3 ms·

> The new hiring strategy is merit-only, using tests that are as neutral as possible, with transparent salary scales and promotion paths. Equality but not equit

by jxf 4y ago

> The new hiring strategy is merit-only, using tests that are as neutral as possible, with transparent salary scales and promotion paths. Equality but not equity. What specific proposals do you have to ensure that this happens? Which perfectly neutral, bias-free tests would you employ? How would you ensure that the humans delivering the tests or screening candidates were neutral and perfectly bias-free? Also, would you be doing all this yourself as the CEO? If so, seems like an inefficient use of your time. Perhaps you'd employ some staff to ensure this gets carried out at the scale of Google. These folks would be assigned to creating the sense of fairness, merit, and justice you describe at scale, so that everyone felt included in the same way. You could even put them in their own department. Hmm...

gruez 4y ago
>What specific proposals do you have to ensure that this happens? Which perfectly neutral, bias-free tests would you employ? How would you ensure that the humans delivering the tests or screening candidates were neutral and perfectly bias-free? Devising which metrics to measure is tough, but your objection isn't really a checkmate like you think it is. OP presumably is against the type of DEI initiatives that are in the form of "group X makes up Y% of the overall population but only make up Z% of the employees at this company. This means there's discrimination going on and we need to enact affirmative action to increase the participation of group X". I can arguably ask the same questions about the approach given there. I doubt that it's "neutral, bias-free", nor do I think the people in DEI would be "neutral and perfectly bias-free". Yes, coming up with objective metrics is hard, but it's not something that's solved by DEI. Using that as an objection against getting rid of DEI doesn't make sense.
- underwater 4y ago
  Targetting underrepresented candidates and trying to change the top of funnel (the focus of most DEI effort) is independent from changing the hiring criteria.
  - gruez 4y ago
    This seems to be an area where the supposed goals of DEI (increased diversity) align with expected business behavior (ie. trying to expand the applicant pool to get better talent and/or reduce costs). That's a good argument for keeping DEI, but also a good argument for getting rid of DEI and telling recruiters/managers to just do their jobs (ie. trying to find candidates wherever you can, whether they're an white appalachian coal miner or a visible minority from the inner cities).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  > Yes, coming up with objective metrics is hard, but it's not something that's solved by DEI. Using that as an objection against getting rid of DEI doesn't make sense. It does though. The objection isn't simply "coming up with objective metrics is hard" but more honestly "there are not objective metrics". This is true for a variety of reasons. A sort of overarching one is that in a Goodhart's law sense, if a metric is public, people will game it. People with more resources ("power", "privilege", "class", whatever you want to call it) will be able to make themselves appear to look better according to the metric, all else equal. In that sense, a lot of DEI is akin to an abuse-prevention org: figuring out how particular ways of measuring can mislead or harm, and how we can improve or account for those in the absence of any single perfect measurement.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >In that sense, a lot of DEI is akin to an abuse-prevention org: figuring out how particular ways of measuring can mislead or harm, and how we can improve or account for those in the absence of any single perfect measurement. But something tells me that if management decided to use some obviously flawed way of measuring performance (eg. # of commits), that DEI won't step in unless it turned out that black workers committed less code than whites or whatever. In that respect you don't really want DEI, you want an anti metrics abuse department.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      > But something tells me that if management decided to use some obviously flawed way of measuring performance Then other people, including perhaps members of the DEI department can step in and point out that this is a bad idea. The DEI department doesn't have a monopoly on management's ear. You're doing the same thing, trying to invent a perfect department to solve all of the problems. Don't do that. Stop trying to invent perfect systems or perfect metrics, they don't exist. Focus on making incremental improvements in people's lives. I don't want a "metrics abuse department" because that's so vague and missionless as to be pointless. If management does something stupid that upsets everyone, they'll know. If they do something stupid that only upsets the 1% of black employees, they're not going to notice unless someone (the DEI department) is specifically looking.
SR2Z 4y ago
This is a great reply. A lot of the anti-DEI folk seem to think that there IS some kind of objective way to rank software engineers against each other. If there was, Google interviews (and interviews in general) would be MUCH less of a shitshow, and hiring would be much less stressful overall. But there isn't - brilliant people present very differently depending on their backgrounds, and the unfortunate truth is that asking people to judge this subjectively ends up creating tons of bias. The constant stream of DEI fluff (like banning the words "blacklist" or "master") can get annoying, but pretending that there are no problems or that these departments exist for ideological reasons is worse. If you believe in meritocracy, you should believe in recruiting from HBCUs and doing outreach to other URM.
mc32 4y ago
The Parent poster's solution has to only be marginally better than the DEI team at hiring based on merit (appropriate relevant experience and performance for the job)
underwater 4y ago
Probably a copy paste of CS material as taught by top-tier US universities. As if a company full of "well, actually" techbros wouldn't be completely dysfunctional too
fleddr 4y ago
Answering this question is an enormous side track, a category of research in its own. I'd first say that I do not share the default assumption that discrimination is widespread. As if it is some default, rather than an exception. You're far too cynical. I base this on 2 decades of work experience. I work in a small tech hub with 80 nationalities. It literally cannot get more diverse. We don't have DEI departments, social justice slack channels or activists. And somehow it all works fine. No tensions, no outrage, happy workers. A mystery, I guess? It's almost as if people are pretty good, by default. How to make a test neutral? Background check before the interview, to verify claimed education/credentials. Then a test similar to what you do when going on one of those certification exams. Then the "softer" in-person test, where you collect multiple inputs to prevent the bias of a single interviewer. I pretty much think that's good enough to give the candidate a 3 month trial period where actual work performance is measured by some agreed metric. Pass that and you're permanently in. The end.

