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Serious question: Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds? Edit: Lots of up and down

Serious question: Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds? Edit: Lots of up and down votes. Why is this question so controversial? I'd like to see an argument as to why it's an invalid or flawed question.

cryoshon 8y ago
i would say that at google there's a chance they're including diversity of ideas and experience. at most companies, we all know that the skin-deep diversity is the only thing the HR department cares about because it's all they're terrified about getting sued over. however, given google's unique corporate culture, i think that they might be forward thinking enough to seek out different perspectives, but probably not in a quota-driven fashion.
- georgeburdell 8y ago
  You’re getting downvoted because Google and many other well known tech companies are known not to be comfortable places to work if you’re a conservative. Political ideology, like skin color, should not itself be a diversity goal, but the former often reflects differences in mindsets that may be better suited for certain projects or job roles.
  - cryoshon 8y ago
    there's a lot more to a person's perspective than their political ideology. i imagine at google it'd be advantageous to have people who approached problems with a plethora of cognitive approaches, however. it's difficult to measure such things, of course. political ideology can't be a meaningful diversity goal anyway, nor should it be. there may not be a "best" ideology but promoting political ideology alone would be a terrible idea because in the current way that diversity is practiced it would require treating ideologies like nazism as on the same table as others.
    - tracker1 8y ago
      I find that the mindset can be dramatically different in many cases depending on one's own experience and background. The length of which a company may intercede or donate to a different pool of candidates, as a simple example depends on the makeup from its' leadership down to its' employees. My parents have always been right-leaning, working class. I, myself am far more libertarian leaning, with a bit of pragmatism. I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't like the political culture present in Google, and do not feel like my ideas would be respected in that culture at all. It emphatically does not mean that my point of view is less valid, but would more often than not be aggressively dismissed in that culture. Not to mention that I'm a cis-gendered, white male, which seems to be looked down on overall in a few of the large, progressive technical companies by itself. In the end, it does matter. Culture, for good or bad, influences the makeup of a company. I tend to only have literally a couple drinks a month, or less generally not at work. That said, I don't feel there's shame in having a beer/ale/wine at lunch now and then. It should be about personal responsibility and accountability. It also shouldn't turn into a witch hunt without investigation. Like most things in life, it depends.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      Political diversity would come naturally if a company really is trying to get a diversity of backgrounds and experiences because those different experiences are the cause of political differences to begin with. In fact "political diversity" and "diversity of thought" are simply two ways to phrase the same idea. The problem with trying to actually do it is that in recent times, one camp in particular tends to label the other as "Nazis" who must be crushed out of existence the moment they're spotted, although there are essentially no actual Nazis in the world today. In other words the side that preaches tolerance and diversity the most can't actually handle it and immediately tries to get rid of it by using the most overblown pastiches imaginable.
goobynight 8y ago
What's more important is if those values spread from the CDO down to teams, whether he holds them or not. From everything I hear as an outsider, that's definitely not the case.
fmitchell0 8y ago
Serious response: Framing it as an 'Or' implies the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Diversity is fact. The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.). Inclusion is the action. Equity is the goal. In the OKR framework, being able to measure your progress towards the goal is important. The real question is, which aspects of people who work for your company do you measure to ensure proper decisions around inclusion to achieve the equity goal? It's easiest to measure by 'skin deep' factors b/c that is what human beings most easily make poor decisions on (fear, bias, stereotype, self-segregation, NIMBY-ism, etc). It is also required for companies to report to the US government on these factors because of our history of poor decisions (to put it lightly). It is therefore easiest to use that as a metric. Serious question: If implied in your question that the goal should be equity in 'thought', how do you propose that is measured?
- ed_balls 8y ago
  from all websites I'd expect HN to NOT read OR as mutually exclusive
  - fmitchell0 8y ago
    I see what you did there. Well done.
  - mrguyorama 8y ago
    OR being mutually exclusive is pretty typical in the english language, for better or worse.
  - rendall 8y ago
    "Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds?" Well, to nitpick even further, those propositions are logically mutually exclusive. "Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience [as well as surface traits]?" Or is it [only surface traits]" Abstracted, could be "(p and q) OR (p and !q)" which is literally mutually exclusive. No, I'm not usually so pedantic, I just thought it was interesting.
gizmo686 8y ago
I don't have any experience with Google in this regard (beyond looking into the Damore case, which is a bit muddy because of the amount of public pressure Google was facing [0]). However, in my experience, diversity programs and officers tend to be about liability and checkboxes; and there is no legal checkbox for diversity of ideas. Plus, surface diversity is much easier to measure; and you optimize for your metrics. [0] Ideally a diversity officer would stand up for Damore. But I have no idea what went on behind the scenes of that decidion.
- munificent 8y ago
