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It's a pretty straightforward deadlock: "We want to hire you because you'll add diversity." vs. "I don't want to be hired just because I'll add diversity."

It's a pretty straightforward deadlock: "We want to hire you because you'll add diversity." vs. "I don't want to be hired just because I'll add diversity." Since the solution of giving preference based on diverse attributes creates a deadlock, the problem has been framed wrong. I'm not going to posit the right framing... I'm actually not sure. But letting people know they are doing the job for reasons other than their capability means they'll forever feel less qualified than their colleagues.

SavantIdiot 6y ago
Taking a non-diverse population and making it diverse is not easy at first. You need to jumpstart the effort across the board. Example: if there are no minority engineers applying from schools, it is because there are no minority students getting degrees. Follow that back to the source. It also is a lot to ask of a non-diverse group to suddenly understand diversity: they really can't, you need the group to be diverse in the first place so that those opinions are baked-in to the system. It's a catch-22, and bootstrapping is gonna upset the status quo (and probably newcomers) until things are running smoothly. One source: With engineering it can be followed back to opportunity at school. The US school funding model sucks: wealthy districts get the most money, which means better education, which means students come out primed for better jobs. Then there's the Gatekeeping common in engineering that tries to keep out others (in the late 80's it was harassing women so that they dropped out... one of the frats at my uni had an actual game to try to get women to drop out by making fun of them in recitation, which was horrific).
- rwcarlsen 6y ago
  More egalitarian funding will just make the wealthier classes just put their money and students somewhere else. I live in an area with a lot of private and charter schools. This is the mechanism that the community members have evolved to fund+support their children's education directly the way they want. If you try to make people pay for something they don't want to - they'll just find ways around it and you could even be left with even worse outcomes than before.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Simple. Don't let them. My province has a math education program that would rank amongst #2-3 in the world, and you aren't allowed to run a private school with a different curriculum - at all, beyond a certain amount of enriched tracks that are available to anyone. This also applies to the first few years of college. Result? Everyone gets an amazing education, and you can't pay your way around it. You might say that there is a risk that universities will simply select around it. In order to prevent that, universities may not use any criteria to select students from within the province, except a score, calculated from pre-university college education, that is a Z-score augmented by metrics from the performance of your classmates at standardized high school exams, deviation thereof, and a few more. The exception are programs like medicine and dentistry, where this score is used as the primary criteria but the interview and scores at ethical tests are also taken into account. That way, there is simply no way to pay your way around it. Private high-schools are not competitive with the best public schools (which you can enter by exam or recommendation), purely private colleges and universities are even worse, and everyone ends up on a common track. Result? In my Computer Science program, almost every minority is over-represented (the others are more commonly in Math or EEng), altough there is still a large majority of men. It works pretty well. I would recommend it to you, but you'd probably need to sort out your incompetent-on-purpose government (from both parties). It would also require basically nationalizing every accredited university, but on the upside you'd have tuition costs of ~3000$ per year for every university.
    - SavantIdiot 6y ago
      Unfortunately, in the US, people from higher socioeconomic strata don't like to mingle with those of the lower. That is why they flee public education and laws allow them. In addition, charter schools have no curriculum requirements in the name of "flexibility". They can teach whatever they want and hire whomever they wish but still get federal $$$. It's absurd. Even worse, the US lacks comprehensive nationalized standards to begin with - public schools can purchase textbooks that have completely different US histories, usually regarding the Civil War and racism. It really is a clusterf*ck of epic proportions driven entirely by the GOP. I know HN gets fussy about calling out political differences, but this is a huge one. The GOP fights standards tooth-and-nail, as do GOP governors at the state level.
ViViDboarder 6y ago
Actually, this is not a deadlock at all really. If a company wants to hire someone because of diversity, it’s not necessarily just because of diversity. In the article, the author describes their experience as having been different than non-diverse candidates, therefore creating a sense of personal doubt about their abilities, however unfounded. If given two equally qualified candidates, giving a preference to diverse ones does not present any deadlock. If you’re not just hiring someone for diversity, then you are doing that due diligence. Additionally, I would hope also doing the due diligence to make the environment you are hiring them into welcoming as well. The authors stories reflect things breaking down in this regard in a big way as well.
- ip26 6y ago
  In practice, how often is it really going to come down to a neck-and-neck tiebreaker?
munchbunny 6y ago
There's a pretty standard accepted approach to this for software engineers: your resume might be more likely to make it to the first phone call because of diversity, but you have to go through the same interview loop as everyone else. The fact that you got the same competence test should be enough. Leave it at "the team thinks you can do the job."

