6 ms·

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hir

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support programs), but in it's current state, it seems discriminatory.

infosample 11y ago
Assuming a different race/gender is under the bar or will under-perform seems discriminatory.
- BhavdeepSethi 11y ago
  I never said that they will. I'm just wondering how are they gonna do things differently to meet those numbers. I'm sure their current hiring process isn't biased towards a particular race/gender. To make it more balanced, are they planning to have a different hiring bar?
  - infosample 11y ago
    If it is similar to the Rooney Rule, no. The bar is the same, just required to consider a minority candidate. I personally find tangible monetary value in employees with diverse backgrounds but I don't lower my bar. I just slightly discount sameness and slightly appreciate difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - henok 11y ago
    @infosample, you are right. You cannot assume minorities and women will under-perform or are under the bar. The issue of people just don't give it enough thought when hiring. At the same time, you should not hire someone solely based on their gender or race. But if there are 2 candidates with very similar skill sets and meet the standards you are looking for, hire the one who will bring you more diverse background.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
      Consider the one who had to come farther to get to the same point, and what that implies about how they will go in the future.
- xanderstrike 11y ago
  This is why the discussion can't even happen, and why companies and universities still enforce percentages for underprivileged groups even though it is obvious discrimination (but it's "good" discrimination! Give me a break). Person 1 says that enforcing a 50 people of type A and 50 people of type B when the number of qualified candidates is 20 and 80 will result in either hiring significantly fewer people in general, or hiring under qualified people of type A. People of type B are being passed over because of their race/gender/ethnicity. This is discrimination. Person 2 says that implying that anyone of type A could be under qualified is itself discrimination, and this possibility should not be addressed or considered. Nothing can change because the issue cannot be discussed.
  - infosample 11y ago
    It helps to have a discussion when affirmative action and the Rooney Rule aren't conflated. We have a tendency to assume type A is qualified and type B isn't. That is a natural bias based on evidence. We must actively subdue our biases if we want to overcome them, sometimes with rules. I think we sometimes forget that the goal isn't to get a qualified employee but a successful employee. Qualifications generally leads to success but not always, so we should constantly question our qualification criteria. White males have benefited from discrimination for a long time. White males have been discriminated against sometimes. This article isn't about discrimination or affirmative action. It's about setting a goal to be more diverse, not by lowering the bar, or forced hiring, but through awareness, inclusion, and an opportunity to interview. BTW, everyone's been given a chance they didn't deserve.
comrh 11y ago
If you have 9 men who apply and 1 woman and they're all of equal skill, chances are a man will get it purely on probability.
- Nadya 11y ago
  And it would be discriminatory to give the job to the women purely based on her gonads in such a scenario. Benevolent sexism is still sexism, but it seems people only care about it when it comes to holding doors rather than holding jobs.
- wvenable 11y ago
  Where I work, if we had 9 men and 1 woman of equal skill applying for a job the woman would get it hands down. I find most good sized companies would rather have that kind of diversity even when it's not official policy. Our team has a few women but still well less than 50%.
rheydrichSS 11y ago
For a site whose chief technical accomplishment is to allow women to pin and share cutesy images, I'm not sure having top talent really matters that much.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  Congratulations on illustrating the problem of sexism in tech so well. Your interest in the content they host has zero relevance to the technical challenges they face as a platform and heavily trafficked website.
  - rheydrichSS 11y ago
    I'd rather see more top women doctors, scientists, lawyers, civi, biomedical and chemical engineers. Not sure what having more women sit in front of a computer screen writing CRUD apps all day does for equality.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      I'm really having a hard time imagining you're concerned about equality given the username.
      - rheydrichSS 11y ago
        Its my SJW troll username. Seems to work.
  - Zikes 11y ago
    I would hardly consider a troll post from an account less than half an hour old to be representative of the technology industry.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      There are plenty of folks in our industry moonlighting as trolls, and plenty not outright trolling who still hold these sorts of attitudes.
ksenzee 11y ago
This very common assumption -- which I used to hold -- has it exactly backwards. Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Mathematically, if 90% of your egg-crackers are short, you've already hired under-performing egg-crackers. You've passed over some really good tall people in favor of the short people you hired. If you want the best egg-crackers, you need to interview a bunch of tall people.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  This analysis has its own flaw. This assumes that their other opportunities are also equal. But tall people may make better apple pickers. And apple picking pays more than egg cracking. If you want 50% tall people, you are going to need to compete directly against the apple picking market as well. You need to account not just for your own selection criteria, but that of everybody else as well. (Not to say this actually explains tech demographics; it's a point about the stats in your example.)
- devalier 11y ago
  Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Umm, in the actual example we are talking about, the evidence is on the side of that assumption being false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977751 https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/ https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i...
- pervycreeper 11y ago
  > Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Mathematically, if 90% of your egg-crackers are short, you've already hired under-performing egg-crackers. In fact, this depends on the underlying population sizes of tall vs. short people, so this is a faulty argument. More germane to the situation, however, is your initial assumption, whose analogue is dubious. So much so, in fact, that it is taboo to even allude to it. cf. pg's "What you can't say".
- debacle 11y ago
  If 90% of all egg-crackers are short, and you want to hire the best egg-crackers, it's very likely that 90% of your egg crackers are going to be short.
mklim 11y ago
The counter argument that I've heard most is that minorities are less likely to be hired than equally qualified members of the majority because of subconscious bias. Enforcing a quota is a sort of equalizer—formal discrimination in one direction in order to push back against informal discrimination in the other direction. I'm not completely sold on the method, but the problem of subconscious bias in hiring is very well documented: * Resumes with stereotypically White names receive 50% more callbacks than identical resumes with traditionally black ones. The addition of honors and special skills had a significant effect on the likelihood of White applications being called, but a statistically insignificant effect for the otherwise-identical African-American ones. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf * Applicants with male names are rated as more competent and offered higher starting salaries than identical applications with female names. Identical resumes with male names are called back more often than female ones. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html, http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf * Initial subconscious bias is logically justified post-hoc—in the linked experiment, the qualities deemed necessary for a position would actually be redefined by the person reviewing resumes depending on the gender of the applicants so that the male applicant's traits fit the position better. http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%202005.pdf http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%20... There's quite a few more papers on the subject, it's easy to search for them. Depressing read all around.
- devalier 11y ago
  If those studies are true, then the correct solution would be to: 1) ask people not include their names on their resume. Or don't use resumes at all. Create a web form application that does not require a name and only asks about the crucial skills you actually need. 2) Create a highly objective hiring process, such as this: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ I don't really buy that subconscious bias is the problem in tech. I've been part of a lot of hiring, we were actually consciously biased toward hiring women since we wanted better numbers. I had an objective interview process, always giving the same questions, and the hiring was still very disproportionately male whasian (the applicant pool was also very disproportionately male whasian, despite doing active reach out to woman-in-tech events).
rada 11y ago
The fact that you immediately equated "diversity" to "lowering your hiring bar" and "under-performing" is as ignorant as it is insulting. Women and brown people are not lower quality humans, and it has been shown over and over and over that companies who hire for diversity perform better. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=do+diverse+companies+perform+better http://lmgtfy.com/?q=do+diverse+companies+perform+better
- BhavdeepSethi 11y ago
  I think ignorance is taking things out of context unnecessarily. I am assuming Pinterest already has an unbiased hiring bar. Yet, due to sheer probability, the number of other races get hired much more. Considering the number of applicants remain the same, how do you balance the race/gender without being biased to one race/cast?

