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>We know from decades of research that more diverse teams are more successful. I like success. That's a very strong claim. What research? >The teams I’ve like

>We know from decades of research that more diverse teams are more successful. I like success. That's a very strong claim. What research? >The teams I’ve liked the most have been the most diverse; the teams I’ve felt the most uncomfortable on are the ones where everyone looks like me. Not surprisingly, for the author, "diversity" is only about how people look like. He also seems to suffer from self-hatred.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
I am an Indian engineer in a tech company in Austin and out of the 8 people in my team 7 are Indians / Asians in their late 20s / early 30s who all followed roughly the same career trajectory (Undergrad in India / China from one of 2-3 universities, followed almost immediately by Masters in the US followed by joining tech jobs in the last 7-8 years). The eighth guy is a white American guy in his 40s who grew up in Alabama, was in the US Air Force for a bit, then did his undergrad in an unrelated field from a relatively unheard-of university, then self-taught programming and worked a few odd IT jobs before landing here. If you ask me, he is the true source of diversity in the team, but pretty sure none of the teams tasked with increasing diversity see it that way.
- username90 6y ago
  Yeah, if your team is made up of people from USA, France, Russia, India, China and Korea then you have plenty of diversity even if none of them are black. I'd argue that they are more diverse than a team comprised of people grown up in USA with latino, black, white and asian exteriors.
- eat_veggies 6y ago
  Diversity doesn't mean "non-white," it means "varied." Yes, your team is diverse because of his inclusion, and it's diverse because of yours too. Individual people aren't diverse, teams are. To say that one guy is the source of diversity is like saying that he is the source of the eight-ness of the number of people on your team.
  - username90 6y ago
    > Diversity doesn't mean "non-white," it means "varied." In USA it means "Black and Latino representation according to US demographics". It isn't the words actual meaning, but that it is how its used and if you are trying to argue something different you will almost surely be labelled racist by the person asking this question. For example, lets say you answer this question: > That’s a bit about what these values mean to us; what do diversity, equity, and inclusion mean to you? With: I always worked on very diverse teams comprised of people from many backgrounds including Russians, Indians, Europeans. We worked hard to ensure that language barriers weren't a problem by forcing everyone to talk in English so nobody feels left out etc, it is a challenge but having a diverse team definitely is worth it. Do you think you'd get hired? Maybe, but it is pretty likely they will see that answer as a dog whistle for being right wing and just end the process right then and there.
    - eat_veggies 6y ago
      That doesn't sound like a right wing dogwhistle, although you could perhaps phrase "by forcing everyone to talk in English" differently to not be so negative. But overall, it's a great answer. You talked about your specific team, which happened to include Russians, Indians, and Europeans. You pointed out that there were challenges involved, but you made an effort to make sure nobody felt left out, and that overall it was worth it. Nice!
      - username90 6y ago
        Yeah, that was the point. My experience is working with teams with very varied backgrounds in Europe, and you really have to make a point to talk a common language. Instead of speaking my native language with others with my background I speak English. Similarly others have to do the same thing. If a group of Russians speak Russian with each other it hurts the group. The reason I brought that up is because I've seen some American progressives say that trying to make people speak English is racist or non inclusive. But it is the other way around. in the teams I've worked nobody were native English speakers but everyone spoke English. That is the only sensible way to handle a diverse team and letting people speak their native language just creates silos and removes the point of diversity. And someone on the team being a native English speaker wouldn't change that point. For example, if I worked in USA and a group of latinos spoke Spanish with each other I'd tell them to speak English. Not because I think they need to speak English in USA but because they are excluding other groups by speaking a language only they understand. Similarly if I were to speak Swedish with my teammates I'd expect others to say the same thing to me, and in diverse environments I even speak English when everyone around me knows Swedish just to make it a habit.
