>Companies are diverse as a side effect of hiring for competence. I mean, unless factors you evaluate for competence are just 'similarity to current decision m

>Companies are diverse as a side effect of hiring for competence. I mean, unless factors you evaluate for competence are just 'similarity to current decision makers'. Which is what people largely do in practice. This is why we see that tests show that hiring decisions vary dramatically on the basis of names, pictures, educational background, etc. No one has a magic 8-ball that spits out an employee's power level. So something else is being measured. But even if we COULD measure for competence - say in an objective numerical manner - the amount of times you'd optimize towards a local maxima rather than overall maxima would be significant. So the measurement is flawed, and the algorithm is wrong. You'd think people on HN of all people would recognize the above as self-evident given how frequently 'I'm upset at tech hiring' threads are posted here.