  > [0] Ideally a diversity officer would stand up for Damore. That claim depends entirely on how you interpret Damore's behavior. Tolerance does not and must not require tolerating intolerance [0]. I'm not stating a claim as to whether or not Damore's behavior should be considered intolerance. I don't have a take on that. But without having some opinion on that, you can't claim a priori that a diversity officer is obligated to enable his views. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    I don't want to relitigate the entire Damore saga. But for the sake of conversation, I will state that my view was that he was engaging in good faith with the diversity program Google was running. The statement I made in my previous comment does not actually require this however. Even if Damore was actually acting in bad faith, fireing him would still have a chilling effect unless it was thought by every Googler that he was clearly acting in bad faith. Further, I would excpect a Chief Diversity Officer to understand how perception alone can create a hostile environment, so ignorance of this (or disagreemrnent about the facts of the case) is not a good excuse.
    - snowwrestler 8y ago
      > Even if Damore was actually acting in bad faith, fireing him would still have a chilling effect unless it was thought by every Googler that he was clearly acting in bad faith. You can't help side effects. If someone is acting in a way that is detrimental to the company, you have to fire them, even if you know it will upset some other people in the company.
Aqua 8y ago
To me the notion of a need for diversity in a workplace is absurd. Seriously, whats the point? There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women. From the perspective of an employer, gender, skin colour or political views should be completely irrelevant when it comes to making a hire/no hire decision. By introducing rules that aim to achieve a 50/50 distribution of e.g. each gender in any field, you're forming up an artificial construct that ultimately results in poorer overall performance (since you had to reject a number of candidates that likely were more qualified for the position in order to reach your equal distribution goals).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Lolibturd 8y ago
  Mein safe spacen!
- kaitai 8y ago
  You seem to be conflating quotas and diversity, and also conflating mechanisms and results. The point of a diversity office or officer is to provide a resource for discussing whether mechanisms of hiring and recruitment are fair, and trying to improve them if they're not. Once all those studies that send out the same exact resume with the names John, Jane, T'yesha, Jamal, Xiaoying, and Shan Shan at the top find you get the same number of callbacks, then we'll actually be in a situation where people are being hired on their qualifications!
  - Aqua 8y ago
    Apologies, I should have been more clear as I intended to point out an example, not a fixed quota, because clearly if you consider diversity when making a hiring decision you inevitably have to end up aiming to hire more people of certain characteristics(and not necessarily qualifications) that fit your long term quota goals. Besides, what do you mean by fair recruitment? Because personally in this context I view diversity and fairness as contradicting terms, since it would always be more fair to hire a candidate that has higher qualifications and is a good cultural fit over one that wasn't as qualified, but turned out to be a good match when it comes to meeting present quarter's diversity goals? I believe that basing hiring decisions on physical appearance, race, religion, gender or political views is simply wrong. I recall there was a company that focused on distorting candidates' voices during phone interviews that effectively prevented the interviewers from distinguishing the interviewees' gender. If companies like Google want to actually be more "fair", perhaps they should move in that direction rather than introducing artificial quotas and justifying them with a vague "need for diversity"?
atom-morgan 8y ago
It's controversial because it's selectively applied and advocates for D&I know it. There are plenty of Asians in tech (men and women) and yet we're always hearing about a "diversity" problem. This is why tech no longer uses the term minority - they use "underrepresented minority" instead.
- danans 8y ago
  Why should the representation of Asians in tech reduce the concerns about the under-representations of Blacks and Latinos in tech?
  - edikit 8y ago
    Because factoring Asians (and Indians, for that matter) in to the equation changes the framing of the argument. Asians are a minority group, but are vastly over-represented in tech, to the point that even white people are under-represented by comparison. The concern about racial diversity tends to focus on the idea that white hiring managers are subconsciously selective against non-white applicants. This doesn't make sense though when you factor in the minority groups that are actually over-represented. So what has happened is that the argument has shifted to ignore Asian representation and only focus on black and Latino representation, while still coming to the same conclusion that white hiring managers are subconsciously racist and that the company needs to take corrective action. The representation of Asians and Indians in tech should not necessarily reduce concerns for other minorities that are under-represented, but should definitely change the way those concerns are framed. The fact that it hasn't suggests that some sort of tomfoolery is afoot.
    - stale2002 8y ago
      > The concern about racial diversity tends to focus on the idea that white hiring managers are subconsciously selective against non-white applicants. This doesn't make sense though when you factor in the minority groups that are actually over-represented. Of course it makes sense. It means that instead of subconsciously being biased against the non white category, they are instead biased against non white non Asians. That was an easy logical deduction there.
williamaadams 8y ago
I work for Microsoft, and the back of my employee badge says: Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To me, this implies that our engineering organizations, and entire company, need to have an appropriate amount of empathy across a broad spectrum of geographies, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and the like. You only get that by having a diversity of talent, and more importantly, inclusion in your engineering practices. When I talk about diversity, I usually say; "There are two forms of diversity, DNA diversity, the stuff we usually talk about in terms of color, sex, etc, things you can see, and then there's diversity of perspectives and experiences. You need the diversity of experiences and perspectives. In some cases that's conveniently wrapped in some forms of DNA diversity, but is not exclusive to that". I don't think the question is at all controversial, and we should not be afraid to openly talk about it.