infosample 11y ago

Assuming a different race/gender is under the bar or will under-perform seems discriminatory.

BhavdeepSethi 11y ago
I never said that they will. I'm just wondering how are they gonna do things differently to meet those numbers. I'm sure their current hiring process isn't biased towards a particular race/gender. To make it more balanced, are they planning to have a different hiring bar?
- infosample 11y ago
  If it is similar to the Rooney Rule, no. The bar is the same, just required to consider a minority candidate. I personally find tangible monetary value in employees with diverse backgrounds but I don't lower my bar. I just slightly discount sameness and slightly appreciate difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- henok 11y ago
  @infosample, you are right. You cannot assume minorities and women will under-perform or are under the bar. The issue of people just don't give it enough thought when hiring. At the same time, you should not hire someone solely based on their gender or race. But if there are 2 candidates with very similar skill sets and meet the standards you are looking for, hire the one who will bring you more diverse background.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    Consider the one who had to come farther to get to the same point, and what that implies about how they will go in the future.
xanderstrike 11y ago
This is why the discussion can't even happen, and why companies and universities still enforce percentages for underprivileged groups even though it is obvious discrimination (but it's "good" discrimination! Give me a break). Person 1 says that enforcing a 50 people of type A and 50 people of type B when the number of qualified candidates is 20 and 80 will result in either hiring significantly fewer people in general, or hiring under qualified people of type A. People of type B are being passed over because of their race/gender/ethnicity. This is discrimination. Person 2 says that implying that anyone of type A could be under qualified is itself discrimination, and this possibility should not be addressed or considered. Nothing can change because the issue cannot be discussed.
- infosample 11y ago
  It helps to have a discussion when affirmative action and the Rooney Rule aren't conflated. We have a tendency to assume type A is qualified and type B isn't. That is a natural bias based on evidence. We must actively subdue our biases if we want to overcome them, sometimes with rules. I think we sometimes forget that the goal isn't to get a qualified employee but a successful employee. Qualifications generally leads to success but not always, so we should constantly question our qualification criteria. White males have benefited from discrimination for a long time. White males have been discriminated against sometimes. This article isn't about discrimination or affirmative action. It's about setting a goal to be more diverse, not by lowering the bar, or forced hiring, but through awareness, inclusion, and an opportunity to interview. BTW, everyone's been given a chance they didn't deserve.

comrh 11y ago

If you have 9 men who apply and 1 woman and they're all of equal skill, chances are a man will get it purely on probability.

