YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#161

Post by Distant_horizon » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:49 AM UTC

joefkelley wrote: post #128

My understanding is that you can't legally have any sort of explicit quota or scoring system, but that you can sort-of factor in race, ethnicity, or gender to meet diversity goals. Is this correct? And isn't it kind of inconsistent? Whatever sort of decision-making process a recruiter goes through, one could imagine a mathematical formulation of it that matches up to some tolerance. Would such a formulation be illega…

Companies are only required to "avoid discrimination."

So documenting attempts to hire and attract underrepresented people (POC), is a way to avoid discrimination lawsuits and satisfy court judgments for prior bad hiring practices.

Recruiters need to get POC into the pipeline. Then, merit based "scoring" is introduced. There's no guarantee they'll be hired.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#162

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:49 AM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #155

stcredzero wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that the reason is that screening for basic math competency could be discrimination, because it reduces the chance of hiring for minorities who do less well at math testing. If it genuinely screens for basic math, then there's nothing racist about it. artificially discriminate in the opposite direction and suppress valid criteria that are statistically unfavorable to minorities. Eroding meritocracy is ul…

While it's clearly not genuinely discriminatory to filter people based on math skills, this is something that gets pushed internally at some companies by the people they hire to improve their diversity. They see that the people they "want to hire" can't pass some standard so they call it discriminatory. It's an easy way for them to show "success".

They see that the people they "want to hire" can't pass some standard so they call it discriminatory.

It's as if they think people can't do math based on ethnicity. Those people are the true racists.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#163

Post by zanny » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:49 AM UTC

majos wrote: post #26

ausjke wrote: post #4

NBA is totally underrepresented by non-black Males, let's sue them. Swim tournament is severely underrepresented by deep skin colors. Meanwhile track and field is the opposite. Let's mix all colors everywhere based on population percentile, to achieve diversity, equal rights and fairness. Or do something like Dr.King hoped, that is, don't judge a person by color.

Do you really think there are young people in the US who could be NBA players but are held back by lack of resources, lack of training, and lack of friends/family members who play basketball? I think that's a key difference between the "diversity problem" in the NBA and the diversity problem (no scare quotes) in tech.

You don't solve the upstream problems by doing the exact same wrong that made the problem to begin with. If the institutions that preceded yours bred inequality and bias then yes, you get a biased candidate pool, whether you are the NBA or Google. But the solution is never to get an input of biased applicants and select not the best candidate but the one that meets a racial quota to try to make yourself feel better about racism in the world.

In both cases I imagine there are capable young non-black men who don't pursue basketball because its a "black sport" and there are technically minded young black women who don't pursue software because its a "nerdy white man industry". Regardless of if the NBA is actually biased, or if tech companies are actually sexist, what matters is the average normative cultural perception of that industry or discipline. If you are told your whole life by opinionated outsiders that only white men can program of course you are going to have a hard time finding the willpower to fight that presumption as a young uninformed anything.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#164

Post by spicymaki » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:49 AM UTC

Toast_25 wrote: post #103

This begs the question, what is Latino and what is white? I was born in a Latin American country to a Latin American mother and a Canadian father, have lived here my entire life but if you saw me you wouldn't even think I spoke Spanish. Likewise, I've made friends in the US who are of Mexican descent and look very much like it but don't speak a lick of Spanish. This has led me to feel not at home in either my country…

Many aspects of how we categorize humans fall apart when you start asking questions like this. Best I can say is there are no logically satisfying answers.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#165

Post by whatyoucantsay » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

The article mentions that there was a hiring freeze of white and Asian candidates and shows in a demographic breakdown that 56% of its employees are white.

The US is 76.9% of the US "white alone" according to its Census data. The corresponding figure for California is 72.7%.

It's interesting that YouTube (allegedly) made the decision to freeze hires of a racial group already underrepresented and that the text of the article never touched upon the point. The ethnic group truly overrepresented in US tech companies is Asians.

It's an unfortunate trend of treating people as members of groups rather than individuals to begin with, but it's doubly unfortunate that so many Americans are struggling even to speak openly about the what the current numbers are.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#166

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #136

master-litty wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Towards the end of last year I actually did apply to Google in Mountain View for Software Engineering. I believe my on-site went excellent technically overall, but I had a hard time meshing with a couple of my interviewers and wasn't surprised about my rejection. Nothing strange about that personally. However, another Google recruiter reached out to me for two other potential positions, said I would be an excellent f…

Friend of mine had setup interview at Google London, he flew in, came into the office and they completely forgot about him! :D He was just sitting there for a few hours, then left.

In my youth, these things were simply not done. They were inexcusable. Now, people think nothing of blowing you off.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#167

Post by guildenstern » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #19

The thing I hate about actions like this is what it does to talented people who fit some diversity quota checklist, both in the perception they have of themselves and those of other people. If you are a talented melanin-rich woman you are going to face both heightened impostor syndrome and dismissal by others that you only got the job because of some quota. Not good for anyone. There are no easy solutions, but it wou…

nevermind, hn is not the place for discussion of race.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#168

Post by rmrm » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

gyc wrote: post #139

EduardoBautista wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Asians are more successful than white people on average. Strange that there is no “Asian Privilege”

Well when Asians are discriminated against in university admissions and now even when searching for a job (at least in the case of Asian males), exactly what kind of privilege do Asians really have?

Asian males are generally, without knowing them, considered to be smart, hardworking, nonviolent, helpful, family and work oriented, and stable. And they likely (I would guess) on average be more likely to be raised by both parents, who model school and work and family to them. So, in terms of what is termed as priviledge...theres that.

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#169

Post by Caveman_Coder » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

ghostcluster wrote: post #61

ignoramceisblis wrote: post #23

Did anyone not see this coming? The goal posts of equal _outcome_ continue to move, from university enrollment, to employment enrollment. And there are some people who want to see it go further. (What societal engineering scheme does this resemble?) With no apparent regard for what it costs. Do you want to live in a world where you are judged by the color of your skin, your gender, your "ethnicity"? Or do you think t…

Note, this lawsuit is being brought by former Google recruiters who say they were ordered to "purge" certain groups from the interview queue. > YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” the applications of people who didn’t fit those categories, the lawsuit claims. I'd like to remind people of what Denise Young Smit…

> "She's gone now, instantly, after working there for 20 years and rising to senior executive VP. What is going on in our industry?"

Her crime was not having ideological purity...

Re: YouTube Hiring for Some Positions Excluded White and Asian Males, Lawsuit Says

#170

Post by pasabagi » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:54 AM UTC

throwaway0255 wrote: post #158

danieltillett wrote: post #19

The thing I hate about actions like this is what it does to talented people who fit some diversity quota checklist, both in the perception they have of themselves and those of other people. If you are a talented melanin-rich woman you are going to face both heightened impostor syndrome and dismissal by others that you only got the job because of some quota. Not good for anyone. There are no easy solutions, but it wou…

Tell that to the white and asian males who get rejected on the basis of their race and gender despite having worked their entire lives to be the most qualified and technically adept candidate. I'm pretty sure impostor syndrome is a problem they would love to have. Instead they got the entire course of their careers (and lives) stepped on by bigoted racists and sexists. I know your comment has to be the top one becaus…

I think I'd settle for having a proportionate amount of the conversation being about discrimination against white men. So, perhaps, for every thousand comments about discrimination against other groups, we could include a word or two. I am a white man - I have never to my knowledge been meaningfully discriminated against. I think only a fool would suggest that if I was black, or a woman, I could say that - or even say that for a more limited time period.