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Throwaway. I'm happy to have more women in tech and hope it occurs or continues. However, virtually everyone recruiting in tech has observed some toxic diversi

• thewileyone 4y ago
  Totally agree with you. It's becoming toxic in many companies.
• antiverse 4y ago
  >- people in interview panels openly saying "but he's a white man" / "do we want to hire more white men" etc. Not surprised to hear people saying this, but am surprised that nobody brings that up as a plainly racist/sexist thing when it is said. Bystander effect?
  • colpabar 4y ago
    The only person who would gain anything by saying that would be a white man, who would just be told that his opinion isn’t important because he’s a white man.
    • jeffhuys 4y ago
      Which is racist.
      • theodric 4y ago
        • usrn 4y ago
  • throwaway0wha8h 4y ago
    I have observed some people pushing back, but it's rare. I know there is a fear of dissent to the DEI dogma. Particularly if you're a white man. If you're a minority you have more leeway to dissent and it will be fine you'll just be ignored or perhaps have someone read the pro-DEI talking points to you. After Damore firing most people just think it's not worth it I would guess, why risk it? And if you're a founder why risk a campaign against your company when you need to raise funding etc.
  • psyc 4y ago
    They’ll just say racism and sexism only exist in a context of oppressed and oppressor. It’s all been carefully worked out by certain academic intellectuals, long before it vectored into the mainstream (apparently by way of Tumblr)
  • jrsj 4y ago
    I sat next to a guy who once complained that our new Pakistani CTO fired our black coworker for no reason (he was a top performer but was called “lazy”) and then proceeded to fire 3 Indians and only bring Pakistani candidates to the final round of interviews. He was called racist for pointing this out by HR (all white women) and he was the next person to be fired and replaced by a Pakistani developer. Moral of the story being that unless you already have another job lined up you shouldn’t even question things like this publicly as it can cost you your job.
    • ipaddr 4y ago
      That would be a good lawsuit case.
      • jrsj 4y ago
        Difficult to do because when you want to do something like this there are a lot of tools that can be used to cover up for the behavior. There was a paper trail of “evidence” created that would give them a degree of protection. This particular company was also acquired by a very large corporation shortly after & odds of winning a lawsuit against them are basically 0. This wasn’t the only thing they did either. They had to sell the company on not particularly favorable terms so they also invented a lot of reasons to get rid of people just before their stock options vested. Basically everyone but the 5 people at the top got fucked.
  • wccrawford 4y ago
    Any time I've pushed back on that racism, the person has redefined racism so that what they are doing isn't racism any more. Typically that involves the phrase "systemic racism" instead, as if the need to qualify the type of racism doesn't invalidate their point. Unsurprisingly, racists aren't willing to actually discuss racism and instead do whatever they have to in order to justify it. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
    • vmception 4y ago
      Protip: “race based discrimination” is what the federal government prosecutes for 40 years, and it cuts the knees off of the segregationists that are playing a semantics game with the word “racism”. So just use race based discrimination, thats the unproductive thing after all, the representatives have been far ahead on this one.
• throwaway6734 4y ago
  >people in interview panels openly saying "but he's a white man" / "do we want to hire more white men" etc. Isn't this illegal?
  • throwaway0wha8h 4y ago
    Lot of things are illegal but still happen everyday. The violation has to be known to lawmakers and they have to have the will and resources to enforce the penalty. That's not the case here.
  • Manuel_D 4y ago
    Who is going to speak up? I've worked in these environments before and it's career suicide to object to DEI discrimination.
    • forum_ghost 4y ago
      Maybe two-party recording laws in California needs to be removed.
      • recursive 4y ago
        Maybe, but they haven't been. That's what matters.
        • nullc 4y ago
          Doesn't apply if the parties have notice of the recording. Offer to take notes for the meetings and tell people you're recording for the notes. People making openly racist/sexist statements usually won't refrain when a mic is on-- they do it because they've convinced themselves that what they're doing is OKAY. Failing that, an illicitly obtained recording can still be used in court in California if its used to disprove conflicting testimony. So you sue over the discrimination, when they lie and claim they didn't say the statements in question, the recording can be introduced. You'd still be vulnerable to the $2500 fine and imprisonment, but I don't know how likely it is that a prosecutor would actually go after someone for making a recording which exposed a crime. Personally I'd be inclined to get a recording and then decide what to do about it later, since if due care is taken the recording would be unlikely to be known to anyone but you. Obviously you should get legal advice before trying something like that.
• deathanatos 4y ago
  To add to your list: - referral bonuses, but only for diversity hires - hiring freezes, except diversity hires
  • oaiey 4y ago
    Referral bonus to fix a problem of a funnel ... Does not sound wrong. Sound actually very smart. Hiring freezes except diversity hires ... Sounds wrong.
