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It says a great deal that some people won't concede that a company like Google doesn't have "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity

It says a great deal that some people won't concede that a company like Google doesn't have "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates" even if the author was much more politically correct in their verbiage. Forgive me if I'm conflating two groups, but isn't it the same people saying Google is incapable of doing such a thing whom are also defending the practice of affirmative action at universities? I don't understand how affirmative action is deemed acceptable and even encouraged and at universities to improve diversity numbers, but somehow it's inconceivable that a company like Google could lower the bar to hire employees whom have already had the bar lowered for them since the day they were accepted into college?

manfredo 9y ago
> It says a great deal that some people won't concede that a company like Google doesn't have "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates" even if the author was much more politically correct in their verbiage. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the author wrote, "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate." In other words, not that under qualified candidates are given an offer if they're diverse but rather than qualified non-diverse candidates are passed on. This is not a pedantic clarification. I think that for many people the phrase "lowering the bar" overrode the second part about decreasing false negatives. To be fair "lowering the bar" is a very politically loaded term that typically implies that under qualified applicants are (in some people's views) unfairly accepted. The author was sloppy for this poor choice of words, and it likely cost him his job. Many people would agree that some hiring practices make non-diverse candidates more likely to be rejected when they're qualified, but not that they make diverse candidates more likely to be accepted when unqualified (at least not to a significant degree). In fact, I am one of them. The way my company handles phone screens[1] largely fits this categorization. I think it's an acceptable way of bringing in people of backgrounds we don't often, and that it does not have a particularly large chance of causing under qualified applicants to be accepted. I do think it's fair to criticize the system as discriminating against the non-diverse candidates who don't get extra chances at the phone screen, and that stating as such is not saying that diverse candidate's had the bar lowered for them. But on the whole I think it's justified. Edit: Here's the link to the comment in which I describe my company's phone-screen policy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953762

manfredo 9y ago

> It says a great deal that some people won't concede that a company like Google doesn't have "hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates" even if the author was much more politically correct in their verbiage. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the author wrote, "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate." In other words, not that under qualified candidates are given an offer if they're diverse but rather than qualified non-diverse candidates are passed on. This is not a pedantic clarification. I think that for many people the phrase "lowering the bar" overrode the second part about decreasing false negatives. To be fair "lowering the bar" is a very politically loaded term that typically implies that under qualified applicants are (in some people's views) unfairly accepted. The author was sloppy for this poor choice of words, and it likely cost him his job. Many people would agree that some hiring practices make non-diverse candidates more likely to be rejected when they're qualified, but not that they make diverse candidates more likely to be accepted when unqualified (at least not to a significant degree). In fact, I am one of them. The way my company handles phone screens[1] largely fits this categorization. I think it's an acceptable way of bringing in people of backgrounds we don't often, and that it does not have a particularly large chance of causing under qualified applicants to be accepted. I do think it's fair to criticize the system as discriminating against the non-diverse candidates who don't get extra chances at the phone screen, and that stating as such is not saying that diverse candidate's had the bar lowered for them. But on the whole I think it's justified. Edit: Here's the link to the comment in which I describe my company's phone-screen policy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14953762