11 ms·

As a female engineer, I am not diversity

104 points by zhangela 8y ago

leephillips 8y ago
This article is part of the problem. By pointing out that she does not contribute to "diversity" because of her economic and cultural background, the author reinforces the idea that those are the interesting ingredients of this elusive "diversity." She says nothing about her ideas, interests, or opinions. Does she perhaps add to diversity by having original thoughts? Or are her political opinions and taste in music predictable? I'd say this article is evidence that she may in fact possess some intellectual diversity, but that it is something that she herself does not recognize as such.
- fatnoah 8y ago
  You said (in a much better way) part of what I was trying to say in another post. She reduces herself to bullet points and ignores all of the things that I would consider critical parts of what makes people different. Upon a reread, I think that was her point. Measuring diversity based on a few predefined attributes makes no sense. Creating diversity by hiring someone because they're female isn't the answer, we need to go beyond that to truly have diversity.
  - leephillips 8y ago
    Thanks, but I thought your other post was really good.
  - zhangela 8y ago
    Thank you for your thoughtful response! >>> Measuring diversity based on a few predefined attributes makes no sense. Creating diversity by hiring someone because they're female isn't the answer, we need to go beyond that to truly have diversity. I think I might have been a tad overdramatic by just saying "I'm not diversity" in the title, but what you wrote above there is exactly what I'm trying to communicate: diversity is more than just bullet points, we need to see it more holistically.
- wittgenstein 8y ago
  Exactly. The greatest problem with this article is its underlying assumption that "diversity" is good by itself and that companies should pursue it. The author makes the point that she is not "diverse enough", while ignoring the fundamental issue that measuring "diversity" and showing that it is a goal worth pursuing by itself is non-trivial and problematic. The fact that she is counted as "diversity" while claiming that she isn't is exactly the reason why current societies' and organizations' extreme focus on and overvaluing of diversity is misguided.
  - zhangela 8y ago
    Here are a few articles on why diversity is good for business: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-really-good-for-business-mckinsey-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-re... https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diversity-is-good-for-business.html https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diver...
    - wittgenstein 8y ago
      I know that statistics can be found that in some way correlate "diversity" with some financial metric or other being better. But that still is not definitive nor does it address the fundamental issue which is "what really is diversity, on what basis and features should it be measured, and WHY should we optimize for diversity as opposed to OTHER traits that potentially will correlate even more highly with other desirable metrics?"
bootsz 8y ago
Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity. Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted introvert" is one of two things: 1) Ambivert : "a person whose personality has a balance of extrovert and introvert features" 2) Introvert, but not shy : It is a common misconception that introverts are inherently shy. The two are correlated, but not the same thing. You can be introverted and not be shy, either inherently or by learning to overcome shyness. Extra/introversion has more to do with your preferences and where you derive energy from. Shyness is more fear-based, and fear can be overcome. Anyway that's not really a critical part of your article but I've sort of unintentionally become a Myers-Briggs nerd over the years and enjoy discussing stuff like that :)
- stephengillie 8y ago
  "Ambiverts" are never called this. Extroverts complain about the ambivert's introversion, and introverts praise the ambivert's extroversion. Thus, at least some of the confusion is understandable.
- jerrycruncher 8y ago
  The whole 'introverted extrovert' (and vice versa) thing is pretty stilly. In the old days we had a word for people who neither sought nor avoided emotional stimuli: normal.
- zwieback 8y ago
  I just finished "The personality brokers", fantastic book, which explores how E<>I entered popular culture via the Myers-Briggs test. When the E<>I spectrum was subjected to more rigorous analysis it turned out it may just be a metric of "talkativeness" and not really related to the Jungian concept.
  - bootsz 8y ago
    Hmm.. Talkativeness seems way too narrow to me. The theory of deriving energy externally vs. internally makes the most sense to me personally. Though it would certainly correlate with talkativeness. But I'm not an expert on the matter :)
abnry 8y ago
If men and women are completely interchangeable, physically and psychologically, then this article makes a lot of sense. But if women really do have something different (at least on average) to bring to the table, then this women really does add diversity. The purpose of diversity is not quotas, but differences that work together and add something to the whole.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  I think the point is that the diversity she brings isn’t enough diversity to justify her as someone who is adding to diversity in a tech company. You could add 1000s of women like her and the company wouldn’t be particularly different.
  - blueboo 8y ago
    It seems obvious that adding 1000s of women like her would absolutely meaningfully change the company though
    - mantas 8y ago
      Adding 1000 people would change most companies, regardless of what those people look or think like.
  - zhangela 8y ago
    Thank you so much for helping clarify! This is exactly what I meant in the article.
- thanatropism 8y ago
  I'm not saying men and women shouldn't work together, but isn't office drama related to sexual tension something to subtract from that complementarity as well? In my working life I've seen (and also experienced) a lot of productivity-eating unresolved sexual tension, including between people who were married/had partners and didn't reeeally want to mate, at least not rationally. I mean, I know men behave like pigs at Hackatons and I'm all for codes of conduct but even in better conditions (no one's an incel, yadda yadda) this happens.
fatnoah 8y ago
