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If you ask a politically loaded question such as one about diversity, in an engineering interview, I would walk out. Those who do so are the reason a divide gro

If you ask a politically loaded question such as one about diversity, in an engineering interview, I would walk out. Those who do so are the reason a divide grows in the USA. Diversity of background and ideas is superb. Diversity of skin color, for skin color’s sake, is racist in the highest degree. Judge a man by his deeds and character, not his race.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
Not talking about inclusion is effectively accepting the current inclusion status quo. Talking about it isn’t divisive, it’s being frank about existing division. If you really believe that inclusion is so valuable you should be willing to accept the discomfort of recognizing that it’s not where it should be.
- cobraetor 6y ago
  I think nobody disagrees that talking about diversity is divisive. But talking about it using critical race theory terminology is.
jessaustin 6y ago
Job interviews are filters. Here you've identified this question as an excellent filter all by itself.
geofft 6y ago
That's a sign it's a good question. It is, after all, logically impossible for every company to hire the best candidate on the same scale. If you interview people by general aptitude, one company (with the best salary etc.) will get the top folks and everyone else will settle. (It also makes independent interviewing rather useless: each company may as well outsource the job to a single service provider who's good at interviewing and returns a scalar.) So, the effective way to interview, if you happen not to be a monopoly in your field, is to find candidates who are better for your company. Some companies believe diversity of skin color actually matters and demonstrates a serious commitment to avoiding groupthink. Some companies believe they should not be caring about skin color at all. You're looking for a company in the latter group, and they're looking for you. If you give a poor answer to this question, as posed by a company in the first group, it serves the purpose of interviewing - it accurately determines that both you and the company will be unhappy with you being hired at that company.
- username90 6y ago
  Yeah, the correct answer in some interviews is to go on a rant about PC culture. Just not at this place, they'd probably like it if you went on a rant about how privileged white men are though.
  - geofft 6y ago
    The correct answer is not the passing answer. The purpose of an interview, both for the candidate and the company, is to see if you're the right fit. If you say "Oh yes I agree with your DEI goals" and you don't, you'll be miserable pretending to care about them your whole job, same as if you said "Oh yes I love showing up at 8 AM wearing a suit" if you don't to a company that cares about you doing so.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      No, there are many companies that claim to care about these things so it shows up in their interview process. They actually don’t much so if you can’t suffer through the stupidity it can very well be the right career move to take the job.
- kortilla 6y ago
  > color actually matters and demonstrates a serious commitment to avoiding groupthink This statement is based on the racist assumption that skin color makes you think differently. A middle class Asian person who went to college at Stanford is going to think identically to a white middle class person who went to college. A white person who grew up dirt poor and self taught online is going to be vastly different from either.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > This statement is based on the racist assumption that skin color makes you think differently. Skin color doesn't make you think differently, but it (and, even moreso, racial identity, which is different than skin color) does correlate with things beyond socioeconomic class and personal level of education that do. > A middle class Asian person who went to college at Stanford is going to think identically to a white middle class person who went to college. It's possible, because the range of variation overlaps considerably, but, overall, no, major subcultural and lived-experience differences in the US don't reduce to economic class and whether (or even where) you went to college.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

Not talking about inclusion is effectively accepting the current inclusion status quo. Talking about it isn’t divisive, it’s being frank about existing division. If you really believe that inclusion is so valuable you should be willing to accept the discomfort of recognizing that it’s not where it should be.

cobraetor 6y ago
I think nobody disagrees that talking about diversity is divisive. But talking about it using critical race theory terminology is.

jessaustin 6y ago

Job interviews are filters. Here you've identified this question as an excellent filter all by itself.

geofft 6y ago

That's a sign it's a good question. It is, after all, logically impossible for every company to hire the best candidate on the same scale. If you interview people by general aptitude, one company (with the best salary etc.) will get the top folks and everyone else will settle. (It also makes independent interviewing rather useless: each company may as well outsource the job to a single service provider who's good at interviewing and returns a scalar.) So, the effective way to interview, if you happen not to be a monopoly in your field, is to find candidates who are better for your company. Some companies believe diversity of skin color actually matters and demonstrates a serious commitment to avoiding groupthink. Some companies believe they should not be caring about skin color at all. You're looking for a company in the latter group, and they're looking for you. If you give a poor answer to this question, as posed by a company in the first group, it serves the purpose of interviewing - it accurately determines that both you and the company will be unhappy with you being hired at that company.

username90 6y ago
Yeah, the correct answer in some interviews is to go on a rant about PC culture. Just not at this place, they'd probably like it if you went on a rant about how privileged white men are though.
- geofft 6y ago
  The correct answer is not the passing answer. The purpose of an interview, both for the candidate and the company, is to see if you're the right fit. If you say "Oh yes I agree with your DEI goals" and you don't, you'll be miserable pretending to care about them your whole job, same as if you said "Oh yes I love showing up at 8 AM wearing a suit" if you don't to a company that cares about you doing so.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    No, there are many companies that claim to care about these things so it shows up in their interview process. They actually don’t much so if you can’t suffer through the stupidity it can very well be the right career move to take the job.
kortilla 6y ago
> color actually matters and demonstrates a serious commitment to avoiding groupthink This statement is based on the racist assumption that skin color makes you think differently. A middle class Asian person who went to college at Stanford is going to think identically to a white middle class person who went to college. A white person who grew up dirt poor and self taught online is going to be vastly different from either.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > This statement is based on the racist assumption that skin color makes you think differently. Skin color doesn't make you think differently, but it (and, even moreso, racial identity, which is different than skin color) does correlate with things beyond socioeconomic class and personal level of education that do. > A middle class Asian person who went to college at Stanford is going to think identically to a white middle class person who went to college. It's possible, because the range of variation overlaps considerably, but, overall, no, major subcultural and lived-experience differences in the US don't reduce to economic class and whether (or even where) you went to college.