I'll agree diversity in hiring is important across the board when school systems fight to hire more men.
Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
61–70 of 90 posts
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
This bias goes well beyond racial and gender diversity. Why are these the only types of diversity that are ever discussed. And pls don’t misunderstand this argument, but could the same argument not be used for say diversity of skill? Like how come a company can reject me due to lack of skill?
> And pls don’t misunderstand this argument, but could the same argument not be used for say diversity of skill? Like how come a company can reject me due to lack of skill? The argument is that it's unfair and harmful to the individual, your company, and society to not hire someone because their skin is too dark. Do you think that's true of not hiring someone who isn't qualified?
> society to not hire someone because their skin is too dark.
In SV, I can't imagine this being that common. However let's take an example. There's an interview for a position and the interviewer is a white American. Two applicants of equal skill apply. One of them is African American who's attended the same high school as the interviewer. The other one is a recent emigrant from Russia who is skilled technically however his "cultural awareness" might be lacking. Who is more likely to get hired? This is a rhetorical question. I actually don't know.
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#63This is an honest question to people who side with the proposal. At what point would these measures become unnecessary? What are the conditions? Btw what is the name of the ideology that one would use to justify this?
> This is an honest question to people who side with the proposal. At what point would these measures become unnecessary? What are the conditions?
> Btw what is the name of the ideology that one would use to justify this?
I'm not one of the supporters, but I've talked many times to such people and have encountered a lot of resistance to them laying out stopping or success conditions. I'm of the option that the diversity activists want these diversity programs to continue until they are happy with the results, which (more than likely) will be never.
I've also seen a lot of resistance the idea considering the perspectives of anyone who's not a member of one of these "victim"-groups (at least not until their group has experienced "10,000 years of oppression and discrimination."
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because "society" is made up of (among others) companies, and Google is a large company. The way things change in a society is when the members of society start to change them. If a company with the weight and power of Google feel something is wrong and isn't doing their damnedest to try to fix it, then it won't change. Now, from the linked piece, it's unclear exactly what has been proposed, so I'm not offering an op…
The thing is, though, all companies are drawing from the same talent pool. Google hiring an above average number of diverse applicants doesn't raise the percentage of diverse tech workers. Those diverse tech workers came from somewhere. Google's act of hiring them in turn reduced another company's pool of diverse workers. Or if they came from a university, it reduces the number of diverse candidates that other compan…
> Ultimately the total diversity of tech is dictated by the individual decisions of people when they choose their field.
I might add that the total diversity of tech is dictated by the individual opportunities to make a decision, though I generally get your point.
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#65Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is that people aren't hired based solely on skill. There is some degree of bias that needs to be addressed.
This bias goes well beyond racial and gender diversity. Why are these the only types of diversity that are ever discussed. And pls don’t misunderstand this argument, but could the same argument not be used for say diversity of skill? Like how come a company can reject me due to lack of skill?
Why are these the only types of diversity that are ever discussed.
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because "society" is made up of (among others) companies, and Google is a large company. The way things change in a society is when the members of society start to change them. If a company with the weight and power of Google feel something is wrong and isn't doing their damnedest to try to fix it, then it won't change. Now, from the linked piece, it's unclear exactly what has been proposed, so I'm not offering an op…
The thing is, though, all companies are drawing from the same talent pool. Google hiring an above average number of diverse applicants doesn't raise the percentage of diverse tech workers. Those diverse tech workers came from somewhere. Google's act of hiring them in turn reduced another company's pool of diverse workers. Or if they came from a university, it reduces the number of diverse candidates that other compan…
The industry is not a closed system. People can leave or join it at any point in their careers, and they may (read: do) do so because they can't find jobs or the jobs they do find are hostile to them.
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#68Why do companies hire all these diversity administration in the first place? It burns epic amounts of money, and sows discontent, when there message and answer to everything is we need more diversity for all leadership and tech positions,(aka quotas of people with subpar skillsets). Instead of merely hiring on skill.
> aka quotas of people with subpar skillsets
That is not the goal, nor the result of these efforts.
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because "society" is made up of (among others) companies, and Google is a large company. The way things change in a society is when the members of society start to change them. If a company with the weight and power of Google feel something is wrong and isn't doing their damnedest to try to fix it, then it won't change. Now, from the linked piece, it's unclear exactly what has been proposed, so I'm not offering an op…
The thing is, though, all companies are drawing from the same talent pool. Google hiring an above average number of diverse applicants doesn't raise the percentage of diverse tech workers. Those diverse tech workers came from somewhere. Google's act of hiring them in turn reduced another company's pool of diverse workers. Or if they came from a university, it reduces the number of diverse candidates that other compan…
Not quite. The question is how do you choose the most qualified candidates? As an example, a lot of emphasis is put on CS degrees. But if you've been in hiring, they aren't an indicator of how good someone is going to be, and interviewing candidates is hard. I can teach people who can think logically how to program. What I can't teach is having the guts to do the right thing, diligence, curiousness, willingness to learn, etc.
I work for a big tech company; it is very hard to bring in people without CS degrees because of the interview process. Weirdly enough, the only place I've seen this happen is IBM, where they had a written exam based on logic questions, not programming questions (although the two are clearly related, and one was about scheduling/threading, it could be solved by somebody without knowledge of the terminology).
I have never seen numbers that indicate hiring CS majors is more cost effective, better, etc, and most job ads happily say "CS or related", but then the interview just doesn't reflect that. Maybe it is slightly easier to pick from a pool of people who have prior experience, but it's lazy. I think we can do better.
Re: Alphabet shareholders reject diversity proposal backed by employees
#70To what extent should diversity be the responsibility of companies? I would argue the responsibility is in proportion to added-discrimination, so to speak (kind of like your profit should be in proportion to your added value). So, as an example, if 90% of your applicants are male and 10% are female, presuming quality is randomly distributed, the default assumption is that the company ends up with 90% male employees a…
I had this misconception too & Google has not had 50/50 parity as a goal (unsure about specifically what this proposal is but I don't think it establishes quotas either). The discussion has been centered about reaching parity with the available talent pool as you describe. It's even in the article: > Eileen Naughton, who leads Google’s HR operations, said the company remains committed to an internal goal to reach “ma…
Assumes equal distribution of skill across diversity lines.
This can be the case, but as gender bias for STEM starts at a very young age and we try to artificially correct it later, that may not be the case.
In spite of individual skills, however, there may be value in diversity of thought.
So the challenge becomes creating equality (job opportunities are purely derived from the individual's skills in spite of diversity characteristics) vs creating maximally performing organizations, which may benefit(or suffer) from those diversity characteristics.