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How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

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Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#51

Post by omonra »

ch4s3 wrote: post #44
yarper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's no correlation in skill between the people that put hours of their own time into honing their craft, and those that don't?

Maybe, maybe not. I suppose that depends on what and how they choose to practice. And there's nothing wrong with giving positive weight to personal projects. I'm just saying you shouldn't penalize people for spending their personal time on things other than coding.

If two people are equally smart, the one who spends more time practicing will be better. Is it not in the primary interest of the company to hire the more qualified candidate?

Do basketball teams sit around worrying that they ought to not penalize players who don't practice free throws on their personal time?

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#52

Post by dclowd9901 »

acctjustforyou wrote: post #48
dclowd9901 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say overwhelming evidence points to the exact contrary.

Sounds like you've found a great indicator of skill then - "does not have a CS degree."

More like "possession of CS degree has no bearing whatsoever on skill, so ignore it."

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#53

Post by dclowd9901 »

acctjustforyou wrote: post #47
dclowd9901 wrote: post #41

OP is unbelievable. > I completely agree. I’ve interviewed people from MIT who weren’t familiar with a hash table and the best software developer I’ve worked with never went to college. The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, didn’t go to a top CS school. However, it’s still the case that college and experience is an imperfect signal of ability. In other words: Here's all of these great reasons I've found not to trust someo…

"There exists a young man with no legs who has a stellar collegiate wrestling record. There also exists an athlete in the most prestigious wrestling program in the country who always loses because he never makes weight, and when he does make weight, he gets defeated in seconds. Therefore I can confidently conclude that 'number of limbs' has no correlation whatsoever to wrestling ability." Hmmm...

Sounds like you get it.

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#54

Post by ch4s3 »

omonra wrote: post #51
ch4s3 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, maybe not. I suppose that depends on what and how they choose to practice. And there's nothing wrong with giving positive weight to personal projects. I'm just saying you shouldn't penalize people for spending their personal time on things other than coding.

If two people are equally smart, the one who spends more time practicing will be better. Is it not in the primary interest of the company to hire the more qualified candidate? Do basketball teams sit around worrying that they ought to not penalize players who don't practice free throws on their personal time?

You're perhaps misreading me. I stated that the lack of side projects shouldn't be held against people. I think it's fine give positive weight to good, relevant side projects.

I would also argue that a person who is more deliberate about their use of fewer hours will do better than someone who is equally smart but practices less deliberately for more hours[1].

I think that imagining two fully equal candidates only differentiated by their volume of personal projects isn't a particularly useful exercise.

[1]http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#55

Post by ch4s3 »

rmartelli wrote: post #46
ch4s3 wrote: post #26

I'm sorry, but this post seems totally fabricated or at least intentionally misrepresenting what is happening. I spend a lot of time reading about diversity initiatives in tech and I'm trying to set up an initiative where I work. However, I've never heard anyone suggest lowering the bar in the ways listed in this article. The whole thing is constructed as reductio ad absurdum. For example: >Stop considering some coll…

Their argument typically looks like this: Choosing a candidate pool that is 80+% men (>X years experience as a developer) is inherently sexist. To eliminate structural sexism, we must remove hiring criteria that favors men. Let's tell our sourcers that looking for relevant industry experience is not important. For school I've been told that we should look if they have a degree or not, and not consider which instituti…

>Their argument typically looks like this: Choosing a candidate pool that is 80+% men (>X years experience as a developer) is inherently sexist.

I'm not saying this wasn't said, but I've literally never encountered this before today. Perhaps your company is approaching diversity the wrong way for the wrong reasons.

To the point about the rankings of the colleges, it may matter less than you think. If you look at salary numbers over the lifetime of graduates, the ranking of their undergraduate has only a small effect for STEM majors. If you consider salary to be at least somewhat tethered to performance, this suggests that in the long run, the institution doesn't matter as much as the individual. There's some research around this, but I don't recall the authors at the moment. And, perhaps I'm wrong. I can imagine the differences are greater for recent grads.

Again, if they're all "actual suggestions," that seem strange to me. I never see or hear those suggestions, and they seem to run counter to the way people who are writing thoughtfully about tech diversity approach the issue.

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#56

Post by ubernostrum »

rmartelli wrote: post #46
ch4s3 wrote: post #26

I'm sorry, but this post seems totally fabricated or at least intentionally misrepresenting what is happening. I spend a lot of time reading about diversity initiatives in tech and I'm trying to set up an initiative where I work. However, I've never heard anyone suggest lowering the bar in the ways listed in this article. The whole thing is constructed as reductio ad absurdum. For example: >Stop considering some coll…

Their argument typically looks like this: Choosing a candidate pool that is 80+% men (>X years experience as a developer) is inherently sexist. To eliminate structural sexism, we must remove hiring criteria that favors men. Let's tell our sourcers that looking for relevant industry experience is not important. For school I've been told that we should look if they have a degree or not, and not consider which instituti…

It's awfully easy to make technically-true but misrepresentative statements about this stuff, though.

For example, someone might argue that actively seeking out recent graduates of coding bootcamps when hiring for junior positions will help find a more diverse set of candidates. And there's truth here: bootcamps tend to have better gender and somewhat-better racial balance than university CS departments or existing tech shops, and bootcamp graduates on average seem to be pretty good (there are selection and maturity and self-motivation effects there which raise quality compared to the typical randomly-chosen bunch os CVs).

But it's technically correct, so long as you don't mind completely misleading connotations, to describe that approach as "to eliminate racism and sexism, hire people who don't have CS degrees and don't have industry experience" and imply it's "lowering the bar".

And anecdotally, when people make claims like the ones in the OP article, my experience is that it's almost always the case that someone is carefully choosing how they describe things in order to be technically truthful while maliciously misrepresenting the situation in a way that suits their personal axe-grinding.

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#57

Post by omonra »

ch4s3 wrote: post #54
omonra wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If two people are equally smart, the one who spends more time practicing will be better. Is it not in the primary interest of the company to hire the more qualified candidate? Do basketball teams sit around worrying that they ought to not penalize players who don't practice free throws on their personal time?

You're perhaps misreading me. I stated that the lack of side projects shouldn't be held against people. I think it's fine give positive weight to good, relevant side projects. I would also argue that a person who is more deliberate about their use of fewer hours will do better than someone who is equally smart but practices less deliberately for more hours[1]. I think that imagining two fully equal candidates only di…

"I think that imagining two fully equal candidates only differentiated by their volume of personal projects isn't a particularly useful exercise."

But that's precisely the point - two candidates will not be equal if one spends 20 hours a week on personal coding projects and the other does other things (however interesting or beneficial for society at large they may be).

At the end of the day the world is not fair. The question is what outcome you (as a business owner) are looking to advance. If your primary goal is to make the best product - you will have to hire the best people. If your goal is to advance women's careers - you will have to optimize for a different set of objectives.

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#59

Post by angersock »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #58

The author refers to African-Americans as "blacks" numerous times. In my experience, the only people who use that terminology are racists. I can guarantee you the author is a huge fan of "The Bell Curve." This anecdote is clearly troll bait.

Your experience appears to be limited.

Re: How my company is lowering the bar to increase diversity

#60

Post by angersock »

eva1984 wrote: post #15

I think I probably guessed which company this is. But this doesn't smell right. Feels like a real-world version of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM

Video is a bit of a caricature, but unfortunately with only a little poking around one can find examples of similar behavior and views held online. :(
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