5 ms·

Part of the point is that the unprivileged don't get the same opportunities in many ways, so they don't do so well in tests but they still do well at the job; t

Part of the point is that the unprivileged don't get the same opportunities in many ways, so they don't do so well in tests but they still do well at the job; therefore, you need to give them extra leeway during recruiting and such. Also, the experience of the less privileged is that some people use claimed-impartial tests and barriers to exclude them in particular, and so when a test comes along it is demotivating, as it might just be an attempt to exclude them. Look at the voting reforms in various places for examples of this. Using tests to try for pure meritocracy only works when everyone has had the same kind of background and nobody has bias. Look at the examples of CVs/books sent around with just the name/gender changed and the huge difference in response rate to see the bias. Essentially, if you're recruiting (or filtering any set of people) and aren't actively controlling for bias (anonymization is key), you will be biased.

jf- 8y ago
From an organisation’s point of view, does it matter how one person came to be a better performer than another? Surely they just care about current state: this person performs better than this other person now. Perhaps had their backgrounds been different, their performance would be different. Perhaps if the under-performer had more training, their performance would be better. But right now, things aren’t different. From the organisation’s self-interested point of view, they should just choose the better performing candidate.
- aninhumer 8y ago
  This only makes sense if you assume the organisation's interest is only to maximise productivity in the short term. An open source organisation may explicitly be interested in attracting marginalised people into the tech sector, to improve equality in society as a whole. Or even from a cynical perspective, a profit-led corporation may desire to increase their ability to hire competent but undervalued (and thus cheaper) employees in future.
chroma 8y ago
> Look at the examples of CVs/books sent around with just the name/gender changed and the huge difference in response rate to see the bias. That's not true. The original studies used low class names for blacks and hispanics, but not for whites. (For example, they didn't use names like Cletus or Billy Ray.) Once this was corrected for, they found almost no bias in resume screening.[1] 1. https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_koedel.pdf https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_ko...
- angus-prune 8y ago
  I don't think that shows a lack of racism, rather the existance of classism. People are being unfairly judged based on racial and class identifiers, rather than on their CV.
  - chroma 8y ago
    The study I linked to shows that there's almost no race or sex discrimination for names on resumes, even in the southeast US. Regarding class discrimination: I don't think you'll get much disagreement from reasonable people. It's ubiquitous. That said, I do think classism is far less common in tech than in most fields.
- XorNot 8y ago
  This doesn't disprove the original contention.
- aninhumer 8y ago
  So looking at their methodology, they chose the "high class" black names ("Anderson" and "Thompson") (EDIT: I misread, these aren't the black names) based on census proportions, but that doesn't necessarily mean those names are actually read as "black" by most people. Moreover, using census results ignores exposure to foreigners with these names. My own strongest association for "Thompson" is the white police officers in Tintin, and more generally for white English people. (Although I'm British so that may not be representative.) As long as "low class" black names are more readily associated with blackness than "high class" ones, this methodology isn't really isolating anything, just doing a slightly more intersectional analysis.

jf- 8y ago

From an organisation’s point of view, does it matter how one person came to be a better performer than another? Surely they just care about current state: this person performs better than this other person now. Perhaps had their backgrounds been different, their performance would be different. Perhaps if the under-performer had more training, their performance would be better. But right now, things aren’t different. From the organisation’s self-interested point of view, they should just choose the better performing candidate.

aninhumer 8y ago
This only makes sense if you assume the organisation's interest is only to maximise productivity in the short term. An open source organisation may explicitly be interested in attracting marginalised people into the tech sector, to improve equality in society as a whole. Or even from a cynical perspective, a profit-led corporation may desire to increase their ability to hire competent but undervalued (and thus cheaper) employees in future.

chroma 8y ago

> Look at the examples of CVs/books sent around with just the name/gender changed and the huge difference in response rate to see the bias. That's not true. The original studies used low class names for blacks and hispanics, but not for whites. (For example, they didn't use names like Cletus or Billy Ray.) Once this was corrected for, they found almost no bias in resume screening.[1] 1. https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_koedel.pdf https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_ko...

angus-prune 8y ago
I don't think that shows a lack of racism, rather the existance of classism. People are being unfairly judged based on racial and class identifiers, rather than on their CV.
- chroma 8y ago
  The study I linked to shows that there's almost no race or sex discrimination for names on resumes, even in the southeast US. Regarding class discrimination: I don't think you'll get much disagreement from reasonable people. It's ubiquitous. That said, I do think classism is far less common in tech than in most fields.
XorNot 8y ago
This doesn't disprove the original contention.
aninhumer 8y ago
So looking at their methodology, they chose the "high class" black names ("Anderson" and "Thompson") (EDIT: I misread, these aren't the black names) based on census proportions, but that doesn't necessarily mean those names are actually read as "black" by most people. Moreover, using census results ignores exposure to foreigners with these names. My own strongest association for "Thompson" is the white police officers in Tintin, and more generally for white English people. (Although I'm British so that may not be representative.) As long as "low class" black names are more readily associated with blackness than "high class" ones, this methodology isn't really isolating anything, just doing a slightly more intersectional analysis.