- majewsky 8y ago
  > Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Did they think about what they said there before printing? Because there are plenty of organizations which we definitely do not want to achieve more (e.g. drug cartels, nazi parties).
  - jameslevy 8y ago
    I don't think the creators these mission statements are too concerned about the edge cases.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      Not really. PR is all about taking the edge off things. Which is why this struck me as odd.
  - aasasd 8y ago
    I may disapprove of one's views, but I'll commit my code for their right for better software!
- shard972 8y ago
98codes 8y ago
It's controversial because you're conflating diversity in who people are (that they didn't choose, and can't change), vs. what they choose (actions and ideas that can be changed if the individual so chooses).
chasing 8y ago
I suspect it's controversial because HNers think you're referencing people like James Damore and/or people who wrap themselves in the mantle of "diversity of ideas" when they start making racist or sexist comments. Is that the kind of "diversity of ideas and experience" you're talking about?
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Calm down, nobody said anything racist or sexist. How do you expect to have a discussion about this when you attack people for words that you put in their mouth before they had a chance to even engage? Damore didn't do that, by the way.
Aeolun 8y ago
It’s not an invalid question. It just tramples on a lot of peoples toes.
- mattmanser 8y ago
  It is as, unlike people, not all ideas and experience deserve equality.
rimliu 8y ago
I don’t remember where I saw it first (reddit, likely), but: have you seen a msle diversity officer?
- zbentley 8y ago
  Two, at two different companies. One had a male/female team, the other just had a guy.
hrktb 8y ago
Your question has so much baggage in so few words. Your premise is that if the CDO’s role doesn’t include your vision of diversity it is “just skin deep”. Not everyone shares this premise, and focusing on this point also makes it sound like you dismiss all the other aspect his role could have (they’re just skin deep after all, right ?) To get back to yor question, Google has offices all around the world, I find it hard to fault them for lack of diversity of experiences, nor do I think the thousands of people they employ all have the same ideas. I’d actually think it would be harder to find people all sharing all the same ideas. Or do you have something a lot more specific in mind ?
mikekchar 8y ago
How is this for controversial? Diversity of ideas and experience could also be interpreted as lack of direction. In truth, "ideas and experience" could cover anything from cultural issues to technical issues. However, I'll point out some ways that "diversity in ideas an experience" could be interpreted, just so you get a feeling for why someone might object to a non-specific label like that. Elsewhere in the thread, people are talking about excessive drinking on the job contributing to harassment. In the culture where I currently live (Japan), drinking is virtually mandatory. In fact, I once got an official reprimand for not drinking at a company event. Within the Japanese culture, drinking allows you to relax the way your present yourself. If you are drunk, it is acceptable to clearly say what you think, even if it might be embarrassing for others. This may be the only time to provide feedback up the ladder. Additionally, people higher up in the organisation are allowed to be more familiar with those lower down, which is impossible in normal every day work. This develops an honest camaraderie up and down the organisation and without the social lubricant (or excuse is probably a better word) that is alcohol, the work culture suffers. Now, perhaps we have several Japanese people who have experienced significant success with this corporate culture. Do we want to grant it a kind of equivalent status within our organisation? Or do we want to have a kind of veto that says, "Despite your previous experience and your cultural background, this is a no-go area for our organisation"? Even when talking about technical rather than cultural issues, there may be times when we need to limit discussion. I may have hired someone with extensive C++ experience into my Ruby on Rails team. Having that experience is really valuable. The C++ programmer can see things from different perspectives and provide solutions that are different that what the average Rails developer has seen before. However, if the C++ programmer suddenly starts demanding that all string processing should be handled in C++, we might want to limit this discussion. The C++ programmer may have lots of wonderful tools and experience to help them with this task, but the bulk of the developers on the team are not going to be able to cope. Potentially every developer on the team has some niche thing that they would like to introduce. Do we really want to provide a stage for all of these ideas, or do we want to filter them first and work on the ideas that seem most compatible with the team? It is entirely possible that you disagree with my standpoint. I certainly have met a few people who feel that giving every person in the company an equal opportunity to pursue all of their ideas is a good idea. I have not experienced a successful company that embraced that philosophy, however. Leadership is often about focusing on a few ideas and limiting discussion that appear to be going in incompatible directions. As much as I am frustrated when my ideas get shot down without much air time, I recognise the reality of this necessity. It's also possible that you have a completely different point that you are hoping to make and it was lost on me due to the brevity of your comment. In that case, perhaps it would be better to try to explain your position in more detail.
leothekim 8y ago
Doesn't sound skin deep to me. Why do you think it sounds like that?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

