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Tech certainly does have a diversity problem, by which I mean lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. Yes, from the POV of compani

Tech certainly does have a diversity problem, by which I mean lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. Yes, from the POV of companies who are hiring, this is largely a pipeline problem. No, tech companies aren't going to solve this problem directly themselves. But, what tech companies can do is change their candidate sourcing practices. I'm in favor of some version of the Rooney Rule [0] in tech hiring. Roughly, you should make sure to interview at least one person from an underrepresented group each time there's a position to fill. Given the pipeline problem, I'd cap it at some arbitrary number of candidates per opening -- one large enough to ensure that the company made an effort to seek out candidates who would add diversity to the company, but small enough that you can still actually hire. You'd have to validate that recruiters were actually contacting people from underrepresented groups to make sure you're not just getting to a point where every position ended with "Welp, we tried, but the only people we could find to interview for the position were these N white and Asian guys," but it could certainly work. The beauty of this approach is that you don't lower your hiring bar. You just make sure to get people from underrepresented groups in front of your interviewers and hire them if they're the most qualified people for the job. Now, I get that big companies don't hire for 1 position at a time, so, the point here would be to have your pool of candidates interviewing always contain a certain number of people from underrepresented groups. This is explicitly not a hiring quota, because you don't lower your bar. It's just putting an opportunity in front of more people to see if you can get people who look different from your standard straight, cisgender, white or Asian male tech worker into your recruiting pipeline to begin with. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule

theluketaylor 6y ago
I saw an interview with one of the late night hosts (I think it was Seth Meyers). He told a story about building the staff for their show as part of the launch. They asked the various talent agencies for packets for writers (which are collections of sketches and other material tv comedy writers use to get hired. Think artist portfolio). The show wanted to hire a more diverse writing staff and asked for that in packet submissions. They only got a handful packets from women out of hundreds of options. The show went back and said they would only look at packets from women. Suddenly packets came from all over and the show found a number of great female writers. It was a really interesting conversation because to get a diversity of outcomes they had to completely change their approach, not just sprinkle some diversity into their existing process. Applied to the rooney rule from above it would involve cultivating multiple inputs to the talent pipeline to make sure interesting candidates don't get blocked along the way. NFL positions like head coach have a pretty limited pool of candidates to begin with, so ensuring an interview quota is likely sufficient. For something like software developer the pool is so much deeper and wider and interview quota on its own is unlikely to be sufficient.
- kbelder 6y ago
  Isn't that blatantly illegal?
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    Certainly.
- jariel 6y ago
  That doesn't make a whole lot of sense though as a fair hiring process, it's just brutal gender-specific hiring. Nobody ever doubted that there were 'good female writers' but there are 1000 writers for every 1 job, it's a hugely asymettrical situation. The reason it's completely illegal and morally questionable to hire that way is because it ignores the material character of the individual in question. If there are 10x more guys running the gauntlet of early-phase writing career, then it's really unfair and they are not getting the best writers (staff composition advantages notwithstanding). A better approach wold have been to work with the agencies to get a true sense of the pipeline, and then to encourage and demonstrate the job is 'real' for more young women to understand that it's something they can aspire to. The possibly sexist/racist actions of these companies are probably only going to get us into more culture wars, I'm not sure if they are a 'temporary pain' issue. Edit: if you listen to 'Inside Conan OBrien' podcast by the head writers you'll get insight into several very inside conversations about the gender issue. In the 2000's there were hardly any female writers. Writing is a buddy-buddy system that's going to lean a certain way, so expressedly looking outside the boundaries of the pipeline is reasonable. Also a lot of the female writers in the 2000's indicated they literally 'did not know it was a job' in their youth. To be fair - almost nobody did. Though I'm not in the biz, as a young man I literally never contemplated the concept, I don't know anyone that even thought about it, it was like a thing that happened in a far off land. It's a hyper-niche kind of job with specific dynamics.
