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I don't know, anecdotally, relationships broke down with me and other stakeholders, and I ended up leaving the company, after I pushed hard for an amazing candi

I don't know, anecdotally, relationships broke down with me and other stakeholders, and I ended up leaving the company, after I pushed hard for an amazing candidate, the first to ever ace my interviews, whereas said other stakeholders wanted a certain diversity candidate, who while I enjoyed meeting didn't do that well. The funny thing is in SF it's the bro-y white guy CEOs who push the wokeness the hardest. Almost feels performative. SF needs to solve these problems if they want to be a tech mecca.

f430 6y ago
> SF it's the bro-y white guy CEOs who push the wokeness the hardest. Almost feels performative. SF needs to solve these problems if they want to be a tech mecca. its like that in vancouver too but with far less money and even far less exits
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
__turbobrew__ 6y ago
How is rejecting a candidate soley based on race not racial discrimination? This is illegal where I live; it is probably why companies never give interview feedback to the interviewees because they make these illegal hiring decisions behind the scenes but then say “it wasn’t a good fit”.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- xenihn 6y ago
  Racial discrimination is a legal concept. There is no racial discrimination if you lack the following: - evidence - witnesses who are willing to testify - legal action Whether it actually happened or not is irrelevant.
  - andrei_says_ 6y ago
    And everyone in the company being Caucasian and Asian doesn’t count :) Just like the photo of the C-suite of most companies being 99% male doesn’t count as sexism.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  > I pushed hard for an amazing candidate, the first to ever ace my interviews, whereas said other stakeholders wanted a certain diversity candidate Your reading of this comment is "other stakeholders rejected an excellent candidate solely based on race". The actual information given was that the commenter really liked one candidate, and the other stakeholders preferred a different candidate who was somehow "diverse". While I think the commenter probably agrees with your interpretation, it seems equally likely to me that their candidate evaluation was bad, and that the other stakeholders did not use diversity as their sole criteria.
- vharuck 6y ago
  Yes, it does technically fit "racial discrimination." However, some people use that simpler term to talk about historic and current power imbalances. In the United States, there were a lot of extra barriers for non-white people. Some still exist, but there's also the self-perpetuating barriers, like how children from poor households are likely to be poor adults. So, if somebody wants to help solve "racial discrimination," being "race blind" would mean letting past wrongs stay wrong.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Where does education fit in in your assumptions ? Even poor people make it up the social ladder thru education. Most of our ancesters were farmers, and most of them very poor too.
    - cma 6y ago
      You have things like alumni admissions preference at schools that didn't allow black people within just a couple alumni generations.
      - lazyasciiart 6y ago
        Or public school districts neatly drawn to separate rich white areas from poor black areas.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    In the United States, there were a lot of extra barriers for non-white people Join us in Alabama! Here, they put up barriers for everyone that wasn't a large landowner or industrialist. This set back descendants of black slaves, but descendants of white sharecroppers were equally caught up in the net. Arguably, the poor whites were worse off - every black guy realized they were being oppressed, but a good number poor whites had the wool drawn over their eyes.
- greatgoat420 6y ago
  So in general companies will reject people based on race an sex all the time. In fact most of the time when candidates who are not fitting their mold come up. It is super easy to avoid pushback if you plead culture fit as an issue or just judge their responses more strongly. The person who would oversee that won't know what suboptimal solution would really mean, other than unqualified. Maybe they had an unused variable. Maybe they didn't explain themselves.
pydry 6y ago
Performative or the diversity candidate was a pretty girl?
xwdv 6y ago
People need to learn to be okay with rejecting a diversity candidate in favor of a straight white male sometimes, or even most of the time if that’s the right call. Anecdotally, straight white males do tend to be strong candidates on average because their privileged backgrounds have given them superior preparation for the job. Unfortunately many company cultures don’t create this space for people to make authentic decisions, everything is viewed through a lens of “Have I built up enough diversity points to favor a straight white male for this particular instance?”
warent 6y ago
Well I can share my individual perspective as a tall white guy. Sure, I've been through extraordinary struggles and life difficulties in my early adulthood, yet life is still pretty much easy mode just from the privilege. If you've ever read The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, the best way I can describe it is it almost feels like being ta'veren. Even if I'm having an off-day, not performing well, doing the wrong things, saying the wrong things, I still get the results I need/want and it all works out. If a company rejects me in favor of diversity, even my struggles are already relatively so easy to resolve that it's just like, good for them, I'll go to the countless other opportunities. Not saying it's right or wrong, but I feel like the last person who needs a champion.
- cwperkins 6y ago
  Are you also college educated? Under 30, middle-aged or old? Why treat "White Guys" as a monolith?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Sure, that's true. But being tall, attractive, and white, lets you get away with a lot of things were being under 30 and college educated doesn't matter as much. For me, just growing out my hair and beard, which give away my ethnicity, result in drastically different treatment. Same for attractiveness, if I wear contact lenses and make an effort to look a certain way, life in general becomes significantly easier.
  - warent 6y ago
    The comment opens with "I can share my individual perspective" There's no intent to negate other people's struggles at all. Here's the hypothesis. If life is like an RPG, then whiteness / being male (in America) is a passive buff you get in character creation, like "+10 Social Points" Truly, for many people, that still isn't enough to offset the many other debuffs life can bring.
danaliv 6y ago
I would very much like to know the other seven sides to this story.
pixel_tracing 6y ago
Did you know companies get tax incentives for diversity hiring?
- f430 6y ago
  I did not know this, is this in Canada too? Because that explains a lot.
cwperkins 6y ago
This is something I suspect is happening at a wide scale and will only create resentment. I like to see Apple investing in things like the Propel center in Atlanta and a new coding program for kids and teens in Detroit. Ibram Kendi asserts that Discrimination can create Equity. That may be true in the short term, but will it be a permanent solution?

