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> It's not clear to me that it is either good or bad for business. Why is this stated as a matter of fact. And please spare me links to studies funded by specia

> It's not clear to me that it is either good or bad for business. Why is this stated as a matter of fact. And please spare me links to studies funded by special interest groups. Not the poster and going to try to read the last sentence with positive intent. You can find the benefits in most industries where you are providing a product to be used by the general public. The design of products come from the vantage of who is designing them. Historically this has been products designed by men and made for men. From male crash test dummies, to PPE, and even medical treatments. The designers were not looking to exclude women in these cases, everyone simply has blind spots or things that they don't consider, leading to worse/less safe products. Going back to tech. How many demographic text boxes are designed by people who are not accustomed to long surnames? Security/Admin controls by someone who has never been in an abusive relationship? UX that is unusable by anyone with a disability, or simply not accustomed to technology. If you don't care about these groups using your product effectively, then it's likely fine for business. Heck, many companies don't see a problem and conclude that their customers are "wrong" or "dumb" when features are left unused or bugs are reported. > Define "different backgrounds". Why is only reduced to the color of someone's skin or sex? Why not people who grow up as Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, etc? Or those who grew up as a single child? Or played team sports? Don't all these things play a role in shaping who someone is? Everyone is different but I statistically have more in common with a white male 21-35 than any other group (even if he played team sports). Could a particular person be a deeply different 25 year old white man born in Thailand, deeply poor, and raised Jewish? I suppose, but we're all doing heuristics out there. So we use the heuristics that are both good proxies to determine "diversity of thoughts and experiences" and are easy to know. We all know that a leetcode question, or a system design interview, or a take home project isn't a perfect show of someone's technical skills, why should heuristics around diversity be any different? > Some people just like to worth with really intelligent, hard working people and don't care anything else about the person. And some people want to work with people like themselves. I probably fall into the former, but who am I to dictate what model creates the most success for a business (assuming that's the goal) It's easy to say that in the abstract, hard to actually live that. You ask most people on the street and few will say they judge people beyond their character/actions/intelligence/whatever. But we know that isn't true, people aren't that logical and detached. It also ignores what intelligent/hardworking means to each of us. Let's even ignore gender/race. I know many engineers that view front end code as "beneath them" and "not real software engineering". Are they really going to view me as a hardworking, intelligent engineer if that's what I'm doing? Heck, am I a hard working, intelligent engineer if I focus some of my time on DEI initiatives? What if I can't invert a B-tree? What if I still got hired, what would you think of me?

pdimitar 3y ago
> So we use the heuristics that are both good proxies to determine "diversity of thoughts and experiences" and are easy to know. Who is "we"? I personally define "different background" very similarly to your parent poster, and anecdotally 90% of all people I chatted on the topic (several dozen) do so as well. So don't act like you represent some bigger group. I'd like to see exhaustive and irrefutable numerical proof if you choose to double down on this flawed assertion. So if "we" can't be bothered to use very common-sensical criteria on what actually being "diverse" means then the DEI initiatives will keep being hijacked by opportunistic individuals (as it currently seems to be the case). So let's stop normalizing a thought process that shouldn't even be called that. Would be a good start. > It's easy to say that in the abstract, hard to actually live that. It's extremely easy in tech in fact. After being an interviewer and an interviewee for 22 years, I have seen this shake out dozens of times: a round of interviews establishes with 80-90% certainty that (a) the candidate is capable and (b) matches the company's culture. Not sure why you and others are constantly trying to shift goal posts to other areas when the original article clearly qualifies its statement with the word "tech".
- narutosasuke 3y ago
  > Who is "we"? I'm confused why this was focused on so much. I guess "people that use DEI for hiring". Or when I was speaking of heuristics generally that could be "hiring managers in general". > So if "we" can't be bothered to use very common-sensical criteria on what actually being "diverse" means then the DEI initiatives will keep being hijacked by opportunistic individuals (as it currently seems to be the case). It's not controversial to say that women have largely different life experience/background than men. It's not controversial to say those of different races/cultures have largely different life experiences/background than a young white suburban software engineer (which has historically been the majority of the industry). There are an infinite number of factors that go into a person and there will always be something missed with whatever way we slice it. "common-sensical" criteria in that world will end up as a wishy washy "we hire those with diverse opinions and backgrounds". But really that means I'm just going to hire the person I get along with best that answers the questions I happen to have, biases included. Does it feel good that I am not focused on in DEI as a young white man? No, it sucks to be reduced to something I can't change. But I'm not arrogant enough to pretend that I'm not commonly represented at all levels of tech. > I'd like to see exhaustive and irrefutable numerical proof if you choose to double down on this flawed assertion. Asking for an "irrefutable numerical proof" isn't an invitation for debate or speaking from curiosity. It can be lobbed at literally any position one takes. > It's extremely easy in tech in fact. After being an interviewer and an interviewee for 22 years, I have seen this shake out dozens of times: a round of interviews establishes with 80-90% certainty that (a) the candidate is capable and (b) matches the company's culture. You're blowing by that I was responding to "Some people just like to worth with really intelligent, hard working people and don't care anything else about the person" If we're talking about company culture now, then we're talking about something different. > Not sure why you and others are constantly trying to shift goal posts to other areas when the original article clearly qualifies its statement with the word "tech". The comment I was responding to spoke generally so I spoke generally. I applied it to both tech and nontech with examples though.

