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> Olohan said he began feeling increasing pressure from his supervisor, who told him that there were “obviously too many white guys” on his management team. In

> Olohan said he began feeling increasing pressure from his supervisor, who told him that there were “obviously too many white guys” on his management team. In July he was encouraged to fire a male employee to make room on his team for a woman, the suit claims. This is the most crazy section. Why physical characteristics like gender or ethnicity should be important in the management selection? And if yes, why only those two characteristics and not considering others like body weight or baldness?

jacooper 4y ago
Sorry mate, there is no place for rationality in US diversity politics.
- flanked-evergl 4y ago
  > US diversity politics This is in no way restricted to US.
  - alejoar 4y ago
    I agree. However, as a person living in Europe and working for american companies, I can attest gender and race are huge factors when it comes to incentives for hiring, promotion, etc. when compared to companies in my country, which do show some of the same characteristics but not with the same weight. I understand the reasoning and benefits of positive discrimination but I have also seen rationality being relegated to the point plain bad decisions have been taken in the name of diversity.
    - lormayna 4y ago
      My previous job was an US F500 in Europe. We had an open position for a mid-senior role and HR pushed us very much to hire an African girl that was still not graduated and she neither have experience in the domain that we are working (we are looking for someone with experience in cybersecurity and she was completing her master degree with a focus on UI/UX).
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Eh, it largely is? I remember the pre-crisis world, were the policies were projected as universal - basically the assumption was that us culture would infiltrate all things, and thus all places would have us culture and discussions. In russia and china, some values were shared, but by now means all values were shared. Europe may come close to having the same cultural discussions, but 10 years delayed compared to the empire core. Other regions engage in mimicry and may be doing there own thing entirely otherwise. Means, you got a small layer of "international community" among the elites, but the rest of the population, is of other opinions but also never asked.
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    I think GP was saying that it comes from the US, not that it only occurs in the US.
tasuki 4y ago
Their goal is diversity. I think diversity might have been shown to lead to better team outcomes. To me the craziest part is: > Olohan was told that he had shown favouritism towards high-performing employees
- friendzis 4y ago
  As much as I personally have read on this it's not blanket "diversity", or even "diversity of opinions", but rather quite strictly "diversity of viewpoints/perspectives". You know, like for example when we design urban environments we consider residents, pedestrians, cyclists, disabled and what not.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Their goal is diversity. I think diversity might have been shown to lead to better team outcomes. I don't think that's actually been "shown," it's more of an axiom that's assumed to be true without proof. IIRC, the idea that "[sex/race] diversity leads to better team outcomes" may even just be an idea meant to mainly lend legal cover to diversity efforts (e.g. university affirmative action race-based admissions) that would otherwise be illegal.
_8j50 4y ago
Not that I agree and it is more nuanced than this but the argument used to justify such discrimination is compensating for historical exclusivity. Enforce the diversity and let merit catchup someday basically. I think given modern technology, companies can and should be extremely regulated and monitored on their hiring and firing decisions. At-will should be federally banned. If they define objective, auditable and specific merit based criteria, they should send that information along with every applicant and every decision to look at a resume, interview, call and hire/reject to the EEOC which can look for patterns and investigate on its own to validate the reasons being given in those decisions. I think with that, there could be a path to meritocratic hiring/firing. But make no mistake, discrimination based on gender, race,etc... is rampant. I am even all for expanding that to cover any arbitrary criteria. If I decide to wear a clown costume to work, the work has to justify why the clown costume materially prevents me from performing profitably.
polyamid23 4y ago
Because we as society decided so.
vidarh 4y ago
> Why physical characteristics like gender or ethnicity should be important in the management selection? To be clear, the below is not taking into account the allegations in the article, but just seeks to explain the thinking without judgement (as I'm frankly not sure which side I fall down on). There's a school of thought that some degree of weighting helps to redress systemic issues by changing incentives, justified on the basis that there should be an equally capable pool of candidates in the underrepresented demographics. The thinking then goes that e.g. if promotions at certain levels are biased, the argument for allowing that bias to continue is often that the pool to promote from leaves too few capable candidates of the underrepresented groups. The problem with that, is that if (to take extreme numbers for simplicity) 100% of people being promoted from VP to SVP in a company are white men, then a lot of women and non-white people will either self-select out or not get promoted at lower level because it's a strong signal they're not valued and have no future there. That in itself can make it a goal to diversify companies at higher levels irrespective of the current talent available for promotion at the level below. As a concrete example, in 2006 Norway added a legal requirement for at least 40% of either gender at board level of a public limited company (ASA; usually listed companies as only ASA's can be listed, though they don't have to be) and in some other situations (e.g. companies with significant government ownership), and during the debates over this change, this was part of the arguments: If there weren't enough qualified candidates, that was itself considered evidence of a systemic bias that making the change was hoped to help address. Both by giving women an incentive to stay on track towards board seats and give companies an incentive to address other biases to ensure there was a capable pool. Over time, it was also hoped that getting women onto boards would further strengthen the pressure from boards on companies to address the, as well as further develop a pool of women with growing board experience. It was explicitly acknowledged by many proponents that there was a chance that it'd be hard to find suitable candidates initially, but that was seen as a sufficiently temporary problem to be addressed by companies through training and mentoring, not a justification for not changing the incentives.
- j-bos 4y ago
  Thanks, this is a great explanation. And combined with OP's last question, raises for me the question, why not incentivize other marginalized classes, like people who are highly unattractive? Note this a question of curiosity in reasoning, not one of judgement. *Do we say OP for the top level comment?
mantas 4y ago
Socially accepted in some circles „positive“ discrimination.
fidgewidge 4y ago
Not that crazy. Such allegations against Google are common. There was a recruiter there a few years ago who accused them of tasking recruiters to not hire men.

