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Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

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Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#21

Post by devmunchies »

forinti wrote: post #8
klenwell wrote: post #4

A big part of the rational and moral justification for diversity initiatives and affirmative action programs, as I understand them, is as a means to help correct the history of institutional racism and discrimination in this country. So while the idea that meeting and working "with folks from all over the world—Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, South Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, and others" is appealing, for me…

I think more emphasis should be given on the benefit that diversity brings to the organization. A university or a company with lots of young white middle-class people will miss a lot of ideias that people from other backgrounds might bring.

This is dangerous thinking. Its skin-deep diversity. This makes it ok to look at a person and assume they have a typical middle class upbringing, but you don't know anything about that person. They could have grew up doing hard labor on an almond farm in central California and then lived a few years in haiti before going to college.

Diversity does increase innovation, but its a diversity of experience and a diversity of thought and not based on skin color and gender.

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#22

Post by Karunamon »

bearcobra wrote: post #14
spacelizard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, a good office culture extends beyond meatspace. I've worked at plenty of companies where the general atmosphere was... not good. These are places where the "hallway conversation" was either nonexistent or didn't extend beyond small talk about TV or the weather. If your employees aren't comfortable sending instant messages to each other, they definitely aren't going to be comfortable being in the same room…

One of the problems I have with instant messages is you can't tell if you are interrupting the other person. Some people may be able to ignore the message, but I think for many this kind of notifications create a sense of urgency and push them to reply still. Being conscious of this, I try to avoid sending IMs. In person, interactions give me way more signals about the other person's current state. Because of that I'…

IMO, that comes with the adjustment to using IM and is partly an office cultural thing. Most people I know toggle their status to "busy" or "DND" when otherwise engaged in a thing, and it's an understanding that being on open status means that people are okay to ping you or send memes.

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#23

Post by dasmoth »

bearcobra wrote: post #14
spacelizard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, a good office culture extends beyond meatspace. I've worked at plenty of companies where the general atmosphere was... not good. These are places where the "hallway conversation" was either nonexistent or didn't extend beyond small talk about TV or the weather. If your employees aren't comfortable sending instant messages to each other, they definitely aren't going to be comfortable being in the same room…

One of the problems I have with instant messages is you can't tell if you are interrupting the other person. Some people may be able to ignore the message, but I think for many this kind of notifications create a sense of urgency and push them to reply still. Being conscious of this, I try to avoid sending IMs. In person, interactions give me way more signals about the other person's current state. Because of that I'…

There's some truth in this.

The best solution to this is that if you've got something non-urgent that you'd like a colleague to think about at some point, use a truly asynchronous medium (e.g. e-mail, so long as you're not in an organisation which uses it as a de facto IM platform).

This is true whether or not the people you're trying to communicate with are in the same building.

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#24

Post by throwaway91111 »

jdc0589 wrote: post #11
throwaway91111 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully the vast majority of work has nothing to do with innovation. I'd love to hear your argument for "progress", whatever that is.

innovation is relative. Sure, innovation on a global or market scale might not be common or necessary, but within the context of a single company the definition is broader.

True, but I am highly skeptical most people will have issues producing this level of innovation from a coffee shop.

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#25

Post by Karunamon »

notahacker wrote: post #12
thedevil wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me wonder: What does it take to become a protected/victim group? Ugly and socially-unskilled people are not protected/victim groups even though their lives are harder. My current hypothesis is that the main reason that a group gets that status is that they have an emotionally compelling victim-story (although I think there's some randomness due to political movements). Under this hypothesis, the struggles o…

Conventionally ugly and socially-unskilled people might get rough treatment from their peers, but generally haven't been subject to special laws against them, pogroms or even the relatively mild insinuation they should be avoided as a group because of their "immorality" or "agenda". Also, appearance and social skills are gradients which don't fit neatly into groups, and many people who might widely be considered to s…

>...or even the relatively mild insinuation they should be avoided as a group because of their "immorality" or "agenda".

No, instead you get barbs about "creepiness" or "weirdness". Our society generally treats introverts poorly outside of very specific niches.

