5 ms·

Judge people by the content of their character and their ability to do the job. Giving certain people advantages does help them, yes, but it leads to resentmen

by jdlyga 8y ago

Judge people by the content of their character and their ability to do the job. Giving certain people advantages does help them, yes, but it leads to resentment.

ceejayoz 8y ago
> Judge people by the content of their character and their ability to do the job. Given that resumes with black-sounding names get fewer callbacks than the identical resume with a different name (http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873), it's pretty clear we're not very good at doing that.
- chillacy 8y ago
  I can't see how you made the jump from "character and ability" to "resume"–one's name is not one's character nor one's ability. In fact the submission by the founder of interviewing.io seems to imply that more technical evaluations (focus on ability) lead to more diversity: > At interviewing.io, we rely entirely on performance in anonymous technical interviews - not resumes - to surface top-performing candidates, and 40% of hires are people from non-traditional backgrounds and underrepresented groups
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    > I can't see how you made the jump from "character and ability" to "resume"–one's name is not one's character nor one's ability. How does one judge someone's "character and ability" if the resume went into the trash because of their name?
    - chillacy 8y ago
      What if there is no resume, as in the case I cited? I did not find original poster's stated goals to be disagreeable: hire based on character and ability. If it means the tech industry moves towards blind auditions, as the case is with certain music auditions, so be it. The alternative is to artificially add advantages to one group, and like the poster said, it leads to resentment and people questioning if a job was given for merit or quota. And I would add that the focus in jobs becomes more of a political and social one, as your in-group fights for process advantages, versus focusing on skill.
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        > What if there is no resume, as in the case I cited? I suspect you find out the person's name at some point. > I did not find original poster's stated goals to be disagreeable: hire based on character and ability. I don't find the goals disagreeable. I find our ability to do so - even when we've the best of intentions - very questionable.
        chillacy 8y ago
        So you've given up completely? It seems to me that we've only scratched the surface of what we could be doing process-wise. The US isn't even that bad, in lots of other countries, a photo gets attached to your resume. I go back to the blind audition idea because this actually worked: https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... So what similar ideas can we do in tech? I don't need to know someone's name to read a resume, in fact a unique identifier would be more useful than a name.
- daenz 8y ago
  Why didn't they control for poor-sounding names? Rightly or wrongly, some names have an association with low income. What if the white names were "Cletus" and "Brandy Lynn"? And instead of "Lakisha", they used "Jasmine" or "Kiara"?
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    There are various controls detailed in the study. For example, they checked for some class associations: > Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. and this bit: > First, we examine whether the race-specific names we have chosen might also proxy for social class above and beyond the race of the applicant. Using birth certificates data on mother’s education for the different names used in our sample, we find little relationship between social background and the name specific callback rates. > ... > We also argue that a social class interpretation would find it hard to explain all of our results, such as why living a better neighborhood does not increase callback rates more for African American names than for White names. This bit likely controls indirectly for class, as well: > Whites with higher quality resumes receive 30 percent more callbacks than Whites with lower quality resumes, a statistically significant difference. On the other hand, having a higher quality resume has a much smaller effect for African Americans.
krastanov 8y ago
Sure, I would agree if by "quota" you mean quota in hires. I agree that the hiring decision should be based on some "ideal of meritocracy" (with the caveat you should be careful about bias). However, putting a quota like "there should be at least one woman among the interviewees" seems perfectly reasonable and has proven to improve both performance and diversity (a great example is the last UN secretary's policy). Basically, if you ensure that you are not excluding people at the interview stage (which regrettably is very much the status quo), you do get both great hires and (accidentally) diversity.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  What happens when you don’t get any women CVs passed from the recruiters for that opening? Do you wait? Do you mandate recruiters to forward a woman’s CV regarding of qualifications? There are a lot of very fine lines to walk here without a clear good answer for any.
scarface74 8y ago
That’s all nice and dandy until you realize that many companies don’t look outside of their bubble for recruitment. Either internal referrals or only recruiting from a few colleges.

