5 ms·

Did anyone not see this coming? The goal posts of equal _outcome_ continue to move, from university enrollment, to employment enrollment. And there are some pe

Did anyone not see this coming? The goal posts of equal _outcome_ continue to move, from university enrollment, to employment enrollment. And there are some people who want to see it go further. (What societal engineering scheme does this resemble?) With no apparent regard for what it costs. Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? Or do you think that, maybe, we should judge people by who they are? The substantive characteristics that define an individual. Not a fantasy, not a PR story, but _who an individual is_. We should all have the decency to look beyond the superficial traits of a person, to not make assumptions about their character, positive or negative, and to truly try to understand one another. Blatant discrimination of such superficial features has no place in a healthy society, or one that wishes to become one. This arrogance, assumptions, and short-sighted thinking cost more than we can afford.

busterarm 9y ago
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
- DrScump 9y ago
  Some people (especially those from outside the USA) may not know the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream
vkou 9y ago
> Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? We already do, through systemic biases. Sadly, as the downvotes indicate, reminding people of their privilege seems to be an unpopular thing.
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  Is it a systemic bias that men choose to study CS and Engineering majors and make up 80% of graduates and the talent pool? Should we discriminate against them for this reason?
  - vkou 9y ago
    It's a systemic bias when you send out two resumes, one with a traditionally african-american name, and one with a traditionally white american name... And have 50% more callbacks for the one with the white name.
    - overeater 9y ago
      Not sure if this will change your mind, but the latest research with a twice as large sample size does indicate any difference anymore: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-biz-20160503-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-b...
    - netheril96 9y ago
      And the solution is to fight fire with fire? When Asian students apply to universities, they will have better chances if they change their names and activities in their personal statements to be less typical Asian, because of this affirmative action.
    - paul7986 9y ago
      In govt IT(mid Atlantic region) as a Caucasian I am always a minority amongst my awesome Indian and a Asian (few) male & female peers. I often wonder why many Caucasian complain about foreigners taking jobs yet those complainers never bothered to learn an in-demand skill. Thus those nice high paying jobs are going to those who are qualified no matter their race, creed or sex.
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      Its also systemic bias when you won't even interview men... I have first hand experience with this. As a normal working-class white guy with poor parents and no connections (I worked my way through school), I had a hard time even landing an interview at first. As a social experiment, I changed my name/sex from Joe/male to Joanna/female, kept everything else on my resume the same, and reapplied to all the jobs that didn't want me previously. Every single company that rejected Joe was overjoyed when Joanna applied. In every case I got a email within the week wanting to meet and interview me. It was kind of eye-opening. I didn't follow through as "Joanna" because the sexist hiring policies were enough to put me off working at these companies entirely. I eventually found an employer that wasn't sexist and have been happy with them so far...
- malvosenior 9y ago
  > Sadly, as the downvotes indicate, reminding people of their privilege seems to be an unpopular thing. How is being denied employment a "privilege"?
- aphextron 9y ago
  >Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? Reading that sentence as a black person was cringe inducing to say the least. It truly never ceases to amaze me the complete lack of awareness that white males have of their elevated position in society.
  - trsse 9y ago
    It is mind boggling that someone could not realize that we already live in that world.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
majos 9y ago
Sure! Except when left to our own devices to "look beyond the superficial traits of a person", we usually end up hiring people who remind us ourselves. There is a place for consciously paying attention to race, ethnicity, and gender in that case. (Admittedly, the alleged situation in the headline is too far.)
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  > Except when left to our own devices to "look beyond the superficial traits of a person", we usually end up hiring people who remind us ourselves. Speak for yourself. Also, like similarity goes beyond skin color. I have more in common with a programmer of any race than with a non-programmer of my own race. That being said furries are weird.
  - xkjkls 9y ago
    We're speaking to what a large body of research and hiring practices have borne out. It's a bad idea to assume you are immune from unconcious biases. https://hbr.org/2017/08/what-the-science-actually-says-about-gender-gaps-in-the-workplace https://hbr.org/2017/08/what-the-science-actually-says-about...
  - mars4rp 9y ago
    Some biases are on the surface and you might be able to avoid them. Others are unconscious and without knowing it exist you can't avoid it. Problem is people think they are not bias when they actually are! Let's try something, for the next 10 person that you meet, try to come up with a reason of why you like or dislike them. And those reasons are just coming justification for your feelings, and it is coming from your unconscious!
