8 ms·

I find it interesting how so much of the article was concerned about diversity. It seems like SLC is punching above its weight class when it comes to startups e

by jdhn 6y ago

I find it interesting how so much of the article was concerned about diversity. It seems like SLC is punching above its weight class when it comes to startups even though it's not as diverse as the writer would like it to be, which raises the question as to whether diversity is necessary in order to succeed and grow even larger.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rbanffy 6y ago
Diversity is not a requirement for economic success or profitability, specially when you exist in a non-diverse local ecosystem and shutting down minorities doesn't negatively impact your ability to tap local talent. It may impact growth prospects, as companies need to expand and open offices in other places. Being inclusive is, however, something I consider right and, for some, doing the right thing is more important than maximizing profits.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  It seems worth noting that having low diversity doesn’t mean you are shutting down minorities; “diversity” isn’t a natural state of affairs; it requires intentional investment to cultivate. You probably didn’t mean to imply the contrary; I just wanted to be explicit.
  - waisbrot 6y ago
    > having low diversity doesn’t mean you are shutting down minorities Of course it does. How is it that Utah is almost all white? Is that where white people originated? Just random chance? In the natural state of affairs, since we now have the ability to move around the planet faster than we reproduce, entropy would have the world be an even distribution. You're right that diversity requires intentional investment, but that's needed to fight against the active force of bigotry.
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      > Of course it does. How is it that Utah is almost all white? ... For the same reason why Utah is largely LDS, of course. Namely, it was largely white LDS who bothered to actually settle the place. It's a bit weird how some people find something nefarious in any perceived "lack" of diversity, as if founder effect, etc. was not a thing.
      - jayd16 6y ago
        Its an extension of systemic racism in the country going back centuries, which is what the parent is referring to. That said, I don't personally expect every Utah resident to spend all their resources on diversity nor do I expect many are in the position to. That said, the argument that passive participation in an unjust system is tacit approval of that system isn't so far fetched.
        throwaway894345 6y ago
        > Its an extension of systemic racism in the country going back centuries, which is what the parent is referring to. I'm not sure this is true in Utah's case, and anyway it misses the point (Utah could be white for entirely nefarious reasons and we would still expect any given colorblind institution in Utah to be similarly white). > That said, the argument that passive participation in an unjust system is tacit approval of that system isn't so far fetched. It's entirely possible that one is: * unaware of the injustice * unsure of what can be done to help * already helping in a different capacity * spending one's resources otherwise making the world a better place (including potentially addressing worse injustices or just trying to provide for one's family, community, workforce, etc) * etc This "if you're not for my pet issue, you must be against it" isn't doing anyone a service.
      - morelisp 6y ago
        > Namely, it was largely white LDS who bothered to actually settle the place. I mean, this is eliding a lot of history, none of it pleasant and with no convenient villains. Mormons themselves were more or less forced there; they forced enslaved people to come with them making Utah the first western area with African slavery; they accidentally and purposely, violently displaced indigenous people who also actually settled there; and Mormonism held racism as a core precept much longer than most US religions. "Nefarious" is a sadly accurate summary of two centuries of Utah history.
  - lsiebert 6y ago
    Black people couldn't participate fully in the LDS church, as a matter of policy, until 1978, and the church has published materials suggesting against interracial dating and marriage in the last 20 years. Combined with governmental policies like redlining of majority black neighborhoods, I think it's fair to say that the lack of diversity in Utah isn't the natural state of affairs, and required intentional investment to cultivate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormonism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormonism
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      > Black people couldn't participate fully in the LDS church, as a matter of policy, until 1978 True, and deplorable. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). It seems the LDS church was rather late in getting the memo. Still... that was 42 years ago. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that that's why there are so few blacks in Utah today. (And even pre-1978, you could live in Utah without being LDS.) > Combined with governmental policies like redlining of majority black neighborhoods, I think it's fair to say that the lack of diversity in Utah isn't the natural state of affairs Redlining is also deplorable. But did it happen in Utah? I ask because I'm not sure Utah has any majority-black neighborhoods. And even then, for there to be redlining, the blacks have to already be here. If they came here, they couldn't buy a home because of redlining? As opposed to anywhere else, where they... also couldn't buy a home because of redlining? Or is the claim that Utah had redlining later than everywhere else? I don't see the logic for your redlining claim to have any relevance to the question of why Utah is not diverse.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        > It seems a bit of a stretch to say that that's why there are so few blacks in Utah today. Does it? Because to me it doesn't seem like much of a stretch at all to suspect that being entirely unwelcoming to black people would discourage black people from moving there (and encourage black people already there to leave at the earliest opportunity).
