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I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

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Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#191

Post by mayank »

peoplewindow wrote: post #84
whyaduck wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Google, but I work for a large SV company with an aggressive diversity program, and the goal is to hire to match the demographics of the pipeline of qualified candidates, not the population at large.

I'm almost 100% sure that isn't the case. Maybe you're told it is, but Google liked to tell its employees the same thing. If all your firm wanted to do was ensure its employee pool matched the demographic of the qualified worker pool, it wouldn't have to do anything at all except test for competency. Matching demographics then happens naturally. When your company says "the goal is to match the pipeline" yet still has…

> If all your firm wanted to do was ensure its employee pool matched the demographic of the qualified worker pool, it wouldn't have to do anything at all except test for competency. Matching demographics then happens naturally.

Statistically, you're correct. But there's a lot more of a subjective element to hiring than matching skills to requirements. One of the replies to your comment mentions "culture fit", for example.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#192

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Danihan wrote: post #68
JimboOmega wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So quotas are terrible, yes. But what if there are still biases in hiring? That someone sees a woman and assumes this or that about her based on gender alone? My own experience as a transgender person is that there are people who, as my gender presentation has shifted, really seem to view me as less competent. Not in a "girl's can't code" way, but like steadily viewing me as more junior, needing more hand holding, gi…

I believe that treating everyone as individuals, rather than as stereotypical groups, is the only way forward. It's the only truly fair approach. What ever happened to the notion of being color-blind when it comes to policy enforcement? AKA, actually treating people equally, based on merit? If biases are really that big of an issue (are there studies that show this is true in tech?) then what is wrong with "blind-hir…

Doing blind hiring for software is really, really, hard. It's unsurprising that most interviewing pipelines end up being conversations + some whiteboard coding, because coming up with something standardized, systematic, and as blind to biases as possible is something we really haven't figured out yet.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#193

Post by turc1656 »

ryanobjc wrote: post #179
turc1656 wrote: post #146

" In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech. " Precisely. This goes directly to the core of the issue and what I had brought up on the thread recently about the Google employee who got fired. Specifically, if companies were truly interested in fairness, the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions.…

So, from the context of Google, you are implying that is not what Google does (hires only to the bar). However, that is exactly what Google does. To get hired you have to pass the 5-interview in-person panel. Period. What the original memo author was railing about, incorrectly, is the perception that spending more time widening the recruiting funnel for "diversity candidates" was lowering the bar. That is not true. T…

I think you may have misread what I wrote, or perhaps what I wrote was a bit confusing or vague. I didn't mean that any of this was part of the anti-diversity memo. I meant that what this woman wrote was very similar in content to my own comments on that thread about the Google employee. I agree with you that what she has written is very different than what the Google employee wrote. And I wasn't making specific comments about Google's hiring process. I have never worked for Google and have never interviewed with them. Only thing I know about their hiring process is that it's supposedly one of the best and very difficult. My comments were about diversity in general and not specific to Google.

Hope that clarifies my thoughts a bit.

EDIT: grammatical mistake.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#194

Post by pbhjpbhj »

peterwwillis wrote: post #95

People are still trying to make weak links between biology and interest in a subject, as if there are some mysterious laws of nature that link work to body chemistry. There's no overwhelming scientific evidence proving this. Others (like this article) assert that simply increasing the amount we invest in education will result in an immediate change in not only who decides to stay in tech as a career, but also, who ge…

There's no evidence linking, for example, testosterone levels to bone and muscle mass?

Or progesterone levels to compassion and nurturing desires?

I think you need to look a little harder.

Of course more complex skills/desires/abilities are going to have more complex biological causation; though if you can prove otherwise, go ahead.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#195

Post by turc1656 »

microcolonel wrote: post #189
turc1656 wrote: post #146

" In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech. " Precisely. This goes directly to the core of the issue and what I had brought up on the thread recently about the Google employee who got fired. Specifically, if companies were truly interested in fairness, the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions.…

> fighting the battle far earlier and getting girls interested young so that they choose to enter these fields at a higher rate than they currently are doing. I encourage you to try, but grand social engineering projects have been devoted to this exact specification in Sweden (and probably elsewhere), and the ratios don't seem to budge. I hope we won't all get so upset if it turns out nothing reasonable can be done.

I won't be upset at all. My opinion is simply that is the only reasonable/ethical way to go about it if we choose to do so.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#196

Post by skybrian »

turc1656 wrote: post #146

" In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech. " Precisely. This goes directly to the core of the issue and what I had brought up on the thread recently about the Google employee who got fired. Specifically, if companies were truly interested in fairness, the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions.…

If you tell your recruiters to look harder for one kind of candidate than another, I don't see how that's messing up fairness, because the search/recruiting process isn't part of the evaluation process.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#198

Post by apk-d »

guiomie wrote: post #63

"Men who reported to me liked and respected me. Men who managed me liked and respected me." Starting straight off with this makes me wonder if it's a perception she had or if it was the reality. The majority of people to not tell someone if they dont like them or dont respect them.

Most people are entirely capable of reading the general attitude others have towards them. We occasionally make mistakes but a large sample goes a long way ("Jerry respects me" vs "most people at work respect me"). Is there any rational reason to think she's wrong?

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#199

Post by hnnsj »

Yes, yes, yes. You have to go to the root of the problem. It's impossible to solve the problem by (only) changing the recruitment processes. It starts way earlier than that. You can't expect to have the current gender distribution in education and job applications that we have today and then expect the numbers to magically even out in recruitment no matter what policies the companies have. It basically doesn't matter what way you measure differences in programming interest, at every level there are vastly more men than women that are interested in programming, let alone has anything more than cursory experience with it.

I believe that can be changed. I don't think it's biological. But the changes needed are wide and deep. If you want it to change, you have to actually change something about culture. That also means letting go of things you are familiar and comfortable with, maybe even some thing you really like. Gender norms need to change. I'm not so sure a lot of people even actually want that. Many seem to want to fix some negative symptoms, but not fix the root cause.

Re: I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

#200

Post by imron »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #165
imron wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And so hiring decisions are done by interviewers without knowing the gender or how the candidate looks. It might make the situation worse: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

It's very sad that "free from sexist, racist, ageist biases" is considered "worse", surely? Do you agree?

Yes, I agree (check my comment history over the last few days to see which side I fall on).

I meant worse for the problem the GP was trying to solve.

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