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Not Twilio. I recently attended a manager meeting in my own company, where some of the managers were comfortable saying they would insist on a certain number o

Not Twilio. I recently attended a manager meeting in my own company, where some of the managers were comfortable saying they would insist on a certain number of percentage of new-hire candidates who were of “x”. Non-white male; but I’m quietly distressed at the implications. I’ve been thinking over how to even process or deal with this.

h2odragon 4y ago
Judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, or whatever other affinity group one can assign them to. Simple idea. People are individuals, not instances of stereotypes. It's been said before but it obviously needs repeating. We're gonna hafta embrace the "subversive" label that preaching MLK's message will earn us.
- nobodyandproud 4y ago
  It’s easy in theory but difficult in practice not to be biased; like, I get why quotas happen. It’s also wrong and undercuts someone’s actual talent and achievements.
quelltext 4y ago
Pretty common I think. Not only hiring. A coworker was blocked from organizing some technical community event because among the 5 speakers who applied to present only one was "x". I get the sentiment behind such quotas but it's not always realistic. I think a fair way to look at it is, if the environment is such that "x" are discouraged from participation then it needs fixing. But it should be easy for the diversity team to go identify such an issue and tell the organizers to fix that rather than saying "meet quota or no event". For hiring, it's fine to look at numbers and identify a skew pattern and to look into why it may exist and how to counter, but just asking for percentage alone is not helpful.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Indeed, I was just reading about a local software shop that managed to increase its rate of hiring female engineers to over 40% without any quota system. One of the simple tricks they use is to ensure there's always a woman involved in the job advertising/interviewing/hiring process. Note that most companies are lucky if they can reach 20% for female engineer hires (and certainly from experience, it's rare to get even 25% of applicants be female, which is at least partly an issue of implicit biases in the education system).
  - nobodyandproud 4y ago
    That’s an insightful idea. There’s no question of unconscious and unintentional bias that goes on, even with the best of intentions. Forcing a quota system cannot be the right answer, however.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      Arguably that is a quota system for the selection of those involved that make up the hiring team.
seer-zig 4y ago

h2odragon 4y ago

Judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, or whatever other affinity group one can assign them to. Simple idea. People are individuals, not instances of stereotypes. It's been said before but it obviously needs repeating. We're gonna hafta embrace the "subversive" label that preaching MLK's message will earn us.

nobodyandproud 4y ago
It’s easy in theory but difficult in practice not to be biased; like, I get why quotas happen. It’s also wrong and undercuts someone’s actual talent and achievements.

quelltext 4y ago

Pretty common I think. Not only hiring. A coworker was blocked from organizing some technical community event because among the 5 speakers who applied to present only one was "x". I get the sentiment behind such quotas but it's not always realistic. I think a fair way to look at it is, if the environment is such that "x" are discouraged from participation then it needs fixing. But it should be easy for the diversity team to go identify such an issue and tell the organizers to fix that rather than saying "meet quota or no event". For hiring, it's fine to look at numbers and identify a skew pattern and to look into why it may exist and how to counter, but just asking for percentage alone is not helpful.

wizofaus 4y ago
Indeed, I was just reading about a local software shop that managed to increase its rate of hiring female engineers to over 40% without any quota system. One of the simple tricks they use is to ensure there's always a woman involved in the job advertising/interviewing/hiring process. Note that most companies are lucky if they can reach 20% for female engineer hires (and certainly from experience, it's rare to get even 25% of applicants be female, which is at least partly an issue of implicit biases in the education system).
- nobodyandproud 4y ago
  That’s an insightful idea. There’s no question of unconscious and unintentional bias that goes on, even with the best of intentions. Forcing a quota system cannot be the right answer, however.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Arguably that is a quota system for the selection of those involved that make up the hiring team.

seer-zig 4y ago