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> It must be allowed to discriminate based on ability, even if a certain ability correlates trongly with age, sex or something else. Wow! I rarely openly disag

> It must be allowed to discriminate based on ability, even if a certain ability correlates trongly with age, sex or something else. Wow! I rarely openly disagree with strangers on the internet but wow! I am currently focused on improving diversity and inclusion within my teams and the diversity of thought, approaches and outcomes that are a direct result of this effort are a delight. Progress may not always be in the right direction or slower than one expects but zigging and zagging towards the right thing is a reward in its own.

carmenbr 7y ago
Some companies have a Head of D&I specifically to promote it within the company. Yes, you are in the right direction. Happy to share more details about your company?
Grustaf 7y ago
If there is an argument in your reply i must have missed it. My argument is that you must be allowed to hire only strong people if the job requires that, even if men in general wre much stronger. What would the alternative be?
- nxrabl 7y ago
  I don't want to put words in GP's mouth, but they seem to be making the argument that "ability" comprises multiple considerations, one of which is the meta-consideration that employees should have a range of talents and experiences which are different from one another. In the moving company example, it would be a mistake to optimize exclusively for physical strength in the hiring process - you're going to want someone who can work out the dimensions of things in their head to tell whether that table is going to fit through that door frame, someone who can put the homeowner at ease while you put their priceless heirlooms on a truck, etc. In knowledge work, which is the domain I daresay most of us around here will actually be applying this to, there are far more of these variables, many of which are invisible to us. They impact a team's ability to, for example, devise innovative and robust solutions to problems by drawing on a wide range of inspirations, or design products that appeal to target markets beyond what any one team member might be familiar with. Valuing a diverse staff makes a reasonable proxy for these hidden variables. Your argument, as I understand it, is that a company has the right to choose some characteristic and require that characteristic to be present at or above some standard level in all of the employees it hires. Which is fine, so long as it isn't one of these [0] (in which age is included). However, I would argue that a term like "tech-native" is not a characteristic - it's a label, and it's loaded from the start. Imagine the moving company puts out a job ad saying that they're looking for "powerlifters" or "muscleheads" or something. What they _mean_ by that (or what they think they mean) is that they want people who are physically strong, regardless of any other characteristic. What they're _saying_ is that they want men, and no woman is going to read that posting and think that the poster is expecting women to apply. And when the candidate gets to the interview, the interviewer is going to try out that label on that candidate, and the label will inevitably be overloaded with connotations far beyond "physical strength" - with the best will in the world, the interviewer will end up selecting men at even a higher rate than they apply, because "masculinity" is part of the implicit set of characteristics attached to that label. The use of language in the want ad, rightly or wrongly, appeals to a certain type of candidate, and not only indicates but reinforces a preference for that type of candidate. What would have been wrong with just saying "Must be able to lift 100 lbs", or "Must be comfortable with social media"? The term "tech-native" is an opaque neologism that doesn't mean anything other than the big ball of mixed-up stereotypes the HR person had in their head when they typed it, and a company that asks for "tech-natives" either doesn't know what they really want, or isn't willing to tell us straight out. Either way, we should be celebrating companies who don't use bs terms like that, which is exactly what OP is doing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
  - foldingmoney 7y ago
    >Imagine the moving company puts out a job ad saying that they're looking for "powerlifters" or "muscleheads" or something. What they _mean_ by that (or what they think they mean) is that they want people who are physically strong, regardless of any other characteristic. What they're _saying_ is that they want men, and no woman is going to read that posting and think that the poster is expecting women to apply. There are plenty of female powerlifters...
  - Grustaf 7y ago
    My point, and I realise it wasn’t very explicit, was that even if you put up a very concrete requirement like being able to lift 200 lbs, a certain kind of person will still argue that this is discrimination because mostly men will be able to meet the requirement. It sounds like OP was arguing along those lines in her last paragraph. But that’s untenable, if we consider that discrimination then we can’t advertise for people with skills in anything related to IT since 9 out 10 people with the skill will be men, yet it’s quite reasonable to want your web developer to know Javascript.
  - Grustaf 7y ago
    Btw isn’t tech-native just shorthand for “good with social media”? Then why not use that term?

carmenbr 7y ago

Some companies have a Head of D&I specifically to promote it within the company. Yes, you are in the right direction. Happy to share more details about your company?