Nadya 11y ago
And it would be discriminatory to give the job to the women purely based on her gonads in such a scenario. Benevolent sexism is still sexism, but it seems people only care about it when it comes to holding doors rather than holding jobs.
wvenable 11y ago
Where I work, if we had 9 men and 1 woman of equal skill applying for a job the woman would get it hands down. I find most good sized companies would rather have that kind of diversity even when it's not official policy. Our team has a few women but still well less than 50%.

rheydrichSS 11y ago

For a site whose chief technical accomplishment is to allow women to pin and share cutesy images, I'm not sure having top talent really matters that much.

ceejayoz 11y ago
Congratulations on illustrating the problem of sexism in tech so well. Your interest in the content they host has zero relevance to the technical challenges they face as a platform and heavily trafficked website.
- rheydrichSS 11y ago
  I'd rather see more top women doctors, scientists, lawyers, civi, biomedical and chemical engineers. Not sure what having more women sit in front of a computer screen writing CRUD apps all day does for equality.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    I'm really having a hard time imagining you're concerned about equality given the username.
    - rheydrichSS 11y ago
      Its my SJW troll username. Seems to work.
- Zikes 11y ago
  I would hardly consider a troll post from an account less than half an hour old to be representative of the technology industry.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    There are plenty of folks in our industry moonlighting as trolls, and plenty not outright trolling who still hold these sorts of attitudes.

ksenzee 11y ago

This very common assumption -- which I used to hold -- has it exactly backwards. Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Mathematically, if 90% of your egg-crackers are short, you've already hired under-performing egg-crackers. You've passed over some really good tall people in favor of the short people you hired. If you want the best egg-crackers, you need to interview a bunch of tall people.

tedunangst 11y ago
This analysis has its own flaw. This assumes that their other opportunities are also equal. But tall people may make better apple pickers. And apple picking pays more than egg cracking. If you want 50% tall people, you are going to need to compete directly against the apple picking market as well. You need to account not just for your own selection criteria, but that of everybody else as well. (Not to say this actually explains tech demographics; it's a point about the stats in your example.)
devalier 11y ago
Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Umm, in the actual example we are talking about, the evidence is on the side of that assumption being false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977751 https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/ https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i...
pervycreeper 11y ago
> Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Mathematically, if 90% of your egg-crackers are short, you've already hired under-performing egg-crackers. In fact, this depends on the underlying population sizes of tall vs. short people, so this is a faulty argument. More germane to the situation, however, is your initial assumption, whose analogue is dubious. So much so, in fact, that it is taboo to even allude to it. cf. pg's "What you can't say".
debacle 11y ago
If 90% of all egg-crackers are short, and you want to hire the best egg-crackers, it's very likely that 90% of your egg crackers are going to be short.

mklim 11y ago

The counter argument that I've heard most is that minorities are less likely to be hired than equally qualified members of the majority because of subconscious bias. Enforcing a quota is a sort of equalizer—formal discrimination in one direction in order to push back against informal discrimination in the other direction. I'm not completely sold on the method, but the problem of subconscious bias in hiring is very well documented: * Resumes with stereotypically White names receive 50% more callbacks than identical resumes with traditionally black ones. The addition of honors and special skills had a significant effect on the likelihood of White applications being called, but a statistically insignificant effect for the otherwise-identical African-American ones. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf * Applicants with male names are rated as more competent and offered higher starting salaries than identical applications with female names. Identical resumes with male names are called back more often than female ones. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html, http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf * Initial subconscious bias is logically justified post-hoc—in the linked experiment, the qualities deemed necessary for a position would actually be redefined by the person reviewing resumes depending on the gender of the applicants so that the male applicant's traits fit the position better. http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%202005.pdf http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%20... There's quite a few more papers on the subject, it's easy to search for them. Depressing read all around.

devalier 11y ago
If those studies are true, then the correct solution would be to: 1) ask people not include their names on their resume. Or don't use resumes at all. Create a web form application that does not require a name and only asks about the crucial skills you actually need. 2) Create a highly objective hiring process, such as this: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ I don't really buy that subconscious bias is the problem in tech. I've been part of a lot of hiring, we were actually consciously biased toward hiring women since we wanted better numbers. I had an objective interview process, always giving the same questions, and the hiring was still very disproportionately male whasian (the applicant pool was also very disproportionately male whasian, despite doing active reach out to woman-in-tech events).

rada 11y ago

The fact that you immediately equated "diversity" to "lowering your hiring bar" and "under-performing" is as ignorant as it is insulting. Women and brown people are not lower quality humans, and it has been shown over and over and over that companies who hire for diversity perform better. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=do+diverse+companies+perform+better http://lmgtfy.com/?q=do+diverse+companies+perform+better

BhavdeepSethi 11y ago
I think ignorance is taking things out of context unnecessarily. I am assuming Pinterest already has an unbiased hiring bar. Yet, due to sheer probability, the number of other races get hired much more. Considering the number of applicants remain the same, how do you balance the race/gender without being biased to one race/cast?