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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

#61
post #9
post #2

Ain't not gonna happen. From what I can tell from articles and company brochures diversity means young, good-looking people in an open office all staring at the same screen. There will be no diversity regarding introverts, shy, disabled, fat, ugly or other types of people.

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…

>Under this hypothesis, the struggles of the ugly and socially-unskilled may be less emotionally compelling because they are less likable and so we have less empathy for them.

The ends up being the reason they should be considered for protective group status ends up being the same reason they would not pass any such consideration.

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

#62
post #56
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Hiring managers should really know better. Age >40 is a protected class in US employment law.

In what way?

"Protected class" is a term used in US law to indicate a group of people with common characteristics who are protected from discrimination based on that characteristic in certain circumstances. It's illegal to discriminate against people over 40 in the US for employment purposes because "age over 40" is a protected class in employment law via the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967

See[1] for a list of the protected classes

One would assume a hiring manager would have a familiarity with the laws around hiring. Especially since many states (and maybe the US?) are required to post information about those sorts of laws in a visible place in places of employment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

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

#63
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…

Is it that society hasn't discriminated against them, or that we haven't been made aware of such discrimination. Many extremely racist laws that directly discriminated against minorities have fallen out of common knowledge and we are only aware of it because the common understanding of past injustice (and a few specific stories) are in the collective knowledge.

So perhaps such discrimination has existed, but too few have worked to add it to the common knowledge of our society. For example, maybe ugly people get significantly lower pay and longer prison sentences (all else being equal), but no one has spent the time researching such data? Should laws against sexual harassment end up being considered, to some extent, laws against the unattractive and socially awkward since the same interaction may or may not be considered harassment? Maybe treatment of socially awkward children (which can get very brutal and lead to suicide) hasn't been considered an issue of a group because no one has yet made the emotional argument it should be discrimination of a group.

>and many people who might widely be considered to sit at the ugly/unskilled end of the spectrum have absolutely no desire to identify as such.

There is a lot of history of who was considered black and who wasn't that might be of note.

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

#64
post #13
post #2

Ain't not gonna happen. From what I can tell from articles and company brochures diversity means young, good-looking people in an open office all staring at the same screen. There will be no diversity regarding introverts, shy, disabled, fat, ugly or other types of people.

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…

> This is not a zero sum game, improving diversity makes things better for everyone.

A positive sum game can still result in losers. Imagine two players, both starting with 2 and 2 and ended up with -2 and 10. Not a zero sum game, but there is still a loser. Even if it makes things better on average, it can still be worse for select individuals.

One example, as tech work places become more diverse, socially awkward people end up facing more trouble due to having to interact with a more diverse cast of individuals which involves an increasing scope of understanding of social interactions. If their own disadvantages are given no consideration, they end up worse off, and this can be even worse since their social awkwardness leads to a vastly smaller social support network to help them.

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

#65
post #20

Remote work is a boon for anyone with kids. You get to cut the commute out of your day, and so long as day care is nearby, recoup that time with your family. But AFAICT, the tech industry is generally hostile to the notion of having children, or aging past thirty-five.

Have you ever seen a single hostility? I can't speak for startups, but if someone ever mentioned age or child status in a hiring meeting at an established Tech Company, they'd be met with horrified glares and immediately told those facts CANNOT factor into the hiring decision.

Frankly I've worked with many engineers and I've never seen any correlation, positive or negative, between overall engineering productivity and whether the engineer had children.

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

#66

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.

I meant innovation and progress in the sense of the sharing of good ideas, and solving shared problems. If a remote job only involves some kind of repeated task, it could probably just be automated.

Thank god most code requires no innovation at all, and thank god i am the one automating others out of the job!

Unless you're working on research, it's hard to buy physical proximity reducing throughput; just latency.

