemf 9y ago
        As I said in another comment, we might need tolerance programs instead of diversity programs. We shouldn't assess anyone by their gender or other bias but for their skills for the job (where I say skills I mean also biological facts, like you have to be tall to be a basketball player o be a women to be a bikinis model, etc)
        9y ago
jorgemf 9y ago
> Are you saying there are no situations in which applying a systematic adjustment as a function of gender to interview scores could result in a predictable net-fitness-increase in the resulting skill distribution of hired people? Yes if you don't try to match the distribution of the pool of candidates. if the pool of candidates ratio is 10/90 and your goal in the company is 10/90, I am ok with anything that helps you to get close to the 10/90. (When both distributions are normal gaussian with similar mean and average. I don't see basketball teams hiring short people to fit the ratio or the pool of candidates) > That's not really the important question though. Would you prefer being not being hired due to bias even though you are qualified, or being hired despite bias, even though you know it will make some people think you weren't really qualified? I prefer being hired because they saw my skills. I think is better in the long term. If I am qualified for a job I will find it, it could take me more time but at some point I will find it and I will be happier than in a job where they saw me hired by a diversity program. Of course if I need the job to survive wouldn't care, but I think this is not the common case (or I might be wrong but as I said in another comment this is my personal opinion, other will think differently)
- tunesmith 9y ago
  If the pool of candidates is 10/90, I would agree a hiring goal of 10/90 is fine assuming that the pool of candidates is not also negatively impacted by bias. The pool of candidates, however, is widely accepted to be negatively impacted by bias (which is why you see things like female-friendly coding camps, etc).
  - jorgemf 9y ago
    I don't know the reason why women are not interested in tech. I think there is an important biological component and also a cultural issue. But I am not sure of the cultural issue because in countries like Norway, one of the most equality countries, the ratios are higher than other countries, which doesn't make sense unless the biological factor is what affects the most.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
arkh 9y ago
Here is the problem in tech. Your have around 20% females. If any company has 30%, this means a lot of other companies will have to fight to get women there. So they have to pay a lot more for the qualified ones or accept to get token women for the sake of PR. The problem starts before the workplace: in homes and at school. Start educating minorities and women on the job opportunities in tech. Make them discover the joy of tinkering. It's not for everyone but as someone from a lower socio-economic world I experienced how you can not know what is available to you. That's a huge failing of the school system and especially guidance counselor who usually don't know shit about nothing.

tunesmith 9y ago

Assuming you're not a woman or minority, don't be so sure that's what you would prefer (unless you're saying you would prefer there were no bias at all, in which case, duh). There are women and minorities that have benefited from such programs, and absolutely do not feel guilty by it, because they believe that in the absence of those programs, the unfair disadvantage would have exceeded any "unfair advantage" the program gave them.

jorgemf 9y ago
When I said "if I were a woman" I was talking about me. My personal opinion. I know that there are people that think differently. I prefer to work for a company that was able to see my skills than other that hire me because other reasons. I think I would be happier and achieve more things this way. (Again, this is a personal opinion)
- tunesmith 9y ago
  Respectfully, I'm still not sure my point is coming across. I agree with you; and I think everyone else does, that they'd rather work for a company that was able to see their skills. But, what if you knew there was bias that would keep them from seeing your skills, and would keep you from being hired because of it? What if your only choices were to be hired through a diversity program, or not be hired at all?
  - jorgemf 9y ago
    If it is either die or survive without choose survive, obviously. Why are you so sure the bias is there? Countries like Norway are one of the most equality countries but they have the higher ratios, which doesn't make sense because they have the less bias.
    - Kluny 9y ago
      > Why are you so sure the bias is there? Countries like Norway are one of the most equality countries but they have the higher ratios, which doesn't make sense because they have the less bias. This sentence is a little garbled so not quite sure what you're going for, but I like to point people to the example of the Danish parliament. A gender quota was established some decades ago to ensure that female members could get the job, because obviously half the population is female and so they need to be represented. Now that they have an equal number of men and women, they're getting ready to remove the quota because it served its purpose, and it's not needed anymore. There are enough qualified and experienced women with strong reputations available that they don't need the help anymore.

fatbird 9y ago

If you were a woman, you might think that being hired under a diversity initiative is okay, given that the alternative is not to get the opportunity at all due to systemic discrimination in hiring.

