4 ms·

I'm not sure what you're referring to by "easy pool of candidates". If you post a job listing online and people apply, is that an easy pool? In that situation

by nscalf 7y ago

I'm not sure what you're referring to by "easy pool of candidates". If you post a job listing online and people apply, is that an easy pool? In that situation, is it the responsibility of the company to find more people to apply if they found someone good who could do the job? It sounds like the argument you're making is referring to more diversity earlier in the process, which makes sense to me. Assuming there is no racial bias in the selection process, if the pool of people you're choosing from is more diverse and you still end up with a board of white straight males because they were the most qualified in that pool, is that a problem?

notacoward 7y ago
> If you post a job listing online and people apply, is that an easy pool? Posted where? In what publications, at what position, for how long? "Token posting" to comply with the letter of open-posting requirements while defying their intent is already a thing.
TotempaaltJ 7y ago
> If you post a job listing online and people apply, is that an easy pool? I doubt most directors at companies going to IPO with Goldman Sachs are chosen from applicants to an online job listing. If 90% of the total pool has a largely similar background, and you find 20 candidates without controlling for diversity (my "easy pool"), you'll have 2 candidates with a diverse background. Now even if you could do a merit based selection on that, you'll most likely hire from the 18. If you put more effort into sourcing from the 10% you should be able to get, for example, 10 candidates from the 90% and 10 from the 10%. > if the pool of people you're choosing from is more diverse and you still end up with a board of white straight males because they were the most qualified in that pool, is that a problem? Not necessarily. I don't entirely believe people can pick purely on merit, but assuming you could, that would be a reasonable result to end up with. Though there is an argument to be made that a more diverse board could lead to more inclusive decision making. That in turn could lead to your company being appealing to both more diverse candidates and more diverse customers. More customers is more money. Not sure that I believe that should be the only goal, but it's.
- thu2111 7y ago
  there is an argument to be made that a more diverse board could lead to more inclusive decision making ... more diverse customers ... more money This argument is the core intellectual justification for this kind of anti-western-male discrimination but it's unsound. If we handwave away the uncertain definitions of "diverse" and "inclusive" then it boils down to women should be on corporate boards because they will force decisions to be made that are better for women. Is this legitimate? If there was widespread unfair discrimination against women by corporations then you could argue this would tip the balance back to equality, assuming you could precisely measure the appointees pro-women/anti-man decisions and figure out when there was 'enough' such decision making. But as we can see from this story the reality is the opposite: there's widespread discrimination against men in our society, not women. I don't remember ever reading about women being denied jobs outside of special cases with physical strength requirements like the military, and even then, not anymore. So what is more inclusive decision making meant to mean, exactly? Corporations are not refusing to sell products to women today, or refusing to promote women. Quite the opposite. Unfortunately my experience of 'inclusive' decision making in corporations is that it's a double-speak inversion. It really means excluding and discouraging people based on how they were born. If appointing women to boards is meant to create more of this then we can assume it's not really "female/diverse" they're going for but rather people with a specific ideological bent. Goldman Sachs, enforcing leftist wokeism on the world via financial discrimination. What kind of a topsy turvy world are our sons being born into?
- nscalf 7y ago
  If we work hard to get more than 2 candidates from that 10%, aren't we being very biased against the 90% though? I think I'm missing some step in this logic where we should be acting in a highly biased way to get equality. If 90% of candidates are of one type, the most reasonable outcome that I can think of is if your board is 90% of that type, assuming people are largely equal. If we go off merit, and assuming there are no really significant differences between peoples gender/sex/ethnicity, it should just be a simple distribution. That's where I get really caught up with this, when people what an "even" outcome, i.e. 50% one type, 50% another (or equal percentages of each type). I think non-bias outcomes are closer to simple distribution of the candidates. Does that make sense? I'm honestly trying to bridge the gap between what I hear a lot of people's views are and what mine are.

by nscalf 7y ago

notacoward 7y ago

> If you post a job listing online and people apply, is that an easy pool? Posted where? In what publications, at what position, for how long? "Token posting" to comply with the letter of open-posting requirements while defying their intent is already a thing.

TotempaaltJ 7y ago

> If you post a job listing online and people apply, is that an easy pool? I doubt most directors at companies going to IPO with Goldman Sachs are chosen from applicants to an online job listing. If 90% of the total pool has a largely similar background, and you find 20 candidates without controlling for diversity (my "easy pool"), you'll have 2 candidates with a diverse background. Now even if you could do a merit based selection on that, you'll most likely hire from the 18. If you put more effort into sourcing from the 10% you should be able to get, for example, 10 candidates from the 90% and 10 from the 10%. > if the pool of people you're choosing from is more diverse and you still end up with a board of white straight males because they were the most qualified in that pool, is that a problem? Not necessarily. I don't entirely believe people can pick purely on merit, but assuming you could, that would be a reasonable result to end up with. Though there is an argument to be made that a more diverse board could lead to more inclusive decision making. That in turn could lead to your company being appealing to both more diverse candidates and more diverse customers. More customers is more money. Not sure that I believe that should be the only goal, but it's.

thu2111 7y ago
there is an argument to be made that a more diverse board could lead to more inclusive decision making ... more diverse customers ... more money This argument is the core intellectual justification for this kind of anti-western-male discrimination but it's unsound. If we handwave away the uncertain definitions of "diverse" and "inclusive" then it boils down to women should be on corporate boards because they will force decisions to be made that are better for women. Is this legitimate? If there was widespread unfair discrimination against women by corporations then you could argue this would tip the balance back to equality, assuming you could precisely measure the appointees pro-women/anti-man decisions and figure out when there was 'enough' such decision making. But as we can see from this story the reality is the opposite: there's widespread discrimination against men in our society, not women. I don't remember ever reading about women being denied jobs outside of special cases with physical strength requirements like the military, and even then, not anymore. So what is more inclusive decision making meant to mean, exactly? Corporations are not refusing to sell products to women today, or refusing to promote women. Quite the opposite. Unfortunately my experience of 'inclusive' decision making in corporations is that it's a double-speak inversion. It really means excluding and discouraging people based on how they were born. If appointing women to boards is meant to create more of this then we can assume it's not really "female/diverse" they're going for but rather people with a specific ideological bent. Goldman Sachs, enforcing leftist wokeism on the world via financial discrimination. What kind of a topsy turvy world are our sons being born into?
nscalf 7y ago
If we work hard to get more than 2 candidates from that 10%, aren't we being very biased against the 90% though? I think I'm missing some step in this logic where we should be acting in a highly biased way to get equality. If 90% of candidates are of one type, the most reasonable outcome that I can think of is if your board is 90% of that type, assuming people are largely equal. If we go off merit, and assuming there are no really significant differences between peoples gender/sex/ethnicity, it should just be a simple distribution. That's where I get really caught up with this, when people what an "even" outcome, i.e. 50% one type, 50% another (or equal percentages of each type). I think non-bias outcomes are closer to simple distribution of the candidates. Does that make sense? I'm honestly trying to bridge the gap between what I hear a lot of people's views are and what mine are.