I get the point the author is making, but I'm not 100% sure I agree with how she expressed it. By limiting the definition of diversity/minority, we can probably identify a cohort for any individual where they are in the majority. Diversity measured across an entire company or large cohort doesn't really show the value of diversity in the first place. For me, the real power of diversity is at a micro-level. The author would absolutely add diversity to a three person team where one member is an Indian woman born, raised, and educated to PhD in India, another is a Croatian man with no formal education beyond secondary school, and the third person was a poor kid from Detroit that scrapped their way through community college and into the job market. When I'm putting a team together, I try my hardest to create diversity. That doesn't mean running through a checklist of gender, ethnicity, sexual identification, etc. but it does mean looking for people with different points of view, experience, and ways of solving problems. tl;dr: Diversity == good, agree gender doesn't necessarily mean diversity, diversity is a meaningless term without context.
- Kalium 8y ago
  I think checklists get favored because they're easy to codify in the form of procedures and business processes. They're also easy to measure and report on. The broader, more complex concerns you point to are difficult to measure and thus perhaps more likely to be given short shrift.
  - fatnoah 8y ago
    All excellent points. It's definitely not press-release material, but (IMHO) highlights how things should be. Companies would naturally reach the desired levels of "diversity" if they simply practiced it at a micro level. Certainly some teams would look "unbalanced" by some of the traditional metrics, but I think everything would even out on the larger scale. An interesting anecdote was that I led Engineering for a startup that was acquired by a large ($50-100 Billion) company. After we were acquired, several people commented on my collective team as being the "most diverse" in the company. That was nice to hear, but (for me) the most gratifying part was the team members taking stock and collectively thinking "oh yeah, I guess we are diverse!" It happened on purpose, but with the intention of using diversity as a source of strength not as a means of checking off a box.
jankotek 8y ago
Hire remotely if you want diversity...
nirElHeroinas 8y ago
>I don’t have physical or mental disabilities. As a woman, you have a bit of both.
hkai 8y ago
Interesting that this person does not mention diversity of political opinion, which seems to be lacking.
- YinglingLight 8y ago
  Touching display of political diversity from within Google https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/09/13/breitbart_posts_leaked_video_of_google_leadership_reacting_to_2016_election.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/09/13/breitbart...
- zaccus 8y ago
  That's not something you should ask someone in a job interview though. And most people (mercifully) don't talk about politics at work. So what would promoting political diversity look like?
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >So what would promoting political diversity look like? Not ostracizing people for having political opinions that are not the majority but fairly mainstream. I work at the satellite office of an east coast tech company and how you have to be careful not to say anything that betrays politics that are not officially condoned is a bi-weekly gripe among the group I eat lunch with. I'm not saying it should be perfectly acceptable to tell your coworkers you went to a KKK chapter (is that their organizational unit?) barbecue when discussing what you did over the weekend but if you went to see NASCAR you shouldn't feel compelled to tell people you stayed home.
    - mantas 8y ago
      Is NASCAR uncool now? :(
- blueboo 8y ago
  It's lacking insofar as political opinion is restricted to "should the poors starve" and "is the female intellect inherently inferior"; but when it comes to things like engaging with problematic regimes, capitalist/socialist choices, and bottom up/top down solutions, there's quite a diversity
gorpomon 8y ago
In reference to the point she makes about people not assuming women are developers, I now make it a point to assume two things about most everyone (male and female identifying) that I meet in tech: 1) That they are competent and smart until they definitely prove otherwise to me. 2) That they are technical and interested in technology. It's worked really well for me so far. In practice it means when I meet someone I say "You're a dev right?". Most people appreciate being assumed to be technical, and if they aren't we still get a great convo out of it. I admit it's kind of a silly thing, but so far in years of doing it I don't know of a time it's made anyone feel bad. Edit - Also, if their answer to the dev question is that they are instead a product manager, UX, Designer, etc, I try and follow up with a funny compliment about their field. "Ah, so you make apps useable", etc. Again, just a simple conversational technique to make people feel valued.
- julianh95 8y ago
  This has been my strategy as well and I can confirm that only good things have come of it.
- zhangela 8y ago
  Great strategy! Thank you for sharing.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I try to do the same, and I share your experience. That said, sometimes it gets awkward in funny ways. A few months ago I was at a conference/event selling our product (booth and everything), talking to two young Polish girls who were running a tech startup. I don't recall the details by heart, but it was some marketplace I think. Our product is relatively technical, so your approach, "You're a dev, right?" usually pays off. But these founders giggled, rolled their eyes, and said "Do we look like developers to you?" Eh, yes? :/
  - rexaliquid 8y ago
    I can see that getting awkward! But, you might also have been able to save the moment with a confident "Yes. You look like you'd make awesome developers." I try to live by "It's only awkward if you let it be awkward" to get through those situations.
wccrawford 8y ago
I do think that pointing at someone's physical body and saying, "They bring diversity because they're X!" is wrong. However, I do think that gender and race have an influence on your thought processes because of who you tend to associate with. In addition, she spent 15 years in China, which is definitely not very common here in the US. That alone means she's going to think somewhat differently than the average engineer. And finally, a lack of diversity in a group (all white hetero males, for example) indicates an attempt to exclude diversity, though perhaps subconsciously.
- jriot 8y ago
  A group of white males can be diverse, we just don't accept it. Do you think a group of white males who went to Stanford, MIT etc... right after high school, are the same as those who joined the military, yet now work in the same company?
  - malcolmgreaves 8y ago
    They will have a common thread: they all will be recipients of privileged treatment by society. That is indeed a crucially important fact that will share their attitudes and perspectives.
    - jriot 8y ago
