4 ms·

>>If you give Jeff he benefit of the doubt here, Sorry, not giving a virtue-signaling billionaire the 'benefit of the doubt' - he explicitly says that race was

by ejb999 4y ago

>>If you give Jeff he benefit of the doubt here, Sorry, not giving a virtue-signaling billionaire the 'benefit of the doubt' - he explicitly says that race was taken into account when deciding who to fire and who not to - that is de-facto a racist statement. You don't fix racism by being racist. If jobs need to be eliminated, they should be eliminated by making decisions about which departments/projects/initiatives are no longer needed, which people are no longer performing well, or which area's are not profitable etc. As soon as you say, we took into account peoples race when deciding who should be fired, it is racist, period.

ViViDboarder 4y ago
And if everyone picked every pregnant woman on leave and every minority, leadership should totally just assume that it wasn’t some bias or racism. /s It makes sense to review to ensure that there is no slant to your layoffs to me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
staticautomatic 4y ago
Philosophical issues aside, the Supreme Court is sort of ok with “fixing racism by being racist” if it’s done to compensate for historically being racist.
- maxehmookau 4y ago
  Many countries do this and it's not controvertial. The UK Equality Act says that given two candidates of equal ability, it's legal to pick the candiadate from an underrepresented background purely because of that.
maxehmookau 4y ago
> As soon as you say, we took into account peoples race when deciding who should be fired, it is racist, period. Oy. I expect better from HN discussion, because this is a solved problem. Auditing your decisions for implicit bias along racial lines _is not racist_. In fact, it's the opposite.
kweingar 4y ago
This is a tired debate that won’t be resolved here, but here’s the other perspective anyway: Suppose you work for a company and your boss is from Country X and you are not. Your boss hired several other people from Country X and regularly socializes with them more than others in the office. When layoffs come, your boss instinctively advocates for the people he is closest to, which happens to be people who look like him and speak the same native language. “That’s not fair!” you say. “I’m a higher performer than them. This is just favoritism.” Your boss says that he did not take race into account in his decision. Your company agrees with you and tells your boss that his favoritism is unacceptable. There are now processes in place to flag this kind of situation. Your boss grumbles “well I didn’t take anybody’s race into account before, and now I have to. This is racism!”
- anonym29 4y ago
  Except they do take race into account. Have you never been on a hiring committee for a tech company? There's a just-barely-legal imperative to prioritize all nonwhite/nonasian and nonmale candidates. In some corporations, this goes as far as mandating that an equal number of nonwhite/nonasian candidates as white/asian candidates make it to the final interview round. What makes you trust someone who says they aren't taking race into account when that same person okayed having objective racial biases baked into the hiring process? Humans have a known exploit called "lying". It's well-documented being abused in the wild and there are no patches. Keep that in mind whenever someone is telling you something that is in direct contradiction with their actions.
  - caeril 4y ago
    > and nonmale candidates This is hilarious in the context of white-collar work, considering that women absolutely dominate college degree issuance, and have for quite some time now.
    - anonym29 4y ago
      Still, there is a shocking shortage of women in highly technical engineering roles. I'm a board member of a local college's Women In Tech group, and have donated a few thousand dollars of my personal money to the group. There are just not as many women as men who are interested.

by ejb999 4y ago

ViViDboarder 4y ago

And if everyone picked every pregnant woman on leave and every minority, leadership should totally just assume that it wasn’t some bias or racism. /s It makes sense to review to ensure that there is no slant to your layoffs to me.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

staticautomatic 4y ago

Philosophical issues aside, the Supreme Court is sort of ok with “fixing racism by being racist” if it’s done to compensate for historically being racist.

maxehmookau 4y ago
Many countries do this and it's not controvertial. The UK Equality Act says that given two candidates of equal ability, it's legal to pick the candiadate from an underrepresented background purely because of that.

maxehmookau 4y ago

> As soon as you say, we took into account peoples race when deciding who should be fired, it is racist, period. Oy. I expect better from HN discussion, because this is a solved problem. Auditing your decisions for implicit bias along racial lines _is not racist_. In fact, it's the opposite.

kweingar 4y ago

This is a tired debate that won’t be resolved here, but here’s the other perspective anyway: Suppose you work for a company and your boss is from Country X and you are not. Your boss hired several other people from Country X and regularly socializes with them more than others in the office. When layoffs come, your boss instinctively advocates for the people he is closest to, which happens to be people who look like him and speak the same native language. “That’s not fair!” you say. “I’m a higher performer than them. This is just favoritism.” Your boss says that he did not take race into account in his decision. Your company agrees with you and tells your boss that his favoritism is unacceptable. There are now processes in place to flag this kind of situation. Your boss grumbles “well I didn’t take anybody’s race into account before, and now I have to. This is racism!”

anonym29 4y ago
Except they do take race into account. Have you never been on a hiring committee for a tech company? There's a just-barely-legal imperative to prioritize all nonwhite/nonasian and nonmale candidates. In some corporations, this goes as far as mandating that an equal number of nonwhite/nonasian candidates as white/asian candidates make it to the final interview round. What makes you trust someone who says they aren't taking race into account when that same person okayed having objective racial biases baked into the hiring process? Humans have a known exploit called "lying". It's well-documented being abused in the wild and there are no patches. Keep that in mind whenever someone is telling you something that is in direct contradiction with their actions.
- caeril 4y ago
  > and nonmale candidates This is hilarious in the context of white-collar work, considering that women absolutely dominate college degree issuance, and have for quite some time now.
  - anonym29 4y ago
    Still, there is a shocking shortage of women in highly technical engineering roles. I'm a board member of a local college's Women In Tech group, and have donated a few thousand dollars of my personal money to the group. There are just not as many women as men who are interested.