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I think this is actually stated in the reverse, based on my experience. Companies that value high-quality output generally tend to become more diverse as they
by eitally 9y ago
I think this is actually stated in the reverse, based on my experience. Companies that value high-quality output generally tend to become more diverse as they grow. There are obvious places this falls on its face. I used to manage plenty diverse global team of engineers (China, India, Brazil, Mexico, US, and a few in the UK) but that doesn't mean diversity was a cornerstone of our culture. Our CIO just wanted to cut expenses and do as much as possible in low cost locations. Software quality was predictably mediocre, not because there weren't some good engineers but because the short view was valued far more than the long view, and every dev cycle was a series of compromises followed by releases that were series of P0 emergencies.
- kartan 9y ago> I used to manage plenty diverse global team of engineers To have Chinese engineers in China, Brazilian in Brazil and Mexicans in Mexico is NOT diversity. That is the contrary of diversity. That is to have homogeneous teams. I have worked for companies in Stockholm that have people from India, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, ... working together in the same office. That is diversity. All of them were had the same range of salaries and expectations. Of course, it was not fairytale perfect. But it was quite good. Externalizing costs to a low-cost country has nothing to do with diversity, as I understand it.
- mhluongo 9y agoSo my global, remote team isn't diverse... because they're remote? The shared office doesn't matter IMO.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoI believe it boils down to how often they all interact with each other. If they're all part of one team, and are regularly interacting, that's one thing, but if they're all kind of self-contained units that don't interact with each other normally, that's not that diverse.
- AlexB138 9y ago> To have Chinese engineers in China, Brazilian in Brazil and Mexicans in Mexico is NOT diversity. That is the contrary of diversity. That is to have homogeneous teams. I'm curious what definition of Diversity you're using that a team of people from all over the world doesn't qualify.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoThey're saying that if you have one team that's all Mexican and another team that's all Chinese, neither of these teams are diverse. Your company might have diversity if you look at the employees as a whole, but segregation is not part of what diversity is supposed to mean.
- adamjc 9y agoEthnicity is not the only measure of diversity. To boil diversity down to one metric like that is missing the point.
- gknoy 9y agoYou're right, but I think it's still important to consider. If I had a team of engineers that were from diverse cultures, but all happened to be male, I would feel that lack of (gender) diversity would still be a fair criticism. It's not boiling it down to one metric, it's pointing out that there's an important metric that might have been missed.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoI didn't boil down diversity to one metric. I was responding to this: > I'm curious what definition of Diversity you're using that a team of people from all over the world doesn't qualify. What you wrote would work better as a response to that than to what I wrote.
- drharby 9y agoYea i echo this - genuinely different backgrounds, influences on business processes and styles as it pertains to the company is discountes as not diverse because of where they are pgysically located. Like an office in sf with all genders and colors represented is diverse...even tho they are all impacted by being im sf and sf culture
- eitally 9y agoI should have been clear. People across these teams were working together on projects, so in that context it meets your bar (as far as I'm concerned). That said, when I started at Google there were 7 countries represented in my initial team of 15 people, which is an entirely different situation.