xname2 9y ago
"not to get the opportunity at all due to systemic discrimination in hiring" - this is not reality but only your imagination.
- fatbird 9y ago
  Your denial of reality is noted. Systemic discrimination against women in hiring has been exhaustively documented and studied, including in the tech industry.
  - jorgemf 9y ago
    I think you should cite references. It will make your point stronger and I want to read them!
    - fatbird 9y ago
      I don't have a pile of references at hand since this isn't my area of study, but here's what I was able to google up: 1. http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Bertrand&Mullainathan.pdf http://www.uh.edu/~adkugler/Bertrand&Mullainathan.pdf This study was primarily aimed at identifying the impact of race, but incidentally showed that resumes with females names received a lower number of callbacks, in addition to the race based effect. 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970474/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970474/ "Without provision of information about candidates other than their appearance, men are twice more likely to be hired for a mathematical task than women." 3. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract "Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant." 4. http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilrreview/vol65/iss1/5/ http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/ilrreview/vol65/iss1/5... "the authors show that [anonymous application procedure] increased the chances of both women and individuals of non-Western origin of advancing to the interview stage." 5. http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903 http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903 Anonymization in orchestra additions (blind screening) led to women advancing out of preliminary rounds 50% more often.

nyxtom 9y ago

This is actually one of the points made here: https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tide%20Why%20Women%20Leave%20Engineering.pdf https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid... "Still getting asked if I can handle being in a mostly male work environment in interviews in 2009 - I’ve been an engineer for 9 years, obviously I can. I know when I’m asked that question, I HAVE NO CHANCE AT THE JOB. It is nice they brought me in for equal opportunity survey points but don’t waste my time if you don’t take females seriously.” The point is when you have a male dominated "bro"/"frat" culture, diversity programs are indeed just to meet labor standards - but they don't actually hold water. Which is why women end up leaving these places because people can't treat women like human beings. A diversity program becomes virtually useless if you can't keep people from leaving short of incentivizing them to deal with a company's toxic culture.

jorgemf 9y ago
Stupid people are everywhere. I want to think that there is a big amount of people that is not like that. As a male I was told something similar in an interview at Google: if I would mind to work in a company where most people are men? And as the girl you cite I found the question stupid. I have worked in tech I already know how is this. Instead of diversity program to hire women we should create tolerance programs for everybody.
- nyxtom 9y ago
  Wishful thinking unfortunately :/ Hence the exodus.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  That, or employers should up their professionalism. Bring back the 9-5 job, the clean desk policy, the grumpy boss that will chew you out if you come to work wearing shorts.
  - pas 9y ago
    How does that signal for professionalism? How does that make a healthier workplace culture? It just becomes a management minefield. People can commit crimes in suits too.

Kluny 9y ago

As a woman with a disability who got hired by a diversity program, I don't give a fuck. I just need a job. Working at McDonald's sucks balls. If I really couldn't do the job, they could have fired me at the end of my probation period. I'm quite happy to earn my position after I've got it.

LoSboccacc 9y ago
I second your sentiment. Even assuming we live in a perfect world were no-one is biased and hiring is perfectly fair based on skills etc, things like commuting time and accessibility of living spaces restricts what job people with impaired mobility can actually accept and as result they compete in a smaller job market. This applies to the majority of protected categories one way or another, but people forget it's not "just because people are biased" - while many sadly are, at an explicit or implicit level, even if they weren't there are good reason to keep certain quotas around. Edit: enlighten me naysayers, why protecting special categories with objective limitations a priory even in absence of cultural bias would be so bad?
noisy_boy 9y ago
At the risk of somewhat generalizing, a disability puts a person at disadvantage. Just being a women isn't a disadvantage. Regarding your employer being able to potentially firing you, the point isn't that they can fire you but that hiring you based on a diversity program for women could have excluded a more qualified man (not saying that you could not be the most qualified candidate). Firing you later doesn't fix the missed opportunity for that man or the employer.
- nthcolumn 9y ago
  From what you've said it is obvious that there is some disadvantage to being a women. There is no such thing as the mythical better qualified man. ALL the people interviewed are qualified, they can ALL do the job. Progressive companies do not want the same old same old weird white male dominated culture. They want to attract people with different life experiences, different perspectives, they need diversity. Not a nice to have, need. If they want to attract the best engineer in the world ever and she looks into their office and sees a whole load of middle aged white men she will think 'Nope I don't fit in here'. She was more important for innovative, disruptive company than all those dudes she spied and we lost her because we couldn't manage our hiring process properly. Ugh, what is so hard to understand here??? Diverse is better. There is no lowering of the bar, get over yourselves!