Grustaf 7y ago

If there is an argument in your reply i must have missed it. My argument is that you must be allowed to hire only strong people if the job requires that, even if men in general wre much stronger. What would the alternative be?

nxrabl 7y ago
I don't want to put words in GP's mouth, but they seem to be making the argument that "ability" comprises multiple considerations, one of which is the meta-consideration that employees should have a range of talents and experiences which are different from one another. In the moving company example, it would be a mistake to optimize exclusively for physical strength in the hiring process - you're going to want someone who can work out the dimensions of things in their head to tell whether that table is going to fit through that door frame, someone who can put the homeowner at ease while you put their priceless heirlooms on a truck, etc. In knowledge work, which is the domain I daresay most of us around here will actually be applying this to, there are far more of these variables, many of which are invisible to us. They impact a team's ability to, for example, devise innovative and robust solutions to problems by drawing on a wide range of inspirations, or design products that appeal to target markets beyond what any one team member might be familiar with. Valuing a diverse staff makes a reasonable proxy for these hidden variables. Your argument, as I understand it, is that a company has the right to choose some characteristic and require that characteristic to be present at or above some standard level in all of the employees it hires. Which is fine, so long as it isn't one of these [0] (in which age is included). However, I would argue that a term like "tech-native" is not a characteristic - it's a label, and it's loaded from the start. Imagine the moving company puts out a job ad saying that they're looking for "powerlifters" or "muscleheads" or something. What they _mean_ by that (or what they think they mean) is that they want people who are physically strong, regardless of any other characteristic. What they're _saying_ is that they want men, and no woman is going to read that posting and think that the poster is expecting women to apply. And when the candidate gets to the interview, the interviewer is going to try out that label on that candidate, and the label will inevitably be overloaded with connotations far beyond "physical strength" - with the best will in the world, the interviewer will end up selecting men at even a higher rate than they apply, because "masculinity" is part of the implicit set of characteristics attached to that label. The use of language in the want ad, rightly or wrongly, appeals to a certain type of candidate, and not only indicates but reinforces a preference for that type of candidate. What would have been wrong with just saying "Must be able to lift 100 lbs", or "Must be comfortable with social media"? The term "tech-native" is an opaque neologism that doesn't mean anything other than the big ball of mixed-up stereotypes the HR person had in their head when they typed it, and a company that asks for "tech-natives" either doesn't know what they really want, or isn't willing to tell us straight out. Either way, we should be celebrating companies who don't use bs terms like that, which is exactly what OP is doing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group
- foldingmoney 7y ago
  >Imagine the moving company puts out a job ad saying that they're looking for "powerlifters" or "muscleheads" or something. What they _mean_ by that (or what they think they mean) is that they want people who are physically strong, regardless of any other characteristic. What they're _saying_ is that they want men, and no woman is going to read that posting and think that the poster is expecting women to apply. There are plenty of female powerlifters...
- Grustaf 7y ago
  My point, and I realise it wasn’t very explicit, was that even if you put up a very concrete requirement like being able to lift 200 lbs, a certain kind of person will still argue that this is discrimination because mostly men will be able to meet the requirement. It sounds like OP was arguing along those lines in her last paragraph. But that’s untenable, if we consider that discrimination then we can’t advertise for people with skills in anything related to IT since 9 out 10 people with the skill will be men, yet it’s quite reasonable to want your web developer to know Javascript.
- Grustaf 7y ago
  Btw isn’t tech-native just shorthand for “good with social media”? Then why not use that term?