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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

#451

Post by xigency »

nether wrote: post #245
viewtransform wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a recruiter contacted me for a position at Google in 2012, I happened to be also taking Daphne Koller's Coursera class on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM). I was puzzled why the recruiter wanted to know my SAT score. He also wanted to know the college and high school I went to and my GRE score and my undergrad GPA ... Keep in mind that I have a BS, MS, Phd in three different engineering fields and over a dec…

Then we've got this 2013 article saying that Google doesn't care about GPA and test scores: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-hires-people-2013-... . Maybe things have changed since your experience.

That's doubtful. In 2015 they called me back to clarify my college GPA after an onsite interview. The next week they gave me a rejection.

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

#452

Post by xigency »

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…

    - Family courts
While I would have thought that these would weigh in favor of women, in my experience I have actually seen the opposite. There are many family judges and lawyers that are incredibly sexist and will screw over women in favor of men. And in fact, that is mostly what I have seen in my county.

> ...try and create equality of outcome for women, thereby simultaneously eliminating equality of opportunity for men.

I understand the emotional argument here but I don't think it's valid. Opportunity isn't zero-sum.

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

#453

Post by s73ver_ »

crispyambulance wrote: post #359
s73ver_ wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be better for those candidates to make that decision themselves.

Well, sure, but they can do that with or without recruiting events sponsored by the top-5 at their schools. I guess I am also trying to say that these students should not feel so deprived if google recruiters aren't easily accessible, there's plenty of great places to work.

But not many with the clout and paycheck of Google.

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

#454

Post by s73ver_ »

sopooneo wrote: post #336
s73ver_ wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On the other hand, I bet if you sat down and ran the numbers, recruiting from state schools isn't productive." I would not buy that for a second.

I tend to agree with you. But with the intense competition for talent, why aren't maket forces sorting this out?

You're assuming the actors are all rational. In other words, "No one ever got fired for hiring from Stanford"

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

#455

Post by Scea91 »

obstacle1 wrote: post #260
dogruck wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your definition?

This seems like a deflection. It's totally legit to ask you what your definition of the 'best' candidate is, because you made a claim: that the best people come from the top schools. How are we to conclude that your argument has any worth whatsoever when you aren't able to even define the components of the claim you are making?

Asking OP to define 'best' is a red herring and it would steer the discussion away from the topic. Deflection is the correct response.

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

#456

Post by messick »

vonmoltke wrote: post #68
messick wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol If you are "someone who has only ever worked on IT-focused Java development" that apparently we don't want at Apple, my email is in my profile.

FYI, it isn't. If you are referring to the "email" field, that isn't public.

Huh, never knew. Ok it’s fixed.

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

#457

Post by peoplewindow »

wpietri wrote: post #446
peoplewindow wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, the…

Modern men are not "privileged". This is corruption-of-blood level stuff. Men alive today unless perhaps very old have not benefited from discrimination against women and have no reason to accept being discriminated against as a result.

Trying to blame bad things done by historical figures for bad actions taken today is the result of much wrongness in the world. Please don't try to justify it.

Oh, and your analogy to the rich dude is deeply flawed. Rich people can become poor and poor can become rich; it happens all the time. Putting gender re-assignment surgery to one side, gender is generally fixed. If you get discriminated against because you're a man, you aren't going to be mollified by an argument of the form "one day you might be a woman and it may work in your favour". Whereas "one day you may be rich" or "one day you may be poor" is used as a reasonable justification for all sorts of things, like progressive taxation and a social safety net.

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

#458

Post by peoplewindow »

xigency wrote: post #452
peoplewindow wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

- Family courts While I would have thought that these would weigh in favor of women, in my experience I have actually seen the opposite. There are many family judges and lawyers that are incredibly sexist and will screw over women in favor of men. And in fact, that is mostly what I have seen in my county. > ...try and create equality of outcome for women, thereby simultaneously eliminating equality of opportunity for…

I wonder where you live. I have heard many reported family courts cases over the years and they have always been resolved in favour of the woman, sometimes grossly so.

For instance, I have one friend whose wife went literally mad (post-partum psychosis). Total psycho breakdown level mad when she was off her meds, which happened a lot. Fortunately the courts awarded him custody of the kids. Unfortunately they are still, years later, dragging their heels over the divorce and he his still not yet divorced. There is no reason for this beyond the fact that family law in his (western) country is designed to benefit the woman to the cost of the man, to a nearly absurd degree.

Re: opportunity. Yes, opportunity is very often zero sum. Most obviously hiring and firing at the company level are zero sum games - if a woman got the job because she's a woman, it means you didn't. Whilst the economy in general may not be zero sum over the long run, it sure is at the moment you're applying for a job. Likewise for cases like this:

https://sites.google.com/site/codejamtoioforwomen/

where tickets to a very expensive conference were reserved only for women. Limited number of places at the conference = zero sum game and therefore, very much unequal opportunity. Note that there's a female only version of Code Jam because women couldn't compete with the men in the mixed gender version.

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

#459

Post by mcguire »

peoplewindow wrote: post #425
mcguire wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How are you judging "best professor"? I had professors at my school that taught their pet research topics. They all sucked at teaching, partly because their research areas were utterly irrelevant for undergrads who were still struggling to learn programming. RDF, anyone? The best profs were the ones who had been working developers in industry. They found ways to make the classes engaging and fun, vs just lifelessly r…

Best professor:

1. Actually know something about, and be interested in, what they are teaching.

2. Being able to explain the subject without making a complete hash of it.

3. Being able to explain the subject without leaving me comotose in my desk-thing.

Extra credit for including tips and tricks that don't get covered in textbooks and are only known to people involved in the field. Plus, background and amusing stories about how the goofy nomenclature and such got the way it is.

On the other hand, when and where I was an undergraduate, if you were "still struggling to learn programming" after the first couple of semesters of programming and data structures (taught by aforementioned "CS education" people), then you were pretty thoroughly hosed. (There were, however, 1-course hour classes in individual programming languages, if you couldn't pick up those yourself.)

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

#460

Post by s73ver_ »

Scea91 wrote: post #455
obstacle1 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a deflection. It's totally legit to ask you what your definition of the 'best' candidate is, because you made a claim: that the best people come from the top schools. How are we to conclude that your argument has any worth whatsoever when you aren't able to even define the components of the claim you are making?

Asking OP to define 'best' is a red herring and it would steer the discussion away from the topic. Deflection is the correct response.

No, it isn't. Their entire argument was predicated on "these companies need to hire the best." So they need to define what "best" means in this context. Cause so far, for the likes of Google, it's "Went to an expensive school, and can do whiteboard problems."
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