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

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is it that society hasn't discriminated against them, or that we haven't been made aware of such discrimination. Many extremely racist laws that directly discriminated against minorities have fallen out of common knowledge and we are only aware of it because the common understanding of past injustice (and a few specific stories) are in the collective knowledge. So perhaps such discrimination has existed, but too few…

Nobody is pretending that ugly and socially awkward people have never been discriminated against by individuals and peer groups; all kinds of people are cruelly and unusually treated on a large variety of arbitrary and non-arbitrary criteria on a daily basis, and many more are marginalised.

But social awkwardness isn't something which was only decriminalised 14 years ago in the US and still illegal in 72 countries. Influential religious leaders do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly people to subordinate themselves to their partners. Beautiful, socially adept people don't hold tiki-torch-lit rallies to venerate people that lead the fight to keep ugly or socially awkward people as property.

Maybe nobody influential is making the emotional argument that kids bullied for their individual awkwardnesses should be protected as a group because nobody influential is making the emotional argument for discriminating against socially awkward children as a group...

Protected discrimination classes haven't emerged as a consequence of extensive research to find hints of systematic discrimination, they've arisen as a response to obvious, organised and usually very open attempts to encourage and enforce systematic discrimination. If you're inclined to make the mistake of assuming that discrimination against protected classes is historic or the result of statistical fishing expeditions, it's probably because - whatever other mistreatment or misfortunes you might have suffered in your life - you're not in a group that is subject to organised and systematic attempts to suppress it.

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

#68
post #65
post #20

Remote work is a boon for anyone with kids. You get to cut the commute out of your day, and so long as day care is nearby, recoup that time with your family. But AFAICT, the tech industry is generally hostile to the notion of having children, or aging past thirty-five.

Have you ever seen a single hostility? I can't speak for startups, but if someone ever mentioned age or child status in a hiring meeting at an established Tech Company, they'd be met with horrified glares and immediately told those facts CANNOT factor into the hiring decision. Frankly I've worked with many engineers and I've never seen any correlation, positive or negative, between overall engineering productivity an…

Yes, I have had heated arguments during hiring committees, behind closed doors, over this issue.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that society hasn't discriminated against them, or that we haven't been made aware of such discrimination. Many extremely racist laws that directly discriminated against minorities have fallen out of common knowledge and we are only aware of it because the common understanding of past injustice (and a few specific stories) are in the collective knowledge. So perhaps such discrimination has existed, but too few…

Nobody is pretending that ugly and socially awkward people have never been discriminated against by individuals and peer groups; all kinds of people are cruelly and unusually treated on a large variety of arbitrary and non-arbitrary criteria on a daily basis, and many more are marginalised. But social awkwardness isn't something which was only decriminalised 14 years ago in the US and still illegal in 72 countries. I…

> because nobody influential is making the emotional argument for discriminating against socially awkward children as a group

Why is the metric about who is making the argument, instead of what is actually happening?

Also, many influential people make arguments such as 'kids being kids' that open tolerate bullying. Especially people directly involved in the school system that should be protecting these kids. There is no one in the national spotlight for it because it isn't outrageous enough for our society to put it in the national spotlight.

>Influential religious leaders do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly people to subordinate themselves to their partners.

Writers at major news organizations, who have audiences that would make most pastors jealous, have written such things. Especially if we talk about people who openly support discrimination against short men. And the attack on men's sexuality is pretty brutal as well, yet openly tolerated (just look at how often virgin is equated to someones who hates women and wants to enslave/kill them).

> they've arisen as a response to obvious, organised and usually very open attempts to encourage and enforce systematic discrimination

And there are still groups who have experienced such who haven't yet been made into a protected class. For an example I think we can both agree on, sexual orientation hasn't yet been made (federal level in the US at least) into a protected class.

Also, this doesn't explain why the majorities are also protected. Race is a protected class, not just being a minority. (Age is a weird one where being old is protected but being young isn't, despite massive historic discrimination against young people, namely the forcing of young men to die in wars on behalf of old people.)

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