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

#241

Post by throwaway1584 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

spicymaki wrote: post #201

throwaway0255 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am trying to wrap my head around this. The level of black employees at Google is at 2% and actually dropped since 2016. How fair is it to say from a statistical point of view that if you did not get hired, you lost out to a lesser qualified black person and not someone from a white or asian of equal or more qualifications? I pick on the black statistic specifically because at the end of the day the blow back for th…

A pretty straightforward explanation is that ⅔ [1] of the tech workers in Silicon Valley are immigrants. Silicon Valley recruits outliers from around the world, and it doesn't make sense to apply US demographics to an industry that recruits from such a pool.

If you assume that the Silicon Valley percent of immigrant workers holds for Google you conclude that 6% of the American Googlers are African Americans, since none of the foreigners can be. About 2.4% [2] of computer science degree recipients in the US are African American.

[1] https://jointventure.org/images/stories/pdf/index2018.pdf

[2] https://cra.org/crn/2015/09/expanding-the-pipeline-the-state...

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

#242

Post by oceanghost » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:13 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #231

oceanghost wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in the early 90s (I'm old), and it was the local AT&T office. I've also been "discriminated" against for not being Native American (Casino Morongo in So Cal), and not being an Evangelical Christian (Cal Baptist University). As it turns out-- those institutions are legally allowed to discriminate. It absolutely blew my mind being asked to "describe my relationship with jesus" in an interview.

I hope you said first name basis :)

Oh, it was awful. I was perhaps, 26, hardcore atheist. No mention was made of any of what was to come when I accepted the interview.

There was a technical interview with a very nice guy, who said I scored the highest of any candidate who had ever interviewed for the university.

Then, this sallow cow of a woman with a permanent look of disgust on her face conducted my "religious" interview on subjects like evolution, the Trinity, and my relationship with Jesus.

I tried my best to be "reasonable," but I'm sure I looked like a deer in headlights. It's impossible to be reasonable with unreasonable people such as evangelicals.

My position on spirituality has softened quite a bit as I've gotten older and had a few "spiritual experiences"... but sometimes I wonder if, in the intervening years, if it has occurred to them that beliving in provably false things like creationism, (remember, evangelicals won't even accept that "evolution is gods mechanism of creation"), doesn't make for a good engineer.

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

#243

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

spicymaki wrote: post #217

aliston wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re correct that the difference is in the margins. But, at the end of the day, is any exclusion based on race acceptable? From my perspective, it’s hypocritical to champion equal opportunity while systematically having a different hiring process for different races, not to mention illegal.

That is not the argument I am making. I am asking the question if there is a super majority of white and asian males being hired at these firms (that is present in the Google stats), is it fair to say on an individual basis that the reason you did not get the job was because you were passed over for someone unqualified in an underrepresented group, or is it because said person just did not get hired for some other re…

[deleted]

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

#244

Post by alphabettsy » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:43 AM UTC

fatbird wrote: post #152

danieltillett wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn’t complain about being down voted. To answer your question the issue of discrimination is solved by not discriminating. If women and others are being discriminated against then stop doing this, rather than just start discriminating against other people.

You can't stop discrimination without addressing the long-term systemic effects of pervasive discrimination.

It seems this is an issue many don’t want to talk about. Is the solution to ignore systemic discrimination that led us to where we are today? That only leaves one group happy.

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

#245

Post by throwaway1584 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:45 AM UTC

spicymaki wrote: post #180

netheril96 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This starts with the [diversity pledge]( http://thehill.com/policy/technology/284517-white-house-pres... ) pushed by Obama administration, including companies like Airbnb, Box, GitHub, GoDaddy, Intel, Lyft, Medium. No wonder many Asians sigh relief when Clinton failed her presidency, or she surely would have pushed for more.

That is not accurate according to 2016 votes: http://aaldef.org/TheAsianAmericanVote2016-AALDEF.pdf 79% of Asians voted for Clinton.

Anecdotally I only knew two Trump voters in the Bay Area. One is Chinese and the other Indian. Polling was not great in the last election, maybe because pollsters can mainly call people with landlines [1] which excludes large pools of people.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/12/t...

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

#246

Post by nomansland » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 7:39 AM UTC

tibbetts wrote: post #135

hnaccy wrote: post #96

I disagree with this but I do selfishly wish I could get a "diversity" boost when applying. Too bad being LGBT is effectively invisible to recruiters.

Do you find that LBGT status is still an obstacle in tech?

I find that T status is still an issue.

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

#247

Post by cyphar » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 7:52 AM UTC

throwaway1584 wrote: post #245

spicymaki wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not accurate according to 2016 votes: http://aaldef.org/TheAsianAmericanVote2016-AALDEF.pdf 79% of Asians voted for Clinton.

Anecdotally I only knew two Trump voters in the Bay Area. One is Chinese and the other Indian. Polling was not great in the last election, maybe because pollsters can mainly call people with landlines [1] which excludes large pools of people. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/03/12/t...

> Polling was not great in the last election

Exit polls are different from opinion polls. The surveying techniques are entirely different, and in general exit polls are considered far more accurate than opinion polls -- because you're polling on a concrete question ("who did you vote for a few minutes ago") rather than a less concrete one ("who are you more likely to vote for").

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

#248

Post by cyphar » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 7:53 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #209

spicymaki wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not accurate according to 2016 votes: http://aaldef.org/TheAsianAmericanVote2016-AALDEF.pdf 79% of Asians voted for Clinton.

Out of curiosity, how did they get the cast ballots with the voters race to do their count? Polling, particularly in the last election, was atrocious.

Exit polls are very different from opinion polls, it doesn't make sense to conflate the two.

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

#249

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 8:20 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #190

ghostcluster wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes beyond a lazy fix. According to another HN commenter here: > under Title VII, the federal antidiscrimination law, employers aren’t allowed to make hiring decisions based on race and gender among other protected classes. The former veteran Google recruiters behind this suit are claiming they were 'instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic, and to “purge entirely” t…

The fact that it's illegal doesn't make it any less lazy.

[deleted]

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

#250

Post by edanm » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 8:43 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…

Well, we certainly should concentrate on removing hurdles, of course. But patching problems is not necessarily a bad idea, especially from the point of view of the employers themselves.

Legality aside, there is a moral/practical argument for some discrimination based on "race" as a patch, which benefits the employer, so it's what we should expect employers to do. It's also something to keep in mind when thinking people are just hired to fill a "diversity quota checklist", which may or may not be true.

For example, say I'm an employer that wants the best performing employees. I know that, for whatever societal/biological/whatever reasons, the black population in the US tends to have worse schooling (maybe the schools have less money, maybe the parents tend to be less wealthy, it doesn't really matter so long as I believe that the black population has some biases against them).

I can deduce just from these biases that the black population will tend to have lower grades, just because of these biases. I may choose to "correct" this bias by preferring equivalent hires that are black, on the assumption that if they have equivalent grades, they had to work harder/be smarter to achieve them, because of the aforementioned biases. I do this entirely from a selfish perspective - I want the best, and if my beliefs about the world are right, this gets me the best!

The same reasoning can theoretically be reversed for e.g. asian populations (maybe their schooling tends to be better, because e.g. wealthier or stricter parents causing more focus on school? Which would imply higher grades without necessarily translating into better workers).

Note: This is a hypothetical case for why an employer might voluntarily and correctly choose to use some form of "affirmative action". It is not necessarily what I think is right or what I think is happening, and is based on a lot of possible assumptions which I have no idea if true. I'm just trying to demonstrate that there is a case, which doesn't rely on "social justice" or anything other than correct self-interest of the employer.