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I'm not sure I understand what you expected. This reads to me like somebody came in with the job of identifying ways of being diverse that your company didn't h

I'm not sure I understand what you expected. This reads to me like somebody came in with the job of identifying ways of being diverse that your company didn't have, they did their job, and then you thew them out for doing it. Maybe you didn't want them there in the first place - that's fair - but if so, that's something to take up with your accelerator, not with the consultant. Was it just that they said you "weren't" diverse, rather than "you could be more" diverse? If the whole message was just "hey, you should consider having more representation of women and LGBT people", I'm really struggling to understand what's offensive about that. It's a good idea to have representation of those groups. I don't think that means you need to go out and immediately hire a whole bunch of totally unqualified people to meet a diversity quota. What was this person proposing as a solution - did you ask them? And if you're comfortable with/confident in the diversity of your team, what did you have to lose by listening to him?

OminousWeapons 6y ago
> I'm really struggling to understand what's offensive about that. It's a good idea to have representation of those groups. I can't speak for women, but why exactly is it a good idea to have representation of LGBT for the sake of representation? You seem to be implying that LGBT are somehow different than straight people from a job performance perspective which comes off as discriminatory even though your intentions are clearly positive. If there is active discrimination against LGBT at a company, that needs to be immediately addressed. If you are making a product which is specifically catering to LGBT then you probably should have some on your team for design purposes and requirements generation. Otherwise, someone's sexual orientation has no bearing on job performance and really shouldn't be a factor for or against hiring them.
- ivraatiems 6y ago
  > You seem to be implying that LGBT are somehow different than straight people from a job performance perspective which comes off as discriminatory even though your intentions are clearly positive. That's not what I mean to imply, nor the basis of the recent push for more workplace diversity as I understand it. The goal is not using people's diverse status to determine whether they'd be good at their jobs. Rather, it's to find people who are diverse as well as meeting job criteria, and hiring them preferentially if there aren't enough people representing their viewpoints. But even so, merely pointing out that a company didn't have a certain kind of representation doesn't seem, to me, to be a cause for offense. Editing to add: Yes, there is a tension between hiring on the basis of innate characteristics and trying to be meritocratic. But I view that as a balancing act, not something that always comes down on one side or the other.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - OminousWeapons 6y ago
    > That's not what I mean to imply, nor the basis of the recent push for more workplace diversity as I understand it. The goal is not using people's diverse status to determine whether they'd be good at their jobs. Rather, it's to find people who are diverse as well as meeting job criteria, and hiring them preferentially if there aren't enough people representing their viewpoints. But what does it mean to have an LGBT viewpoint? Why should it be assumed that because someone is LGBT they think about issues that would be pertinent to most jobs or product offerings in a manner that is different than a straight person? Explicitly classifying LGBT as a separate group with different thought processes that could impact how a job is performed is inherently discriminatory, even if it is done for positive reasons.
    - ivraatiems 6y ago
      > Explicitly classifying LGBT as a separate group with different thought processes that could impact how a job is performed is inherently discriminatory, even if it is done for positive reasons. It's not about "different thought processes", it's about "different lived experiences". We live in a society that is so completely bound up in its conception of the "default" person that we don't even know what we don't know. There are specific advocacy groups just for LGBT people in tech for exactly this reason: outintech.com, for instance. And here's an example of ways that LGBT people find themselves unable to work in environments that don't respect their views: https://www.geekwire.com/2015/out-in-tech-what-its-like-to-be-lgbt-in-an-industry-struggling-with-diversity/ https://www.geekwire.com/2015/out-in-tech-what-its-like-to-b... To think about this as expecting LGBT people (or any group) to bring some different kind of thought is not the point at all. The point is to expand the range of people whose views we consider in the ways we act and in what we create at every level.
      - tjpnz 6y ago
        What are these different views? I work with all sorts of people including LGBT and haven't noticed any difference in how they approach an engineering task.

OminousWeapons 6y ago

> I'm really struggling to understand what's offensive about that. It's a good idea to have representation of those groups. I can't speak for women, but why exactly is it a good idea to have representation of LGBT for the sake of representation? You seem to be implying that LGBT are somehow different than straight people from a job performance perspective which comes off as discriminatory even though your intentions are clearly positive. If there is active discrimination against LGBT at a company, that needs to be immediately addressed. If you are making a product which is specifically catering to LGBT then you probably should have some on your team for design purposes and requirements generation. Otherwise, someone's sexual orientation has no bearing on job performance and really shouldn't be a factor for or against hiring them.

ivraatiems 6y ago
> You seem to be implying that LGBT are somehow different than straight people from a job performance perspective which comes off as discriminatory even though your intentions are clearly positive. That's not what I mean to imply, nor the basis of the recent push for more workplace diversity as I understand it. The goal is not using people's diverse status to determine whether they'd be good at their jobs. Rather, it's to find people who are diverse as well as meeting job criteria, and hiring them preferentially if there aren't enough people representing their viewpoints. But even so, merely pointing out that a company didn't have a certain kind of representation doesn't seem, to me, to be a cause for offense. Editing to add: Yes, there is a tension between hiring on the basis of innate characteristics and trying to be meritocratic. But I view that as a balancing act, not something that always comes down on one side or the other.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- OminousWeapons 6y ago
  > That's not what I mean to imply, nor the basis of the recent push for more workplace diversity as I understand it. The goal is not using people's diverse status to determine whether they'd be good at their jobs. Rather, it's to find people who are diverse as well as meeting job criteria, and hiring them preferentially if there aren't enough people representing their viewpoints. But what does it mean to have an LGBT viewpoint? Why should it be assumed that because someone is LGBT they think about issues that would be pertinent to most jobs or product offerings in a manner that is different than a straight person? Explicitly classifying LGBT as a separate group with different thought processes that could impact how a job is performed is inherently discriminatory, even if it is done for positive reasons.
  - ivraatiems 6y ago
    > Explicitly classifying LGBT as a separate group with different thought processes that could impact how a job is performed is inherently discriminatory, even if it is done for positive reasons. It's not about "different thought processes", it's about "different lived experiences". We live in a society that is so completely bound up in its conception of the "default" person that we don't even know what we don't know. There are specific advocacy groups just for LGBT people in tech for exactly this reason: outintech.com, for instance. And here's an example of ways that LGBT people find themselves unable to work in environments that don't respect their views: https://www.geekwire.com/2015/out-in-tech-what-its-like-to-be-lgbt-in-an-industry-struggling-with-diversity/ https://www.geekwire.com/2015/out-in-tech-what-its-like-to-b... To think about this as expecting LGBT people (or any group) to bring some different kind of thought is not the point at all. The point is to expand the range of people whose views we consider in the ways we act and in what we create at every level.
    - tjpnz 6y ago
      What are these different views? I work with all sorts of people including LGBT and haven't noticed any difference in how they approach an engineering task.