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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

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.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  I think that English OR is Logical XOR and logical OR is English "A or B or both" or "A and/or B". Oddly enough, my use of or seems to violates the very rule it is used to describe.
Benjammer 8y ago
> If implied in your question that the goal should be equity in 'thought', how do you propose that is measured? OP mentioned "ideas & experience," not "thought," which seems like an intentional framing as something unbounded and immeasurable. Diversity of ideas could be measured by the average number of options/solutions that are seriously considered (and investigated/piloted) over the course of multiple projects for a team. Diversity of experience seems somewhat obvious to me. But if you want clarity on this as well, the idea would be to value various types of experiences in the same way that companies value diverse outward traits like gender, sex, skin color, racial identity, etc. It's a balance. You could hire a person of each gender/skin color combination, but if they all grew up in the New England suburbs and all of them went to either MIT or Harvard, you are generally NOT going to have a diversity of experience, even though everyone _looks_ different. On the other end of the scale, you could hire one person from each type of school, big state school, small technical school, ivy league, "public ivy", liberal arts college, bootcamp graduate, etc. Hire people native to your country/culture, and people who come from a different part of the world. But if they are all white men, you are not going to realize as much benefit. I think it's important to make an attempt to combine all of these concepts to come up with something that approaches the concept of "diversity of thought."
- fmitchell0 8y ago
  I appreciate your response and respect your idea of trying to combine a lot of aspects to get the goal. I would challenge you on one point though: > gender/skin color combination, but if they all grew up in the New England suburbs and all of them went to either MIT or Harvard, you are generally NOT going to have a diversity of experience, even though everyone _looks_ different Unfortunately, there are many stories, points of evidence, and history that say people who look different, but come from the same place and education level DO have different experiences. Race and gender are exponentially powerful factors that can change a person's experience and outlook no matter how wealthy they are or what school they graduated from.
  - Benjammer 8y ago
    You are correct, I should not have used absolute, either-or terms there ("you are generally NOT ..."). I meant to say that you would not have _as much_ diversity of experience.
whtswrong 8y ago
>The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.) And yet time and time again we'll see images of a workforce of predominantly white males and someone will claim "no diversity", as if having white skin and a penis makes you the same as the next guy.
- ummonk 8y ago
  Or more accurately white, chinese, and indian males.
prepend 8y ago
“Equity is the goal.” I don’t think this is a good goal. Unless you mean equity of opportunity. Equity of outcome is a ridiculously foolish goal in that outcomes will vary substantially and trying to have equity at the end on arbitrary human factors with easy to measure biases (gender, race, etc). So the goal is not 45/45/10 for gender distribution for all roles. As that is obviously impossible as roles change and then people would need to be redistributed ad infinitum (eg, project managers have “perfect” gender diversity of 45/45/10 today but now the role is changes and split into product owner and product manager. Does this mean that the roles must include the same gender mix?)
- mebreuer 8y ago
  With a high enough sample size, shouldn't equity of outcome reflect equity of opportunity?
  - golemiprague 8y ago
    No, because certain groups in society prefer doing different things on average and certain jobs require certain capabilities which are not evenly distributed among those groups that people tend to measure. The decision what to measure is a problem in itself which what the OP is trying to say, we tend to look at skin colour and gender, what about height, IQ, chest hair, glasses, political tendencies, levels of aggression and whatever other measurable classification I could find? Equity of outcome usually means a gulag or a concentration camp, that's the only place where there is equity of outcome and that's the destiny of any society which aspire for such a ridiculous idea. It is evident that the more egalitarian societies are and the more thee is equality of opportunity people tend to cluster according to their preferences and capabilities and there is actually less equity of outcome because those are not equally distributed, which is actually good.
  - naasking 8y ago
    Not at all. For instance, if there are innate gender dispositions to certain subjects, then those fields will have a much larger proportion of that gender. There's evidence this may be the case in STEM for instance, which would explain the so-called gender equality paradox.
PavlovsCat 8y ago
To the degree something is deep, it is not shallow, and vice versa. That something is easy to measure does not per se make it less or more shallow.

