> If you live in an area and work in a field where more white men are qualified for the work available than other colour-sex groups then you probably act in a r

> If you live in an area and work in a field where more white men are qualified for the work available than other colour-sex groups then you probably act in a racist and sexist manner then. Thats quite a bold assumption. I don't see where I am acting racist by claiming that hetergenous teams are more fun to work in. I have simply made a conclusion from actual experience made time and time again. > Wanting your teams to be fun is fine, find a way to determine how "fun" someone is and use that rather than assuming that position in a colour-sex space is a proper metric for "fun-ness". Granted. It should not be the only metric, but I have simply stated my personal experience. Homogenous teams are (in my personal experience) often stuck in certain social dynamics, which they are often not even aware of. Since homogenity in tech is skewed along the racial / sex axis (also somewhat along the age dimension for certain positions), introducing heterogenity along these axis can indeed make sense. And yes, wealth and education of the family are an interesting dimension one could take into account. Now, don't jump to conclusions here. I did never say that one should introduce a race/sex quota when hiring. This is not an easy subject, and I have not made up my mind as to what is the right approach when hiring. Research indicates that heterogenous teams do indeed perform significantly better than do homogenous teams: http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/better_decisions_through_diversity http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/better_decis... > IMO if you're happy to accept that with everything else being equal you should give a job to my youngest's best friend - a black girl - in preference to him just because her grandparents live in Zimbabwe then you've got to also accept those who chose other arbitrary characteristics too, like giving a job to someone just because they're white. I don't think you can equivocate and say racism is fine how you do it but not how someone else does it. Interesting point. Let me give you another example with a different perspective. I am male, white, born into a well educated middle class family. My sister is adopted and of color. We both had the same upbringing. I simply did not have to overcome the same negative biases as she did. While teachers never questioned my ability to perform in school, they openly questioned my sisters ability to properly perform time and time again (sometimes being openly racist in their comments). She did manage to overcome these obstacles imposed on her, and she is now quite accomplished in a field that is dominated by mostly white male (neuroscience). Given the exact same background and upbringing, her experience is substantially different from mine. And so are probably the experiences made by your sons black friend. A person from a different color/gender does inherently have different experience to that of a white male. This experience is not easily measurable, and often not obvious to the outside observer, but a person with such experience (given the same educational merits) can introduce a different perspective into a team, not only making it often "more fun" to work in but probably even enabling it to perform better.