6 ms·

The author makes some good points about hiring and working, but what's with this fixation on diversity? If you're a small start up (i.e. 5 or 10 people in his w

by ffn 11y ago

The author makes some good points about hiring and working, but what's with this fixation on diversity? If you're a small start up (i.e. 5 or 10 people in his words), your goal should be to build a product and get it to market. And if you happen to be a 30s something white male workaholic who knows a few other 30s something white male workaholics who will work with you to get it out, why shouldn't you just throw diversity out the window and work with what you have to get a project to completion.

Retric 11y ago
Diversity is very useful because companies pivot and having a diverse* team allows you to better consider more options. Note: By diversity I don't mean a team of 30 year old workaholic that graduated from Stanford and then worked at Google/MS for a few years that happen to have different skin colors. I mean a diversity of experience, fresh college student, a 60 year old near retiree, and someone that just spent six months backpacking in South America etc. It might seem like having a bind person on your team will slow you down, but plenty of dumb products get created because everyone has the same exact background and can't see just how tiny the market is. PS: The world has ~7 billion people and most of them are not like you.
- entee 11y ago
  No diversity = blind spots. How many startups aren't serving needs because they're simply not the needs of those founding the company? And how many are missing the bigger picture on the product because they don't have someone on staff who sees things differently? Taking a slightly roundabout example: AFAIK Pinterest was founded by men and the core team is the standard valley profile, however it has primarily a female userbase. In that case the user demographic doesn't match the initial team's demographic. However, one has to wonder whether Pinterest would have happened sooner if there were more women in the startup community, and whether there are other similar opportunities that address a huge need for a demographic not usually represented in the valley. Another example: pigeonly. A really cool company, an idea that springs forth from a different experience in the world.
- golemotron 11y ago
  Nice theory, but optimizing for the pivot over the running state is not a great strategy. Even if it was you do not need the kind of diversity you mention on the team as much as in their network. The benefit of having a particular life experience and point of view is not something you need 24/7. You need it, if at all, at decision points.
  - scarmig 11y ago
    The obvious rejoinder is that those decision points make the difference between a failed startup and a multi-billion dollar company. As empiricists, though, it's worth asking if there are any real examples of companies exploiting hidden market opportunities thanks to a diversity of viewpoints. A lack of examples wouldn't be quite damning--maybe there's just not enough diversity at all to rise above the noise level--but it'd be a useful test of how valuable diversity actually can be. This all stands apart from moral and ideological reasons to try to foster diversity, which are in my view more compelling but are understandably less effective when it comes to influencing decision makers.
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- wyager 11y ago
  How are the people you've described actually going to help a company that is pivoting? You've just claimed that they will without explaining why you think so.
kelukelugames 11y ago
As an ethnic person who evaluates a company's demographics before joining, I want to say diversity is unnecessary for being financially successful. Working with people who are different can even be difficult. But at the end of the day, what is the founder trying to achieve? His or her personal and broader definition of success might include being inclusive. Anecdote: working in a homogenous environment can suck for minorities. Maybe starting out diverse makes it easy to stay that way?
- rifung 11y ago
  I imagine the founder is trying to make a successful company. Being that diversity is correlated with financial performance, it makes sense to try to have a diverse team. On the other hand, you're right in that you can't just throw different people in a room and let them work things out.
  - golemotron 11y ago
    > Being that diversity is correlated with financial performance. Can you back that up?
    - rifung 11y ago
      Sure. I imagine Google will easily give you more results but here's one: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/is_there_a_payoff_from_top-team_diversity http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/is_there_a_pay... As has been said many times before, correlation is not causation though, and other studies have shown that the more females you have, the better a team performs so maybe we dont need diversity and just need more women. I do remember reading other articles about the benefits of racial diversity as well but I'm sure you won't have trouble finding them.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
j_baker 11y ago
Perhaps because building a diverse workforce that gives everyone opportunities regardless of culture/ethnicity/sex/gender/sexuality is the right thing to do? I mean, having a culture of shipping is great and all, but it shouldn't trump ethical and moral concerns.
- wyager 11y ago
  "It's ok if our company fails in an entirely preventable way as long as we failed while meeting some arbitrary standard of not hiring people according to the actual demographics of our hiring base."
  - j_baker 11y ago
    "It's ok to build an unjust work environment just as long as it fits with my religion of 'shipping above all else'."
- tomjen3 11y ago
  You are building a business, not trying to save the world.
killface 11y ago
Because "diversity" is the catchphrase of the day when it comes to programming and most technology in general. Some butthurt people see a bunch of white males sitting on computers and making really good money, and wonder why we can't have moms do it at home part-time while taking care of kids (it's just typing, right?), or why we can't just hire 1,000 minimum wage people of (color|poor economic means|criminal backgrounds|dragon-kin) to hack something together. Our industry is seen by outsiders as an old-boys club full of young boys who viciously hate and destroy any attempt at diversifying. Unfortunately, when these sjw types score a small victory, they see it as a big victory. The rest of us see it like a quota system -- we're forced to deal with less talented people just so somebody doesn't get butthurt that there's not enough females or black people or whatever.
- x0x0 11y ago
  It is a kid's club. Within the last two years: I discovered my cto, who used to supervise hundreds at google, and therefore absolutely positively had sexual harassment training, was sending candidate engineers a code test that ended up printing a naked woman in ascii art. The answer to the code test was the number between her legs. I realized this when a prospective female engineer emailed basically asking WTF? Another workplace had 2 female engineers, out of 8 or so. A candidate commented we had, "a lot of secretaries" and was stunned when I pointed out that 2 of the secretaries were engineering peers. An engineering peer spent lunch speculating about whether the ceo was fucking his secretary until I stopped being subtle and flatly told him to fucking shut up. I have more stories, but let's stop there for now. Or quietly ask female peers -- most of them will have similar stories. Further -- like any other industry, the startup / tech world has received enormous dividends from America. From massive investments in early tech, to R&D subsidies, to R&D tax breaks, to the education of the vast majority of the employees at the companies. Demanding diversity is part of fulfilling their social compact with America, and most of the whining is the companies attempting to duck it.
tptacek 11y ago
This article is partly about the longevity of startup dev teams. Here is a simple true fact: If your hiring pipeline isn't diverse (in a bunch of different ways, but in particular in the ways that represent "the opposite of the approach you just spelled out for building up a team"), then it may be fast and effective, but it is also brittle. Every team loses people, no matter how carefully designed they are. Companies with huge traction and close-knit management teams where everyone likes each other lose cofounders. People leave, for all sorts of reasons. On brittle teams, when one person leaves, a whole bunch of people follow. You want to build a team that is resilient to one or two people leaving every once in awhile. Diversity --- not in the "Benetton ad" sense, but in a more fundamental sense --- is an extremely good mitigating strategy. You may not care about team resiliency and longevity; "throw it out the window" to get to release and all of that. I think that's a bad plan (getting to a reasonable successful first release only to have your team implode is not a really good use of your very limited window of time to build companies in, is what I think), but that's neither here nor there.