- worker767424 6y ago
  I've been the white guy in that situation, and it can be not great, but it was specifically with a 90% Chinese team. I can tell you who never quite fit in and who got laid off first... I wouldn't join a team like that again because of how much harder it made things. Maybe this is an argument for why diverse teams are good?
  - mysore 6y ago
    is this your first time experiencing racism first hand? Them chinese immigrants tend to work harder than most locals, must have been hard to keep up.
eat_veggies 6y ago
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=diverse+teams+performance https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=diverse+teams+performan...
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  Lots of those studies seem to be about how to ensure your work environment doesn't cause diverse teams to perform like shit.
- worker767424 6y ago
  I think it's likely that certain types of diversity produce better outcomes. My problem with the research is publication bias, publication bias where finding the opposite will cost you a career, most of the experiments being contrived, social science being a joke field, and the sort of people who are attracted to social science.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  I went through the top results of that search, and most of them make no claims at all about the performance differences of diverse vs non-diverse groups (since they instead adress some quite different questions), and those in the top results of this search who do look into performance comparisons do not find such an advantage, they find that there is no significant difference. Furthermore, a large part of the studies are focused on artificial short-term cooperations e.g. study groups or team projects at a university course (which actually eliminates a key part of diversity by ensuring that all the team members are of a similar age group and of similar specialization, they essentially only measure the effect of ethnic variation) which aren't really representative of what the success criteria are in a business environment. Perhaps there are studies that would justify a claim that "diverse teams are more successful", however, this particular search does not immediately lead to them and should not be used as evidence of some scientific consensus on the matter - quite the contrary.
kaczordon 6y ago
Yeah people always seem to assume diversity should be based on your skin pigmentation. Reminds me of that Apple Diversity VP who said, "There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they're going to be diverse too because they're going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” Needless to say she was forced to resign after that comment. https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-vp-diversity-12-white-men-can-be-diverse-group-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-vp-diversity-12-white...
- mandeepj 6y ago
  > Needless to say she was forced to resign after that comment. Not really. She's still at Apple. https://www.linkedin.com/in/soprano/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/soprano/
  - mandeepj 6y ago
    My bad. Her linkedin is not latest. She's not more at Apple https://www.blackenterprise.com/apple-denise-young-smith-own-voice/ https://www.blackenterprise.com/apple-denise-young-smith-own...
LordHumungous 6y ago
Decades of research! I hate how they can't just say we believe in diversity because that's what we value. There's nothing wrong with that.
- frongpik 6y ago
  They just want to label anyone who disagrees as irrational or stupid. A tired rhetorical trick.
worker767424 6y ago
>> We know from decades of research that more diverse teams are more successful. I like success. If you think correlation implies causation, I know a lot of ways to brings value to your company.
koonsolo 6y ago
I want to hire the least diverse team as possible, here are the traits that they are selected on: - highly intelligent - professional work attitude - nice people to work with If you want to hire a more diverse group where there are some jerks in there, and idiots that screw up all the time, that's fine. But I like my team uniformly aligned like this. ;)