jacooper 4y ago

Sorry mate, there is no place for rationality in US diversity politics.

flanked-evergl 4y ago
> US diversity politics This is in no way restricted to US.
- alejoar 4y ago
  I agree. However, as a person living in Europe and working for american companies, I can attest gender and race are huge factors when it comes to incentives for hiring, promotion, etc. when compared to companies in my country, which do show some of the same characteristics but not with the same weight. I understand the reasoning and benefits of positive discrimination but I have also seen rationality being relegated to the point plain bad decisions have been taken in the name of diversity.
  - lormayna 4y ago
    My previous job was an US F500 in Europe. We had an open position for a mid-senior role and HR pushed us very much to hire an African girl that was still not graduated and she neither have experience in the domain that we are working (we are looking for someone with experience in cybersecurity and she was completing her master degree with a focus on UI/UX).
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Eh, it largely is? I remember the pre-crisis world, were the policies were projected as universal - basically the assumption was that us culture would infiltrate all things, and thus all places would have us culture and discussions. In russia and china, some values were shared, but by now means all values were shared. Europe may come close to having the same cultural discussions, but 10 years delayed compared to the empire core. Other regions engage in mimicry and may be doing there own thing entirely otherwise. Means, you got a small layer of "international community" among the elites, but the rest of the population, is of other opinions but also never asked.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  I think GP was saying that it comes from the US, not that it only occurs in the US.

tasuki 4y ago

Their goal is diversity. I think diversity might have been shown to lead to better team outcomes. To me the craziest part is: > Olohan was told that he had shown favouritism towards high-performing employees

friendzis 4y ago
As much as I personally have read on this it's not blanket "diversity", or even "diversity of opinions", but rather quite strictly "diversity of viewpoints/perspectives". You know, like for example when we design urban environments we consider residents, pedestrians, cyclists, disabled and what not.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Their goal is diversity. I think diversity might have been shown to lead to better team outcomes. I don't think that's actually been "shown," it's more of an axiom that's assumed to be true without proof. IIRC, the idea that "[sex/race] diversity leads to better team outcomes" may even just be an idea meant to mainly lend legal cover to diversity efforts (e.g. university affirmative action race-based admissions) that would otherwise be illegal.

_8j50 4y ago

Not that I agree and it is more nuanced than this but the argument used to justify such discrimination is compensating for historical exclusivity. Enforce the diversity and let merit catchup someday basically. I think given modern technology, companies can and should be extremely regulated and monitored on their hiring and firing decisions. At-will should be federally banned. If they define objective, auditable and specific merit based criteria, they should send that information along with every applicant and every decision to look at a resume, interview, call and hire/reject to the EEOC which can look for patterns and investigate on its own to validate the reasons being given in those decisions. I think with that, there could be a path to meritocratic hiring/firing. But make no mistake, discrimination based on gender, race,etc... is rampant. I am even all for expanding that to cover any arbitrary criteria. If I decide to wear a clown costume to work, the work has to justify why the clown costume materially prevents me from performing profitably.

polyamid23 4y ago

Because we as society decided so.

vidarh 4y ago

> Why physical characteristics like gender or ethnicity should be important in the management selection? To be clear, the below is not taking into account the allegations in the article, but just seeks to explain the thinking without judgement (as I'm frankly not sure which side I fall down on). There's a school of thought that some degree of weighting helps to redress systemic issues by changing incentives, justified on the basis that there should be an equally capable pool of candidates in the underrepresented demographics. The thinking then goes that e.g. if promotions at certain levels are biased, the argument for allowing that bias to continue is often that the pool to promote from leaves too few capable candidates of the underrepresented groups. The problem with that, is that if (to take extreme numbers for simplicity) 100% of people being promoted from VP to SVP in a company are white men, then a lot of women and non-white people will either self-select out or not get promoted at lower level because it's a strong signal they're not valued and have no future there. That in itself can make it a goal to diversify companies at higher levels irrespective of the current talent available for promotion at the level below. As a concrete example, in 2006 Norway added a legal requirement for at least 40% of either gender at board level of a public limited company (ASA; usually listed companies as only ASA's can be listed, though they don't have to be) and in some other situations (e.g. companies with significant government ownership), and during the debates over this change, this was part of the arguments: If there weren't enough qualified candidates, that was itself considered evidence of a systemic bias that making the change was hoped to help address. Both by giving women an incentive to stay on track towards board seats and give companies an incentive to address other biases to ensure there was a capable pool. Over time, it was also hoped that getting women onto boards would further strengthen the pressure from boards on companies to address the, as well as further develop a pool of women with growing board experience. It was explicitly acknowledged by many proponents that there was a chance that it'd be hard to find suitable candidates initially, but that was seen as a sufficiently temporary problem to be addressed by companies through training and mentoring, not a justification for not changing the incentives.

j-bos 4y ago
Thanks, this is a great explanation. And combined with OP's last question, raises for me the question, why not incentivize other marginalized classes, like people who are highly unattractive? Note this a question of curiosity in reasoning, not one of judgement. *Do we say OP for the top level comment?

mantas 4y ago

Socially accepted in some circles „positive“ discrimination.

fidgewidge 4y ago

Not that crazy. Such allegations against Google are common. There was a recruiter there a few years ago who accused them of tasking recruiters to not hire men.