by ffn 11y ago

Retric 11y ago

Diversity is very useful because companies pivot and having a diverse* team allows you to better consider more options. Note: By diversity I don't mean a team of 30 year old workaholic that graduated from Stanford and then worked at Google/MS for a few years that happen to have different skin colors. I mean a diversity of experience, fresh college student, a 60 year old near retiree, and someone that just spent six months backpacking in South America etc. It might seem like having a bind person on your team will slow you down, but plenty of dumb products get created because everyone has the same exact background and can't see just how tiny the market is. PS: The world has ~7 billion people and most of them are not like you.

entee 11y ago
No diversity = blind spots. How many startups aren't serving needs because they're simply not the needs of those founding the company? And how many are missing the bigger picture on the product because they don't have someone on staff who sees things differently? Taking a slightly roundabout example: AFAIK Pinterest was founded by men and the core team is the standard valley profile, however it has primarily a female userbase. In that case the user demographic doesn't match the initial team's demographic. However, one has to wonder whether Pinterest would have happened sooner if there were more women in the startup community, and whether there are other similar opportunities that address a huge need for a demographic not usually represented in the valley. Another example: pigeonly. A really cool company, an idea that springs forth from a different experience in the world.
golemotron 11y ago
Nice theory, but optimizing for the pivot over the running state is not a great strategy. Even if it was you do not need the kind of diversity you mention on the team as much as in their network. The benefit of having a particular life experience and point of view is not something you need 24/7. You need it, if at all, at decision points.
- scarmig 11y ago
  The obvious rejoinder is that those decision points make the difference between a failed startup and a multi-billion dollar company. As empiricists, though, it's worth asking if there are any real examples of companies exploiting hidden market opportunities thanks to a diversity of viewpoints. A lack of examples wouldn't be quite damning--maybe there's just not enough diversity at all to rise above the noise level--but it'd be a useful test of how valuable diversity actually can be. This all stands apart from moral and ideological reasons to try to foster diversity, which are in my view more compelling but are understandably less effective when it comes to influencing decision makers.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
wyager 11y ago
How are the people you've described actually going to help a company that is pivoting? You've just claimed that they will without explaining why you think so.

