5 ms·

> illegal hiring quotas Whether or not this is illegal, or true, this is an anti-pattern. If you want representation (and PR) hiring quotas are great; however,

> illegal hiring quotas Whether or not this is illegal, or true, this is an anti-pattern. If you want representation (and PR) hiring quotas are great; however, if you truly want to empower they work against your goals. At the end of the day any person who walks into a job because of a quota will question, "did I get this job because of my gender/race/creed/orientation?" While you have provided them with opportunity it would be very difficult for that person to fairly evaluate themselves and especially determine whether they are making progress in their career.

sp332 9y ago
Making someone question whether they are qualified is better than not hiring them at all. Quotas are useful if you have reason to believe that your hiring process is biased and you are missing out on qualified candidates. That way you're not passing up too many candidates from specific groups that you're having a hard time characterizing.
- zamalek 9y ago
  Quotas do have their place for instigating change, to more correctly state my views (which are incredibly complex, just like the subject is): I think that they rapidly outgrow their usefulness. If you have women in hire/fire positions, in theory the bias should work itself out. It probably wouldn't in reality. It's a nasty situation. We want to make progress as society, which means quantifying that progress (quotas make this impossible). However, at the same time we are trying to make that progress to represent individuals and, yes, place them in lucrative jobs to level the playing field (which quotas assist). > reason to believe that your hiring process is biased and you are missing out on qualified candidates That is to my point. How could you justify that position if you have no way of measuring it? Find 50 lions and 50 white lions, put them in an enclosure and ask a scientist to tell you what percentage of lions are white based on that sample. I'm not saying that we don't have to solve this, or that it has been solved. It hasn't. I really question our approach (and I don't have a better alternative, apart from eradicating gender stereotypes from a young age). Are we still in the 1990's with a social equality facade?
  - sp332 9y ago
    > Are we still in the 1990's with a social equality facade? No, things have gotten worse since the 90's. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/women-in-tech_n_6955940.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/women-in-tech_n_69... Women have a >40% quit rate, so it's not just the hiring practices which need work. https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenintech_facts_fullreport_05132016.pdf https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenint... (PDF)
    - mpweiher 9y ago
      Define "worse". An easy explanation for higher quit rates is that the various programs to get more women into tech worked, but the percentage of women who actually want to be in tech hasn't budged. When you interview both men and women, women actually report higher rates of support from their companies and superiors than the men. It is one of the few areas where there are differences. The other is "enjoy the work", which women rate a lot lower.
  - ryanbrunner 9y ago
    > If you have women in hire/fire positions, in theory the bias should work itself out. It probably wouldn't in reality. I think this is a common, and pretty unfounded claim that people make. In my experience, men and women are both perfectly capable of having harmful opinions on gender roles.
- ryanbrunner 9y ago
  I think they can be an over-simplistic solution when more effective solutions exist and can work with a little more effort, particularly for a company as large as Google where you have the volume to have meaningful data about hiring patterns. - Outreach to under-represented groups is a no-brainer (I assume Google is already doing this) - Look at ways to make your interview / recruiting process as blind as possible - coding exercises, resume review and even behavioural questions can be done in a way that doesn't reveal someone's gender or race. - Where blindness isn't possible, use data to figure out where there may be bias. Do certain individuals / teams / departments show bias in who they advance through the hiring process? If at least part of your process is blind this is even easier - look for evidence of candidates who did well until the process could no longer be gender / race blind and see if there's any bias introduced at that point. OKRs mandating a fixed gender ratio are the worst way to go about things. It's supposedly common knowledge that any metric is going to be gamed, and doubly so if your career performance is based heavily on it, so it shouldn't be surprising that basing it heavily on a 50/50 ratio can often result in "hiring to quota". Long term, this ends up casting doubt on eminently qualified women and racialized folks.
  - sp332 9y ago
    > (I assume Google is already doing this) Yeah, Google spent a quarter-billion dollars on racial diversity and got nowhere. https://www.fastcompany.com/3066914/google-and-tech-struggle-to-hack-bias-and-diversity https://www.fastcompany.com/3066914/google-and-tech-struggle... So there's a metric they haven't even figured out how to game yet, that's how bad the situation is. As I replied to your sibling comment, the industry wouldn't need to hire so many women (and other tech minorities) if they could keep women from quitting so fast.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  That's not a binary choice. There are both women that would have been hired anyways, and ones that wouldn't. The quota benefits the second group at the expense of the first. Some of the best female engineers I know hate pro-diversity movements because of this.
- OCASM 9y ago
  So if you suspect your hiring process is biased the solution is to make sure it is by implementing quotas. Mhh...