  - notacoward 9y ago
    > I have more in common with a programmer of any race than with a non-programmer of my own race. Is that unusual freedom from unconscious bias reflected in the history of what engineers you have chosen to interview, made offers to, or subsequently promoted? Everyone thinks they're free from bias, until the empirical results show that the majority of them mathematically must be wrong.
ghostcluster 9y ago
Note, this lawsuit is being brought by former Google recruiters who say they were ordered to "purge" certain groups from the interview queue. > YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” the applications of people who didn’t fit those categories, the lawsuit claims. I'd like to remind people of what Denise Young Smith, who ran HR at Apple, said, before suddenly stepping down after the outrageous repsonse. > “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation,” the inaugural diversity chief said. > “Diversity is the human experience,” she said, according to Quartz. “I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.” She's gone now, instantly, after working there for 20 years and rising to senior executive VP. What is going on in our industry?
- wycs 9y ago
  It’s a purity death spiral. Model diversity as a sacred belief with no central authorities. With no pope of social justice to tamp down on the overzealous all actors ratchet towards increasing absurd signaling behaviours, limited only when the enterprise is outcompeted.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- netheril96 9y ago
  She should file a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination by Apple. The irony would be palpable.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  > "She's gone now, instantly, after working there for 20 years and rising to senior executive VP. What is going on in our industry?" Her crime was not having ideological purity...
- ignoramceisblis 9y ago
  What seems to be going on, I think, is largely a one-sided story. There are many people with bullhorns who speak, for whatever reasons, but who seem to go largely unchallenged. Whether that's due to unawareness, lack of critical thought, laziness, or perceived distance (e.g. "I think things are still fine with me; I can't or don't see how this could affect me."), I can't say for certain, but I imagine many people are affected by some combination of them all. What I can say we do need more of, however, is well-engaged, open and honest discussion. Having leading voices speak your mind can be very good, but central figures can be fallible. A better solution would be to have input from humans in the "silent majority", whatever that might be.
fzeroracer 9y ago
We already do live in that world. If you 'whiten up' your resume, you're more likely to get callbacks. Even if the company indicates that they're pro-diversity or equal-opportunity [1]. Employees with black-sounding names are in general less likely to receive callbacks even when accounting for economic status and skill level [2]. Depending on your name, you will be perceived as being more violent or lesser in status [3]. For minorities, this sort of thing is what they already and commonly experience. So while we can claim that diversity hiring and so forth has swung too far in the opposite direction, studies and research in general has shown this to not be the case. I'm skeptical of any lawsuits like this brought against Google and while I don't doubt there are instances of terrible hiring managers going too far I imagine people will use this lawsuit as vindication for why they weren't hired. [1] http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening%20MS%20R2%20Accepted.pdf http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening%20MS%... [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 [3] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/5494/black-sounding-name-conjures-larger-more-dangerous-person https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/5494/black-sound...
- nv-vn 9y ago
  So what about making it name-blind?
  - vkou 9y ago
    You still end up with all the biases in the pipeline.
  - fzeroracer 9y ago
    It solves a little bit of the issue. But software development in general has been far from a 100% merit-focused occupation; networking and having people that can get a foot in the door for you is often far more important than your explicit skill level. That entire process amplifies both unconscious biases and discrepancies of economic status. People without economic means to network, made worse by prejudices and expectations.
    - 9y ago
ericmcer 9y ago
Have there been any experiments that stripped all identifying characteristics from resumes (gender, race, age) including things like name, graduation year, college, etc., and recorded the resulting hiring outcomes? A company as big as google could easily do something like sanitize resumes to ensure impartial hiring.
brookside 9y ago
Jordan Peterson is that you?
notacoward 9y ago
> try to understand one another > ... > arrogance, assumptions, and short-sighted thinking What happened to trying to understand one another? Or should others only try to understand you, without you trying to understand them? The premise behind affirmative action is that it is needed in the present to correct for other forms of systemic bias that we haven't been able to eliminate yet. Practically all of the people who believe this, whether they do so rightly or wrongly, have color blindness as an eventual goal, just that pretending we're already there will never get us there. If you disagree with the premise, engage with it. Accusing others of arrogance etc. because you haven't tried to understand their POV - it's so well explained so many places that if you had tried you would have succeeded - isn't constructive.