kelukelugames 11y ago

As an ethnic person who evaluates a company's demographics before joining, I want to say diversity is unnecessary for being financially successful. Working with people who are different can even be difficult. But at the end of the day, what is the founder trying to achieve? His or her personal and broader definition of success might include being inclusive. Anecdote: working in a homogenous environment can suck for minorities. Maybe starting out diverse makes it easy to stay that way?

rifung 11y ago
I imagine the founder is trying to make a successful company. Being that diversity is correlated with financial performance, it makes sense to try to have a diverse team. On the other hand, you're right in that you can't just throw different people in a room and let them work things out.
- golemotron 11y ago
  > Being that diversity is correlated with financial performance. Can you back that up?
  - rifung 11y ago
    Sure. I imagine Google will easily give you more results but here's one: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/is_there_a_payoff_from_top-team_diversity http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/is_there_a_pay... As has been said many times before, correlation is not causation though, and other studies have shown that the more females you have, the better a team performs so maybe we dont need diversity and just need more women. I do remember reading other articles about the benefits of racial diversity as well but I'm sure you won't have trouble finding them.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- kelukelugames 11y ago

j_baker 11y ago

Perhaps because building a diverse workforce that gives everyone opportunities regardless of culture/ethnicity/sex/gender/sexuality is the right thing to do? I mean, having a culture of shipping is great and all, but it shouldn't trump ethical and moral concerns.

wyager 11y ago
"It's ok if our company fails in an entirely preventable way as long as we failed while meeting some arbitrary standard of not hiring people according to the actual demographics of our hiring base."
- j_baker 11y ago
  "It's ok to build an unjust work environment just as long as it fits with my religion of 'shipping above all else'."
tomjen3 11y ago
You are building a business, not trying to save the world.

killface 11y ago

Because "diversity" is the catchphrase of the day when it comes to programming and most technology in general. Some butthurt people see a bunch of white males sitting on computers and making really good money, and wonder why we can't have moms do it at home part-time while taking care of kids (it's just typing, right?), or why we can't just hire 1,000 minimum wage people of (color|poor economic means|criminal backgrounds|dragon-kin) to hack something together. Our industry is seen by outsiders as an old-boys club full of young boys who viciously hate and destroy any attempt at diversifying. Unfortunately, when these sjw types score a small victory, they see it as a big victory. The rest of us see it like a quota system -- we're forced to deal with less talented people just so somebody doesn't get butthurt that there's not enough females or black people or whatever.

x0x0 11y ago
It is a kid's club. Within the last two years: I discovered my cto, who used to supervise hundreds at google, and therefore absolutely positively had sexual harassment training, was sending candidate engineers a code test that ended up printing a naked woman in ascii art. The answer to the code test was the number between her legs. I realized this when a prospective female engineer emailed basically asking WTF? Another workplace had 2 female engineers, out of 8 or so. A candidate commented we had, "a lot of secretaries" and was stunned when I pointed out that 2 of the secretaries were engineering peers. An engineering peer spent lunch speculating about whether the ceo was fucking his secretary until I stopped being subtle and flatly told him to fucking shut up. I have more stories, but let's stop there for now. Or quietly ask female peers -- most of them will have similar stories. Further -- like any other industry, the startup / tech world has received enormous dividends from America. From massive investments in early tech, to R&D subsidies, to R&D tax breaks, to the education of the vast majority of the employees at the companies. Demanding diversity is part of fulfilling their social compact with America, and most of the whining is the companies attempting to duck it.

tptacek 11y ago

This article is partly about the longevity of startup dev teams. Here is a simple true fact: If your hiring pipeline isn't diverse (in a bunch of different ways, but in particular in the ways that represent "the opposite of the approach you just spelled out for building up a team"), then it may be fast and effective, but it is also brittle. Every team loses people, no matter how carefully designed they are. Companies with huge traction and close-knit management teams where everyone likes each other lose cofounders. People leave, for all sorts of reasons. On brittle teams, when one person leaves, a whole bunch of people follow. You want to build a team that is resilient to one or two people leaving every once in awhile. Diversity --- not in the "Benetton ad" sense, but in a more fundamental sense --- is an extremely good mitigating strategy. You may not care about team resiliency and longevity; "throw it out the window" to get to release and all of that. I think that's a bad plan (getting to a reasonable successful first release only to have your team implode is not a really good use of your very limited window of time to build companies in, is what I think), but that's neither here nor there.