      - 6y ago
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I'm not sure they're not "doing the right thing". They can't hire who isn't here, and Utah is not a demographically diverse place. (Yes, they can recruit nationally, but for cost reasons, everyone starts by recruiting locally.) I haven't seen any sign of any of these tech companies "shutting down minorities". From what I've seen, if the right candidate is a minority, they'll hire them without blinking.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    > They can't hire who isn't here, That's a very good point. Lack of diversity is completely invisible if the surrounding context also lacks it.
    - irrational 6y ago
      I live in Portland, OR. It was actually illegal for Black people to live in Oregon until well into the 1900s. That is partly why so few Black people live here. My company has been trying to hire more Black people, but it is really difficult when none apply since so few live around here and all the other companies are also trying to become more diverse. If you are a programmer who is also Black, please consider moving to Portland.
      - tolbish 6y ago
        Or they can move somewhere where their token status won't be under constant scrutiny.
      - yobi-ponti 6y ago
        Great message to put someone in a box "if you're black and a programmer we need you to fill our diversity quota so uproot your life and come here so we can virtue signal and post pictures of you on LinkedIn" Hire good people, don't deny them on the basis of their immutable qualities. Don't pick someone because they look a certain way, but because they can do the work.
      - foobiekr 6y ago
        Open an office in Atlanta or DC. I'm not joking. I have tried multiple times to hire a friend, who is black, because he is good (and not because he's black), and have failed every time because his cultural support structure is simply not there. That's not his problem, and honestly, it's not the Valley's problem, it's just a factr. It took me a long time to understand this, but I realized, there's lots of places I wouldn't move, either, even for a good opportunity, because my expectations about the culture is some places and not others. There is a rate of migration now and then, but honestly, there is a serious geo problem. Some people go where the jobs are (born here, but grew up out east), some won't, and there's nothing wrong with that.
mc32 6y ago
As the former head of HR at Apple said in the past but got fired for is that there are multiple forms of diversity and they have validity for particular reasons, however, to succeed as a business you mostly need diversity in thought (the opposite of groupthink), but there is also the social dimension of diversity which needs addressing if there are forces that are artificially affecting the dynamics. That said, Japan, China and others have been very successful without having to import much external talent. And there are places with more social diversity than the US such have not done well, though there are examples of very diverse places that do extremely well too (Singapore and to a lesser degree Malaysia). So success is probably more aligned with economic policies and other policies weigh less.
- bluedino 6y ago
  >> China has 'imported' a ton of IP and many people from other countries have gone to China and made fortunes setting up clones of non-Chinese businesses.
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  Singapore presents itself as "very diverse" but people will regularly be surprised if you have a western appearance and speak with the same accent as everybody else in the city. It's not really comparable to the US (or the UK or commonwealth countries or much of Europe) in that way.
millbraebart 6y ago
The author lives in the great bastion of diversity... Burlington, VT. What a brave article.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
I suspect diversity is a requirement for growth. How are you expected to add thousands of jobs if Asians, Indians need not apply?
- bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
  1. I think it's a myth that every company needs to metastasize and acquire all the wealth in the universe 2. Aside from that, "inclusiveness" is of course a complete bullshit term that's abused by hiring managers to mean "discriminatory hiring that favors minorities and females; especially the minorities CNN tells us to favor" 3. There is no evidence that companies composed of 100% whites are decidedly exclusive There's your daily dose of reality. Thank me later
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  The big economic growth success stories of the last 50 years were in China and East Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam. Some of the least diverse places on earth. Many of these wont accept immigrants from other backgrounds at all, although they might accept low wage agricultural workers. Economic growth in the US over the same period was mediocre, with declining productivity, and in Europe, it was anemic. There is just no evidence that nations which focus on diversity in and of themselves have had better economic outcomes. Now it does make sense that if you are in a large multi-ethnic society then you will be at a disadvantage if you only hire from one group, since good people are hard to find, so why limit yourself to just a small subset of the population. This is less important for a small company than a large company that really needs to cast a wide net. So not intentionally excluding subgroups of your population makes economic sense. But I'm not aware of any evidence that being more diverse than your population will improve outcomes.
Barrin92 6y ago
if you want to grow outside of your domestic market it's a significant help to have as much possible information available to you when you build something, diversity is simply a way of information discovery. One of the most trivial examples being the soap dispenser that didn't detect black hands. If you have someone with dark skin on your team you discover it right in development.