by jxf 4y ago

gruez 4y ago

>What specific proposals do you have to ensure that this happens? Which perfectly neutral, bias-free tests would you employ? How would you ensure that the humans delivering the tests or screening candidates were neutral and perfectly bias-free? Devising which metrics to measure is tough, but your objection isn't really a checkmate like you think it is. OP presumably is against the type of DEI initiatives that are in the form of "group X makes up Y% of the overall population but only make up Z% of the employees at this company. This means there's discrimination going on and we need to enact affirmative action to increase the participation of group X". I can arguably ask the same questions about the approach given there. I doubt that it's "neutral, bias-free", nor do I think the people in DEI would be "neutral and perfectly bias-free". Yes, coming up with objective metrics is hard, but it's not something that's solved by DEI. Using that as an objection against getting rid of DEI doesn't make sense.

underwater 4y ago
Targetting underrepresented candidates and trying to change the top of funnel (the focus of most DEI effort) is independent from changing the hiring criteria.
- gruez 4y ago
  This seems to be an area where the supposed goals of DEI (increased diversity) align with expected business behavior (ie. trying to expand the applicant pool to get better talent and/or reduce costs). That's a good argument for keeping DEI, but also a good argument for getting rid of DEI and telling recruiters/managers to just do their jobs (ie. trying to find candidates wherever you can, whether they're an white appalachian coal miner or a visible minority from the inner cities).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
joshuamorton 4y ago
> Yes, coming up with objective metrics is hard, but it's not something that's solved by DEI. Using that as an objection against getting rid of DEI doesn't make sense. It does though. The objection isn't simply "coming up with objective metrics is hard" but more honestly "there are not objective metrics". This is true for a variety of reasons. A sort of overarching one is that in a Goodhart's law sense, if a metric is public, people will game it. People with more resources ("power", "privilege", "class", whatever you want to call it) will be able to make themselves appear to look better according to the metric, all else equal. In that sense, a lot of DEI is akin to an abuse-prevention org: figuring out how particular ways of measuring can mislead or harm, and how we can improve or account for those in the absence of any single perfect measurement.
- gruez 4y ago
  >In that sense, a lot of DEI is akin to an abuse-prevention org: figuring out how particular ways of measuring can mislead or harm, and how we can improve or account for those in the absence of any single perfect measurement. But something tells me that if management decided to use some obviously flawed way of measuring performance (eg. # of commits), that DEI won't step in unless it turned out that black workers committed less code than whites or whatever. In that respect you don't really want DEI, you want an anti metrics abuse department.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    > But something tells me that if management decided to use some obviously flawed way of measuring performance Then other people, including perhaps members of the DEI department can step in and point out that this is a bad idea. The DEI department doesn't have a monopoly on management's ear. You're doing the same thing, trying to invent a perfect department to solve all of the problems. Don't do that. Stop trying to invent perfect systems or perfect metrics, they don't exist. Focus on making incremental improvements in people's lives. I don't want a "metrics abuse department" because that's so vague and missionless as to be pointless. If management does something stupid that upsets everyone, they'll know. If they do something stupid that only upsets the 1% of black employees, they're not going to notice unless someone (the DEI department) is specifically looking.

SR2Z 4y ago

This is a great reply. A lot of the anti-DEI folk seem to think that there IS some kind of objective way to rank software engineers against each other. If there was, Google interviews (and interviews in general) would be MUCH less of a shitshow, and hiring would be much less stressful overall. But there isn't - brilliant people present very differently depending on their backgrounds, and the unfortunate truth is that asking people to judge this subjectively ends up creating tons of bias. The constant stream of DEI fluff (like banning the words "blacklist" or "master") can get annoying, but pretending that there are no problems or that these departments exist for ideological reasons is worse. If you believe in meritocracy, you should believe in recruiting from HBCUs and doing outreach to other URM.

mc32 4y ago

The Parent poster's solution has to only be marginally better than the DEI team at hiring based on merit (appropriate relevant experience and performance for the job)

underwater 4y ago

Probably a copy paste of CS material as taught by top-tier US universities. As if a company full of "well, actually" techbros wouldn't be completely dysfunctional too

fleddr 4y ago

Answering this question is an enormous side track, a category of research in its own. I'd first say that I do not share the default assumption that discrimination is widespread. As if it is some default, rather than an exception. You're far too cynical. I base this on 2 decades of work experience. I work in a small tech hub with 80 nationalities. It literally cannot get more diverse. We don't have DEI departments, social justice slack channels or activists. And somehow it all works fine. No tensions, no outrage, happy workers. A mystery, I guess? It's almost as if people are pretty good, by default. How to make a test neutral? Background check before the interview, to verify claimed education/credentials. Then a test similar to what you do when going on one of those certification exams. Then the "softer" in-person test, where you collect multiple inputs to prevent the bias of a single interviewer. I pretty much think that's good enough to give the candidate a 3 month trial period where actual work performance is measured by some agreed metric. Pass that and you're permanently in. The end.