cryoshon 8y ago

i would say that at google there's a chance they're including diversity of ideas and experience. at most companies, we all know that the skin-deep diversity is the only thing the HR department cares about because it's all they're terrified about getting sued over. however, given google's unique corporate culture, i think that they might be forward thinking enough to seek out different perspectives, but probably not in a quota-driven fashion.

georgeburdell 8y ago
You’re getting downvoted because Google and many other well known tech companies are known not to be comfortable places to work if you’re a conservative. Political ideology, like skin color, should not itself be a diversity goal, but the former often reflects differences in mindsets that may be better suited for certain projects or job roles.
- cryoshon 8y ago
  there's a lot more to a person's perspective than their political ideology. i imagine at google it'd be advantageous to have people who approached problems with a plethora of cognitive approaches, however. it's difficult to measure such things, of course. political ideology can't be a meaningful diversity goal anyway, nor should it be. there may not be a "best" ideology but promoting political ideology alone would be a terrible idea because in the current way that diversity is practiced it would require treating ideologies like nazism as on the same table as others.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    I find that the mindset can be dramatically different in many cases depending on one's own experience and background. The length of which a company may intercede or donate to a different pool of candidates, as a simple example depends on the makeup from its' leadership down to its' employees. My parents have always been right-leaning, working class. I, myself am far more libertarian leaning, with a bit of pragmatism. I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't like the political culture present in Google, and do not feel like my ideas would be respected in that culture at all. It emphatically does not mean that my point of view is less valid, but would more often than not be aggressively dismissed in that culture. Not to mention that I'm a cis-gendered, white male, which seems to be looked down on overall in a few of the large, progressive technical companies by itself. In the end, it does matter. Culture, for good or bad, influences the makeup of a company. I tend to only have literally a couple drinks a month, or less generally not at work. That said, I don't feel there's shame in having a beer/ale/wine at lunch now and then. It should be about personal responsibility and accountability. It also shouldn't turn into a witch hunt without investigation. Like most things in life, it depends.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Political diversity would come naturally if a company really is trying to get a diversity of backgrounds and experiences because those different experiences are the cause of political differences to begin with. In fact "political diversity" and "diversity of thought" are simply two ways to phrase the same idea. The problem with trying to actually do it is that in recent times, one camp in particular tends to label the other as "Nazis" who must be crushed out of existence the moment they're spotted, although there are essentially no actual Nazis in the world today. In other words the side that preaches tolerance and diversity the most can't actually handle it and immediately tries to get rid of it by using the most overblown pastiches imaginable.

