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> That my gender or my age or my ethnicity or my sexual orientation or my weight or my clothes might (will!) have an impact on the perceived quality of the soft
by maerF0x0 8y ago
> That my gender or my age or my ethnicity or my sexual orientation or my weight or my clothes might (will!) have an impact on the perceived quality of the software I build. (Or, in other words, that this is not really a meritocracy, and doing a good job is not nearly enough.)
Does there exist any body of proof around this one? Would like to see it and add it to my corpus of knowledge
- luckydata 8y agogo out in the world and pay attention for a few days, you'll get all the proof you need.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lozaning 8y agoWell I certainly hope I havent been growing out this Unix beard for nothing!
- mixmastamyk 8y agoGrey beards no longer allowed at some places, so grab a Just for Men.
- Beldin 8y agoYes. One typical test is to have people evaluate identical resumes, with the thing being checked for constituting the only difference (e.g. "ethnic" ames vs. "regular" names). Other data points are gathered by studying success at finding internships. A recent study found a rather staggering difference - names indicating local ethnicity got a place in 1-2 letters, while some other ethnicities had to write over 20 (if memory serves). You'll want to find studies for the country you're living in, as the parameters inevitably vary (e.g. which ethnicities to compare). I don't think the outcomes cary much, but i didn't do a comparative study on the literature.
- bytematic 8y agoMaybe names shouldn't be disclosed until the actual hiring is done.
- yladiz 8y agoIt's not that simple since it's essentially impossible to do a true blind hiring process, due to the fact that interviews happen in person (on video, physically, etc.) and so hiding the name can get a foot in the door but biases take over once the interviews start.
- pmiller2 8y agoThat's not going to work, unless we don't have in person interviews. Since most jobs involve working physically with other people, and, theoretically, you want the interview to simulate the actual working conditions as closely as possible, so it constitutes a valid "work sample test," that doesn't seem workable.
- pmiller2 8y agoI am upvoting you, but you didn't actually answer the question. Your examples have to do with getting a job, not perceived quality of work once one has a job. Both are bad, and your examples are arguably worse, but it doesn't shed any light on how one's clothes, name, etc. can affect the perception of one's actual work.
- kradroy 8y agoI think this is true for most professions. Just look around you at work. You might see similarities/differences among/between groups: managers vs ICs, senior vs junior, execs vs non-execs. It's not homogenous across professions but will be idiosyncratic to your company or even to your department. There's the adage: "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have." You can liberally interpret the meaning of the word "dress" as more than just clothing.
- jfrankamp 8y agoI suggest going to the Harvard Project Implicit tests and taking a few. After that, study the design of the test. Because humans are the decision makers (not some objective code review acceptance program for example) all you would need to 'prove' is that humans are bad at making objective decisions. We use heuristics consciously and more importantly _unconsciously_ to the detriment of people who don't fit norms.
- pacala 8y agoAlso consider alternative perspectives on IAT, for example https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-conscious/201706/is-implicit-bias-useful-scientific-concept https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-conscious/20.... Inline excerpts: > The test-retest reliability (repeatability) of the Race IAT is only .42, which falls well below the psychometric standard of .80. Your score on the IAT can fluctuate significantly from one testing to the next. Hart Blanton, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, has noted the ease with which people can decrease their racial bias score “by simply exposing people to pictures of African-Americans enjoying a picnic.” > The validity of IAT scores has also come under scrutiny. In 2013, Frederick Oswald and his research team published a meta-analysis of 46 studies.[1] They found that IAT scores are poor predictors of actual behavior and policy preferences. They also found that IAT scores predicted behaviors and policy preferences no better than scores on simple paper-and-pencil measures of prejudice. > Perhaps the most interesting feature of the debate concerns how to interpret IAT scores. Some social psychologists believe the IAT measures prejudice, while others believe the IAT measures our knowledge of common stereotypes. > They then took a version of the Race IAT with Noffians and Fasites standing in for Blacks and Whites, respectively. The students showed a consistent bias against Noffians, not because they perceived Noffians as bad but because they perceived them as bad off.
- jfrankamp 8y agoThat's good, and here is some more including different ways to measure implicit bias that have emerged. The point stands that people aren't objective: >White applicants get about 50 percent more call-backs than black applicants with the same resumes; college professors are 26 percent more likely to respond to a student’s email when it is signed by Brad rather than Lamar; and physicians recommend less pain medication for black patients than white patients with the same injury. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-about-implicit-bias/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-think-abou...
- youeseh 8y agoGuilt by association. If you belong to a certain group then there will be certain assumptions made about you. It is human nature. This will happen every time you meet someone new, even when the person belongs to the same group as you. The question is: what do you want to do about it? Is it a reasonable ask for society to suppress how it identifies you? Should you acknowledge the reality and work with it? Different groups and communities have approached this issue in different ways: band together and support each other, organize politically, organize protests, use guilt, stay low and work hard, use another strength to gain leverage, etc. Some of these strategies and tactics will gain the community respect. Others will strengthen the stereotype - they may get what they want but will lose something else.
- pmiller2 8y agoWhat clothes will make my manager and coworkers think I write better software? (Serious question.) Also regarding presentation improving the perceived quality of work, I noticed that when I started writing my homework assignments in LaTeX in grad school (math), I started getting better grades. I don't think my actual quality of work increased, but I was able to get away with less convincing arguments.
- Mascros 8y agoOn mobile so haven't got exact links to hand so you might have to do some googling to find the exact things I mention. There's a study which examined pull requests to certain open source projects on GitHub and compared approval rates for accounts which could be identified as female (name or profile picture) with those of men, and also of those known to belong to females but where you could not tell from the profile. They found interesting differences in approvals ratings. On a more general note the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg is a good read if you're interested in learning about biases you (whether man or woman) might have. The book is thoroughly cited and aims to be productive rather than an attack on men and does a great job in my opinion. It points out certain things such as how certain traits are seen as positive in men and negative in women and how this manifests itself in the workplace. It definitely helped me spot things I was guilty of without even realising before
- maerF0x0 8y agoThank you for the book recommendation. Added to my reading list