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> I can't claim to know Lynn's exact thoughts (Lynn being the person quoted here), but this kind of rhetoric is common among racists/xenophobes. It is also com

> I can't claim to know Lynn's exact thoughts (Lynn being the person quoted here), but this kind of rhetoric is common among racists/xenophobes. It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. > You could have a room full of CS PhDs, and if they all come from similar enough backgrounds then they may all come up with the same solutions to certain problems. "Merit" on its own isn't always enough. Simply having a different background could give someone an edge in such a group when it comes to innovation. I get what you are trying to say, though I do disagree. If you define diversity as different ethnic, cultural, etc. backgrounds, I think having a group of all-<insert group here> with different educational backgrounds (PhDs in CS, Engineering, Math, Physics, etc) would be more beneficial for innovation than having all CS PhDs but from different cultural backgrounds. I do not have any evidence to back up my claim, but I also haven't seen much evidence to prove that cultural diversity is more important than educational diversity. I would love to read more if you have any articles/studies

s2g 9y ago
If a that person is concerned with is hiring skill then they wouldnt be putting up these ads.
joshuamorton 9y ago
The best we have are case studies of non-diverse teams reliably making products that aren't very good for people who look different, despite being highly educated and crossfunctional. The very common example is the Google Photos image search labelling dark-skinned people as gorillas (and more broadly facial recognition and machine learning biases towards light skinned people in a variety of ways). But there are others I've seen. It comes down to needing an advocate. Unless you have someone who advocates for making your products inclusive, you won't end up with inclusive products, and the best advocate is almost always an engineer who says "hey team this product doesn't work for me". (Edit: I should add, this is true for pretty much any feature, not just inclusive ones, but its also true for them) There's no reason a machine learning team needs physics PhDs. There is a reason that same machine learning team needs dark skinned machine learning PhDs. >It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. Right, and given that most people don't want to explicitly state that they're bigoted, often people who are racist and xenophobic claim to hold their views because they care about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct. Perhaps you aren't, but its a worryingly common tactic.
- anon12345690 9y ago
  that's called user testing and focus groups, not forcing the developers to look different just to get a job
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    Focus groups are not an advocate. Focus groups are not a developer with a vested interest in the feature doing what they want. Focus groups cannot be as effective. I address this, but you seemed to ignore it.
    - anon12345690 9y ago
      you didnt address it, you proclaimed that products wont be inclusive (whatever that means) unless you have someone advocating for it, which you then describe as having someone who looks different. its not like people cant understand other perspectives, its not that hard, and focus/user groups would catch all the of examples you cite, just like any QA testing catches bugs and edgecases
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        >you didnt address it, you proclaimed that products wont be inclusive (whatever that means) unless you have someone advocating for it, which you then describe as having someone who looks different. And gave examples of that happening. Repeated, continued examples in the same context (facial processing). >its not like people cant understand other perspectives, its not that hard, and focus/user groups would catch all the of examples you cite But empirically they don't. Yes, they should. But they don't. This keeps happening, which would imply that the user groups aren't actually catching these examples, or maybe they are, but again without an advocate, a single complaint, or even some complaints, doesn't matter. So let me ask you, who is more likely to advocate for changes to fix a bug: an engineer who is directly affected by that bug, or one who isn't?
cthalupa 9y ago
> It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. This is a common dog whistle argument. Especially because humans are terrible at properly judging people's impact post hiring. > but I also haven't seen much evidence to prove that cultural diversity is more important than educational diversity. I would love to read more if you have any articles/studies Sure. There's a lot. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1435-5957.2009.00271.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1435-5957... https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJKBD.2010.032586 https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJKBD.201... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1941152 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1941152 https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/31795# https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/31795# https://academic.oup.com/joeg/article/6/1/9/1056407 https://academic.oup.com/joeg/article/6/1/9/1056407 http://amj.aom.org/content/47/2/255.short http://amj.aom.org/content/47/2/255.short There's literally hundreds of studies on this.

s2g 9y ago

If a that person is concerned with is hiring skill then they wouldnt be putting up these ads.

joshuamorton 9y ago

The best we have are case studies of non-diverse teams reliably making products that aren't very good for people who look different, despite being highly educated and crossfunctional. The very common example is the Google Photos image search labelling dark-skinned people as gorillas (and more broadly facial recognition and machine learning biases towards light skinned people in a variety of ways). But there are others I've seen. It comes down to needing an advocate. Unless you have someone who advocates for making your products inclusive, you won't end up with inclusive products, and the best advocate is almost always an engineer who says "hey team this product doesn't work for me". (Edit: I should add, this is true for pretty much any feature, not just inclusive ones, but its also true for them) There's no reason a machine learning team needs physics PhDs. There is a reason that same machine learning team needs dark skinned machine learning PhDs. >It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. Right, and given that most people don't want to explicitly state that they're bigoted, often people who are racist and xenophobic claim to hold their views because they care about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct. Perhaps you aren't, but its a worryingly common tactic.

anon12345690 9y ago
that's called user testing and focus groups, not forcing the developers to look different just to get a job
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  Focus groups are not an advocate. Focus groups are not a developer with a vested interest in the feature doing what they want. Focus groups cannot be as effective. I address this, but you seemed to ignore it.
  - anon12345690 9y ago
    you didnt address it, you proclaimed that products wont be inclusive (whatever that means) unless you have someone advocating for it, which you then describe as having someone who looks different. its not like people cant understand other perspectives, its not that hard, and focus/user groups would catch all the of examples you cite, just like any QA testing catches bugs and edgecases
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      >you didnt address it, you proclaimed that products wont be inclusive (whatever that means) unless you have someone advocating for it, which you then describe as having someone who looks different. And gave examples of that happening. Repeated, continued examples in the same context (facial processing). >its not like people cant understand other perspectives, its not that hard, and focus/user groups would catch all the of examples you cite But empirically they don't. Yes, they should. But they don't. This keeps happening, which would imply that the user groups aren't actually catching these examples, or maybe they are, but again without an advocate, a single complaint, or even some complaints, doesn't matter. So let me ask you, who is more likely to advocate for changes to fix a bug: an engineer who is directly affected by that bug, or one who isn't?

cthalupa 9y ago

> It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. This is a common dog whistle argument. Especially because humans are terrible at properly judging people's impact post hiring. > but I also haven't seen much evidence to prove that cultural diversity is more important than educational diversity. I would love to read more if you have any articles/studies Sure. There's a lot. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1435-5957.2009.00271.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1435-5957... https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJKBD.2010.032586 https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJKBD.201... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1941152 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1941152 https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/31795# https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/31795# https://academic.oup.com/joeg/article/6/1/9/1056407 https://academic.oup.com/joeg/article/6/1/9/1056407 http://amj.aom.org/content/47/2/255.short http://amj.aom.org/content/47/2/255.short There's literally hundreds of studies on this.