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.
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
I think that English OR is Logical XOR and logical OR is English "A or B or both" or "A and/or B". Oddly enough, my use of or seems to violates the very rule it is used to describe.

Benjammer 8y ago

> If implied in your question that the goal should be equity in 'thought', how do you propose that is measured? OP mentioned "ideas & experience," not "thought," which seems like an intentional framing as something unbounded and immeasurable. Diversity of ideas could be measured by the average number of options/solutions that are seriously considered (and investigated/piloted) over the course of multiple projects for a team. Diversity of experience seems somewhat obvious to me. But if you want clarity on this as well, the idea would be to value various types of experiences in the same way that companies value diverse outward traits like gender, sex, skin color, racial identity, etc. It's a balance. You could hire a person of each gender/skin color combination, but if they all grew up in the New England suburbs and all of them went to either MIT or Harvard, you are generally NOT going to have a diversity of experience, even though everyone _looks_ different. On the other end of the scale, you could hire one person from each type of school, big state school, small technical school, ivy league, "public ivy", liberal arts college, bootcamp graduate, etc. Hire people native to your country/culture, and people who come from a different part of the world. But if they are all white men, you are not going to realize as much benefit. I think it's important to make an attempt to combine all of these concepts to come up with something that approaches the concept of "diversity of thought."

fmitchell0 8y ago
I appreciate your response and respect your idea of trying to combine a lot of aspects to get the goal. I would challenge you on one point though: > gender/skin color combination, but if they all grew up in the New England suburbs and all of them went to either MIT or Harvard, you are generally NOT going to have a diversity of experience, even though everyone _looks_ different Unfortunately, there are many stories, points of evidence, and history that say people who look different, but come from the same place and education level DO have different experiences. Race and gender are exponentially powerful factors that can change a person's experience and outlook no matter how wealthy they are or what school they graduated from.
- Benjammer 8y ago
  You are correct, I should not have used absolute, either-or terms there ("you are generally NOT ..."). I meant to say that you would not have _as much_ diversity of experience.

whtswrong 8y ago

>The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.) And yet time and time again we'll see images of a workforce of predominantly white males and someone will claim "no diversity", as if having white skin and a penis makes you the same as the next guy.

ummonk 8y ago
Or more accurately white, chinese, and indian males.

prepend 8y ago

“Equity is the goal.” I don’t think this is a good goal. Unless you mean equity of opportunity. Equity of outcome is a ridiculously foolish goal in that outcomes will vary substantially and trying to have equity at the end on arbitrary human factors with easy to measure biases (gender, race, etc). So the goal is not 45/45/10 for gender distribution for all roles. As that is obviously impossible as roles change and then people would need to be redistributed ad infinitum (eg, project managers have “perfect” gender diversity of 45/45/10 today but now the role is changes and split into product owner and product manager. Does this mean that the roles must include the same gender mix?)

mebreuer 8y ago
With a high enough sample size, shouldn't equity of outcome reflect equity of opportunity?
- golemiprague 8y ago
  No, because certain groups in society prefer doing different things on average and certain jobs require certain capabilities which are not evenly distributed among those groups that people tend to measure. The decision what to measure is a problem in itself which what the OP is trying to say, we tend to look at skin colour and gender, what about height, IQ, chest hair, glasses, political tendencies, levels of aggression and whatever other measurable classification I could find? Equity of outcome usually means a gulag or a concentration camp, that's the only place where there is equity of outcome and that's the destiny of any society which aspire for such a ridiculous idea. It is evident that the more egalitarian societies are and the more thee is equality of opportunity people tend to cluster according to their preferences and capabilities and there is actually less equity of outcome because those are not equally distributed, which is actually good.
- naasking 8y ago
  Not at all. For instance, if there are innate gender dispositions to certain subjects, then those fields will have a much larger proportion of that gender. There's evidence this may be the case in STEM for instance, which would explain the so-called gender equality paradox.

PavlovsCat 8y ago

To the degree something is deep, it is not shallow, and vice versa. That something is easy to measure does not per se make it less or more shallow.