- jariel 6y ago
  "diversity is simply a way of information discovery" This is one of the arguments given, and it makes a whole lot of sense, so much so, it's hard to negate. But in my years of business experience, I don't believe it's true. Having Engineers of 'XYZ Heritage' will not really in any way help you 'think differently' vis-a-vis the XYZ market. It just doesn't work that way. Now - having Engineers 'born and raised' in a certain part of the world - yes, that can possibly make a difference. It's no surprise that Vancouver has a lot of 'ties' to APAC. Paradoxically, when you start a business, generally you want to hit the very narrow segment of your best possible followers, in which case, diversity may be the opposite of important: you want to nail a demo, that may or may not be related to diversity. The primary advantage, I believe, of diversity, actually has nothing to do with diversity. I have mostly come to believe that most of it doesn't matter materially - what matters - is that companies and individuals have an opportunity to connect with one another. A young, white, CEO may simply be unwilling to look beyond his network and local horizons to find, for example, a lot of women. It's the issue of gender that will help the company, rather massive talent pools overlooked. So having internal biases agains 'certain types' results in just missing out on talent, not so much on some 'special thing' that those candidates bring. Mostly.
throwaway894345 6y ago
The thing that strikes me as especially interesting about our drive for diversity is that it’s based on the premise that if you hire people who look different, then you will very likely get people with heterogeneous viewpoints, which will make an organization stronger. I think this absolutely makes sense provided you sample evenly from all races, genders, etc; however, what I suspect is happening is that organizations that sort of worship diversity end up selecting from each race, gender, etc only those people who are similarly obsessive about diversity, and this selection bias erodes much of the purported benefit of diversity. Notably, institutions like academia and media increasingly consider viewpoint homogeneity something akin to moral purity, and consequently they end up with lots of racial and gender diversity but minimal viewpoint diversity (of course the degree of homogeneity is not uniform across these institutions, but this doesn’t detract from my point).
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Intellectual diversity is dangerous these days. You might get canceled for being too diverse! It's interesting how woke culture seems to be pushing many organizations into being more discriminating when it comes to intellectual, political etc. viewpoints.
  - carapace 6y ago
    FWIW, "It's interesting how..." seems to me to be a rhetorical signal that you have an ax to grind. Just grind it. Racism and sexism aren't "intellectual diversity".
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      I don't agree with the parent's tone, but I don't think the parent was claiming that "racism and sexism" were equivalent to "intellectual diversity"; I'm not sure how you got there. I also don't think it's very interesting or relevant to speculate about the parent's motives for their observation, especially to use pejorative language like "ax to grind".
carapace 6y ago
It seems like most of these startups are not succeeding though innovation rather they are "just" executing well. '“the consumerization of enterprise.”' ?
- yroc92 6y ago
  Having spent 10 years there, I can say this is true. There’s not much innovation, just solid business execution and sales, sales, sales. The proliferation of ambitious former missionaries is a driving factor for this cultural element.
faitswulff 6y ago
The need for diversity is not a means to succeed and grow, it's a directive for redistributing wealth and power from those populations who already have it to those who do not. Diversity as being good for capitalism is red herring.
- 236dev 6y ago
  More diverse areas have less unionization which is good for capitalism. https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-technology-heat-map/ https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-t...
jariel 6y ago
The writers at very least need to take into context the population at large. Germany is not super diverse, neither is Utah. Hence, it will feel different than LA. Ironically, this is the 'Coastal Writers' being guilty of not respecting diversity (!) in that, not every place is like NYC or LA. That doesn't mean Utah is off the hook for not being fair, or for concerns about systematic issues, but Utah is literally less than 2% Black. So that's a starting point. I'm pretty empathetic to issues of unfairness or discrimination, but I lose interest when I see a ham-fisted or lack of contextual elements on the part of writers. Someone noted that Utah has a highly educated workforce - a lot of places do, that's not enough to make a 'Valley'. I think that such places will be great for Tier2 tech, by that I mean, tech that is an end product, not tech used by other techies. Shopfiy in Ottawa, is an example. Ottawa has 'great schools' super B+ competent work force, the most safe and stable place in North America. But not nearly the depth needed to make a Google or MS. Wix. Survey Monkey. I can see Stripe maybe happening out of the Valley. Though I often wonder what the difference would be - maybe Shopify needed to 'start' elsewhere but if it was now a fully SF company I wonder where they would be. But the 'centres' of social networks I think will remain in the big cosmo areas, and 'core tech' will mostly remain in the valley, other than little dots here and there, that usually get eaten up anyhow.
- bluedino 6y ago
  >> Utah is literally less than 2% Black Non-Mormon whites are treated quit differently in SLC. You don't even have to be brown.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by jdhn 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rbanffy 6y ago