goobynight 8y ago

What's more important is if those values spread from the CDO down to teams, whether he holds them or not. From everything I hear as an outsider, that's definitely not the case.

fmitchell0 8y ago

Serious response: Framing it as an 'Or' implies the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Diversity is fact. The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.). Inclusion is the action. Equity is the goal. In the OKR framework, being able to measure your progress towards the goal is important. The real question is, which aspects of people who work for your company do you measure to ensure proper decisions around inclusion to achieve the equity goal? It's easiest to measure by 'skin deep' factors b/c that is what human beings most easily make poor decisions on (fear, bias, stereotype, self-segregation, NIMBY-ism, etc). It is also required for companies to report to the US government on these factors because of our history of poor decisions (to put it lightly). It is therefore easiest to use that as a metric. Serious question: If implied in your question that the goal should be equity in 'thought', how do you propose that is measured?

ed_balls 8y ago
from all websites I'd expect HN to NOT read OR as mutually exclusive
- fmitchell0 8y ago
  I see what you did there. Well done.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  OR being mutually exclusive is pretty typical in the english language, for better or worse.
- rendall 8y ago
  "Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds?" Well, to nitpick even further, those propositions are logically mutually exclusive. "Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience [as well as surface traits]?" Or is it [only surface traits]" Abstracted, could be "(p and q) OR (p and !q)" which is literally mutually exclusive. No, I'm not usually so pedantic, I just thought it was interesting.

gizmo686 8y ago

I don't have any experience with Google in this regard (beyond looking into the Damore case, which is a bit muddy because of the amount of public pressure Google was facing [0]). However, in my experience, diversity programs and officers tend to be about liability and checkboxes; and there is no legal checkbox for diversity of ideas. Plus, surface diversity is much easier to measure; and you optimize for your metrics. [0] Ideally a diversity officer would stand up for Damore. But I have no idea what went on behind the scenes of that decidion.

munificent 8y ago
> [0] Ideally a diversity officer would stand up for Damore. That claim depends entirely on how you interpret Damore's behavior. Tolerance does not and must not require tolerating intolerance [0]. I'm not stating a claim as to whether or not Damore's behavior should be considered intolerance. I don't have a take on that. But without having some opinion on that, you can't claim a priori that a diversity officer is obligated to enable his views. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- gizmo686 8y ago
  I don't want to relitigate the entire Damore saga. But for the sake of conversation, I will state that my view was that he was engaging in good faith with the diversity program Google was running. The statement I made in my previous comment does not actually require this however. Even if Damore was actually acting in bad faith, fireing him would still have a chilling effect unless it was thought by every Googler that he was clearly acting in bad faith. Further, I would excpect a Chief Diversity Officer to understand how perception alone can create a hostile environment, so ignorance of this (or disagreemrnent about the facts of the case) is not a good excuse.
  - snowwrestler 8y ago
    > Even if Damore was actually acting in bad faith, fireing him would still have a chilling effect unless it was thought by every Googler that he was clearly acting in bad faith. You can't help side effects. If someone is acting in a way that is detrimental to the company, you have to fire them, even if you know it will upset some other people in the company.