    • deathanatos 4y ago
      Financially incentivizing people to hire people of a particular race or gender doesn't sound wrong to you? If it were "white" or "men", people would have a cow, and rightfully so. But encouraging discrimination in the reverse direction is just fine?
      • leaflets2 4y ago
        What does "cow" mean here? Online dictionaries weren't helpful
      • usrn 4y ago
      • oaiey 4y ago
        It is about the funnel and not the hiring. I assume here that the funnel is anyway full of white men and the hiring decision itself is non discriminatory.
• at_a_remove 4y ago
  I have mentioned this on Hacker News before: At this one job, we had only two remotely viable candidates for an open position. I was on the hiring committee, as I often was in those days. Candidate A: Had worked in the industry, had all of the qualifications, already chock-full of some interesting ideas I wanted to hear more of from the interview alone. Excited at the prospect. Candidate B: Had never worked in the industry, had only a handful of qualifications, barely responsive. Seemed indifferent to getting the job. Additionally, not too fluent in English, to the point where it was more than a little difficult to communicate. Candidate A was a white man, Candidate B was a recent immigrant and a woman. The immediate supervisor for the position -- a woman -- wanted Candidate A, as did most others. However, the person running the show said, out loud I might add, that our group already had "too many pale males." I would like to repeat that: too many pale males. A significant glance was then cast at me and the guy in the wheelchair on the hiring committee, both being not-particularly-dark men. Presumably by "virtue" of our disabilities we would automatically be down for the Diversity Squad. Candidate B was hired and turned out exactly as she was in the interview: disinterested in doing the job, lacking even some bare understanding of how to accomplish many things, always trying to find ways to do her grad school homework while on the job and pushing off her duties on someone else, rather than trying to learn her tasks. Her poor English was a significant barrier. She remained a leaden weight until she went off to be someone else's problem. She wasn't a drag due to her skin color or sex, but she was hired because of those things. This was over ten years ago, in academia. A friend who worked for pharmacy chain was bluntly told that as a white male, he was not going to get a manager job, no matter how long he held on. Something something equity.
  • ackfoobar 4y ago
    "Pale". What a great word to catch the East Asians, in addition to white people.
  • spzb 4y ago
    There are morons in a lot of jobs. It sounds like you had one making the decisions. It's only an anecdote though.
    • 4y ago
• nostromo 4y ago
  This is plainly illegal according to the Civil Rights Act, but the courts have watered it down repeatedly. Hopefully the Supreme Court picks up these cases and confirms that Civil Rights Act meant what it said when it said: >It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. (b) It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
• phlakaton 4y ago
  No. Not I. But I will say this: > pressure on HMs to hire more women despite 95% of applicants being male is something I've done myself, not to hold anything against the applicants coming in but because HMs have a significant amount of control over the funnel of applications coming in. I want them hustling to encourage women, minorities, veterans, old-timers, re-inventors, people with nonstandard educational paths--people from ALL walks of life who are qualified, to get them to apply. I want it because I firmly believe that will make the engineering departments I work for more healthy. > people championing all women teams as a win for diversity I have been on many all-men teams in my career. I wouldn't consider it a specific diversity goal, but I do not think _one_ all-woman team is likely to put a dent in balancing, let alone over-balancing, the scales. > women getting a salary premium ROFL, I would _love_ to see an instance of this.
  • ipaddr 4y ago
    You divide candidates into such stereotypical categories why not throw all of that labeling away and get to know each candidate as unique humans with different skills/personalities and make judgements on those? It's like you are judging a tasting contest by the color of icing instead of eating it.
    • phlakaton 4y ago
      When it comes time to determine qualifications, we of course do that. But if that's the point where you decide to start caring about the pipeline, you've already lost.
  • kodah 4y ago
    > I want them hustling to encourage women, minorities, veterans, old-timers, re-inventors, people with nonstandard educational paths I'm a vet. This is a band-aid and I'd discourage you from thinking this way because it's short term at best. If you want to hire more vets then companies need to find where vets are. Some of us use our VA benefits and get a degree, others meet the stress of post-separation and collapse. Both will still end up in the field, but companies will not train or treat them the same. That's why companies are now doing that whole, "atypical background" search. Apprenticeship programs within companies would also strengthen vet (and other DEI category) numbers given the absence of an industry wide apprenticeship program. It was always my opinion that if the goal is more diverse hiring then more diverse sourcing is required.
• joshcanhelp 4y ago
  As a white man in tech, I often ask myself “do we want to hire more white men?” When I’ve interviewed 5 white guys in a row, for a team comprised of mostly/all white guys, that kind of reflection is important. I’m not trying to discount your experience in any way and it’s certainly possible that everything you’re describing was actually toxic but I don’t see over-indexing on diversity is as problem in and of itself. Diverse perspectives are an asset, full stop, and representation matters. Our industry clearly does not know how to address this in a way that makes everyone happy so, in the meantime, if the only reason I’m passed over for a job is because I’m over-represented there, so be it.