5 ms·

I don't know, but it must be horrible not knowing whether you got the job on your own merit, or if you were just hired to tick a box, if a company has some cyni

I don't know, but it must be horrible not knowing whether you got the job on your own merit, or if you were just hired to tick a box, if a company has some cynical hiring policy.

hraedon 5y ago
Whatever problems the current system has, it isn't as if the system being replaced ever hired people primarily on "merit." The beneficiaries of the older system rarely wondered if they were the best candidates for the job, so why should anyone today give it a second thought?
- okeuro49 5y ago
  This conversation is referring to a specific phenomenon that has become strongly noticeable in the last 5 years or so. That problems of nepotism, or cronyism have already existed to some extent, is another conversation. I also don't know why "merit" is in quotes. Hiring based on merit is going to be the main goal for companies that are not corrupt. Corruption should also be discouraged e.g. by stopping companies becoming "too big to fail", or by being anti-competitive, or by actually creating legislation that actually protects against discrimination, rather than by perpetuating it. That corruption exists, is not an argument to ignore corruption in another form.
  - hraedon 5y ago
    I know what the conversation is referring to, and my response is in regards to the naiveté demonstrated by responses like yours. The problems of today are different only in particular application, not in motivation or nature. "Merit" as I understand it—who can best perform the job—has almost never been the primary hiring characteristic. Companies are comprised of people and those people are almost always the ones making the ultimate decisions. In hiring, this means that "merit" almost always means something different or is a secondary consideration behind more personal factors. "Is diverse" doesn't really strike me as inherently more corrupt a trait than "went to the same school I did" or "is a member of the same country club I am," though why it gets a lot more attention is certainly not a mystery.
    - pedrosorio 5y ago
      > Companies are comprised of people and those people are almost always the ones making the ultimate decisions. What would be an example of a company where “those people” (who comprise the company) are not making “the ultimate decisions”?
      - hraedon 5y ago
        This mostly tongue-in-cheek carve out was for the fortunately stalled initiatives for outsourcing these decisions to AI tools, but to me it also applies to filters that are blindly applied and never reviewed. If 100 applicants are rejected for byzantine/opaque reasons without ever being reviewed by a person, I think it is not unreasonable to characterize those exclusions as decisions not being made by the people in the company. Of course, someone in the company did decide to implement and use the filter, so I wouldn't argue the point very strongly.
    - okeuro49 5y ago
      > I know what the conversation is referring to, and my response is in regards to the naiveté demonstrated by responses like yours Please read some autobiographies of people from diverse backgrounds trying to break into atypical careers, the topic of imposter syndrome and anxieties about wanting to be taken on one's own merits regularly features.
      - hraedon 5y ago
        I don't disagree, but my point was that they shouldn't. Clarence Thomas famously wrote about believing that his own success was tainted by affirmative action, and later he was indeed appointed to the Supreme Court primarily because he was a black conservative. That doesn't mean he was unqualified or less fit for the court than previous appointees, no matter what his own insecurities were, and it also doesn't mean that he or our society would have somehow been better served by Clarence Thomas not being given any of the opportunities affirmative action programs may have afforded him. The deeper problem is that there isn't really a solution here. The old system wasn't neutral and instead actively discriminated against huge swathes of the population. That the beneficiaries of that system never doubted their worthiness doesn't make the old system better, and any change that impacts them will suffer from the same aspersions about a lack of "merit" that we are seeing now.
knodi123 5y ago
Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor from The Office) is a famous diversity hire. It's not a theory; their show used a diversity hiring program through NBC, where if you hire a white person, it comes out of your show's budget; but if you hire a minority member, then NBC pays for their salary. So The Office had her on the writing staff basically for free. The catch was the program only paid for one year, so she knew from the first day that she had exactly one year to prove that she was worth the same salary as the other staff. Obviously she did, and was quickly elevated to on-screen talent, and her star just kept climbing. But knowing she was a diversity hire made her try harder; that sort of thing can be very motivating to a certain type of person.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  It's interesting because she's asian and yet was was considered "diverse". There has been this trend of diversity reporting to list Whites and Asians together in stats. Google has been notorious for this [0] and others are following the trend when it seems convenient [1]. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accuses-google-hiring-discrimination-against-white-asian-men-n853601 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accu... [1] https://nextshark.com/students-of-color-washington-asians-with-whites/ https://nextshark.com/students-of-color-washington-asians-wi...
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > It's interesting because she's asian and yet was was considered "diverse". Asians are current and historic targets of discrimination. This sometimes gets masked in outcome stats because lots of Asians in the US are themselves or first generation descendants of immigrants through programs which filter for the top end of the socioeconomic, and more particularly recently technical skills, spectrum.
- tomcam 5y ago
  > basically for free Well they got a bargain. She's immensely talented. She hates my politics but damn can she write. Her first memoir is one of the funniest things I've ever read
hackerfromthefu 5y ago
On the other hand it must be nice getting paid above your abilities, which is (one of) the common outcomes of diversity hiring, isn't it?
- jeromegv 5y ago
  What's interesting is that in average, Black people (and many other group) get paid less than their counterpart for the same job. Same for men vs women. Isn't that nice to be paid above your ability? But somehow, that isn't a problem for you?
  - lmm 5y ago
    > What's interesting is that in average, Black people (and many other group) get paid less than their counterpart for the same job. Same for men vs women. Isn't that nice to be paid above your ability? Is it actually same ability though? IIRC the men vs women difference disappears once you control for hours worked, for example.

