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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

#271

Post by curun1r »

humanrebar wrote: post #24
orclev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the core of the article was pointing out that setting arbitrary quotas for female hires and then sacrificing your standards in order to meet those quotas does more harm than good. Fundamentally there are two issues that need addressing, firstly trying to get more qualified female applicants which is why she recommends focusing on early education and college STEM programs. Secondly there's the issue of how to addr…

> ...I mean hiring junior level candidates, not trying to shove a more senior female developer into a lower level position... The word "shove" aside, I wish more companies would hire senior people for junior roles if they want them. One of the big problems with the American (and I presume Western) job market is the unwillingness to train people unless they're straight out of college. It seems that moms (and less ofte…

I know the prevailing sentiment around here is anti-age-discrimination, but the flip side is also bad. We've seen in a few European countries what happens when the unemployment figures for young people are an order of magnitude higher than people with more experience and it's not pretty. Young people need to be given a chance to start their careers and senior people taking junior roles can get in the way of that. The current trend towards people not having the required savings for retirement is going to echo into future generations that have to delay the start of their careers because those jobs haven't been vacated.

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

#272

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

unit91 wrote: post #255
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to start with, don't conflate sex with gender. Next, I'll make it really easy for you: women are women, and you can just count them as one group. That doesn't mean we should erase away the specific challenges and bigotry trans women face, but we also shouldn't be forcing them into a separate "quadrant" of women.

Wait...this didn't make it easy at all. When you said "women are women" were you speaking in terms of gender or sex? After that you said "trans women", so I take it you mean gender only? If so, does that mean a biological female who identifies as a male does not count as a woman in tech?

Gender.

A trans man is a man.

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

#274

Post by dang »

mberning wrote: post #240
dang wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users are flagging it heavily, as they have been flagging most opinion pieces that have appeared during this tidal wave. People who feel strongly one way or the other typically want to see the articles they agree with stay on the front page and the ones they disagree with get flagged. But from a systemic point of view, it isn't in HN's interest to have the front page dominated by repetitive arguments (and certainly n…

I find the stance of HN admins/managers on these type stories incredibly biased. When something is agreeable to the "more X in tech" trope it stays on the front page for hours and gets hundreds of points. When a story that is counter to that trope gains traction it quickly drops off the page and admins/managers are all over the discussion picking and chosing what to suppress. The whole google memo/James Damore thing…

I hear you that it seems that way, but it seems the opposite way to people on the opposite side.

Plenty of articles arguing both sides of this hurricane have spent time on HN's front page, and there have been many thousands of comments for and against. At this point nothing new is emerging. If significant new information appears in the developing news story, that's fine, but until that happens, these threads are effectively dupes and it's not unfair for users to flag them. Repetitive rehashing of the same scorched earth is not why most people come here.

Re HN moderation, the phenomenon behind your perception is that both sides of each ideological divide believe, quite fervently, that we're secretly moderating HN to favor the opposing agenda. I'd love to figure out something we could do about this, but alas there doesn't seem much hope of it. For sure these accusations can't all be right since they say opposite things, and what's remarkable is how similar they are except for the one flipped ideological bit.

More on this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14994960 and lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... if anyone is interested.

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

#275

Post by softawre »

JimboOmega wrote: post #46
Icedcool wrote: post #23

"In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech." Awesome. A plea towards hiring based on quality, rather than quotas. Towards a group that is judged by the content and quality of their character rather than some of the variation of an attempt to combat discrimination through discrimination.

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…

> course correcting toxic environments early in the pipeline would be the best, because then the men that share those environments don't normalize them, either

Women can be biased too, right?

I think I'm with you on the rest. Fixing early pipeline isn't enough.

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

#276

Post by rbanffy »

humanrebar wrote: post #203
microcolonel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hear you when you say,"the only mandate for the interview process would be to hire the best person, no exceptions". It just sounds like an HR platitude. If you know how to do that, I actually think you have a multi-$B idea! Unless you mean "cultural fit", or "went to the same school I did" as the best person, I'm doubtful you have one though. I've done enough interviewing and worked with enough people to know tha…

> The only reason not to do blind hiring is if it produces results which are indistinguishable from standard hiring. Or the fact that it's not really possible. Right now, most software engineering jobs are pretty communication heavy. Almost all company cultures contain a non-trivial amount of verbal communication, so with that premise, it's reasonable to have candidates verbally describe technical things or even make…

> Once you're listening to real voices,

Use a voice scrambler.

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

#277

Post by unclebucknasty »

tptacek wrote: post #22
jasode wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. Fascinating how different readers take away different salient points. For me, her main buildup was hiring women to meet a "diversity goal" resulted in pressures to hire some women who couldn't do the work . This creates a perverse feedback loop that unfairly taints future women candidates who could do the wo…

Because the piece isn't very well written†, it's unclear whether the "infinite loop" of mediocrity she's referring to is something she actually observed, or something she surmises is possible. She is clear and specific, presenting numbers, when talking about things she was personally involved in. Since the cycle of increasing mediocrity has a prominent float in the parade of horribles conjured by the "anti-diversity"…

>Subjective performance evaluations are easily tainted by prejudice

This is vastly under-acknowledged. Implicit biases affect even the most well-intentioned of us, which then persistently and negatively impact the targets of our biases (see the movie Get Out for an exaggerated, but entertaining take on this).

For an "out-group" in any particular environ, their very status as a historical out-group itself fuels the perceptions that perpetuate their disenfranchisement.

So, the remedy to this has not been to psychoanalyze every hiring manager in an attempt to navigate these murky, subjective waters; but to set objective goals that seek to counter the equally objective under-representation manifestations that we can actually measure.

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

#278

Post by rbanffy »

Icedcool wrote: post #23

"In the name of diversity, when we fill quotas to check boxes, we fuck it up for the genuinely amazing women in tech." Awesome. A plea towards hiring based on quality, rather than quotas. Towards a group that is judged by the content and quality of their character rather than some of the variation of an attempt to combat discrimination through discrimination.

> Awesome. A plea towards hiring based on quality, rather than quotas.

Would be awesome if there existed a way to remove all human biases from hiring.

Unfortunately, there isn't one yet.

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

#279

Post by halloij »

halloij wrote: post #45
magic_beans wrote: post #31

> Despite that, we paid premium salaries to bring a few women who did well in our interviews. But, they lacked the energy to put us into overdrive. Worse, they were starting to drain the energy from the rest of the team. Eventually, we had to do the right thing for the company and let them go. This is one of the most disturbing thing's I've ever read in an article proclaiming to promote change in the tech gender gap.…

> And WHY would this be a problem inherent to women? Because men and women have entirely different brains. They have entirely different strengths and weaknesses. Hate to break that to you. The rise of "lets pretend everyone is equal even though they're obviously not" is one of the worst things going on right now.

I love that this is getting down-voted. Because the liberal agenda is more important than scientific biological facts to some people :)

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

#280

Post by JimboOmega »

softawre wrote: post #275
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…

> course correcting toxic environments early in the pipeline would be the best, because then the men that share those environments don't normalize them, either Women can be biased too, right? I think I'm with you on the rest. Fixing early pipeline isn't enough.

Oh, they can - and even against themselves! Internalized transphobia and misogyny is a really hard thing.
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