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If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

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Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#441

Post by sharemywin »

eropple wrote: post #65
drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

> They just don't understand that some people like me, who can get into the (mostly private) elite schools choose to go to a "long tail" school for a variety of reasons (financial, family obligations, etc). Agreed--I was accepted everywhere I applied save one and I ended up going to the University of Maine. I've never hurt for work and I paid off my student loans by the age of 25. Google sniffs around now (aside: rec…

It's hard to be elitist if you went to a state school.

Think of all the extra brainwashing needed.

It's way cheaper to start with a kernel than expand from there.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#442

Post by groupthink-- »

whipoodle wrote: post #117
gonehome wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - and this is even more true at state schools than the slightly more selective schools (like RPI that I went to). State schools have people that got into MIT, but didn't go for financial reasons or family reasons. Nobody at RPI got into MIT because if they did they would have gone to MIT (maybe some rare exception exists, but this is generally true). School admission is obviously not a perfect indicator of ab…

I didn't even understand the whole world of prestige and specialization among colleges when I was 16 or 17 and trying to pick a school. I didn't know that some schools were where the "good" people go. I just knew I was supposed to go to college, so I visited the local Penn State campus and people said "don't come here". Then I visited another state school and people seemed to like it, so that's where I went. I wonder…

it’s not a function of having gone to college. my parents and other family members have stem-related graduate degrees from state schools but were entirely ineffective in educating me on how the social aspect works. they just had no idea how the ruling class / managerial swath of society really works.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#443

Post by wpietri »

jasonx1e wrote: post #413
wpietri wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An especially good assumption given that assuming otherwise has been proven wrong time and time again. Pretty much every advance for women was argued against on the basis that women were somehow not biologically capable. That argument has been consistently wrong since women's suffrage, but that doesn't stop chowderheads from hauling it out anew, apparently unaware of its rich history of failure.

Except this isn't true; there are many cases where inequality of outcome is not a cause of inequality of opportunity - unless you're telling me the system actively encourages men to die on the job - so much so that 93% of all occupational deaths are male.[0] CollegeBoard testing statistics demonstrate that in high school, 2-3 times as many boys take the AP Calculus BC, AP Physics, AP Computer Science exam than girls.…

Oh, gosh! Of course it's an anonymous dude showing up to try to preserve the argument that women are biologically inferior. With an account that's doesn't appear to care about much besides arguing against diversity. What a surprise.

We aren't of course seeing 50/50 outcomes in tech. As I said elsewhere in this thread, we are steadily approaching them in law and medicine. This is despite that fact that goofs like you made effectively identical arguments for decades about it just not being in women's nature to study those topics, to do that work.

That ended up not being true. When the barriers in law and medicine were diminished, representation ended up pretty quickly moving toward 50/50. If you talk to women in tech you'll quickly discover that they face similar barriers. Prof. Ellen Spertus wrote this in 1991:

http://www.spertus.com/ellen/Gender/pap/pap.html

Talking with her recently, she mentioned that she believes the problems are the same or worse.

We have seen this pattern over and over for many topics for the last 100 years. Dudes say women can't or intrinsically don't want to. When we reduce the discrimination, they can and do want to. It turns out what women don't want is to deal with discrimination. Like, I'm sure, yours.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#444

Post by internetman55 »

mcguire wrote: post #350
CWuestefeld wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody at RPI got into MIT because if they did they would have gone to MIT (maybe some rare exception exists, but this is generally true). One exception at least. One of my fraternity brothers at RPI came to beautiful Troy, NY when he had the option of MIT. There really are good reasons for such a choice. The schools that are so famous for their top-end research are achieving that research success by having those eli…

Most of the best professors I have had were researchers teaching they favorite subject. Most of the worst were "CS education" types who should have been good teachers.

I definitely agree on this.

Mathematical logic class taught by logician? Awesome

Automata class taught by expert in complexity theory? Fantastic

Rudin class taught by PDEs expert - amazing

The worst class I had was an introductory algorithms course taught by someone who specialized in teaching.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#445

Post by wpietri »

BadassFractal wrote: post #396
wpietri wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think perhaps you aren't looking at this through a long enough lens. You can tell America's history in terms of decreasing inequality of opportunity. We started with only well-off white men having the vote; black people were chattel and women were pretty close. We have sporadically worked ever since to repair that. One civil war, assorted constitutional amendments, and 8 civil rights acts so far. We try something,…

Well written, thanks for that. I'm usually on the more conservative end of things but this has definitely helped me think of the issue differently, I love having my opinion changed or at least nudged in a different direction, confirms that I'm not sitting in an echo chamber all day. What would be in your opinion a reasonable way to support the opinion of the poster you replied to? Could you steel man his position? Cu…

Thanks. I'm dispositionally conservative. In another era would have ended up a Rockefeller Republican; in another timeline, a libertarian. But when I honestly look at America's history in this timeline and the lived experience of a lot of people, I don't think we are yet living up to America's promise. That has made me pretty energetic in pushing against racism and sexism.

