4 ms·

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

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

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