sp332 9y ago

Making someone question whether they are qualified is better than not hiring them at all. Quotas are useful if you have reason to believe that your hiring process is biased and you are missing out on qualified candidates. That way you're not passing up too many candidates from specific groups that you're having a hard time characterizing.

zamalek 9y ago
Quotas do have their place for instigating change, to more correctly state my views (which are incredibly complex, just like the subject is): I think that they rapidly outgrow their usefulness. If you have women in hire/fire positions, in theory the bias should work itself out. It probably wouldn't in reality. It's a nasty situation. We want to make progress as society, which means quantifying that progress (quotas make this impossible). However, at the same time we are trying to make that progress to represent individuals and, yes, place them in lucrative jobs to level the playing field (which quotas assist). > reason to believe that your hiring process is biased and you are missing out on qualified candidates That is to my point. How could you justify that position if you have no way of measuring it? Find 50 lions and 50 white lions, put them in an enclosure and ask a scientist to tell you what percentage of lions are white based on that sample. I'm not saying that we don't have to solve this, or that it has been solved. It hasn't. I really question our approach (and I don't have a better alternative, apart from eradicating gender stereotypes from a young age). Are we still in the 1990's with a social equality facade?
- sp332 9y ago
  > Are we still in the 1990's with a social equality facade? No, things have gotten worse since the 90's. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/women-in-tech_n_6955940.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/women-in-tech_n_69... Women have a >40% quit rate, so it's not just the hiring practices which need work. https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenintech_facts_fullreport_05132016.pdf https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenint... (PDF)
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    Define "worse". An easy explanation for higher quit rates is that the various programs to get more women into tech worked, but the percentage of women who actually want to be in tech hasn't budged. When you interview both men and women, women actually report higher rates of support from their companies and superiors than the men. It is one of the few areas where there are differences. The other is "enjoy the work", which women rate a lot lower.
- ryanbrunner 9y ago
  > If you have women in hire/fire positions, in theory the bias should work itself out. It probably wouldn't in reality. I think this is a common, and pretty unfounded claim that people make. In my experience, men and women are both perfectly capable of having harmful opinions on gender roles.
ryanbrunner 9y ago
I think they can be an over-simplistic solution when more effective solutions exist and can work with a little more effort, particularly for a company as large as Google where you have the volume to have meaningful data about hiring patterns. - Outreach to under-represented groups is a no-brainer (I assume Google is already doing this) - Look at ways to make your interview / recruiting process as blind as possible - coding exercises, resume review and even behavioural questions can be done in a way that doesn't reveal someone's gender or race. - Where blindness isn't possible, use data to figure out where there may be bias. Do certain individuals / teams / departments show bias in who they advance through the hiring process? If at least part of your process is blind this is even easier - look for evidence of candidates who did well until the process could no longer be gender / race blind and see if there's any bias introduced at that point. OKRs mandating a fixed gender ratio are the worst way to go about things. It's supposedly common knowledge that any metric is going to be gamed, and doubly so if your career performance is based heavily on it, so it shouldn't be surprising that basing it heavily on a 50/50 ratio can often result in "hiring to quota". Long term, this ends up casting doubt on eminently qualified women and racialized folks.
- sp332 9y ago
  > (I assume Google is already doing this) Yeah, Google spent a quarter-billion dollars on racial diversity and got nowhere. https://www.fastcompany.com/3066914/google-and-tech-struggle-to-hack-bias-and-diversity https://www.fastcompany.com/3066914/google-and-tech-struggle... So there's a metric they haven't even figured out how to game yet, that's how bad the situation is. As I replied to your sibling comment, the industry wouldn't need to hire so many women (and other tech minorities) if they could keep women from quitting so fast.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
That's not a binary choice. There are both women that would have been hired anyways, and ones that wouldn't. The quota benefits the second group at the expense of the first. Some of the best female engineers I know hate pro-diversity movements because of this.
OCASM 9y ago
So if you suspect your hiring process is biased the solution is to make sure it is by implementing quotas. Mhh...