      White males who enlisted in the military were not recipients of privileged treatment by society.
      - malcolmgreaves 8y ago
        Yes they are. You don't understand what white privilege is.
        jriot 8y ago
        Seeing that you grew up in Massachusetts, went to CMU, and now live San Francisco, I can see why you hold that opinion. Come visit me in Louisiana and I will show its a socio-economic issue, not a race issue.
ngngngng 8y ago
I liked the article, but even her expanded definition of diversity doesn't resonate completely with me. My brother and I had exactly the same background and upbringing. And we are both remarkably different people. None of the metrics of diversity mentioned here would reflect that, but it's reality. The priority should be diverse people, not diverse backgrounds.
zwieback 8y ago
I think the finer point is that pinning diversity to something specific like gender works against people that don't want to be viewed as a diversity candidate. It's hard to get this right and the end goal is that we don't even talk about diversity anymore but just recognize its benefits.
- creep 8y ago
  Word. I'm a female undergrad in mathematics, and the department is constantly trying to get me involved with female-oriented STEM events, offering to sponsor me for "women in STEM"-type conferences, etc etc. I refuse on principle. It's well-meaning, probably, but really gets on my nerves sometimes. I want to be a mathematician, not a "female mathematician". It feels like I have this bright red sign covering my face that says "FOSTER DIVERSITY HERE". It's okay guys! I'm already fostered!
trevor-e 8y ago
Does anyone else find it weird/disturbing that someone is compiling a list of women engineers and where they work? I understand having a list of influential speakers and such to look up to, but this does not seem to be the case. The author mentioned she has no idea how she made it on there. Link: https://cristinacordova.github.io/women-eng/ https://cristinacordova.github.io/women-eng/
- Jach 8y ago
  Yeah that's kind of weird... I'm reminded of Romney's "notebook full of women", but at least I don't think the contents were made public?
- avinassh 8y ago
  not just weird, I found it creepy too. If I was being profiled and added to some public list, without my knowledge, that would make me extremely uncomfortable, however noble the intentions are.
- briandear 8y ago
  That is extremely creepy.
iagovar 8y ago
I just hope this diversity drama never comes to my country. I already work in a very diverse workplace. Both genders and multiple nationalities are represented, and I really don't see what that brigs to the table. I mean, why is diversity good per se? I don't see any correlation between any demographic variable and being a good coworker.
- SquirrelOnFire 8y ago
  On an individual level, it doesn't improve being a good coworker. On an institutional level, you get a broader set of ideas when you have a more diverse workforce, giving you a better chance at a black swan idea. And frankly, better odds of preventing disaster (Chevy wouldn't have tried to sell a car called the "Nova" in Mexico if they'd had a spanish speaker on the team. No Va means No Go). There's also evidence that diverse teams do better - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our...
  - aidenn0 8y ago
    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanish/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...
    - SquirrelOnFire 8y ago
      Dang. Thanks for pointing that out.
  - iagovar 8y ago
    > you get a broader set of ideas I'm sorry but I'm still failing to see it. My experience in my company does not support that hypothesis (and it's really a large one) and the link you provided the only thing that is really proving is that more executive women is correlated with more profitability, which could perfectly be (and probably be) the consequence of other institutional factors. We do have locals in every market we play, but that's pretty common sense, you have to know the language and cultural references. But again, I'm not in the US nor I work for a US company. Maybe that has something to do, IDK.
alexashka 8y ago
> "I’m not bringing in the diverse perspective that is so critical to the success of any company." Based on what evidence, or even logic, is diversity critical to the success of even some companies? Let alone any company?
- dx87 8y ago
  For most companies it probably doesn't matter, but if you're trying to market a product to a diverse group, it'll help to have diverse input when creating the product. An example is facial recognition software developed by a US company not recognizing black people, or cameras saying "woops, looks like someone blinked" after taking pictures of an asian person. If they had a more diverse development or testing team, they probably would have noticed it before being publicly embarrased.
- zhangela 8y ago
  Here are a few articles on why diversity is good for business: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-really-good-for-business-mckinsey-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-re... https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diversity-is-good-for-business.html https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diver...
  - mantas 8y ago
    I wonder if those studies got correlation vs causation correctly. Maybe well-doing companies have more satellite offices. Or particular cities have become magnets for people to come do business and have good ecosystem for kickstarting their growth.
  - alexashka 8y ago
    :) You may be underestimating the average intelligence of a HackerNews reader. I am well aware of why some people think diversity is good. Many things are good. Few things are critical. I'll make a strong claim - there is no evidence, that diversity is critical for the success of any business, on this planet. It's an easy claim to make because diversity is not a well defined scientific term, hence there can be no evidence. Which was my point - we can hand wave about diversity, inclusivity and all kinds of things - let's just not pretend it's anything but empty hand waving. Before anyone comes back with saying I'm cherry picking one sentence out of an entire article - it is the foundation of this entire diversity movement. If we agree that we don't know whether diversity is important, we can begin to focus on things that people actually care about - like standards of living and wages.
daemonk 8y ago
This comment might not be relevant to the article. Isn't diversity ultimately relative to the group you are comparing to? And how you want to define the group might differ among people? Also how you weigh the trait in relation to its effect on the some kind of performance metric of the group? Someone with trait A could be considered diverse if we define a group with predominantly trait B. Does having diverse traits (a mix of both A and B) highly correlated with better performance/survival/whatever metric? Maybe having diversity means the group can adapt better over time (surviving an evolutionary bottleneck in some sense)? Most of these concepts are obviously not quantifiable in this way, but I think we need some kind of framework to think about how we define diversity.
