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"Big tech" internships are almost always paid, so the good news here is that they're well ahead of you. With that said, the answer of hire lower-income candida

by Kalium 4y ago

"Big tech" internships are almost always paid, so the good news here is that they're well ahead of you. With that said, the answer of hire lower-income candidates isn't particularly actionable if I'm a manager bringing on interns. What am I supposed to do, ask them if they're income-challenged and hire them if they say yes? The story is tragic, painful, and heartbreaking to read. My heart and empathy go out to these struggling and ambitious people. Yet none of those make this an easy problem to solve.

kerkeslager 4y ago
> With that said, the answer of hire lower-income candidates isn't particularly actionable if I'm a manager bringing on interns. What am I supposed to do, ask them if they're income-challenged and hire them if they say yes? Yes. Obviously that's not the only question you ask them: you still want to hire someone with the ability to perform the job. > Yet none of those make this an easy problem to solve. Big tech is well known for only being interested in solving easy problems, which are the only problems worth solving. /s
- Kalium 4y ago
  If you find a way to set that up that doesn't run flagrantly afoul of anti-discrimination laws, I think a lot of people would be very interested.
  - kerkeslager 4y ago
    I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what laws might apply here. Can you explain what you're talking about? As far as I can tell, high-income people aren't a protected class anywhere in the US. There are many state laws preventing you from asking salary histories[1], but that's not everywhere, and where such laws exist, companies are already using loopholes to discriminate against low-income candidates. Many of these laws only say that you aren't allowed to use income history to determine pay: you're welcome to filter candidates by income history if your pay is stated up front. Even under the most strict conditions, you could specify that certain positions are intended as an aid program for lower-income applicants (as defined by an income range) and it would take a special kind of douchebag to apply for such a position if they weren't low-income, even without you verifying their income. This strikes me as possibly the best solution anyway, because sometimes income doesn't tell the whole story: someone with prior high income might have massive medical debt, for example which decreases their effective income. [1] https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/states-with-salary-history-bans/ https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/states-with-...
    - Kalium 4y ago
      Given the tight association between income and race, I think it would almost inevitably look exactly like a clear racial preference of the sort that's illegal under common anti-discrimination language. This is the kind of thing that lands companies in court. Even if they win, it's a huge blow to PR and expensive. Obviously you are allowed to look at income history in some manner, but a lot of the people concerned here won't have any significant income history. So what you're really doing is filtering by the economic status of a student's family. That's inevitably going to be fraught. > you could specify that certain positions are intended as an aid program for lower-income applicants (as defined by an income range) and it would take a special kind of douchebag to apply for such a position if they weren't low-income, even without you verifying their income If you're looking at telling what feels like a little white lie to get a big boost to the next five to seven decades of your life, how easy is it going to be for you to pass on the chance? You personally are clearly willing to take the hit for the greater cause of justice, but I do not have faith that millions of people each year who know they are competing for a limited number of opportunities will share the strength of your conviction. Ultimately, I think we're in a tough spot. At scale, there are enough people suffering that it's easy to find and tell stories about how bad it is for them. Yet solving these major hardships experienced by real people is far harder than tugging on heartstrings.
      - kerkeslager 4y ago
        > Given the tight association between income and race, I think it would almost inevitably look exactly like a clear racial preference of the sort that's illegal under common anti-discrimination language. This is the kind of thing that lands companies in court. Even if they win, it's a huge blow to PR and expensive. Given the number of companies that blatantly use income to discriminate against underprivileged races and suffer zero consequences, I think your concern here is unfounded. > If you're looking at telling what feels like a little white lie to get a big boost to the next five to seven decades of your life, how easy is it going to be for you to pass on the chance? You personally are clearly willing to take the hit for the greater cause of justice, but I do not have faith that millions of people each year who know they are competing for a limited number of opportunities will share the strength of your conviction. That's not a "little white lie", and having a moral compass that you're willing to follow over money isn't some sort of abnormal thing. Your opinion fits with a general anti-pattern in aid programs where people spend more money trying to verify eligibility for aid than they would spend letting a few outliers game the system, meanwhile excluding people who are legitimately eligible because the verification process presents barriers. While I'm not willing to accuse you of either of these things, I will say that this view often comes from people who assume everyone is as amoral as they are, or who are actively trying to undermine the aid programs so they can defund them. Ultimately your opinion makes no sense. You're worried that some of the candidates might lie and you'd hire high-income candidates when you meant to hire low-income candidates. So you just throw up your hands, and say nothing can be done, and then hire high-income candidates because that's what happens when you make no effort to do otherwise. You literally don't even have to spend more money to try to hire lower-income candidates. It begins to sound like you're just not interested in solving the problem. > Ultimately, I think we're in a tough spot. At scale, there are enough people suffering that it's easy to find and tell stories about how bad it is for them. Yet solving these major hardships experienced by real people is far harder than tugging on heartstrings. I'm not tugging on heartstrings. Nowhere have I mentioned any of the hardships which low-income people experience. I'm literally proposing solutions which you're shooting down with incredulity and this straw man argument. If there's money to be made, Hacker News is all about solving hard problems. But suddenly when it involves taking some responsibility for a social problem, it's hard and that's it!