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago

I am an Indian engineer in a tech company in Austin and out of the 8 people in my team 7 are Indians / Asians in their late 20s / early 30s who all followed roughly the same career trajectory (Undergrad in India / China from one of 2-3 universities, followed almost immediately by Masters in the US followed by joining tech jobs in the last 7-8 years). The eighth guy is a white American guy in his 40s who grew up in Alabama, was in the US Air Force for a bit, then did his undergrad in an unrelated field from a relatively unheard-of university, then self-taught programming and worked a few odd IT jobs before landing here. If you ask me, he is the true source of diversity in the team, but pretty sure none of the teams tasked with increasing diversity see it that way.

username90 6y ago
Yeah, if your team is made up of people from USA, France, Russia, India, China and Korea then you have plenty of diversity even if none of them are black. I'd argue that they are more diverse than a team comprised of people grown up in USA with latino, black, white and asian exteriors.
eat_veggies 6y ago
Diversity doesn't mean "non-white," it means "varied." Yes, your team is diverse because of his inclusion, and it's diverse because of yours too. Individual people aren't diverse, teams are. To say that one guy is the source of diversity is like saying that he is the source of the eight-ness of the number of people on your team.
- username90 6y ago
  > Diversity doesn't mean "non-white," it means "varied." In USA it means "Black and Latino representation according to US demographics". It isn't the words actual meaning, but that it is how its used and if you are trying to argue something different you will almost surely be labelled racist by the person asking this question. For example, lets say you answer this question: > That’s a bit about what these values mean to us; what do diversity, equity, and inclusion mean to you? With: I always worked on very diverse teams comprised of people from many backgrounds including Russians, Indians, Europeans. We worked hard to ensure that language barriers weren't a problem by forcing everyone to talk in English so nobody feels left out etc, it is a challenge but having a diverse team definitely is worth it. Do you think you'd get hired? Maybe, but it is pretty likely they will see that answer as a dog whistle for being right wing and just end the process right then and there.
  - eat_veggies 6y ago
    That doesn't sound like a right wing dogwhistle, although you could perhaps phrase "by forcing everyone to talk in English" differently to not be so negative. But overall, it's a great answer. You talked about your specific team, which happened to include Russians, Indians, and Europeans. You pointed out that there were challenges involved, but you made an effort to make sure nobody felt left out, and that overall it was worth it. Nice!
    - username90 6y ago
      Yeah, that was the point. My experience is working with teams with very varied backgrounds in Europe, and you really have to make a point to talk a common language. Instead of speaking my native language with others with my background I speak English. Similarly others have to do the same thing. If a group of Russians speak Russian with each other it hurts the group. The reason I brought that up is because I've seen some American progressives say that trying to make people speak English is racist or non inclusive. But it is the other way around. in the teams I've worked nobody were native English speakers but everyone spoke English. That is the only sensible way to handle a diverse team and letting people speak their native language just creates silos and removes the point of diversity. And someone on the team being a native English speaker wouldn't change that point. For example, if I worked in USA and a group of latinos spoke Spanish with each other I'd tell them to speak English. Not because I think they need to speak English in USA but because they are excluding other groups by speaking a language only they understand. Similarly if I were to speak Swedish with my teammates I'd expect others to say the same thing to me, and in diverse environments I even speak English when everyone around me knows Swedish just to make it a habit.
worker767424 6y ago
I've been the white guy in that situation, and it can be not great, but it was specifically with a 90% Chinese team. I can tell you who never quite fit in and who got laid off first... I wouldn't join a team like that again because of how much harder it made things. Maybe this is an argument for why diverse teams are good?
- mysore 6y ago
  is this your first time experiencing racism first hand? Them chinese immigrants tend to work harder than most locals, must have been hard to keep up.

eat_veggies 6y ago

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=diverse+teams+performance https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=diverse+teams+performan...

bcrosby95 6y ago
Lots of those studies seem to be about how to ensure your work environment doesn't cause diverse teams to perform like shit.
worker767424 6y ago
I think it's likely that certain types of diversity produce better outcomes. My problem with the research is publication bias, publication bias where finding the opposite will cost you a career, most of the experiments being contrived, social science being a joke field, and the sort of people who are attracted to social science.
PeterisP 6y ago
I went through the top results of that search, and most of them make no claims at all about the performance differences of diverse vs non-diverse groups (since they instead adress some quite different questions), and those in the top results of this search who do look into performance comparisons do not find such an advantage, they find that there is no significant difference. Furthermore, a large part of the studies are focused on artificial short-term cooperations e.g. study groups or team projects at a university course (which actually eliminates a key part of diversity by ensuring that all the team members are of a similar age group and of similar specialization, they essentially only measure the effect of ethnic variation) which aren't really representative of what the success criteria are in a business environment. Perhaps there are studies that would justify a claim that "diverse teams are more successful", however, this particular search does not immediately lead to them and should not be used as evidence of some scientific consensus on the matter - quite the contrary.

kaczordon 6y ago

Yeah people always seem to assume diversity should be based on your skin pigmentation. Reminds me of that Apple Diversity VP who said, "There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they're going to be diverse too because they're going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” Needless to say she was forced to resign after that comment. https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-vp-diversity-12-white-men-can-be-diverse-group-2017-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-vp-diversity-12-white...

mandeepj 6y ago
> Needless to say she was forced to resign after that comment. Not really. She's still at Apple. https://www.linkedin.com/in/soprano/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/soprano/
- mandeepj 6y ago
  My bad. Her linkedin is not latest. She's not more at Apple https://www.blackenterprise.com/apple-denise-young-smith-own-voice/ https://www.blackenterprise.com/apple-denise-young-smith-own...

LordHumungous 6y ago

Decades of research! I hate how they can't just say we believe in diversity because that's what we value. There's nothing wrong with that.

frongpik 6y ago
They just want to label anyone who disagrees as irrational or stupid. A tired rhetorical trick.

worker767424 6y ago

>> We know from decades of research that more diverse teams are more successful. I like success. If you think correlation implies causation, I know a lot of ways to brings value to your company.

koonsolo 6y ago

I want to hire the least diverse team as possible, here are the traits that they are selected on: - highly intelligent - professional work attitude - nice people to work with If you want to hire a more diverse group where there are some jerks in there, and idiots that screw up all the time, that's fine. But I like my team uniformly aligned like this. ;)