Aqua 8y ago

To me the notion of a need for diversity in a workplace is absurd. Seriously, whats the point? There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women. From the perspective of an employer, gender, skin colour or political views should be completely irrelevant when it comes to making a hire/no hire decision. By introducing rules that aim to achieve a 50/50 distribution of e.g. each gender in any field, you're forming up an artificial construct that ultimately results in poorer overall performance (since you had to reject a number of candidates that likely were more qualified for the position in order to reach your equal distribution goals).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Lolibturd 8y ago
Mein safe spacen!
kaitai 8y ago
You seem to be conflating quotas and diversity, and also conflating mechanisms and results. The point of a diversity office or officer is to provide a resource for discussing whether mechanisms of hiring and recruitment are fair, and trying to improve them if they're not. Once all those studies that send out the same exact resume with the names John, Jane, T'yesha, Jamal, Xiaoying, and Shan Shan at the top find you get the same number of callbacks, then we'll actually be in a situation where people are being hired on their qualifications!
- Aqua 8y ago
  Apologies, I should have been more clear as I intended to point out an example, not a fixed quota, because clearly if you consider diversity when making a hiring decision you inevitably have to end up aiming to hire more people of certain characteristics(and not necessarily qualifications) that fit your long term quota goals. Besides, what do you mean by fair recruitment? Because personally in this context I view diversity and fairness as contradicting terms, since it would always be more fair to hire a candidate that has higher qualifications and is a good cultural fit over one that wasn't as qualified, but turned out to be a good match when it comes to meeting present quarter's diversity goals? I believe that basing hiring decisions on physical appearance, race, religion, gender or political views is simply wrong. I recall there was a company that focused on distorting candidates' voices during phone interviews that effectively prevented the interviewers from distinguishing the interviewees' gender. If companies like Google want to actually be more "fair", perhaps they should move in that direction rather than introducing artificial quotas and justifying them with a vague "need for diversity"?

atom-morgan 8y ago

It's controversial because it's selectively applied and advocates for D&I know it. There are plenty of Asians in tech (men and women) and yet we're always hearing about a "diversity" problem. This is why tech no longer uses the term minority - they use "underrepresented minority" instead.

danans 8y ago
Why should the representation of Asians in tech reduce the concerns about the under-representations of Blacks and Latinos in tech?
- edikit 8y ago
  Because factoring Asians (and Indians, for that matter) in to the equation changes the framing of the argument. Asians are a minority group, but are vastly over-represented in tech, to the point that even white people are under-represented by comparison. The concern about racial diversity tends to focus on the idea that white hiring managers are subconsciously selective against non-white applicants. This doesn't make sense though when you factor in the minority groups that are actually over-represented. So what has happened is that the argument has shifted to ignore Asian representation and only focus on black and Latino representation, while still coming to the same conclusion that white hiring managers are subconsciously racist and that the company needs to take corrective action. The representation of Asians and Indians in tech should not necessarily reduce concerns for other minorities that are under-represented, but should definitely change the way those concerns are framed. The fact that it hasn't suggests that some sort of tomfoolery is afoot.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    > The concern about racial diversity tends to focus on the idea that white hiring managers are subconsciously selective against non-white applicants. This doesn't make sense though when you factor in the minority groups that are actually over-represented. Of course it makes sense. It means that instead of subconsciously being biased against the non white category, they are instead biased against non white non Asians. That was an easy logical deduction there.

williamaadams 8y ago

I work for Microsoft, and the back of my employee badge says: Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To me, this implies that our engineering organizations, and entire company, need to have an appropriate amount of empathy across a broad spectrum of geographies, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and the like. You only get that by having a diversity of talent, and more importantly, inclusion in your engineering practices. When I talk about diversity, I usually say; "There are two forms of diversity, DNA diversity, the stuff we usually talk about in terms of color, sex, etc, things you can see, and then there's diversity of perspectives and experiences. You need the diversity of experiences and perspectives. In some cases that's conveniently wrapped in some forms of DNA diversity, but is not exclusive to that". I don't think the question is at all controversial, and we should not be afraid to openly talk about it.

majewsky 8y ago
> Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Did they think about what they said there before printing? Because there are plenty of organizations which we definitely do not want to achieve more (e.g. drug cartels, nazi parties).
- jameslevy 8y ago
  I don't think the creators these mission statements are too concerned about the edge cases.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Not really. PR is all about taking the edge off things. Which is why this struck me as odd.
- aasasd 8y ago
  I may disapprove of one's views, but I'll commit my code for their right for better software!
shard972 8y ago

98codes 8y ago

It's controversial because you're conflating diversity in who people are (that they didn't choose, and can't change), vs. what they choose (actions and ideas that can be changed if the individual so chooses).

chasing 8y ago

I suspect it's controversial because HNers think you're referencing people like James Damore and/or people who wrap themselves in the mantle of "diversity of ideas" when they start making racist or sexist comments. Is that the kind of "diversity of ideas and experience" you're talking about?

lawnchair_larry 8y ago
Calm down, nobody said anything racist or sexist. How do you expect to have a discussion about this when you attack people for words that you put in their mouth before they had a chance to even engage? Damore didn't do that, by the way.