puranjay 9y ago

So in my country, we have our own version of affirmative action called caste-based reservations. Basically, if you belong to a certain caste, there are seats reserved for you in every government institution (schools, universities) and public sector jobs. One of the smartest people I know belongs to one of these castes. She is brilliant at her job but constantly worries whether she got in because of her brains or because of the reservations. There is STILL a serious need for reservations and affirmative action in my country, but man does it screw with people.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
The problem here is that even a discussion about this topic is dangerous. That's unbelievable!
- pyvpx 9y ago
  a persons humanity should not be in question. you can discuss the merits of a specific persons qualifications but to argue "women, as an aggregate, are poor coders because they care about people and not things like dudes do" isn't a discussion. it's just grade-school level sexism. for someone with a PhD in biological systems, you'd expect a person to be a little more developed in their thinking...
  - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
    Woman and men are, on average, different. Is this wrong? These differences can be in factors that impact ones desire or ability to perform certain roles. Is this wrong? This individual person, because they are a man/woman, is unfit for the role. This IS wrong. Is it wrong to say there are differences that make women, on average, worse football players? Is that inherently bad, perhaps even blasphemous, thing to say? I don't think so. So why can't one discuss this about other jobs? Perhaps they are wrong, Perhaps which ever group isn't worse on average. But even if they are wrong, then the way to respond is to say that their information is wrong, not that they are wrong for saying it. We are treating the conversation itself like it is a blasphemy that shall not be uttered aloud. Instead, we should be asking 'is this information factual or not'. And we should be taking safe guards that averages aren't assigned to individuals.

zouhair 9y ago

>If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program. Only someone who is not a woman or not from a minority could say this. People tend to dismiss other peoples problem or minimize them, even when those people are telling they are hurting.

JSONwebtoken 9y ago
> Only someone who is not a woman or not from a minority could say this. People tend to dismiss other peoples problem or minimize them, even when those people are telling they are hurting. Only someone who is a woman or from a minority with liberal views could say this. How can you speak for 70% of people? How are you hurting from being treated equally to the 30%?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
lawnchair_larry 9y ago
Haha. Clearly you are not a woman. I've heard many, many women express this. Do you know how insulting it is to be a diversity hire?
- vertex-four 9y ago
  Not insulting to me. I'd love to be a diversity hire. Instead I just don't get hired, and the Government tell me I'm a lying cunt and threaten to take away my benefits for not being able to find a job.
  - dijit 9y ago
    My company is all about diversity hires; please send a CV they'd love to have you aboard if you're willing to relocate. https://massive.se/jobs https://massive.se/jobs edit: not sure why downvotes, I'm being sincere. :S
drakonka 9y ago

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

I think any company should hire diversely in terms of qualifications too, regardless of gender; there's far too many job postings out there where they ask for 5+ years of experience. Even entry-level with X years of experience. I'm glad at least that some IT employers care less about education and look more at potential and whatnot.

gambiting 9y ago

My sister was extremely put off going into CS after the career adviser at her school literally told her "you should go into CS since companies will have to hire you because you are a woman and they have quotas to fill". She was so upset by this she didn't even want to consider trying a CS degree.

wastedhours 9y ago

White male, so checking my privilege, however I know my "widening participation" status influenced certain opportunities I had access to in the run up to university, and quite likely as part of a numbers game for the university place itself. I've often thought about how I feel knowing something as simple as the postcode I grew up in affected how I got somewhere, but always arrive at it being a net positive. There are pros and cons to it all of course, and it doesn't take away from the fear that you don't deserve it. But, society needs to kickstart the fortuitous cycle of opportunity, direction and inspiration somehow. When a group of people have no role models, nobody empathetic of their route or life chances or aware of any other skills they can bring, we can't progress. When we're talking about whether someone is more or less qualified, it's not like it's a AAA+ grade male vs a CCD- female. It's (in almost all cases), very small variations of tangential achievements, most of which can be outweighed with a minority group bringing a different group of life experiences to the table.

peak_body_yo 9y ago
> It's (in almost all cases), very small variations of tangential achievements, most of which can be outweighed with a minority group bringing a different group of life experiences to the table. Actually, diversity initiatives can decrease cultural diversity in tech. Many diversity initiatives leave immigrants behind and mainly benefit Americans. It can be said that foreigners are considered more "culturally diverse" than Americans in USA based workplaces. Diversity programs might increase gender and racial diversity, but also decrease foreign representation as a result and make a company less culturally diverse.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  I think male Asians and Indians are not considered as adding as much 'diversity' in tech.