justaman 8y ago
I'm going to say it. The most excluded group in SV are conservative republicans. Its a death sentence to your career to come out as one. If you truly value diversity, their point of view is the most absent from tech.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- babygoat 8y ago
  It's also the most incompatible point of view. They do not want to be around diversity.
  - mantas 8y ago
    The word "diversity" is kinda loosing it's meaning when there's a specific thing to be described as "diversity".
    - babygoat 8y ago
      If people who look, think, dress, act, love, or worship differently than they do are "a specific thing", then sure.
      - mantas 8y ago
        A lot of "diversity" is confined to US progressive style who are kinda similar in all of those things. Especially those who think that conservatives wouldn't want to be around them.
  - sydd 8y ago
    Every one of them? Isnt this the textbook definition of generalization that diversity is supposed to counter?
    - Frondo 8y ago
      Well, conservatives in the US have thrown in with a party that typically demonizes people of color, is actively working to disenfranchise them, and has a growing white nationalist element to it. Are there some conservatives who really just care about there being too much government regulation, or whatever? Sure. Looking at the party they rally around and the way it wants to treat people, there sure are some general trends that do not speak to a desire to embrace diversity.
kukx 8y ago
The ultimate diversity is individuality. Stop looking at sex, age and skin color and start looking at the competence alone.
ousta 8y ago
She doesn't know what is it to suffer from diversity. Elizabeth Warren has 0.0001% things to say about that.
40acres 8y ago
I agree with her, diversity is more than just race, sex, sexual preference, etc. However I would say that I think these things as a top level attribute DO correlate with different lived experiences that you want in a diverse workforce. Companies are not going to ask you about your political leanings, they are probably not going to give you some mental test to see how you react to situation A and situation B. If you look at the stats, race and gender do correlate between stark differences in people. For instance, the "wealth gap" between black and white Americans is about 10x, growing in poverty vs. growing up in a stable middle class family causes a different lived experience, you view the world differently because of how you grew up. That's not to say that all black people are poor and all white people are rich, but if you're working with a limited data set and are thinking about how you can get some people in a room with different lived experiences, you could do a lot worse than saying "let's get a mix of different races in here". I think the same thing applies to women and other traits that companies and institutions use for their diversity metrics.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
Agreed, diversity should mean more than simply ethnicity and gender. Age is one thing she left out, it's great for one's career these days to look ~28.
arandr0x 8y ago
Does it matter who's diversity? If the argument is that a company with a non-diverse workforce can't deal with users from different walks of life, they don't have a diversity problem, they have an empathy problem. (Arguably most programmers have an empathy problem.) While I'm sure hiring 2 women and 0.2 black people for every scrum team may help fix the empathy issue, so would hiring white guys who don't think they're the center of the universe. Of course to do that we'd need to stop (as an industry) rewarding and recognizing people who think they're the elite for doing a perfectly normal white-collar job that occasionally involves high school math. (And I definitely don't think we need diversity of political opinions. I don't want to know my coworkers' political opinions, whatever they may be. What would be great would be if I could get coworkers who just don't think their particular ideology is super important in terms of their work life. Any companies that are more on the chill side like this?)
subjectsigma 8y ago
All this article says to me is that no matter how hard I work or what decisions I make or what my life experiences are, I'll never be good enough for progressives. I'll fall "lower" than others on some arbitrary and ever-changing grading scale which puts value to my experiences.
orclthwrawy 8y ago
I'm kind of surprised by the extent to which people have bought into this diversity thing, to the point where it's actually literally a thing people care about. My understanding is that this modern push for diversity and all the rhetoric surrounding it effectively started as a dogwhistle used by liberals to push affirmative action in pursuit of social justice without having to talk about the uncomfortable reality of white privilege and the controversial politics of social justice and reparations. Diversity is sort of a cop-out, a way for liberal white people to convince less liberal white people that affirmative action is the right thing not because white people did anything wrong ever but because it make white people richer. Taking this as a serious thing on its own devoid of the political context in which it became a necessary tactic and getting into the weeds about what truly is diversity is sort of like the liberal equivalent of taking the Republican rhetoric about makers and takers, welfare frauds and the need for voter ids seriously without realizing that these talking points are largely understood by their audiences to be about black people and immigrants. Seeing the world through rhetorical devices created specifically to confuse the issues results in confusion like this entire article. This is not what diversity means to people for whom it's an important issue.
- orclthwrawy 8y ago
  Otherwise, do we believe the biggest advocates of diversity are just really passionate about making shareholders richer by getting workers to produce more at lower costs? That is what makes them push for a more diverse workplace everywhere? I mean some middle manager somewhere might be convinced that diversity is an important ingredient for increased productivity and that may be true for some definition of diversity, but by and large the push for diversity comes from an entirely different place that is far more about the politics of gender, race and social justice and the movement that is providing the actual weight behind this push for diversity doesn't care one bit about which teams and companies are more productive.

