3 ms·

> 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 stat

> 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.

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.