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As a hiring manager across all departments at a US tech company (fully remote), the biggest challenge creating a diverse team is a lack of candidates from diver
by cj 4y ago
As a hiring manager across all departments at a US tech company (fully remote), the biggest challenge creating a diverse team is a lack of candidates from diverse background/ethnicities/etc.
We’re able to balance male/female across most departments without overtly favoring one gender over another, but for some reason it’s different for engineering roles. 95%+ of applicants are male, and an overwhelming majority are white.
We try to do things like post and advertise jobs on minority-targeted job boards, but still, it’s very difficult to find minority applicants.
Aside from lowering our hiring standards for minorities, I’m not sure what else we could be doing better.
Edit: just to clarify I’m not trying to undermine your concern, just raising that it’s possible the problem has to do with the candidate pipeline rather than overt discrimination. Your specific case may be different, of course. Building a diverse team is very difficult even when it’s made a priority.
- Damogran6 4y agoI'm SO glad you said this. We've been trying, for years, to hire more diverse, but if the resumes that come in are white male, that's the only pool we have to choose from. Things are getting better, our T1 and T2 incident responders are more diverse, and our Data Scientist positions were much easier to fill from a diversity standpoint.
- alldayeveryday 4y agoAn anecdote: the head of recruiting one time approached me and made a comment about there being a lack of diversity on my team (my team was all White males). She (head of recruiting) was Indian. Every few weeks an email goes out about new hires. I noticed that a department head, who is Indian, has a team entirely comprised of other Indians. I asked the recruiter "I am not seeing a lot of diversity on that team. Are you also concerned with that?" Recruiter was totally caught off guard - of course the reason is clear. Diversity always means less White people. A team of no Whites is the epitome of diversity. She stopped bothering me at that point.
- issa 4y agoI think it is worth pointing out that this simply is not true. The epitome of diversity is when the makeup of a team reflects the demographic makeup of the larger society.
- geraldwhen 4y agoWrong. Look at D&I reports that are published publicly. Diversity is the percent of non white, or non male, or non heterosexual employees depending on the graph. The company where I work recently published such a report. Population demographics have nothing to do with the hiring quotas.
- mathverse 4y agoDo white europeans in general fall into the category of "white people" in the US? As in they are not treated as diversity hires compared to african americans?
- issa 4y agoAmerican racism is VERY complicated. President Trump accidentally explained it pretty well in his comments about "shithole countries". But essentially, people from most European countries are considered "white" when it comes to hiring and diversity issues.
- mathverse 4y agoThat's unfortunate but not unexpected. Europeans consider white americans / african americans / latino americans to be just "americans". There's no distinction.
- issa 4y agoThat's just how silly racism is. By the same token, Americans consider all Europeans to be "just Europeans". We don't distinguish if you're from Ireland or England, Greece or Macedonia, etc.
- mathverse 4y agoThe US definition of diverse is a bit tricky. I am talking about really obvious things as when an indian / filipino / chinese manager hires only people of their ethnicity. Or in case of Europe in an international company where english is the working language a team comprised of german / russian / french speakers decides to hire only people that speak that language.
- cj 4y agoThanks for clarifying. In that case it sounds like the problem likely isn’t a lack of diverse candidates, unless your team lead is sourcing candidates and hiring from their personal network (the demographics of an individual’s personal network often heavily “favor”, perhaps unintentionally, that person’s gender/ethnicity/language). If you’re seeing overt discrimination, you may want to consider raising it to management anonymously if your company is large enough (or non-anonymously if you’re accepting that there could be a negative knee jerk reaction from others hearing your concerns)
- alldayeveryday 4y agoAt a company All Hands our company CEO, while talking about diversity, said overtly "we will increase the % of non-White males working here. It does not mean we will discriminate, but we will hire more people who are not White." So, imagine me going to management and saying "I think person X is showing discrimination against White candidates in their hiring practice." What would you anticipate the outcome of that conversation to be?