f430 6y ago

> SF it's the bro-y white guy CEOs who push the wokeness the hardest. Almost feels performative. SF needs to solve these problems if they want to be a tech mecca. its like that in vancouver too but with far less money and even far less exits

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

__turbobrew__ 6y ago

How is rejecting a candidate soley based on race not racial discrimination? This is illegal where I live; it is probably why companies never give interview feedback to the interviewees because they make these illegal hiring decisions behind the scenes but then say “it wasn’t a good fit”.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xenihn 6y ago
Racial discrimination is a legal concept. There is no racial discrimination if you lack the following: - evidence - witnesses who are willing to testify - legal action Whether it actually happened or not is irrelevant.
- andrei_says_ 6y ago
  And everyone in the company being Caucasian and Asian doesn’t count :) Just like the photo of the C-suite of most companies being 99% male doesn’t count as sexism.
lazyasciiart 6y ago
> I pushed hard for an amazing candidate, the first to ever ace my interviews, whereas said other stakeholders wanted a certain diversity candidate Your reading of this comment is "other stakeholders rejected an excellent candidate solely based on race". The actual information given was that the commenter really liked one candidate, and the other stakeholders preferred a different candidate who was somehow "diverse". While I think the commenter probably agrees with your interpretation, it seems equally likely to me that their candidate evaluation was bad, and that the other stakeholders did not use diversity as their sole criteria.
vharuck 6y ago
Yes, it does technically fit "racial discrimination." However, some people use that simpler term to talk about historic and current power imbalances. In the United States, there were a lot of extra barriers for non-white people. Some still exist, but there's also the self-perpetuating barriers, like how children from poor households are likely to be poor adults. So, if somebody wants to help solve "racial discrimination," being "race blind" would mean letting past wrongs stay wrong.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Where does education fit in in your assumptions ? Even poor people make it up the social ladder thru education. Most of our ancesters were farmers, and most of them very poor too.
  - cma 6y ago
    You have things like alumni admissions preference at schools that didn't allow black people within just a couple alumni generations.
    - lazyasciiart 6y ago
      Or public school districts neatly drawn to separate rich white areas from poor black areas.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  In the United States, there were a lot of extra barriers for non-white people Join us in Alabama! Here, they put up barriers for everyone that wasn't a large landowner or industrialist. This set back descendants of black slaves, but descendants of white sharecroppers were equally caught up in the net. Arguably, the poor whites were worse off - every black guy realized they were being oppressed, but a good number poor whites had the wool drawn over their eyes.
greatgoat420 6y ago
So in general companies will reject people based on race an sex all the time. In fact most of the time when candidates who are not fitting their mold come up. It is super easy to avoid pushback if you plead culture fit as an issue or just judge their responses more strongly. The person who would oversee that won't know what suboptimal solution would really mean, other than unqualified. Maybe they had an unused variable. Maybe they didn't explain themselves.

pydry 6y ago

Performative or the diversity candidate was a pretty girl?

xwdv 6y ago

People need to learn to be okay with rejecting a diversity candidate in favor of a straight white male sometimes, or even most of the time if that’s the right call. Anecdotally, straight white males do tend to be strong candidates on average because their privileged backgrounds have given them superior preparation for the job. Unfortunately many company cultures don’t create this space for people to make authentic decisions, everything is viewed through a lens of “Have I built up enough diversity points to favor a straight white male for this particular instance?”

warent 6y ago

Well I can share my individual perspective as a tall white guy. Sure, I've been through extraordinary struggles and life difficulties in my early adulthood, yet life is still pretty much easy mode just from the privilege. If you've ever read The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, the best way I can describe it is it almost feels like being ta'veren. Even if I'm having an off-day, not performing well, doing the wrong things, saying the wrong things, I still get the results I need/want and it all works out. If a company rejects me in favor of diversity, even my struggles are already relatively so easy to resolve that it's just like, good for them, I'll go to the countless other opportunities. Not saying it's right or wrong, but I feel like the last person who needs a champion.

cwperkins 6y ago
Are you also college educated? Under 30, middle-aged or old? Why treat "White Guys" as a monolith?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Sure, that's true. But being tall, attractive, and white, lets you get away with a lot of things were being under 30 and college educated doesn't matter as much. For me, just growing out my hair and beard, which give away my ethnicity, result in drastically different treatment. Same for attractiveness, if I wear contact lenses and make an effort to look a certain way, life in general becomes significantly easier.
- warent 6y ago
  The comment opens with "I can share my individual perspective" There's no intent to negate other people's struggles at all. Here's the hypothesis. If life is like an RPG, then whiteness / being male (in America) is a passive buff you get in character creation, like "+10 Social Points" Truly, for many people, that still isn't enough to offset the many other debuffs life can bring.

danaliv 6y ago

I would very much like to know the other seven sides to this story.

pixel_tracing 6y ago

Did you know companies get tax incentives for diversity hiring?

f430 6y ago
I did not know this, is this in Canada too? Because that explains a lot.

cwperkins 6y ago

This is something I suspect is happening at a wide scale and will only create resentment. I like to see Apple investing in things like the Propel center in Atlanta and a new coding program for kids and teens in Detroit. Ibram Kendi asserts that Discrimination can create Equity. That may be true in the short term, but will it be a permanent solution?