Diversity is not a requirement for economic success or profitability, specially when you exist in a non-diverse local ecosystem and shutting down minorities doesn't negatively impact your ability to tap local talent. It may impact growth prospects, as companies need to expand and open offices in other places. Being inclusive is, however, something I consider right and, for some, doing the right thing is more important than maximizing profits.

throwaway894345 6y ago
It seems worth noting that having low diversity doesn’t mean you are shutting down minorities; “diversity” isn’t a natural state of affairs; it requires intentional investment to cultivate. You probably didn’t mean to imply the contrary; I just wanted to be explicit.
- waisbrot 6y ago
  > having low diversity doesn’t mean you are shutting down minorities Of course it does. How is it that Utah is almost all white? Is that where white people originated? Just random chance? In the natural state of affairs, since we now have the ability to move around the planet faster than we reproduce, entropy would have the world be an even distribution. You're right that diversity requires intentional investment, but that's needed to fight against the active force of bigotry.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > Of course it does. How is it that Utah is almost all white? ... For the same reason why Utah is largely LDS, of course. Namely, it was largely white LDS who bothered to actually settle the place. It's a bit weird how some people find something nefarious in any perceived "lack" of diversity, as if founder effect, etc. was not a thing.
    - jayd16 6y ago
      Its an extension of systemic racism in the country going back centuries, which is what the parent is referring to. That said, I don't personally expect every Utah resident to spend all their resources on diversity nor do I expect many are in the position to. That said, the argument that passive participation in an unjust system is tacit approval of that system isn't so far fetched.
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        > Its an extension of systemic racism in the country going back centuries, which is what the parent is referring to. I'm not sure this is true in Utah's case, and anyway it misses the point (Utah could be white for entirely nefarious reasons and we would still expect any given colorblind institution in Utah to be similarly white). > That said, the argument that passive participation in an unjust system is tacit approval of that system isn't so far fetched. It's entirely possible that one is: * unaware of the injustice * unsure of what can be done to help * already helping in a different capacity * spending one's resources otherwise making the world a better place (including potentially addressing worse injustices or just trying to provide for one's family, community, workforce, etc) * etc This "if you're not for my pet issue, you must be against it" isn't doing anyone a service.
    - morelisp 6y ago
      > Namely, it was largely white LDS who bothered to actually settle the place. I mean, this is eliding a lot of history, none of it pleasant and with no convenient villains. Mormons themselves were more or less forced there; they forced enslaved people to come with them making Utah the first western area with African slavery; they accidentally and purposely, violently displaced indigenous people who also actually settled there; and Mormonism held racism as a core precept much longer than most US religions. "Nefarious" is a sadly accurate summary of two centuries of Utah history.
- lsiebert 6y ago
  Black people couldn't participate fully in the LDS church, as a matter of policy, until 1978, and the church has published materials suggesting against interracial dating and marriage in the last 20 years. Combined with governmental policies like redlining of majority black neighborhoods, I think it's fair to say that the lack of diversity in Utah isn't the natural state of affairs, and required intentional investment to cultivate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormonism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormonism
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > Black people couldn't participate fully in the LDS church, as a matter of policy, until 1978 True, and deplorable. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). It seems the LDS church was rather late in getting the memo. Still... that was 42 years ago. It seems a bit of a stretch to say that that's why there are so few blacks in Utah today. (And even pre-1978, you could live in Utah without being LDS.) > Combined with governmental policies like redlining of majority black neighborhoods, I think it's fair to say that the lack of diversity in Utah isn't the natural state of affairs Redlining is also deplorable. But did it happen in Utah? I ask because I'm not sure Utah has any majority-black neighborhoods. And even then, for there to be redlining, the blacks have to already be here. If they came here, they couldn't buy a home because of redlining? As opposed to anywhere else, where they... also couldn't buy a home because of redlining? Or is the claim that Utah had redlining later than everywhere else? I don't see the logic for your redlining claim to have any relevance to the question of why Utah is not diverse.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      > It seems a bit of a stretch to say that that's why there are so few blacks in Utah today. Does it? Because to me it doesn't seem like much of a stretch at all to suspect that being entirely unwelcoming to black people would discourage black people from moving there (and encourage black people already there to leave at the earliest opportunity).
    - 6y ago
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I'm not sure they're not "doing the right thing". They can't hire who isn't here, and Utah is not a demographically diverse place. (Yes, they can recruit nationally, but for cost reasons, everyone starts by recruiting locally.) I haven't seen any sign of any of these tech companies "shutting down minorities". From what I've seen, if the right candidate is a minority, they'll hire them without blinking.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  > They can't hire who isn't here, That's a very good point. Lack of diversity is completely invisible if the surrounding context also lacks it.
  - irrational 6y ago
    I live in Portland, OR. It was actually illegal for Black people to live in Oregon until well into the 1900s. That is partly why so few Black people live here. My company has been trying to hire more Black people, but it is really difficult when none apply since so few live around here and all the other companies are also trying to become more diverse. If you are a programmer who is also Black, please consider moving to Portland.
    - tolbish 6y ago
      Or they can move somewhere where their token status won't be under constant scrutiny.
    - yobi-ponti 6y ago
      Great message to put someone in a box "if you're black and a programmer we need you to fill our diversity quota so uproot your life and come here so we can virtue signal and post pictures of you on LinkedIn" Hire good people, don't deny them on the basis of their immutable qualities. Don't pick someone because they look a certain way, but because they can do the work.
    - foobiekr 6y ago
      Open an office in Atlanta or DC. I'm not joking. I have tried multiple times to hire a friend, who is black, because he is good (and not because he's black), and have failed every time because his cultural support structure is simply not there. That's not his problem, and honestly, it's not the Valley's problem, it's just a factr. It took me a long time to understand this, but I realized, there's lots of places I wouldn't move, either, even for a good opportunity, because my expectations about the culture is some places and not others. There is a rate of migration now and then, but honestly, there is a serious geo problem. Some people go where the jobs are (born here, but grew up out east), some won't, and there's nothing wrong with that.