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#26

Post by mrkurt »

maxxxxx wrote: post #15
mrkurt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty cynical. This is not a zero sum game, improving diversity makes things better for everyone. Because properly improving diversity means you're making an environment that focuses less on "type of people" and more on "type of job". As an example, a lot of effort goes into a good interview process. When you work hard to minimize unconscious bias in interviews, you're making the interview process and criteri…

I am a little cynical about the diversity efforts because I think they will maybe expand the favored groups a little but it's still OK to discriminate against a lot of other groups. I even wonder if we are removing some people from the "in" group and moving others in but in total the number of people that are "in" doesn't change that much.

But what I'm saying is that most of the efforts, particularly the hiring / salary / perf eval related ones, are making the "in groups" matter less.

I understand the cynicism, but the actual work people are putting in is much more nuanced than you'd expect from reading twitter or hn or the news.

There's a reason that diversity appeals to companies, and it's not 100% morality. It's because diversity is an indicator that companies are doing better with HR.

Fwiw, I'm actually someone working on this problem, and the changes we implemented improved the chances for every group you listed. That was not an accident, people who care about team performance worry about homogenous groups: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-boss-doesnt-want-your-resum...

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#27

Post by Blackthorn »

jklinger410 wrote: post #19
forinti wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more emphasis should be given on the benefit that diversity brings to the organization. A university or a company with lots of young white middle-class people will miss a lot of ideias that people from other backgrounds might bring.

Has anyone ever done a study showing that teams with diverse backgrounds manage to come up with better ideas than homogeneous ones? I hear this line of logic quite a bit, that "white middle-class people" can only think within their demographic. It seems like a rather regressive kind of logic, that someone's perception, ability to empathize and problem solve, is limited by stereotypes about the demographic they belong…

This has been extensively studied. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=diversity+causing+bette...

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#28

Post by j45 »

devmunchies wrote: post #21
forinti wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more emphasis should be given on the benefit that diversity brings to the organization. A university or a company with lots of young white middle-class people will miss a lot of ideias that people from other backgrounds might bring.

This is dangerous thinking. Its skin-deep diversity. This makes it ok to look at a person and assume they have a typical middle class upbringing, but you don't know anything about that person. They could have grew up doing hard labor on an almond farm in central California and then lived a few years in haiti before going to college. Diversity does increase innovation, but its a diversity of experience and a diversity…

Skin deep diversity is a little dangerous maybe if it's the only kind of diversity.

With gender diversity, and all other types of diversity, the goals of diversity would be ironic if they want to cut visible minorities (by percentage of population and representation).

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#29

Post by j45 »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #17
forinti wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more emphasis should be given on the benefit that diversity brings to the organization. A university or a company with lots of young white middle-class people will miss a lot of ideias that people from other backgrounds might bring.

This gets trotted out a lot, but has anyone actually compared the benefits of diversity versus monoculture in terms of long-term corporate performance? If we look at something like nations, its not immediately clear that diversity is a benefit: sure, it brings a plethora of perspectives and components from which the nation can draw, but it also makes it harder to develop a unified identity from which cooperative acti…

It makes it harder to develop a unified national identity if any one group believes they are the truth path and owners of universal values like kindness and goodness.

The thing is, we all have in common these universal skills of kindness, goodness, neighborliness, hard work, love of family, value of education for children, value of opportunities, etc.

Looking in a place like Canada, while not perfect, it is a lot better, and it starts with not as much overt righteousness.

Re: Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts

#30

Post by basseq »

maxxxxx wrote: post #7
CabSauce wrote: post #3

I honestly think remote work is pretty detrimental to innovation and progress. Many of the best projects that I've worked on started as hallway conversations. Obviously, this isn't true for everyone and all situations... It's just like, my opinion... man.

When I worked at a remote company we had a lot of "hallway conversations" on Skype. I would argue that we had more creative ideas then than I ever see in my current company at the office. In the end it comes down to people. Either people are innovative or not.

I want to highlight how the importance of this comment. It highlights a major and common misconception from the OP, which is this: embracing remote work is more than "letting people work remotely".

To be truly successful, you have to build a remote culture. That means hallway conversations move somewhere else. It doesn't matter if you sit down the hall or around the world: the experience is the same. Remote people don't miss hallways conversations because hallway conversations don't happen (or aren't as important).

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