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FTA : > Race and Ethnicity > Sexual Orientation Could we agree that : 1/ a coder is a coder, no matter his color, his sexual orientation, his whatever 2/ the

by wiz21c 9y ago

FTA : > Race and Ethnicity > Sexual Orientation Could we agree that : 1/ a coder is a coder, no matter his color, his sexual orientation, his whatever 2/ the notion of "race" is problematic at best And before I get down voted : who cares about a statistic about sexual orientation or ethnicity in a survey about IT ? I mean honestly.

boffinism 9y ago
> who cares about a statistic about sexual orientation or ethnicity in a survey about IT People trying to make the IT industry accessible to all regardless of sexual orientation or ethnicity, who want to check in on how we're doing at that?
- dorgo 9y ago
  If you hire 50 random people (uniform distribution) the probability to get twice (or more than twice) as many employees of one sex as the other sex is about 3.5%. If you add ethnicity, age, sexual orientation etc. to the mix you will rarely get a random sample with all attributes proportional to their occurrence in population. Without quotas it will be really hard to be accessible to all regardless of [a long and ever expanding list of attributes].
  - wiz21c 9y ago
    Thanks for that answer !
adgasf 9y ago
Well if the numbers of various minorities are significantly lower in our industry than the overall average, then perhaps it indicates a hostile environment that we can work on.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  It can indicate a lot of things, don't know why you would reach that particular conclusion.
  - SiempreViernes 9y ago
    Well, maybe adgasf saw some off the accounts[0] by minorities about how they perceive tech as a hostile environment and feel forced to leave because of the harassment? Certainly, if you remember that minorities are reporting harassment in tech companies as a reason they leave, the demographic under representation of these must at least partially encode the scale of the problem. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/18/women-google-memo-racism-sexism-discrimination-quit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/18/women-goo...
ify 9y ago
Thank you for pointing this out. I don't see the relevance myself.
atom-morgan 9y ago
And why group "white" and European descent together? Too much diversity that doesn't actually count as diversity?

by wiz21c 9y ago

boffinism 9y ago

> who cares about a statistic about sexual orientation or ethnicity in a survey about IT People trying to make the IT industry accessible to all regardless of sexual orientation or ethnicity, who want to check in on how we're doing at that?

dorgo 9y ago
If you hire 50 random people (uniform distribution) the probability to get twice (or more than twice) as many employees of one sex as the other sex is about 3.5%. If you add ethnicity, age, sexual orientation etc. to the mix you will rarely get a random sample with all attributes proportional to their occurrence in population. Without quotas it will be really hard to be accessible to all regardless of [a long and ever expanding list of attributes].
- wiz21c 9y ago
  Thanks for that answer !

adgasf 9y ago

Well if the numbers of various minorities are significantly lower in our industry than the overall average, then perhaps it indicates a hostile environment that we can work on.

dingo_bat 9y ago
It can indicate a lot of things, don't know why you would reach that particular conclusion.
- SiempreViernes 9y ago
  Well, maybe adgasf saw some off the accounts[0] by minorities about how they perceive tech as a hostile environment and feel forced to leave because of the harassment? Certainly, if you remember that minorities are reporting harassment in tech companies as a reason they leave, the demographic under representation of these must at least partially encode the scale of the problem. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/18/women-google-memo-racism-sexism-discrimination-quit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/18/women-goo...

ify 9y ago

Thank you for pointing this out. I don't see the relevance myself.

atom-morgan 9y ago

And why group "white" and European descent together? Too much diversity that doesn't actually count as diversity?