mc32 6y ago

As the former head of HR at Apple said in the past but got fired for is that there are multiple forms of diversity and they have validity for particular reasons, however, to succeed as a business you mostly need diversity in thought (the opposite of groupthink), but there is also the social dimension of diversity which needs addressing if there are forces that are artificially affecting the dynamics. That said, Japan, China and others have been very successful without having to import much external talent. And there are places with more social diversity than the US such have not done well, though there are examples of very diverse places that do extremely well too (Singapore and to a lesser degree Malaysia). So success is probably more aligned with economic policies and other policies weigh less.

bluedino 6y ago
>> China has 'imported' a ton of IP and many people from other countries have gone to China and made fortunes setting up clones of non-Chinese businesses.
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
Singapore presents itself as "very diverse" but people will regularly be surprised if you have a western appearance and speak with the same accent as everybody else in the city. It's not really comparable to the US (or the UK or commonwealth countries or much of Europe) in that way.

millbraebart 6y ago

The author lives in the great bastion of diversity... Burlington, VT. What a brave article.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

I suspect diversity is a requirement for growth. How are you expected to add thousands of jobs if Asians, Indians need not apply?

bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
1. I think it's a myth that every company needs to metastasize and acquire all the wealth in the universe 2. Aside from that, "inclusiveness" is of course a complete bullshit term that's abused by hiring managers to mean "discriminatory hiring that favors minorities and females; especially the minorities CNN tells us to favor" 3. There is no evidence that companies composed of 100% whites are decidedly exclusive There's your daily dose of reality. Thank me later
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
rsj_hn 6y ago
The big economic growth success stories of the last 50 years were in China and East Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam. Some of the least diverse places on earth. Many of these wont accept immigrants from other backgrounds at all, although they might accept low wage agricultural workers. Economic growth in the US over the same period was mediocre, with declining productivity, and in Europe, it was anemic. There is just no evidence that nations which focus on diversity in and of themselves have had better economic outcomes. Now it does make sense that if you are in a large multi-ethnic society then you will be at a disadvantage if you only hire from one group, since good people are hard to find, so why limit yourself to just a small subset of the population. This is less important for a small company than a large company that really needs to cast a wide net. So not intentionally excluding subgroups of your population makes economic sense. But I'm not aware of any evidence that being more diverse than your population will improve outcomes.

Barrin92 6y ago

if you want to grow outside of your domestic market it's a significant help to have as much possible information available to you when you build something, diversity is simply a way of information discovery. One of the most trivial examples being the soap dispenser that didn't detect black hands. If you have someone with dark skin on your team you discover it right in development.

jariel 6y ago
"diversity is simply a way of information discovery" This is one of the arguments given, and it makes a whole lot of sense, so much so, it's hard to negate. But in my years of business experience, I don't believe it's true. Having Engineers of 'XYZ Heritage' will not really in any way help you 'think differently' vis-a-vis the XYZ market. It just doesn't work that way. Now - having Engineers 'born and raised' in a certain part of the world - yes, that can possibly make a difference. It's no surprise that Vancouver has a lot of 'ties' to APAC. Paradoxically, when you start a business, generally you want to hit the very narrow segment of your best possible followers, in which case, diversity may be the opposite of important: you want to nail a demo, that may or may not be related to diversity. The primary advantage, I believe, of diversity, actually has nothing to do with diversity. I have mostly come to believe that most of it doesn't matter materially - what matters - is that companies and individuals have an opportunity to connect with one another. A young, white, CEO may simply be unwilling to look beyond his network and local horizons to find, for example, a lot of women. It's the issue of gender that will help the company, rather massive talent pools overlooked. So having internal biases agains 'certain types' results in just missing out on talent, not so much on some 'special thing' that those candidates bring. Mostly.