SavantIdiot 6y ago

Taking a non-diverse population and making it diverse is not easy at first. You need to jumpstart the effort across the board. Example: if there are no minority engineers applying from schools, it is because there are no minority students getting degrees. Follow that back to the source. It also is a lot to ask of a non-diverse group to suddenly understand diversity: they really can't, you need the group to be diverse in the first place so that those opinions are baked-in to the system. It's a catch-22, and bootstrapping is gonna upset the status quo (and probably newcomers) until things are running smoothly. One source: With engineering it can be followed back to opportunity at school. The US school funding model sucks: wealthy districts get the most money, which means better education, which means students come out primed for better jobs. Then there's the Gatekeeping common in engineering that tries to keep out others (in the late 80's it was harassing women so that they dropped out... one of the frats at my uni had an actual game to try to get women to drop out by making fun of them in recitation, which was horrific).

rwcarlsen 6y ago
More egalitarian funding will just make the wealthier classes just put their money and students somewhere else. I live in an area with a lot of private and charter schools. This is the mechanism that the community members have evolved to fund+support their children's education directly the way they want. If you try to make people pay for something they don't want to - they'll just find ways around it and you could even be left with even worse outcomes than before.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Simple. Don't let them. My province has a math education program that would rank amongst #2-3 in the world, and you aren't allowed to run a private school with a different curriculum - at all, beyond a certain amount of enriched tracks that are available to anyone. This also applies to the first few years of college. Result? Everyone gets an amazing education, and you can't pay your way around it. You might say that there is a risk that universities will simply select around it. In order to prevent that, universities may not use any criteria to select students from within the province, except a score, calculated from pre-university college education, that is a Z-score augmented by metrics from the performance of your classmates at standardized high school exams, deviation thereof, and a few more. The exception are programs like medicine and dentistry, where this score is used as the primary criteria but the interview and scores at ethical tests are also taken into account. That way, there is simply no way to pay your way around it. Private high-schools are not competitive with the best public schools (which you can enter by exam or recommendation), purely private colleges and universities are even worse, and everyone ends up on a common track. Result? In my Computer Science program, almost every minority is over-represented (the others are more commonly in Math or EEng), altough there is still a large majority of men. It works pretty well. I would recommend it to you, but you'd probably need to sort out your incompetent-on-purpose government (from both parties). It would also require basically nationalizing every accredited university, but on the upside you'd have tuition costs of ~3000$ per year for every university.
  - SavantIdiot 6y ago
    Unfortunately, in the US, people from higher socioeconomic strata don't like to mingle with those of the lower. That is why they flee public education and laws allow them. In addition, charter schools have no curriculum requirements in the name of "flexibility". They can teach whatever they want and hire whomever they wish but still get federal $$$. It's absurd. Even worse, the US lacks comprehensive nationalized standards to begin with - public schools can purchase textbooks that have completely different US histories, usually regarding the Civil War and racism. It really is a clusterf*ck of epic proportions driven entirely by the GOP. I know HN gets fussy about calling out political differences, but this is a huge one. The GOP fights standards tooth-and-nail, as do GOP governors at the state level.

ViViDboarder 6y ago

Actually, this is not a deadlock at all really. If a company wants to hire someone because of diversity, it’s not necessarily just because of diversity. In the article, the author describes their experience as having been different than non-diverse candidates, therefore creating a sense of personal doubt about their abilities, however unfounded. If given two equally qualified candidates, giving a preference to diverse ones does not present any deadlock. If you’re not just hiring someone for diversity, then you are doing that due diligence. Additionally, I would hope also doing the due diligence to make the environment you are hiring them into welcoming as well. The authors stories reflect things breaking down in this regard in a big way as well.

ip26 6y ago
In practice, how often is it really going to come down to a neck-and-neck tiebreaker?

munchbunny 6y ago

There's a pretty standard accepted approach to this for software engineers: your resume might be more likely to make it to the first phone call because of diversity, but you have to go through the same interview loop as everyone else. The fact that you got the same competence test should be enough. Leave it at "the team thinks you can do the job."