104 points by zhangela 8y ago

This article is part of the problem. By pointing out that she does not contribute to "diversity" because of her economic and cultural background, the author reinforces the idea that those are the interesting ingredients of this elusive "diversity." She says nothing about her ideas, interests, or opinions. Does she perhaps add to diversity by having original thoughts? Or are her political opinions and taste in music predictable? I'd say this article is evidence that she may in fact possess some intellectual diversity, but that it is something that she herself does not recognize as such.

fatnoah 8y ago
You said (in a much better way) part of what I was trying to say in another post. She reduces herself to bullet points and ignores all of the things that I would consider critical parts of what makes people different. Upon a reread, I think that was her point. Measuring diversity based on a few predefined attributes makes no sense. Creating diversity by hiring someone because they're female isn't the answer, we need to go beyond that to truly have diversity.
- leephillips 8y ago
  Thanks, but I thought your other post was really good.
- zhangela 8y ago
  Thank you for your thoughtful response! >>> Measuring diversity based on a few predefined attributes makes no sense. Creating diversity by hiring someone because they're female isn't the answer, we need to go beyond that to truly have diversity. I think I might have been a tad overdramatic by just saying "I'm not diversity" in the title, but what you wrote above there is exactly what I'm trying to communicate: diversity is more than just bullet points, we need to see it more holistically.
wittgenstein 8y ago
Exactly. The greatest problem with this article is its underlying assumption that "diversity" is good by itself and that companies should pursue it. The author makes the point that she is not "diverse enough", while ignoring the fundamental issue that measuring "diversity" and showing that it is a goal worth pursuing by itself is non-trivial and problematic. The fact that she is counted as "diversity" while claiming that she isn't is exactly the reason why current societies' and organizations' extreme focus on and overvaluing of diversity is misguided.
- zhangela 8y ago
  Here are a few articles on why diversity is good for business: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-really-good-for-business-mckinsey-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-re... https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diversity-is-good-for-business.html https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diver...
  - wittgenstein 8y ago
    I know that statistics can be found that in some way correlate "diversity" with some financial metric or other being better. But that still is not definitive nor does it address the fundamental issue which is "what really is diversity, on what basis and features should it be measured, and WHY should we optimize for diversity as opposed to OTHER traits that potentially will correlate even more highly with other desirable metrics?"

bootsz 8y ago

Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity. Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted introvert" is one of two things: 1) Ambivert : "a person whose personality has a balance of extrovert and introvert features" 2) Introvert, but not shy : It is a common misconception that introverts are inherently shy. The two are correlated, but not the same thing. You can be introverted and not be shy, either inherently or by learning to overcome shyness. Extra/introversion has more to do with your preferences and where you derive energy from. Shyness is more fear-based, and fear can be overcome. Anyway that's not really a critical part of your article but I've sort of unintentionally become a Myers-Briggs nerd over the years and enjoy discussing stuff like that :)

stephengillie 8y ago
"Ambiverts" are never called this. Extroverts complain about the ambivert's introversion, and introverts praise the ambivert's extroversion. Thus, at least some of the confusion is understandable.
jerrycruncher 8y ago
The whole 'introverted extrovert' (and vice versa) thing is pretty stilly. In the old days we had a word for people who neither sought nor avoided emotional stimuli: normal.
zwieback 8y ago
I just finished "The personality brokers", fantastic book, which explores how E<>I entered popular culture via the Myers-Briggs test. When the E<>I spectrum was subjected to more rigorous analysis it turned out it may just be a metric of "talkativeness" and not really related to the Jungian concept.
- bootsz 8y ago
  Hmm.. Talkativeness seems way too narrow to me. The theory of deriving energy externally vs. internally makes the most sense to me personally. Though it would certainly correlate with talkativeness. But I'm not an expert on the matter :)

abnry 8y ago

If men and women are completely interchangeable, physically and psychologically, then this article makes a lot of sense. But if women really do have something different (at least on average) to bring to the table, then this women really does add diversity. The purpose of diversity is not quotas, but differences that work together and add something to the whole.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago
I think the point is that the diversity she brings isn’t enough diversity to justify her as someone who is adding to diversity in a tech company. You could add 1000s of women like her and the company wouldn’t be particularly different.
- blueboo 8y ago
  It seems obvious that adding 1000s of women like her would absolutely meaningfully change the company though
  - mantas 8y ago
    Adding 1000 people would change most companies, regardless of what those people look or think like.
- zhangela 8y ago
  Thank you so much for helping clarify! This is exactly what I meant in the article.
thanatropism 8y ago
I'm not saying men and women shouldn't work together, but isn't office drama related to sexual tension something to subtract from that complementarity as well? In my working life I've seen (and also experienced) a lot of productivity-eating unresolved sexual tension, including between people who were married/had partners and didn't reeeally want to mate, at least not rationally. I mean, I know men behave like pigs at Hackatons and I'm all for codes of conduct but even in better conditions (no one's an incel, yadda yadda) this happens.

fatnoah 8y ago

I get the point the author is making, but I'm not 100% sure I agree with how she expressed it. By limiting the definition of diversity/minority, we can probably identify a cohort for any individual where they are in the majority. Diversity measured across an entire company or large cohort doesn't really show the value of diversity in the first place. For me, the real power of diversity is at a micro-level. The author would absolutely add diversity to a three person team where one member is an Indian woman born, raised, and educated to PhD in India, another is a Croatian man with no formal education beyond secondary school, and the third person was a poor kid from Detroit that scrapped their way through community college and into the job market. When I'm putting a team together, I try my hardest to create diversity. That doesn't mean running through a checklist of gender, ethnicity, sexual identification, etc. but it does mean looking for people with different points of view, experience, and ways of solving problems. tl;dr: Diversity == good, agree gender doesn't necessarily mean diversity, diversity is a meaningless term without context.