pdimitar 3y ago

> So we use the heuristics that are both good proxies to determine "diversity of thoughts and experiences" and are easy to know. Who is "we"? I personally define "different background" very similarly to your parent poster, and anecdotally 90% of all people I chatted on the topic (several dozen) do so as well. So don't act like you represent some bigger group. I'd like to see exhaustive and irrefutable numerical proof if you choose to double down on this flawed assertion. So if "we" can't be bothered to use very common-sensical criteria on what actually being "diverse" means then the DEI initiatives will keep being hijacked by opportunistic individuals (as it currently seems to be the case). So let's stop normalizing a thought process that shouldn't even be called that. Would be a good start. > It's easy to say that in the abstract, hard to actually live that. It's extremely easy in tech in fact. After being an interviewer and an interviewee for 22 years, I have seen this shake out dozens of times: a round of interviews establishes with 80-90% certainty that (a) the candidate is capable and (b) matches the company's culture. Not sure why you and others are constantly trying to shift goal posts to other areas when the original article clearly qualifies its statement with the word "tech".

narutosasuke 3y ago
> Who is "we"? I'm confused why this was focused on so much. I guess "people that use DEI for hiring". Or when I was speaking of heuristics generally that could be "hiring managers in general". > So if "we" can't be bothered to use very common-sensical criteria on what actually being "diverse" means then the DEI initiatives will keep being hijacked by opportunistic individuals (as it currently seems to be the case). It's not controversial to say that women have largely different life experience/background than men. It's not controversial to say those of different races/cultures have largely different life experiences/background than a young white suburban software engineer (which has historically been the majority of the industry). There are an infinite number of factors that go into a person and there will always be something missed with whatever way we slice it. "common-sensical" criteria in that world will end up as a wishy washy "we hire those with diverse opinions and backgrounds". But really that means I'm just going to hire the person I get along with best that answers the questions I happen to have, biases included. Does it feel good that I am not focused on in DEI as a young white man? No, it sucks to be reduced to something I can't change. But I'm not arrogant enough to pretend that I'm not commonly represented at all levels of tech. > I'd like to see exhaustive and irrefutable numerical proof if you choose to double down on this flawed assertion. Asking for an "irrefutable numerical proof" isn't an invitation for debate or speaking from curiosity. It can be lobbed at literally any position one takes. > It's extremely easy in tech in fact. After being an interviewer and an interviewee for 22 years, I have seen this shake out dozens of times: a round of interviews establishes with 80-90% certainty that (a) the candidate is capable and (b) matches the company's culture. You're blowing by that I was responding to "Some people just like to worth with really intelligent, hard working people and don't care anything else about the person" If we're talking about company culture now, then we're talking about something different. > Not sure why you and others are constantly trying to shift goal posts to other areas when the original article clearly qualifies its statement with the word "tech". The comment I was responding to spoke generally so I spoke generally. I applied it to both tech and nontech with examples though.