jedrek 9y ago

I love how you throw around the term "qualified" as though it were set in stone. Like one person is obviously more qualified than the other, as though these people are 100m sprinters whose performance is measured within a fraction of a hundredth of a second. We're treating highly educated specialists tasked with delivering highly complex, variable and nuanced output like 19th century factory workers. How many hundreds of books have been published on just the question of measuring employee productivity, yet for the sake of this conversation we toss terms like "more qualified" around like they are law.

lagadu 9y ago
"Qualified" was the wrong word because it can imply that the qualifications are measurable à priori, which is what I'm assuming is your interpretation. That's not what the OP is saying though, he's saying "qualified" as seen in demonstrated performance after the hiring. It would've been clearer had he said "better at the job" (as in, leading to a greater total company value) than "qualified".
jorgemf 9y ago
It is a subjetive measure but still a measure. For example, the position requires knowing Python, a person with 5 years of experience in Python will probably know more than a person with 1. Yes, you can be wrong but hiring the 5 year person is the common sense, you will do less mistakes this way. Hiring the women because it is a women it is a positive discrimination. Not hiring the women with experience is discrimination, but does this really happen? Can you prove it? (Ok yes, people see a woman to hire and say +1 point because you a woman and will us pay less taxes because of the diversity balance. This shit happens too) You talk like you have written those books, enlighten me.

StargazyPi 9y ago

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about diversity programs, and their purpose. Let's use tech leadership as an example: The problem they're solving shouldn't be "we need more women in tech, so let's lower the bar for them". The problem they should be solving is "There are two candidates for this leadership position. One tends to use assertiveness and authority to get the job done. The other uses encouragement and persuasion. Who do you hire?". The default response is often to choose the person with the leadership style you've seen many times before, and thus the person who uses unfamiliar, equally effective techniques doesn't get a shot. You sure as hell shouldn't hire me because I'm female. You should hire me because the set of techniques I employ to do my job are effective, even though they might be less familiar to you. Every tech lead has a different style, and that style has been tailored to that individual. Measure the outcome, not arbitrary characteristics that contribute to the outcome.

jorgemf 9y ago
> You sure as hell shouldn't hire me because I'm female. You should hire me because the set of techniques I employ to do my job are effective, even though they might be less familiar to you I couldn't agree more with it. And I think it is one of the points of the infamous memorandum. We should change how the companies works internally so we can use other skills in our benefit. I am not sure the diversity programs work like this, because if they worked like this the focus should be more inside the internal culture than in the hiring process. They would say something like we need to teach people in the company to increase the tolerance and assess diversity skill instead of increasing the diversity. Increasing diversity should be an emerge feature not a goal.

saturdaysaint 9y ago

"If I were I woman (or belong to minority) I would prefer to be being hired without any diversity program." This is like saying "I'd enjoy my success more without the Mortgage Interest Deduction unfairly advantaging me financially". Theoretically feasible, but in practical reality, uh no. If you're hacking it in a competitive environment and you have a life, you most assuredly have 1,000 more important/interesting things on your mind.

jorgemf 9y ago
You have to strive for the things you want in live, nothing is easy for anyone. Do I want a better salary? a better job? yes. But I want a quality of life, I don't want to work long hours. So I wont have something better because I have other preferences in life. And I am ok with it.
- saturdaysaint 9y ago
  Cool.
lr4444lr 9y ago
Completely inaccurate analogy. The MID is in the tax code available and given blindly to everybody who wants to apply for a house, not part of any human judgment on merit or ability. A more relevant one would be whether brokers are now showing houses or discussing financing options differently to people based a perception of the person's identity group.
- saturdaysaint 9y ago
  Apparently it's your hobby horse, but there's no reason an analogy has to adhere to the topic of identity politics. Few people give active thought to the advantages they're born into or receive throughout life - that the GP thinks people advantaged by hiring preferences would prefer to have been hired some other way is just a failure to comprehend human psychology. Unless they're writing a blog on the topic, most people are more busy with their jobs and lives to care about their hiring process.

roguecoder 9y ago

Why do you assume the men being hired are more qualified than the women who were passed over? The hiring process is subjective, not fair. There is extensive evidence that just having a name that is assumed to be female makes a candidate less likely to get hired. Without diversity programs, less qualified men are hired over more qualified women, producing the skewed results we observe. Women are on average more qualified than the men in the same jobs they hold because of these social forces, so your assumptions make you particularly systematically wrong.