- hypersoar 6y ago
  Jon Stewart had a similar story. They had to change the way they did hiring to diversify the writer's room because the existing pipeline was just going to keep sending them college-educated ironic white guys. https://youtu.be/p1H7KxPlbQw?t=2631 https://youtu.be/p1H7KxPlbQw?t=2631
jariel 6y ago
"lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. " Tech companies are diverse, more so than most companies. You mean to say 'not the right kind of diverse'. The ridiculous, Monty Python conversation that nobody wants to have, is that since White Americans are slightly underrepresented, but Asian Americans are about 600% over-represented ... which means getting the 'right' kind of diversity literally means hiring less people of colour, specifically Asians, which seems really unfair to them for very obvious reasons. It's funny and Orwellian at the same time that the problem exists out in the open, but nobody dare speak a word of it. These are the kinds of problems that Cults and the Bad Kinds of religions have. The problem with the 'rule' as you describe it is it may decrease diversity in any sense. There is no data to support the fact that African Americans and Latino Americans are showing up in the pipelines in sufficient the right qualifications to 'balance out' diversity. The data actually works the other way - the ethnic and gender composition of people hired basically is a good reflection of the pipeline. I understand we can do better than just looking at the pipeline, but from any specific, direct hiring perspective, the pipeline is it. Within the pragmatic but admittedly narrow confines of 'the pipeline' - any company is going to be hard pressed to hire considerably more of the 'right race' of people. It's not going to matter that much how you do interviews. 'The Solution' is going to have to be 1) getting more kids from different backgrounds interested in tech at an early age and into the pipeline and 2) accepting that 'diversity' is an ideology on some level, and that just because you have people of some group, doesn't necessarily imply negative or racist behaviours. Nobody will ever state the later in public, but it's possible we come to terms with it.
- handoflixue 6y ago
  Can you cite sources for "more diverse"? I'm curious if you mean "higher percentage of POC" or "numerous different minorities are all represented"? A company composed entirely of 30-something black men is 100% POC, but it's still not actually that diverse. I definitely agree that it's weird how much we focus on holding tech companies "accountable" for diversity when they're fundamentally working with whatever pipeline society gives them.
  - jariel 6y ago
ncw96 6y ago
The Rooney Rule sounds good in theory, and yet 28 out of 32 head coaches in the NFL are white. (For reference, only about 25 percent of NFL players are white.)
- pmiller2 6y ago
  How many were white before the Rooney rule?
  - ncw96 6y ago
    30 of 32.
usaar333 6y ago
There's multiple problems with a Rooney Rule: 1. You'll lose candidates to companies that close faster. In fact, you'll likely lose the best candidates. 2. Can be gamed by hiring managers. If they want to close a rec fast, they just find an unqualified member of an underrepresented group to interview to hit the Rule. Waste of time for everyone. 3. Demographic targeting (especially beyond gender) has a variety of issues (arbitrary definitions, unknowns about whether candidates are in what demographic, etc.).
malandrew 6y ago
> The beauty of this approach is that you don't lower your hiring bar. You don't lower the bar but you do put a locking mechanism on your recruiting pipeline that reduces your hiring throughout in an already supply constrained environment and you impose greater hiring costs to make sure you always have a candidate. Now that may still be a profitable thing to do, but you can pretend there are no costs and downsides. What you need to do it look at all the pros and cons and balance those considerations to find out what is most profitable. Anything that isn't profit maximizing over the time scale we are optimizing for is also to the detriment of the company.

