3 ms·

I recognize that racism is a major issue in tech, it's structurally dominated by white men - and while that is slowly changing people (especially larger compani

by olliej 4y ago

I recognize that racism is a major issue in tech, it's structurally dominated by white men - and while that is slowly changing people (especially larger companies where significant racial biases in the employee database are much stronger indications of employment bias than in smaller companies[1]), but no even in that environment you can't say we will hire/fire with the specific intent of getting a specific racial mix. Whether that mix be the good old white supremacist one, or an intentionally equal one. Firing would seem to not be something where you could reasonably do any form of intentional equalisation w/o it being pretty overt, and illegal, racial bias. The way to correct the racial balance in a company (again one large enough for statistics of employee vs national or regional racial make up to be relevant), is to first address your hiring practices and college or university outreach. Because the reality is people are still more likely to get to the interview stage via nepotism: one of your employees gets a hiring or intern suggestion from their old PI, your employees go back to the school they went to for career fair/outreach programs. Historically for example tech companies did very little outreach at any of the HBCUs or community colleges, which for historical (often racist) reasons are where the major you get a much more representative of society group of people. Aside from anything else that not only means talented people from those schools are less likely to get the experience from, say, interning, but also it means you're missing out on the talent that didn't get lucky enough in where they were born or who their parents were. What I'm trying to say is that I do not believe you can in any way fire your way to a less racist company, but you can do a lot to fix it by making sure your hiring process isn't automatically removing swathes of the population due not to explicit racism but simply habit and the path of least resistance. You shouldn't be in a position where you are saying yes or no about a person simply because of their race, and saying yes or no simply because of the school they went to is at a gross statistical level fairly equivalent to doing just that. [1] Because statistics

PubliusMI 4y ago
>nepotism: one of your employees gets a hiring or intern suggestion from their old PI Not nepotism >your employees go back to the school they went to for career fair/outreach programs Also not nepotism
- olliej 4y ago
  Yes. Merriam Webster defines nepotism as "favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship" In this case kinship does not mean family. You have a kinship with your PI, you have a kinship with your school. The favoritism is the act of bypassing the hiring processes available to people who do not share kinship with you. If you want to argue about "kinship" meaning family, MW defines it as being "the quality or state of being kin". The example sentences are "Despite our close kinship, canines and humans are quite different", "He feels a strong kinship with other survivors of the war", "feelings of kinship between the team's players and their fans". None of which mention any familial relationship. If you think that getting to skip the normal submit CV/resume to a website and hope for the best, and generally go straight to an in person interview is not favouritism I can only assume that you have only ever done one or the other of those options, and so have no awareness of the immense advantage you get by not just being one of thousands of resumes going through recruiters that are doing randomized keyword searches, and just getting to sit in an interview and answer questions. This is nepotism: you get an advantage over others in the hiring path based not on your abilities, but based instead on just having the correct connections. So if you happen to have a PI with a former student now working at X, and the PI forwards your resume directly to them you have an advantage over everyone else, who does not have that relationship (kinship if you will). Similarly if you go to a school with former students at company Y, and those former students come to collect resumes at your school, you have an advantage over people who went to schools without that relationship. If you go to church and another person there works for company Z, and you hand them your resume, and they then say "let's interview him" you have benefited from a relationship that is unavailable to others. This last one is a direct example from my personal experience. As an interviewer I was looking at a resume that would not have got past the normal application phase, and even if it did this candidate would not have got past a phone screen. Now it's important to realize that if as a candidate you can get to an in person interview I would estimate you're already well on your way to an offer. Interviews are not a perfect system, and you can be a fairly middling candidate and get an offer. I'm not going to say you have to really blow it to get rejected, but you sure as hell don't need to be a perfect and amazingly flawless person either.
  - PubliusMI 4y ago

by olliej 4y ago

PubliusMI 4y ago

>nepotism: one of your employees gets a hiring or intern suggestion from their old PI Not nepotism >your employees go back to the school they went to for career fair/outreach programs Also not nepotism

olliej 4y ago
Yes. Merriam Webster defines nepotism as "favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship" In this case kinship does not mean family. You have a kinship with your PI, you have a kinship with your school. The favoritism is the act of bypassing the hiring processes available to people who do not share kinship with you. If you want to argue about "kinship" meaning family, MW defines it as being "the quality or state of being kin". The example sentences are "Despite our close kinship, canines and humans are quite different", "He feels a strong kinship with other survivors of the war", "feelings of kinship between the team's players and their fans". None of which mention any familial relationship. If you think that getting to skip the normal submit CV/resume to a website and hope for the best, and generally go straight to an in person interview is not favouritism I can only assume that you have only ever done one or the other of those options, and so have no awareness of the immense advantage you get by not just being one of thousands of resumes going through recruiters that are doing randomized keyword searches, and just getting to sit in an interview and answer questions. This is nepotism: you get an advantage over others in the hiring path based not on your abilities, but based instead on just having the correct connections. So if you happen to have a PI with a former student now working at X, and the PI forwards your resume directly to them you have an advantage over everyone else, who does not have that relationship (kinship if you will). Similarly if you go to a school with former students at company Y, and those former students come to collect resumes at your school, you have an advantage over people who went to schools without that relationship. If you go to church and another person there works for company Z, and you hand them your resume, and they then say "let's interview him" you have benefited from a relationship that is unavailable to others. This last one is a direct example from my personal experience. As an interviewer I was looking at a resume that would not have got past the normal application phase, and even if it did this candidate would not have got past a phone screen. Now it's important to realize that if as a candidate you can get to an in person interview I would estimate you're already well on your way to an offer. Interviews are not a perfect system, and you can be a fairly middling candidate and get an offer. I'm not going to say you have to really blow it to get rejected, but you sure as hell don't need to be a perfect and amazingly flawless person either.
- PubliusMI 4y ago