throwaway894345 6y ago

The thing that strikes me as especially interesting about our drive for diversity is that it’s based on the premise that if you hire people who look different, then you will very likely get people with heterogeneous viewpoints, which will make an organization stronger. I think this absolutely makes sense provided you sample evenly from all races, genders, etc; however, what I suspect is happening is that organizations that sort of worship diversity end up selecting from each race, gender, etc only those people who are similarly obsessive about diversity, and this selection bias erodes much of the purported benefit of diversity. Notably, institutions like academia and media increasingly consider viewpoint homogeneity something akin to moral purity, and consequently they end up with lots of racial and gender diversity but minimal viewpoint diversity (of course the degree of homogeneity is not uniform across these institutions, but this doesn’t detract from my point).

zozbot234 6y ago
Intellectual diversity is dangerous these days. You might get canceled for being too diverse! It's interesting how woke culture seems to be pushing many organizations into being more discriminating when it comes to intellectual, political etc. viewpoints.
- carapace 6y ago
  FWIW, "It's interesting how..." seems to me to be a rhetorical signal that you have an ax to grind. Just grind it. Racism and sexism aren't "intellectual diversity".
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I don't agree with the parent's tone, but I don't think the parent was claiming that "racism and sexism" were equivalent to "intellectual diversity"; I'm not sure how you got there. I also don't think it's very interesting or relevant to speculate about the parent's motives for their observation, especially to use pejorative language like "ax to grind".

carapace 6y ago

It seems like most of these startups are not succeeding though innovation rather they are "just" executing well. '“the consumerization of enterprise.”' ?

yroc92 6y ago
Having spent 10 years there, I can say this is true. There’s not much innovation, just solid business execution and sales, sales, sales. The proliferation of ambitious former missionaries is a driving factor for this cultural element.

faitswulff 6y ago

The need for diversity is not a means to succeed and grow, it's a directive for redistributing wealth and power from those populations who already have it to those who do not. Diversity as being good for capitalism is red herring.

236dev 6y ago
More diverse areas have less unionization which is good for capitalism. https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-technology-heat-map/ https://observer.com/2020/04/amazon-whole-foods-anti-union-t...

jariel 6y ago

The writers at very least need to take into context the population at large. Germany is not super diverse, neither is Utah. Hence, it will feel different than LA. Ironically, this is the 'Coastal Writers' being guilty of not respecting diversity (!) in that, not every place is like NYC or LA. That doesn't mean Utah is off the hook for not being fair, or for concerns about systematic issues, but Utah is literally less than 2% Black. So that's a starting point. I'm pretty empathetic to issues of unfairness or discrimination, but I lose interest when I see a ham-fisted or lack of contextual elements on the part of writers. Someone noted that Utah has a highly educated workforce - a lot of places do, that's not enough to make a 'Valley'. I think that such places will be great for Tier2 tech, by that I mean, tech that is an end product, not tech used by other techies. Shopfiy in Ottawa, is an example. Ottawa has 'great schools' super B+ competent work force, the most safe and stable place in North America. But not nearly the depth needed to make a Google or MS. Wix. Survey Monkey. I can see Stripe maybe happening out of the Valley. Though I often wonder what the difference would be - maybe Shopify needed to 'start' elsewhere but if it was now a fully SF company I wonder where they would be. But the 'centres' of social networks I think will remain in the big cosmo areas, and 'core tech' will mostly remain in the valley, other than little dots here and there, that usually get eaten up anyhow.

bluedino 6y ago
>> Utah is literally less than 2% Black Non-Mormon whites are treated quit differently in SLC. You don't even have to be brown.

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