busterarm 9y ago

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

DrScump 9y ago
Some people (especially those from outside the USA) may not know the reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream

vkou 9y ago

> Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? We already do, through systemic biases. Sadly, as the downvotes indicate, reminding people of their privilege seems to be an unpopular thing.

ghostcluster 9y ago
Is it a systemic bias that men choose to study CS and Engineering majors and make up 80% of graduates and the talent pool? Should we discriminate against them for this reason?
- vkou 9y ago
  It's a systemic bias when you send out two resumes, one with a traditionally african-american name, and one with a traditionally white american name... And have 50% more callbacks for the one with the white name.
  - overeater 9y ago
    Not sure if this will change your mind, but the latest research with a twice as large sample size does indicate any difference anymore: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-biz-20160503-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-b...
  - netheril96 9y ago
    And the solution is to fight fire with fire? When Asian students apply to universities, they will have better chances if they change their names and activities in their personal statements to be less typical Asian, because of this affirmative action.
  - paul7986 9y ago
    In govt IT(mid Atlantic region) as a Caucasian I am always a minority amongst my awesome Indian and a Asian (few) male & female peers. I often wonder why many Caucasian complain about foreigners taking jobs yet those complainers never bothered to learn an in-demand skill. Thus those nice high paying jobs are going to those who are qualified no matter their race, creed or sex.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    Its also systemic bias when you won't even interview men... I have first hand experience with this. As a normal working-class white guy with poor parents and no connections (I worked my way through school), I had a hard time even landing an interview at first. As a social experiment, I changed my name/sex from Joe/male to Joanna/female, kept everything else on my resume the same, and reapplied to all the jobs that didn't want me previously. Every single company that rejected Joe was overjoyed when Joanna applied. In every case I got a email within the week wanting to meet and interview me. It was kind of eye-opening. I didn't follow through as "Joanna" because the sexist hiring policies were enough to put me off working at these companies entirely. I eventually found an employer that wasn't sexist and have been happy with them so far...
malvosenior 9y ago
> Sadly, as the downvotes indicate, reminding people of their privilege seems to be an unpopular thing. How is being denied employment a "privilege"?
aphextron 9y ago
>Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? Reading that sentence as a black person was cringe inducing to say the least. It truly never ceases to amaze me the complete lack of awareness that white males have of their elevated position in society.
- trsse 9y ago
  It is mind boggling that someone could not realize that we already live in that world.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

majos 9y ago

Sure! Except when left to our own devices to "look beyond the superficial traits of a person", we usually end up hiring people who remind us ourselves. There is a place for consciously paying attention to race, ethnicity, and gender in that case. (Admittedly, the alleged situation in the headline is too far.)

adamnemecek 9y ago
> Except when left to our own devices to "look beyond the superficial traits of a person", we usually end up hiring people who remind us ourselves. Speak for yourself. Also, like similarity goes beyond skin color. I have more in common with a programmer of any race than with a non-programmer of my own race. That being said furries are weird.
- xkjkls 9y ago
  We're speaking to what a large body of research and hiring practices have borne out. It's a bad idea to assume you are immune from unconcious biases. https://hbr.org/2017/08/what-the-science-actually-says-about-gender-gaps-in-the-workplace https://hbr.org/2017/08/what-the-science-actually-says-about...
- mars4rp 9y ago
  Some biases are on the surface and you might be able to avoid them. Others are unconscious and without knowing it exist you can't avoid it. Problem is people think they are not bias when they actually are! Let's try something, for the next 10 person that you meet, try to come up with a reason of why you like or dislike them. And those reasons are just coming justification for your feelings, and it is coming from your unconscious!
- notacoward 9y ago
  > I have more in common with a programmer of any race than with a non-programmer of my own race. Is that unusual freedom from unconscious bias reflected in the history of what engineers you have chosen to interview, made offers to, or subsequently promoted? Everyone thinks they're free from bias, until the empirical results show that the majority of them mathematically must be wrong.