Kalium 8y ago
I think checklists get favored because they're easy to codify in the form of procedures and business processes. They're also easy to measure and report on. The broader, more complex concerns you point to are difficult to measure and thus perhaps more likely to be given short shrift.
- fatnoah 8y ago
  All excellent points. It's definitely not press-release material, but (IMHO) highlights how things should be. Companies would naturally reach the desired levels of "diversity" if they simply practiced it at a micro level. Certainly some teams would look "unbalanced" by some of the traditional metrics, but I think everything would even out on the larger scale. An interesting anecdote was that I led Engineering for a startup that was acquired by a large ($50-100 Billion) company. After we were acquired, several people commented on my collective team as being the "most diverse" in the company. That was nice to hear, but (for me) the most gratifying part was the team members taking stock and collectively thinking "oh yeah, I guess we are diverse!" It happened on purpose, but with the intention of using diversity as a source of strength not as a means of checking off a box.

jankotek 8y ago

Hire remotely if you want diversity...

nirElHeroinas 8y ago

>I don’t have physical or mental disabilities. As a woman, you have a bit of both.

hkai 8y ago

Interesting that this person does not mention diversity of political opinion, which seems to be lacking.

YinglingLight 8y ago
Touching display of political diversity from within Google https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/09/13/breitbart_posts_leaked_video_of_google_leadership_reacting_to_2016_election.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/09/13/breitbart...
zaccus 8y ago
That's not something you should ask someone in a job interview though. And most people (mercifully) don't talk about politics at work. So what would promoting political diversity look like?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >So what would promoting political diversity look like? Not ostracizing people for having political opinions that are not the majority but fairly mainstream. I work at the satellite office of an east coast tech company and how you have to be careful not to say anything that betrays politics that are not officially condoned is a bi-weekly gripe among the group I eat lunch with. I'm not saying it should be perfectly acceptable to tell your coworkers you went to a KKK chapter (is that their organizational unit?) barbecue when discussing what you did over the weekend but if you went to see NASCAR you shouldn't feel compelled to tell people you stayed home.
  - mantas 8y ago
    Is NASCAR uncool now? :(
blueboo 8y ago
It's lacking insofar as political opinion is restricted to "should the poors starve" and "is the female intellect inherently inferior"; but when it comes to things like engaging with problematic regimes, capitalist/socialist choices, and bottom up/top down solutions, there's quite a diversity

gorpomon 8y ago

In reference to the point she makes about people not assuming women are developers, I now make it a point to assume two things about most everyone (male and female identifying) that I meet in tech: 1) That they are competent and smart until they definitely prove otherwise to me. 2) That they are technical and interested in technology. It's worked really well for me so far. In practice it means when I meet someone I say "You're a dev right?". Most people appreciate being assumed to be technical, and if they aren't we still get a great convo out of it. I admit it's kind of a silly thing, but so far in years of doing it I don't know of a time it's made anyone feel bad. Edit - Also, if their answer to the dev question is that they are instead a product manager, UX, Designer, etc, I try and follow up with a funny compliment about their field. "Ah, so you make apps useable", etc. Again, just a simple conversational technique to make people feel valued.

julianh95 8y ago
This has been my strategy as well and I can confirm that only good things have come of it.
zhangela 8y ago
Great strategy! Thank you for sharing.
skrebbel 8y ago
I try to do the same, and I share your experience. That said, sometimes it gets awkward in funny ways. A few months ago I was at a conference/event selling our product (booth and everything), talking to two young Polish girls who were running a tech startup. I don't recall the details by heart, but it was some marketplace I think. Our product is relatively technical, so your approach, "You're a dev, right?" usually pays off. But these founders giggled, rolled their eyes, and said "Do we look like developers to you?" Eh, yes? :/
- rexaliquid 8y ago
  I can see that getting awkward! But, you might also have been able to save the moment with a confident "Yes. You look like you'd make awesome developers." I try to live by "It's only awkward if you let it be awkward" to get through those situations.

wccrawford 8y ago

I do think that pointing at someone's physical body and saying, "They bring diversity because they're X!" is wrong. However, I do think that gender and race have an influence on your thought processes because of who you tend to associate with. In addition, she spent 15 years in China, which is definitely not very common here in the US. That alone means she's going to think somewhat differently than the average engineer. And finally, a lack of diversity in a group (all white hetero males, for example) indicates an attempt to exclude diversity, though perhaps subconsciously.