theluketaylor 6y ago

I saw an interview with one of the late night hosts (I think it was Seth Meyers). He told a story about building the staff for their show as part of the launch. They asked the various talent agencies for packets for writers (which are collections of sketches and other material tv comedy writers use to get hired. Think artist portfolio). The show wanted to hire a more diverse writing staff and asked for that in packet submissions. They only got a handful packets from women out of hundreds of options. The show went back and said they would only look at packets from women. Suddenly packets came from all over and the show found a number of great female writers. It was a really interesting conversation because to get a diversity of outcomes they had to completely change their approach, not just sprinkle some diversity into their existing process. Applied to the rooney rule from above it would involve cultivating multiple inputs to the talent pipeline to make sure interesting candidates don't get blocked along the way. NFL positions like head coach have a pretty limited pool of candidates to begin with, so ensuring an interview quota is likely sufficient. For something like software developer the pool is so much deeper and wider and interview quota on its own is unlikely to be sufficient.

kbelder 6y ago
Isn't that blatantly illegal?
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Certainly.
jariel 6y ago
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense though as a fair hiring process, it's just brutal gender-specific hiring. Nobody ever doubted that there were 'good female writers' but there are 1000 writers for every 1 job, it's a hugely asymettrical situation. The reason it's completely illegal and morally questionable to hire that way is because it ignores the material character of the individual in question. If there are 10x more guys running the gauntlet of early-phase writing career, then it's really unfair and they are not getting the best writers (staff composition advantages notwithstanding). A better approach wold have been to work with the agencies to get a true sense of the pipeline, and then to encourage and demonstrate the job is 'real' for more young women to understand that it's something they can aspire to. The possibly sexist/racist actions of these companies are probably only going to get us into more culture wars, I'm not sure if they are a 'temporary pain' issue. Edit: if you listen to 'Inside Conan OBrien' podcast by the head writers you'll get insight into several very inside conversations about the gender issue. In the 2000's there were hardly any female writers. Writing is a buddy-buddy system that's going to lean a certain way, so expressedly looking outside the boundaries of the pipeline is reasonable. Also a lot of the female writers in the 2000's indicated they literally 'did not know it was a job' in their youth. To be fair - almost nobody did. Though I'm not in the biz, as a young man I literally never contemplated the concept, I don't know anyone that even thought about it, it was like a thing that happened in a far off land. It's a hyper-niche kind of job with specific dynamics.
hypersoar 6y ago
Jon Stewart had a similar story. They had to change the way they did hiring to diversify the writer's room because the existing pipeline was just going to keep sending them college-educated ironic white guys. https://youtu.be/p1H7KxPlbQw?t=2631 https://youtu.be/p1H7KxPlbQw?t=2631

jariel 6y ago

"lack of diversity actually works to the detriment of tech companies. " Tech companies are diverse, more so than most companies. You mean to say 'not the right kind of diverse'. The ridiculous, Monty Python conversation that nobody wants to have, is that since White Americans are slightly underrepresented, but Asian Americans are about 600% over-represented ... which means getting the 'right' kind of diversity literally means hiring less people of colour, specifically Asians, which seems really unfair to them for very obvious reasons. It's funny and Orwellian at the same time that the problem exists out in the open, but nobody dare speak a word of it. These are the kinds of problems that Cults and the Bad Kinds of religions have. The problem with the 'rule' as you describe it is it may decrease diversity in any sense. There is no data to support the fact that African Americans and Latino Americans are showing up in the pipelines in sufficient the right qualifications to 'balance out' diversity. The data actually works the other way - the ethnic and gender composition of people hired basically is a good reflection of the pipeline. I understand we can do better than just looking at the pipeline, but from any specific, direct hiring perspective, the pipeline is it. Within the pragmatic but admittedly narrow confines of 'the pipeline' - any company is going to be hard pressed to hire considerably more of the 'right race' of people. It's not going to matter that much how you do interviews. 'The Solution' is going to have to be 1) getting more kids from different backgrounds interested in tech at an early age and into the pipeline and 2) accepting that 'diversity' is an ideology on some level, and that just because you have people of some group, doesn't necessarily imply negative or racist behaviours. Nobody will ever state the later in public, but it's possible we come to terms with it.

handoflixue 6y ago
Can you cite sources for "more diverse"? I'm curious if you mean "higher percentage of POC" or "numerous different minorities are all represented"? A company composed entirely of 30-something black men is 100% POC, but it's still not actually that diverse. I definitely agree that it's weird how much we focus on holding tech companies "accountable" for diversity when they're fundamentally working with whatever pipeline society gives them.
- jariel 6y ago

ncw96 6y ago

The Rooney Rule sounds good in theory, and yet 28 out of 32 head coaches in the NFL are white. (For reference, only about 25 percent of NFL players are white.)

pmiller2 6y ago
How many were white before the Rooney rule?
- ncw96 6y ago
  30 of 32.

usaar333 6y ago

There's multiple problems with a Rooney Rule: 1. You'll lose candidates to companies that close faster. In fact, you'll likely lose the best candidates. 2. Can be gamed by hiring managers. If they want to close a rec fast, they just find an unqualified member of an underrepresented group to interview to hit the Rule. Waste of time for everyone. 3. Demographic targeting (especially beyond gender) has a variety of issues (arbitrary definitions, unknowns about whether candidates are in what demographic, etc.).

malandrew 6y ago

> The beauty of this approach is that you don't lower your hiring bar. You don't lower the bar but you do put a locking mechanism on your recruiting pipeline that reduces your hiring throughout in an already supply constrained environment and you impose greater hiring costs to make sure you always have a candidate. Now that may still be a profitable thing to do, but you can pretend there are no costs and downsides. What you need to do it look at all the pros and cons and balance those considerations to find out what is most profitable. Anything that isn't profit maximizing over the time scale we are optimizing for is also to the detriment of the company.