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

#281

Post by manigandham » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #276

candiodari wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps he's against discrimination, and that then automatically leads to the "reflexively polarized" opinion. How about we judge people on their merits ?

> How about we judge people on their merits ? That's fine if everyone starts from the same base and has the same opportunities which, currently, they most assuredly do not. Let's knock this privileged bullshit on the head until then.

That will never happen. Life isn't fair and never will be, just by virtue of the natural world itself.

We can and should do our best to clear the way to ensure equal opportunity (not outcome) but it's important to realize what is actually reasonable and achievable vs impossible.

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

#282

Post by ddorian43 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #175

stcredzero wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He was pretty furious; we talked before interview about how he should prepare, I gave him some puzzlers to solve, and after "interview" I was curious how did that go, and he was like: "they completely forgot about me!" :D He now works for their competitor.

Bing ?

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

#283

Post by reefoctopus » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:55 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #212

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…

> If it genuinely screens for basic math, then there's nothing racist about it. Lets say that Google added a test for its engineers, that screened for writing and communication skills. Think, SAT verbal questions or something. And lets say that it just so happens that women are a lot better at SAT verbal questions than men. Would you call that meritocrat, to ask vocabulary questions to software engineers, given that…

I don’t see a problem with that as long as everyone takes the same test. An individual’s skills are not bound by the race and gender to which they belong.

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

#284

Post by JohnTHaller » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

master-litty wrote: post #62

ilamont wrote: post #15

Last spring, 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. Anyone from Google or YouTube--or people who applied to work at either org in this time frame--have perspectives to add regarding this claim?

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…

Apparently all the large technical companies do this. I had this happen after I did 2 phone interviews with one of the big silicon valley tech companies after their recruiters called me for 3 years. They had a position they were interested in me for specifically but were waiting for the manager to get back from leave. Said they'd call when she was back. Didn't hear anything. Months later got a call asking how it went and if I was still interested. Told them I'd never heard anything and was still interested. Never heard back again. I've had friends say Twitter is the worst at this, followed by Google, then Facebook. Amazon, too. It's the nature of using so many different recruiters. My friends have said that the companies all seem to treat potential candidates badly and you only get the job if you pro-actively call back again and again and again.

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

#285

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #115

wycs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then company X gets rightfully trounced by a Chinese firm 5 years from now which does not share our ridiculous racial taboos. Some crimes are self policing.

No company ever got trounced because they followed the prevailing political winds. Let's face it: the top tech companies have sufficient applicants, so they can choose whoever they want, and most jobs are drone jobs.

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by foobardeveloper » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #276

candiodari wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps he's against discrimination, and that then automatically leads to the "reflexively polarized" opinion. How about we judge people on their merits ?

> How about we judge people on their merits ? That's fine if everyone starts from the same base and has the same opportunities which, currently, they most assuredly do not. Let's knock this privileged bullshit on the head until then.

Human society will NEVER provide absolute equal opportunity to everybody. If you want that, please first work on rethinking capitalism.It's not practical and has been tried in the past.

Some of these Asian males may have come out of abject poverty in countries like India - worked all their lives for a chance at better living, were that given the "same" opportunity ?

Please stop this entitled thinking. We should aim to get all kids high quality education, not social engineering in the job market.

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

#287

Post by zimpenfish » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #281

zimpenfish wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about we judge people on their merits ? That's fine if everyone starts from the same base and has the same opportunities which, currently, they most assuredly do not. Let's knock this privileged bullshit on the head until then.

That will never happen. Life isn't fair and never will be, just by virtue of the natural world itself. We can and should do our best to clear the way to ensure equal opportunity (not outcome) but it's important to realize what is actually reasonable and achievable vs impossible.

> That will never happen. Life isn't fair and never will be

And that's why "we should just judge people on their merits" is a bullshit statement.

> We can and should do our best to clear the way to ensure equal opportunity

I am 100% behind this if it actually results in equal opportunities (spoiler: it never will.)

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

#288

Post by zimpenfish » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

foobardeveloper wrote: post #286

zimpenfish wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about we judge people on their merits ? That's fine if everyone starts from the same base and has the same opportunities which, currently, they most assuredly do not. Let's knock this privileged bullshit on the head until then.

Human society will NEVER provide absolute equal opportunity to everybody. If you want that, please first work on rethinking capitalism.It's not practical and has been tried in the past. Some of these Asian males may have come out of abject poverty in countries like India - worked all their lives for a chance at better living, were that given the "same" opportunity ? Please stop this entitled thinking. We should aim t…

> Human society will NEVER provide absolute equal opportunity to everybody.

I know. Which is why "just judge people by their merits" is a nonsense argument.

> We should aim to get all kids high quality education, not social engineering in the job market.

But since there's little chance of the former happening within the next decade or two, we're stuck with the latter.

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

#289

Post by nradov » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

shiado wrote: post #222

The obvious solution is to just lie when applying to jobs. Anything short of a genetic test to determine your racial origin is unsatisfactory and administering such a test for a job applicant is illegal and for good reason. Can you imagine a Gattaca style world where tech companies require your 23andme profile for diversity purposes? There is no situation where somebody in the application process would talk to you ab…

Since race is a social construct with no scientific basis there's no lieing involved. Anyone can select any race they please with a clear conscience.

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

#290

Post by GCU-Empiricist » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

sin7 wrote: post #234

danieltillett wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that there are equal number of people in the hiring pool in each category. There is nothing to suggest that the applicants that apply are drawn at random from the population. Also the absolute numbers of each groups also matter. On this basis we should expect far few Asian and Black employees just on the basis that there are fewer than whites within the USA [0]. 0. This is assuming the employee pool is d…

Ok. California is 39% Hispanic, 38.8% White, 5.8% Black and 13% Asian. California has 40 Million people. Let's say half have not graduated college yet and are not in the employee pool. That means 8 Million Hispanics, 8 Million whites, 1.16 Million Blacks and 2.6 Million Asians. Taking this new information into account, Asians should be around 37% of the employees, Blacks less than 1%, Hispanics around 9% and Whites 5…

What percentage of those populations have the requisite secondary education and or experience (coding, statistics, marketing, electrical engineering) to work at Google? Before you try to just match up a general population to a workforce let's at least try to have a representative sample of what the "pool of qualified applicants" looks like.