I don't know, but it must be horrible not knowing whether you got the job on your own merit, or if you were just hired to tick a box, if a company has some cynical hiring policy.

hraedon 5y ago

Whatever problems the current system has, it isn't as if the system being replaced ever hired people primarily on "merit." The beneficiaries of the older system rarely wondered if they were the best candidates for the job, so why should anyone today give it a second thought?

okeuro49 5y ago
This conversation is referring to a specific phenomenon that has become strongly noticeable in the last 5 years or so. That problems of nepotism, or cronyism have already existed to some extent, is another conversation. I also don't know why "merit" is in quotes. Hiring based on merit is going to be the main goal for companies that are not corrupt. Corruption should also be discouraged e.g. by stopping companies becoming "too big to fail", or by being anti-competitive, or by actually creating legislation that actually protects against discrimination, rather than by perpetuating it. That corruption exists, is not an argument to ignore corruption in another form.
- hraedon 5y ago
  I know what the conversation is referring to, and my response is in regards to the naiveté demonstrated by responses like yours. The problems of today are different only in particular application, not in motivation or nature. "Merit" as I understand it—who can best perform the job—has almost never been the primary hiring characteristic. Companies are comprised of people and those people are almost always the ones making the ultimate decisions. In hiring, this means that "merit" almost always means something different or is a secondary consideration behind more personal factors. "Is diverse" doesn't really strike me as inherently more corrupt a trait than "went to the same school I did" or "is a member of the same country club I am," though why it gets a lot more attention is certainly not a mystery.
  - pedrosorio 5y ago
    > Companies are comprised of people and those people are almost always the ones making the ultimate decisions. What would be an example of a company where “those people” (who comprise the company) are not making “the ultimate decisions”?
    - hraedon 5y ago
      This mostly tongue-in-cheek carve out was for the fortunately stalled initiatives for outsourcing these decisions to AI tools, but to me it also applies to filters that are blindly applied and never reviewed. If 100 applicants are rejected for byzantine/opaque reasons without ever being reviewed by a person, I think it is not unreasonable to characterize those exclusions as decisions not being made by the people in the company. Of course, someone in the company did decide to implement and use the filter, so I wouldn't argue the point very strongly.
  - okeuro49 5y ago
    > I know what the conversation is referring to, and my response is in regards to the naiveté demonstrated by responses like yours Please read some autobiographies of people from diverse backgrounds trying to break into atypical careers, the topic of imposter syndrome and anxieties about wanting to be taken on one's own merits regularly features.
    - hraedon 5y ago
      I don't disagree, but my point was that they shouldn't. Clarence Thomas famously wrote about believing that his own success was tainted by affirmative action, and later he was indeed appointed to the Supreme Court primarily because he was a black conservative. That doesn't mean he was unqualified or less fit for the court than previous appointees, no matter what his own insecurities were, and it also doesn't mean that he or our society would have somehow been better served by Clarence Thomas not being given any of the opportunities affirmative action programs may have afforded him. The deeper problem is that there isn't really a solution here. The old system wasn't neutral and instead actively discriminated against huge swathes of the population. That the beneficiaries of that system never doubted their worthiness doesn't make the old system better, and any change that impacts them will suffer from the same aspersions about a lack of "merit" that we are seeing now.

knodi123 5y ago

Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor from The Office) is a famous diversity hire. It's not a theory; their show used a diversity hiring program through NBC, where if you hire a white person, it comes out of your show's budget; but if you hire a minority member, then NBC pays for their salary. So The Office had her on the writing staff basically for free. The catch was the program only paid for one year, so she knew from the first day that she had exactly one year to prove that she was worth the same salary as the other staff. Obviously she did, and was quickly elevated to on-screen talent, and her star just kept climbing. But knowing she was a diversity hire made her try harder; that sort of thing can be very motivating to a certain type of person.

908B64B197 5y ago
It's interesting because she's asian and yet was was considered "diverse". There has been this trend of diversity reporting to list Whites and Asians together in stats. Google has been notorious for this [0] and others are following the trend when it seems convenient [1]. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accuses-google-hiring-discrimination-against-white-asian-men-n853601 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accu... [1] https://nextshark.com/students-of-color-washington-asians-with-whites/ https://nextshark.com/students-of-color-washington-asians-wi...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > It's interesting because she's asian and yet was was considered "diverse". Asians are current and historic targets of discrimination. This sometimes gets masked in outcome stats because lots of Asians in the US are themselves or first generation descendants of immigrants through programs which filter for the top end of the socioeconomic, and more particularly recently technical skills, spectrum.
tomcam 5y ago
> basically for free Well they got a bargain. She's immensely talented. She hates my politics but damn can she write. Her first memoir is one of the funniest things I've ever read

hackerfromthefu 5y ago

On the other hand it must be nice getting paid above your abilities, which is (one of) the common outcomes of diversity hiring, isn't it?

jeromegv 5y ago
What's interesting is that in average, Black people (and many other group) get paid less than their counterpart for the same job. Same for men vs women. Isn't that nice to be paid above your ability? But somehow, that isn't a problem for you?
- lmm 5y ago
  > What's interesting is that in average, Black people (and many other group) get paid less than their counterpart for the same job. Same for men vs women. Isn't that nice to be paid above your ability? Is it actually same ability though? IIRC the men vs women difference disappears once you control for hours worked, for example.