- Jcowell 4y agoYour approaching it from the wrong angle. You need to narrow it down that a better qualified candidate was passed on for being white. The resume/recruiter stage would be the easiest as you have comparable data. But if it’s at the final stage and both candidates are equally qualified, a cultural fit, and can be taken either or, then it wouldn’t matter since it would be up to the hiring managers preference either way.
- 4y ago
- sillysaurusx 4y agoPiling on to say that yes, this is a real problem. My wife is a fantastic engineer and one day her company’s recruiter straight up told her that she was an absolute outlier and that there’s almost nobody who ever applies like her. He phrased it very poorly, but I think the frustration was the lack of candidates. Watch out for the flip side, too. One of her biggest fears is that she’s only gotten jobs because she’s a woman and not because she’s talented. And it kills me that she’s better than I am in so many ways and still has to live with this fear. Fantastic engineer is an understatement to describe her, and every company has ended up replying on her in a key role. She’s worked at multiple YC cos now.
- n4r9 4y ago> One of her biggest fears is that she’s only gotten jobs because she’s a woman and not because she’s talented. I don't know how reassuring this is, but on the flip side there's often a lot of opportunity and positive conditioning that a man will get, which will help them land a job ultimately because they're a man. I suppose the idea is to try to balance that out, although it's understandable for a woman not to feel like they're being evaluated appropriately.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoI have two nieces who are engineers (one robotics, one aerospace). They're both young, just starting their careers, but it seems clear to me that both are very talented, and certainly very conscientious hard workers. It really bugs me that they'll always have this asterisk on their careers. Regardless of what they achieve, there will always be that footnote saying "but they got special advantages because they were women". Even if they didn't need those special advantages, they were there, and so the two of them will always have to wonder how much of their accomplishments are truly their own.
- geraldwhen 4y agoGetting hired and benchwarming isn’t an accomplishment and it is often discriminatory. Given two candidates within a standard deviation, HR mandates we hire the woman. Once on the team though, there’s no more discrimination. Work accomplished is work accomplished. I know of more companies with positive hiring discrimination, so you shouldn’t wonder if it’s happening. It is happening.
- treeman79 4y agoBe honest up front with your straight white engineers. Got hired into a diverse team. Didn’t give it any thought as I couldn’t care less on race / sex whatever. Was then informed how they hated hiring me because of my race. But they had way to many unqualified people and were desperate. Lots of people liked me as an individual. But constantly ranted on how much they despised white males. I would rather they not hired because of my race / sex. Then to hire me despite it.
- AinderS 4y ago> I couldn’t care less on race / sex whatever. [..] they hated hiring me because of my race [..] constantly ranted on how much they despised white males. How long do you think your enlightened post-racial individualism will remain tenable against groups that proudly organize along ethnic lines?
- colpabar 4y agoJust for clarification, your definition of “diverse” here is effectively “not white,” correct?
- flippinburgers 4y agoIsn't that the standard these days? It totally ignores ethnic diversity within the "white" population but ... "whatever" would be the general response I guess.
- mathverse 4y agoProbably standard only in NA/Anglosphere.
- y-c-o-m-b 4y agoWeird, I've had the opposite experience. The vast majority are Asian, and most of those are of Indian descent. I would say about 30% of the candidates we get are white and many of those are European.
- rr808 4y agoI was going to say this too. In my new team 4 out of 9 are European and its the highest proportion I've ever worked with.
- ihateolives 4y agoIt's interesting seeing "European" as a class of people. There are 44 sovereign countries in Europe and being just bundled together feels super weird for me. It's like there is no distinction between Germans and Greeks while these are two totally different cultures with different cultural norms.
- brnt 4y agoTrue. Also for India and "Asia". It's almost as if generalising falls flat when you're actually trying to understand people ;)
- Veelox 4y agoHere is my 2¢ on the matter. Most tech companies currently have publicly stated goals to hire more under-represented minority engineers. Almost all of them publicly say they want to hire more of these engineers. Thus I conclude the demand for these engineers outpasses supply. > Aside from lowering our hiring standards for minorities, I’m not sure what else we could be doing better. Your options when supply constrained are to pay more, buy lower quality, find untapped supply or do without. It sounds like you are doing without. I don't see many issues with that approach.