If you get interested, I'd strongly recommend "Sundown Towns", which looks at a conveniently unexamined phenomenon that a) did a lot to shape America's racial history, and b) helped me to see forces in play today. It's been a giant eye-opener for me.

Sorry, but I didn't quite follow your last paragraph. Which particular opinion of the poster were you thinking of?

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#446

Post by wpietri »

peoplewindow wrote: post #429
wpietri wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think perhaps you aren't looking at this through a long enough lens. You can tell America's history in terms of decreasing inequality of opportunity. We started with only well-off white men having the vote; black people were chattel and women were pretty close. We have sporadically worked ever since to repair that. One civil war, assorted constitutional amendments, and 8 civil rights acts so far. We try something,…

That's itself a very biased telling of how things are. The USA along with many other western nations now discriminates against men in favour of women, in many concrete and very specific ways: - Family courts - Rape shield laws - In the private sector, tech sector programmes handing out money but only to women - Laws that mandate gender ratios in certain situations, like bidding on government contracts Society has ben…

Loss of privilege feels like a loss. If you have no historical perspective and are currently favored by discrimination, programs attempting to undo historical discrimination seem like they're biased against you. They aren't.

As an example, consider the common practice of scholarships that are awarded based on both merit and economic need. A rich dude could be mad that he is being discriminated against. After all, they won't even consider giving him those scholarships! What jerks people are! He worked hard, and should be eligible for everything!

He's wrong, of course. His feelings are real, but his perspective is severely limited. If you're used to things being tilted in your favor, a level playing field is going to seem unfair.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#447

Post by wpietri »

UncreativeCodar wrote: post #294
wpietri wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I happened to chat recently with some people from the startup Handshake: https://www.joinhandshake.com/ It's founded by 3 graduates of Michigan Tech University, a small but well-regarded school that even other Michiganders think is far north. Their goal is to level the playing field for internships and first jobs. It was great to meet people so sincere about solving this problem.

Thats an admirable goal. I hope it continues to be developed, my experience so far is that it's just a less functional LinkedIn clone.

Oh, interesting! I'd love to hear more about your experience. Drop me a note? Details are in my profile.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#448

Post by dragonwriter »

peoplewindow wrote: post #429
wpietri wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think perhaps you aren't looking at this through a long enough lens. You can tell America's history in terms of decreasing inequality of opportunity. We started with only well-off white men having the vote; black people were chattel and women were pretty close. We have sporadically worked ever since to repair that. One civil war, assorted constitutional amendments, and 8 civil rights acts so far. We try something,…

That's itself a very biased telling of how things are. The USA along with many other western nations now discriminates against men in favour of women, in many concrete and very specific ways: - Family courts - Rape shield laws - In the private sector, tech sector programmes handing out money but only to women - Laws that mandate gender ratios in certain situations, like bidding on government contracts Society has ben…

> Society has bent over backwards to try and create equality of outcome for women, thereby simultaneously eliminating equality of opportunity for men

No, it's bent over backwards to address a pre-existing inequality of opportunity that disfavors women.

But what both sides find uncomfortable and avoid is the inconvenient fact that in a continued series of interactions over time (like life in the real world) rather than an isolated event disconnected from past and future, every opportunity is a product of outcomes at an earlier time, and every outcome effects opportunities at a later time.

Equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes are different concerns, but not at all orthogonal concerns. Any attempt to durably effect changes to inequality of opportunity will necessarily effect inequality of outcomes not only as an effect of opportunity, but as a key mechanism.

And, conversely, every attempt to safeguard existing inequality of outcome safeguards (whether it is the conscious intent or not) durable inequalities of opportunity.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#449

Post by internetman55 »

habosa wrote: post #80
drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

I work at Google and have done some university recruiting (not a ton, but some) and I have not had this experience. Recently I saw a list of hundreds of schools of all sizes and locations that we were committed to sending reps to, so I think Google is actually way out ahead of the field when it comes to not only looking at Ivy League / Stanford / MIT.

I attended a state school where we had presentations each semester from Google recruitment, including advice from alumni Google employees on how to schedule your classes and choose extracurricular activities if you wanted to be a strong applicant. I don't doubt that top school folks have some resources that others may not, but Google had some presence at my school (East coast state school with quite strong mathematics department and a relatively strong CS department).

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#450

Post by Karunamon »

samstave wrote: post #331
cyberpunk0 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You placed your hopes in someone other than yourself and we're disappointed when it didn't go well?

Screw this logic. Ok the company who is one of the biggest data--based companies in the world is trying to "make the world a better place" - and we are all one big family blah blah gives no data back, so as to literally stomp on some dream rather than to foster growth. So, to the VCs out there, you have a moral obligation to tell people why you don't want to invest/work-with or hire. Otherwise you stick the idea of "…

I don’t know whether to be disheartened or comforted that their approach to hiring is basically the same as their approach to customer service.
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