ghostcluster 9y ago

Note, this lawsuit is being brought by former Google recruiters who say they were ordered to "purge" certain groups from the interview queue. > YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” the applications of people who didn’t fit those categories, the lawsuit claims. I'd like to remind people of what Denise Young Smith, who ran HR at Apple, said, before suddenly stepping down after the outrageous repsonse. > “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation,” the inaugural diversity chief said. > “Diversity is the human experience,” she said, according to Quartz. “I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.” She's gone now, instantly, after working there for 20 years and rising to senior executive VP. What is going on in our industry?

wycs 9y ago
It’s a purity death spiral. Model diversity as a sacred belief with no central authorities. With no pope of social justice to tamp down on the overzealous all actors ratchet towards increasing absurd signaling behaviours, limited only when the enterprise is outcompeted.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
netheril96 9y ago
She should file a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination by Apple. The irony would be palpable.
Caveman_Coder 9y ago
> "She's gone now, instantly, after working there for 20 years and rising to senior executive VP. What is going on in our industry?" Her crime was not having ideological purity...
ignoramceisblis 9y ago
What seems to be going on, I think, is largely a one-sided story. There are many people with bullhorns who speak, for whatever reasons, but who seem to go largely unchallenged. Whether that's due to unawareness, lack of critical thought, laziness, or perceived distance (e.g. "I think things are still fine with me; I can't or don't see how this could affect me."), I can't say for certain, but I imagine many people are affected by some combination of them all. What I can say we do need more of, however, is well-engaged, open and honest discussion. Having leading voices speak your mind can be very good, but central figures can be fallible. A better solution would be to have input from humans in the "silent majority", whatever that might be.

fzeroracer 9y ago

We already do live in that world. If you 'whiten up' your resume, you're more likely to get callbacks. Even if the company indicates that they're pro-diversity or equal-opportunity [1]. Employees with black-sounding names are in general less likely to receive callbacks even when accounting for economic status and skill level [2]. Depending on your name, you will be perceived as being more violent or lesser in status [3]. For minorities, this sort of thing is what they already and commonly experience. So while we can claim that diversity hiring and so forth has swung too far in the opposite direction, studies and research in general has shown this to not be the case. I'm skeptical of any lawsuits like this brought against Google and while I don't doubt there are instances of terrible hiring managers going too far I imagine people will use this lawsuit as vindication for why they weren't hired. [1] http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening%20MS%20R2%20Accepted.pdf http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/Whitening%20MS%... [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 [3] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/5494/black-sounding-name-conjures-larger-more-dangerous-person https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/5494/black-sound...

nv-vn 9y ago
So what about making it name-blind?
- vkou 9y ago
  You still end up with all the biases in the pipeline.
- fzeroracer 9y ago
  It solves a little bit of the issue. But software development in general has been far from a 100% merit-focused occupation; networking and having people that can get a foot in the door for you is often far more important than your explicit skill level. That entire process amplifies both unconscious biases and discrepancies of economic status. People without economic means to network, made worse by prejudices and expectations.
  - 9y ago

ericmcer 9y ago

Have there been any experiments that stripped all identifying characteristics from resumes (gender, race, age) including things like name, graduation year, college, etc., and recorded the resulting hiring outcomes? A company as big as google could easily do something like sanitize resumes to ensure impartial hiring.

brookside 9y ago

Jordan Peterson is that you?

notacoward 9y ago

> try to understand one another > ... > arrogance, assumptions, and short-sighted thinking What happened to trying to understand one another? Or should others only try to understand you, without you trying to understand them? The premise behind affirmative action is that it is needed in the present to correct for other forms of systemic bias that we haven't been able to eliminate yet. Practically all of the people who believe this, whether they do so rightly or wrongly, have color blindness as an eventual goal, just that pretending we're already there will never get us there. If you disagree with the premise, engage with it. Accusing others of arrogance etc. because you haven't tried to understand their POV - it's so well explained so many places that if you had tried you would have succeeded - isn't constructive.