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From a company perspective the reason is you may well be missing out on great talent and the great teams that research shows come with greater diversity. I don
by Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
From a company perspective the reason is you may well be missing out on great talent and the great teams that research shows come with greater diversity.
I don't necessarily agree with affirmative action, but if you believe that many of the factors which contribute towards easily measured ability (attending a good school, work experience) may be skewed, then you presumably also accept that there is untapped potential out there - people with the ability to be as great but who have been in some way - fairly or otherwise - disadvantaged.
In IT in particular, where everything changes rapidly, you want to be hiring for potential as much as skill the candidate has today.
I don't think it's about picking someone because they're part of a minority, it's about thinking about how you look for and judge candidates to take into account that potential which so far hasn't been tapped.
- orbifold 12y agoI agree that there is a lot of potential lost due to unequal opportunities (for example children with poor parents, versus children with rich parents) and peer pressure / gender stereotypes. I've studied physics and the 5% of female students consistently were well above average for example, which suggests that only a portion of the extremely talented females even considered studying physics. I am not sure if an individual company can really do anything about the factors contributing to those inequal oportunities. I feel for many skills they come to late, the education system is really the place that should work to reduce the amount of wasted potential.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y agoI'm not suggesting that companies change the system, more that they look at the criteria they use for recruitment to see if there are ways they can better judge underlying potential that what grad school people went to.