jriot 8y ago
A group of white males can be diverse, we just don't accept it. Do you think a group of white males who went to Stanford, MIT etc... right after high school, are the same as those who joined the military, yet now work in the same company?
- malcolmgreaves 8y ago
  They will have a common thread: they all will be recipients of privileged treatment by society. That is indeed a crucially important fact that will share their attitudes and perspectives.
  - jriot 8y ago
    White males who enlisted in the military were not recipients of privileged treatment by society.
    - malcolmgreaves 8y ago
      Yes they are. You don't understand what white privilege is.
      - jriot 8y ago
        Seeing that you grew up in Massachusetts, went to CMU, and now live San Francisco, I can see why you hold that opinion. Come visit me in Louisiana and I will show its a socio-economic issue, not a race issue.

ngngngng 8y ago

I liked the article, but even her expanded definition of diversity doesn't resonate completely with me. My brother and I had exactly the same background and upbringing. And we are both remarkably different people. None of the metrics of diversity mentioned here would reflect that, but it's reality. The priority should be diverse people, not diverse backgrounds.

zwieback 8y ago

I think the finer point is that pinning diversity to something specific like gender works against people that don't want to be viewed as a diversity candidate. It's hard to get this right and the end goal is that we don't even talk about diversity anymore but just recognize its benefits.

creep 8y ago
Word. I'm a female undergrad in mathematics, and the department is constantly trying to get me involved with female-oriented STEM events, offering to sponsor me for "women in STEM"-type conferences, etc etc. I refuse on principle. It's well-meaning, probably, but really gets on my nerves sometimes. I want to be a mathematician, not a "female mathematician". It feels like I have this bright red sign covering my face that says "FOSTER DIVERSITY HERE". It's okay guys! I'm already fostered!

trevor-e 8y ago

Does anyone else find it weird/disturbing that someone is compiling a list of women engineers and where they work? I understand having a list of influential speakers and such to look up to, but this does not seem to be the case. The author mentioned she has no idea how she made it on there. Link: https://cristinacordova.github.io/women-eng/ https://cristinacordova.github.io/women-eng/

Jach 8y ago
Yeah that's kind of weird... I'm reminded of Romney's "notebook full of women", but at least I don't think the contents were made public?
avinassh 8y ago
not just weird, I found it creepy too. If I was being profiled and added to some public list, without my knowledge, that would make me extremely uncomfortable, however noble the intentions are.
briandear 8y ago
That is extremely creepy.

iagovar 8y ago

I just hope this diversity drama never comes to my country. I already work in a very diverse workplace. Both genders and multiple nationalities are represented, and I really don't see what that brigs to the table. I mean, why is diversity good per se? I don't see any correlation between any demographic variable and being a good coworker.

SquirrelOnFire 8y ago
On an individual level, it doesn't improve being a good coworker. On an institutional level, you get a broader set of ideas when you have a more diverse workforce, giving you a better chance at a black swan idea. And frankly, better odds of preventing disaster (Chevy wouldn't have tried to sell a car called the "Nova" in Mexico if they'd had a spanish speaker on the team. No Va means No Go). There's also evidence that diverse teams do better - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our...
- aidenn0 8y ago
  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanish/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevrolet-nova-name-spanis...
  - SquirrelOnFire 8y ago
    Dang. Thanks for pointing that out.
- iagovar 8y ago
  > you get a broader set of ideas I'm sorry but I'm still failing to see it. My experience in my company does not support that hypothesis (and it's really a large one) and the link you provided the only thing that is really proving is that more executive women is correlated with more profitability, which could perfectly be (and probably be) the consequence of other institutional factors. We do have locals in every market we play, but that's pretty common sense, you have to know the language and cultural references. But again, I'm not in the US nor I work for a US company. Maybe that has something to do, IDK.

alexashka 8y ago

> "I’m not bringing in the diverse perspective that is so critical to the success of any company." Based on what evidence, or even logic, is diversity critical to the success of even some companies? Let alone any company?

dx87 8y ago
For most companies it probably doesn't matter, but if you're trying to market a product to a diverse group, it'll help to have diverse input when creating the product. An example is facial recognition software developed by a US company not recognizing black people, or cameras saying "woops, looks like someone blinked" after taking pictures of an asian person. If they had a more diverse development or testing team, they probably would have noticed it before being publicly embarrased.
zhangela 8y ago
Here are a few articles on why diversity is good for business: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-really-good-for-business-mckinsey-says/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-re... https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diversity-is-good-for-business.html https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diver...
- mantas 8y ago
  I wonder if those studies got correlation vs causation correctly. Maybe well-doing companies have more satellite offices. Or particular cities have become magnets for people to come do business and have good ecosystem for kickstarting their growth.
- alexashka 8y ago
  :) You may be underestimating the average intelligence of a HackerNews reader. I am well aware of why some people think diversity is good. Many things are good. Few things are critical. I'll make a strong claim - there is no evidence, that diversity is critical for the success of any business, on this planet. It's an easy claim to make because diversity is not a well defined scientific term, hence there can be no evidence. Which was my point - we can hand wave about diversity, inclusivity and all kinds of things - let's just not pretend it's anything but empty hand waving. Before anyone comes back with saying I'm cherry picking one sentence out of an entire article - it is the foundation of this entire diversity movement. If we agree that we don't know whether diversity is important, we can begin to focus on things that people actually care about - like standards of living and wages.

daemonk 8y ago

This comment might not be relevant to the article. Isn't diversity ultimately relative to the group you are comparing to? And how you want to define the group might differ among people? Also how you weigh the trait in relation to its effect on the some kind of performance metric of the group? Someone with trait A could be considered diverse if we define a group with predominantly trait B. Does having diverse traits (a mix of both A and B) highly correlated with better performance/survival/whatever metric? Maybe having diversity means the group can adapt better over time (surviving an evolutionary bottleneck in some sense)? Most of these concepts are obviously not quantifiable in this way, but I think we need some kind of framework to think about how we define diversity.

justaman 8y ago

I'm going to say it. The most excluded group in SV are conservative republicans. Its a death sentence to your career to come out as one. If you truly value diversity, their point of view is the most absent from tech.