by Kalium 4y ago

kerkeslager 4y ago

> With that said, the answer of hire lower-income candidates isn't particularly actionable if I'm a manager bringing on interns. What am I supposed to do, ask them if they're income-challenged and hire them if they say yes? Yes. Obviously that's not the only question you ask them: you still want to hire someone with the ability to perform the job. > Yet none of those make this an easy problem to solve. Big tech is well known for only being interested in solving easy problems, which are the only problems worth solving. /s

Kalium 4y ago
If you find a way to set that up that doesn't run flagrantly afoul of anti-discrimination laws, I think a lot of people would be very interested.
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what laws might apply here. Can you explain what you're talking about? As far as I can tell, high-income people aren't a protected class anywhere in the US. There are many state laws preventing you from asking salary histories[1], but that's not everywhere, and where such laws exist, companies are already using loopholes to discriminate against low-income candidates. Many of these laws only say that you aren't allowed to use income history to determine pay: you're welcome to filter candidates by income history if your pay is stated up front. Even under the most strict conditions, you could specify that certain positions are intended as an aid program for lower-income applicants (as defined by an income range) and it would take a special kind of douchebag to apply for such a position if they weren't low-income, even without you verifying their income. This strikes me as possibly the best solution anyway, because sometimes income doesn't tell the whole story: someone with prior high income might have massive medical debt, for example which decreases their effective income. [1] https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/states-with-salary-history-bans/ https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/states-with-...
  - Kalium 4y ago
    Given the tight association between income and race, I think it would almost inevitably look exactly like a clear racial preference of the sort that's illegal under common anti-discrimination language. This is the kind of thing that lands companies in court. Even if they win, it's a huge blow to PR and expensive. Obviously you are allowed to look at income history in some manner, but a lot of the people concerned here won't have any significant income history. So what you're really doing is filtering by the economic status of a student's family. That's inevitably going to be fraught. > you could specify that certain positions are intended as an aid program for lower-income applicants (as defined by an income range) and it would take a special kind of douchebag to apply for such a position if they weren't low-income, even without you verifying their income If you're looking at telling what feels like a little white lie to get a big boost to the next five to seven decades of your life, how easy is it going to be for you to pass on the chance? You personally are clearly willing to take the hit for the greater cause of justice, but I do not have faith that millions of people each year who know they are competing for a limited number of opportunities will share the strength of your conviction. Ultimately, I think we're in a tough spot. At scale, there are enough people suffering that it's easy to find and tell stories about how bad it is for them. Yet solving these major hardships experienced by real people is far harder than tugging on heartstrings.
    - kerkeslager 4y ago
      > Given the tight association between income and race, I think it would almost inevitably look exactly like a clear racial preference of the sort that's illegal under common anti-discrimination language. This is the kind of thing that lands companies in court. Even if they win, it's a huge blow to PR and expensive. Given the number of companies that blatantly use income to discriminate against underprivileged races and suffer zero consequences, I think your concern here is unfounded. > If you're looking at telling what feels like a little white lie to get a big boost to the next five to seven decades of your life, how easy is it going to be for you to pass on the chance? You personally are clearly willing to take the hit for the greater cause of justice, but I do not have faith that millions of people each year who know they are competing for a limited number of opportunities will share the strength of your conviction. That's not a "little white lie", and having a moral compass that you're willing to follow over money isn't some sort of abnormal thing. Your opinion fits with a general anti-pattern in aid programs where people spend more money trying to verify eligibility for aid than they would spend letting a few outliers game the system, meanwhile excluding people who are legitimately eligible because the verification process presents barriers. While I'm not willing to accuse you of either of these things, I will say that this view often comes from people who assume everyone is as amoral as they are, or who are actively trying to undermine the aid programs so they can defund them. Ultimately your opinion makes no sense. You're worried that some of the candidates might lie and you'd hire high-income candidates when you meant to hire low-income candidates. So you just throw up your hands, and say nothing can be done, and then hire high-income candidates because that's what happens when you make no effort to do otherwise. You literally don't even have to spend more money to try to hire lower-income candidates. It begins to sound like you're just not interested in solving the problem. > Ultimately, I think we're in a tough spot. At scale, there are enough people suffering that it's easy to find and tell stories about how bad it is for them. Yet solving these major hardships experienced by real people is far harder than tugging on heartstrings. I'm not tugging on heartstrings. Nowhere have I mentioned any of the hardships which low-income people experience. I'm literally proposing solutions which you're shooting down with incredulity and this straw man argument. If there's money to be made, Hacker News is all about solving hard problems. But suddenly when it involves taking some responsibility for a social problem, it's hard and that's it!