by jdlyga 8y ago

Judge people by the content of their character and their ability to do the job. Giving certain people advantages does help them, yes, but it leads to resentment.

ceejayoz 8y ago

> Judge people by the content of their character and their ability to do the job. Given that resumes with black-sounding names get fewer callbacks than the identical resume with a different name (http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873), it's pretty clear we're not very good at doing that.

chillacy 8y ago
I can't see how you made the jump from "character and ability" to "resume"–one's name is not one's character nor one's ability. In fact the submission by the founder of interviewing.io seems to imply that more technical evaluations (focus on ability) lead to more diversity: > At interviewing.io, we rely entirely on performance in anonymous technical interviews - not resumes - to surface top-performing candidates, and 40% of hires are people from non-traditional backgrounds and underrepresented groups
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > I can't see how you made the jump from "character and ability" to "resume"–one's name is not one's character nor one's ability. How does one judge someone's "character and ability" if the resume went into the trash because of their name?
  - chillacy 8y ago
    What if there is no resume, as in the case I cited? I did not find original poster's stated goals to be disagreeable: hire based on character and ability. If it means the tech industry moves towards blind auditions, as the case is with certain music auditions, so be it. The alternative is to artificially add advantages to one group, and like the poster said, it leads to resentment and people questioning if a job was given for merit or quota. And I would add that the focus in jobs becomes more of a political and social one, as your in-group fights for process advantages, versus focusing on skill.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      > What if there is no resume, as in the case I cited? I suspect you find out the person's name at some point. > I did not find original poster's stated goals to be disagreeable: hire based on character and ability. I don't find the goals disagreeable. I find our ability to do so - even when we've the best of intentions - very questionable.
      - chillacy 8y ago
        So you've given up completely? It seems to me that we've only scratched the surface of what we could be doing process-wise. The US isn't even that bad, in lots of other countries, a photo gets attached to your resume. I go back to the blind audition idea because this actually worked: https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... So what similar ideas can we do in tech? I don't need to know someone's name to read a resume, in fact a unique identifier would be more useful than a name.
daenz 8y ago
Why didn't they control for poor-sounding names? Rightly or wrongly, some names have an association with low income. What if the white names were "Cletus" and "Brandy Lynn"? And instead of "Lakisha", they used "Jasmine" or "Kiara"?
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  There are various controls detailed in the study. For example, they checked for some class associations: > Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. and this bit: > First, we examine whether the race-specific names we have chosen might also proxy for social class above and beyond the race of the applicant. Using birth certificates data on mother’s education for the different names used in our sample, we find little relationship between social background and the name specific callback rates. > ... > We also argue that a social class interpretation would find it hard to explain all of our results, such as why living a better neighborhood does not increase callback rates more for African American names than for White names. This bit likely controls indirectly for class, as well: > Whites with higher quality resumes receive 30 percent more callbacks than Whites with lower quality resumes, a statistically significant difference. On the other hand, having a higher quality resume has a much smaller effect for African Americans.

krastanov 8y ago

Sure, I would agree if by "quota" you mean quota in hires. I agree that the hiring decision should be based on some "ideal of meritocracy" (with the caveat you should be careful about bias). However, putting a quota like "there should be at least one woman among the interviewees" seems perfectly reasonable and has proven to improve both performance and diversity (a great example is the last UN secretary's policy). Basically, if you ensure that you are not excluding people at the interview stage (which regrettably is very much the status quo), you do get both great hires and (accidentally) diversity.

dogma1138 8y ago
What happens when you don’t get any women CVs passed from the recruiters for that opening? Do you wait? Do you mandate recruiters to forward a woman’s CV regarding of qualifications? There are a lot of very fine lines to walk here without a clear good answer for any.

scarface74 8y ago

That’s all nice and dandy until you realize that many companies don’t look outside of their bubble for recruitment. Either internal referrals or only recruiting from a few colleges.