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babygoat 8y ago
It's also the most incompatible point of view. They do not want to be around diversity.
- mantas 8y ago
  The word "diversity" is kinda loosing it's meaning when there's a specific thing to be described as "diversity".
  - babygoat 8y ago
    If people who look, think, dress, act, love, or worship differently than they do are "a specific thing", then sure.
    - mantas 8y ago
      A lot of "diversity" is confined to US progressive style who are kinda similar in all of those things. Especially those who think that conservatives wouldn't want to be around them.
- sydd 8y ago
  Every one of them? Isnt this the textbook definition of generalization that diversity is supposed to counter?
  - Frondo 8y ago
    Well, conservatives in the US have thrown in with a party that typically demonizes people of color, is actively working to disenfranchise them, and has a growing white nationalist element to it. Are there some conservatives who really just care about there being too much government regulation, or whatever? Sure. Looking at the party they rally around and the way it wants to treat people, there sure are some general trends that do not speak to a desire to embrace diversity.

kukx 8y ago

The ultimate diversity is individuality. Stop looking at sex, age and skin color and start looking at the competence alone.

ousta 8y ago

She doesn't know what is it to suffer from diversity. Elizabeth Warren has 0.0001% things to say about that.

40acres 8y ago

I agree with her, diversity is more than just race, sex, sexual preference, etc. However I would say that I think these things as a top level attribute DO correlate with different lived experiences that you want in a diverse workforce. Companies are not going to ask you about your political leanings, they are probably not going to give you some mental test to see how you react to situation A and situation B. If you look at the stats, race and gender do correlate between stark differences in people. For instance, the "wealth gap" between black and white Americans is about 10x, growing in poverty vs. growing up in a stable middle class family causes a different lived experience, you view the world differently because of how you grew up. That's not to say that all black people are poor and all white people are rich, but if you're working with a limited data set and are thinking about how you can get some people in a room with different lived experiences, you could do a lot worse than saying "let's get a mix of different races in here". I think the same thing applies to women and other traits that companies and institutions use for their diversity metrics.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

Agreed, diversity should mean more than simply ethnicity and gender. Age is one thing she left out, it's great for one's career these days to look ~28.

arandr0x 8y ago

Does it matter who's diversity? If the argument is that a company with a non-diverse workforce can't deal with users from different walks of life, they don't have a diversity problem, they have an empathy problem. (Arguably most programmers have an empathy problem.) While I'm sure hiring 2 women and 0.2 black people for every scrum team may help fix the empathy issue, so would hiring white guys who don't think they're the center of the universe. Of course to do that we'd need to stop (as an industry) rewarding and recognizing people who think they're the elite for doing a perfectly normal white-collar job that occasionally involves high school math. (And I definitely don't think we need diversity of political opinions. I don't want to know my coworkers' political opinions, whatever they may be. What would be great would be if I could get coworkers who just don't think their particular ideology is super important in terms of their work life. Any companies that are more on the chill side like this?)

subjectsigma 8y ago

All this article says to me is that no matter how hard I work or what decisions I make or what my life experiences are, I'll never be good enough for progressives. I'll fall "lower" than others on some arbitrary and ever-changing grading scale which puts value to my experiences.

orclthwrawy 8y ago

I'm kind of surprised by the extent to which people have bought into this diversity thing, to the point where it's actually literally a thing people care about. My understanding is that this modern push for diversity and all the rhetoric surrounding it effectively started as a dogwhistle used by liberals to push affirmative action in pursuit of social justice without having to talk about the uncomfortable reality of white privilege and the controversial politics of social justice and reparations. Diversity is sort of a cop-out, a way for liberal white people to convince less liberal white people that affirmative action is the right thing not because white people did anything wrong ever but because it make white people richer. Taking this as a serious thing on its own devoid of the political context in which it became a necessary tactic and getting into the weeds about what truly is diversity is sort of like the liberal equivalent of taking the Republican rhetoric about makers and takers, welfare frauds and the need for voter ids seriously without realizing that these talking points are largely understood by their audiences to be about black people and immigrants. Seeing the world through rhetorical devices created specifically to confuse the issues results in confusion like this entire article. This is not what diversity means to people for whom it's an important issue.

orclthwrawy 8y ago
Otherwise, do we believe the biggest advocates of diversity are just really passionate about making shareholders richer by getting workers to produce more at lower costs? That is what makes them push for a more diverse workplace everywhere? I mean some middle manager somewhere might be convinced that diversity is an important ingredient for increased productivity and that may be true for some definition of diversity, but by and large the push for diversity comes from an entirely different place that is far more about the politics of gender, race and social justice and the movement that is providing the actual weight behind this push for diversity doesn't care one bit about which teams and companies are more productive.