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Google used to do this - they worked very hard to remove all gender signals, and as a result, pay discrimination against women got worse. So now they no longer

Google used to do this - they worked very hard to remove all gender signals, and as a result, pay discrimination against women got worse. So now they no longer try to hide gender.

bhelkey 3y ago
Could you provide a source for this?
tester756 3y ago
What was reasoning behind it getting worse?
- calderwoodra 3y ago
  I'm not sure - it was just a well known internal experiment that didn't have the intended result.
- GreedClarifies 3y ago
  Seriously?
- xienze 3y ago
  Not sure if the poster is talking about Google’s hiring practices in this case, but similar things have been tried during hiring elsewhere and quietly abandoned for approximately the same reason, because it didn’t result in more female hires. The reason is because the typical resume pipeline for an engineering position is roughly 90/10 male/female. If you take away anything indicating gender during the hiring process, in general you will end up with... a 90/10 mix. Which is decidedly worse than what these progressive companies are hoping for. The only real way to gain a more favorable ratio is to, well, introduce bias towards females in the hiring process (to overcome the pipeline factor). It’s why these blind hiring/review practices always fail — they don’t give the expected results.
  - VirusNewbie 3y ago
    > you take away anything indicating gender during the hiring process, in general you will end up with... a 90/10 mix What? That makes no sense. When I put up a job listing and I get 90% resumes of people who are under qualified, and 10% that are qualified, that doesn't skew my hire rate of under qualified people.
    - xienze 3y ago
      But you’re talking about something completely different. You can judge bad/good resumes in the absence of information about the applicant’s gender. If your goal is (for example) to achieve a 65/35 male/female hiring ratio and your pool of resumes is 90/10 male/female, you will find it very difficult to do so in a completely blind manner, because you _don’t_ have any distinguishing information with which to pare down the pool in a positive manner anymore. For example: 500 total resumes for one position. 90% are unqualified => 50 good ones. Assuming equal representation here, 45 of those resumes will be from men, 5 will be from women. You narrow it down to say 25 resumes for initial online screens (no voice chat so you can keep things gender-neutral!). Call it 22/3 male/female at this point. Second round, online again (there’s even been companies that have done voice changing during interviews so they can have real conversations!). Half get cut. Let’s call it 11/2 male/female now. How likely do you think it is that a man will get the position versus a woman? How likely do you think you’ll be to achieve a “good” gender balance in hiring over time using this strategy?

Google used to do this - they worked very hard to remove all gender signals, and as a result, pay discrimination against women got worse. So now they no longer try to hide gender.

bhelkey 3y ago

Could you provide a source for this?

tester756 3y ago

What was reasoning behind it getting worse?

calderwoodra 3y ago
I'm not sure - it was just a well known internal experiment that didn't have the intended result.
GreedClarifies 3y ago
Seriously?
xienze 3y ago
Not sure if the poster is talking about Google’s hiring practices in this case, but similar things have been tried during hiring elsewhere and quietly abandoned for approximately the same reason, because it didn’t result in more female hires. The reason is because the typical resume pipeline for an engineering position is roughly 90/10 male/female. If you take away anything indicating gender during the hiring process, in general you will end up with... a 90/10 mix. Which is decidedly worse than what these progressive companies are hoping for. The only real way to gain a more favorable ratio is to, well, introduce bias towards females in the hiring process (to overcome the pipeline factor). It’s why these blind hiring/review practices always fail — they don’t give the expected results.
- VirusNewbie 3y ago
  > you take away anything indicating gender during the hiring process, in general you will end up with... a 90/10 mix What? That makes no sense. When I put up a job listing and I get 90% resumes of people who are under qualified, and 10% that are qualified, that doesn't skew my hire rate of under qualified people.
  - xienze 3y ago
    But you’re talking about something completely different. You can judge bad/good resumes in the absence of information about the applicant’s gender. If your goal is (for example) to achieve a 65/35 male/female hiring ratio and your pool of resumes is 90/10 male/female, you will find it very difficult to do so in a completely blind manner, because you _don’t_ have any distinguishing information with which to pare down the pool in a positive manner anymore. For example: 500 total resumes for one position. 90% are unqualified => 50 good ones. Assuming equal representation here, 45 of those resumes will be from men, 5 will be from women. You narrow it down to say 25 resumes for initial online screens (no voice chat so you can keep things gender-neutral!). Call it 22/3 male/female at this point. Second round, online again (there’s even been companies that have done voice changing during interviews so they can have real conversations!). Half get cut. Let’s call it 11/2 male/female now. How likely do you think it is that a man will get the position versus a woman? How likely do you think you’ll be to achieve a “good” gender balance in hiring over time using this strategy?