Aeolun 8y ago

It’s not an invalid question. It just tramples on a lot of peoples toes.

mattmanser 8y ago
It is as, unlike people, not all ideas and experience deserve equality.

rimliu 8y ago

I don’t remember where I saw it first (reddit, likely), but: have you seen a msle diversity officer?

zbentley 8y ago
Two, at two different companies. One had a male/female team, the other just had a guy.

hrktb 8y ago

Your question has so much baggage in so few words. Your premise is that if the CDO’s role doesn’t include your vision of diversity it is “just skin deep”. Not everyone shares this premise, and focusing on this point also makes it sound like you dismiss all the other aspect his role could have (they’re just skin deep after all, right ?) To get back to yor question, Google has offices all around the world, I find it hard to fault them for lack of diversity of experiences, nor do I think the thousands of people they employ all have the same ideas. I’d actually think it would be harder to find people all sharing all the same ideas. Or do you have something a lot more specific in mind ?

mikekchar 8y ago

How is this for controversial? Diversity of ideas and experience could also be interpreted as lack of direction. In truth, "ideas and experience" could cover anything from cultural issues to technical issues. However, I'll point out some ways that "diversity in ideas an experience" could be interpreted, just so you get a feeling for why someone might object to a non-specific label like that. Elsewhere in the thread, people are talking about excessive drinking on the job contributing to harassment. In the culture where I currently live (Japan), drinking is virtually mandatory. In fact, I once got an official reprimand for not drinking at a company event. Within the Japanese culture, drinking allows you to relax the way your present yourself. If you are drunk, it is acceptable to clearly say what you think, even if it might be embarrassing for others. This may be the only time to provide feedback up the ladder. Additionally, people higher up in the organisation are allowed to be more familiar with those lower down, which is impossible in normal every day work. This develops an honest camaraderie up and down the organisation and without the social lubricant (or excuse is probably a better word) that is alcohol, the work culture suffers. Now, perhaps we have several Japanese people who have experienced significant success with this corporate culture. Do we want to grant it a kind of equivalent status within our organisation? Or do we want to have a kind of veto that says, "Despite your previous experience and your cultural background, this is a no-go area for our organisation"? Even when talking about technical rather than cultural issues, there may be times when we need to limit discussion. I may have hired someone with extensive C++ experience into my Ruby on Rails team. Having that experience is really valuable. The C++ programmer can see things from different perspectives and provide solutions that are different that what the average Rails developer has seen before. However, if the C++ programmer suddenly starts demanding that all string processing should be handled in C++, we might want to limit this discussion. The C++ programmer may have lots of wonderful tools and experience to help them with this task, but the bulk of the developers on the team are not going to be able to cope. Potentially every developer on the team has some niche thing that they would like to introduce. Do we really want to provide a stage for all of these ideas, or do we want to filter them first and work on the ideas that seem most compatible with the team? It is entirely possible that you disagree with my standpoint. I certainly have met a few people who feel that giving every person in the company an equal opportunity to pursue all of their ideas is a good idea. I have not experienced a successful company that embraced that philosophy, however. Leadership is often about focusing on a few ideas and limiting discussion that appear to be going in incompatible directions. As much as I am frustrated when my ideas get shot down without much air time, I recognise the reality of this necessity. It's also possible that you have a completely different point that you are hoping to make and it was lost on me due to the brevity of your comment. In that case, perhaps it would be better to try to explain your position in more detail.

leothekim 8y ago

Doesn't sound skin deep to me. Why do you think it sounds like that?

deleted 8y ago

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