Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why • Hacker News Board

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#21

Post by AmericanChopper » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:49 AM UTC

themarkn wrote: post #6

manigandham wrote: post #5

Well said. The fact is that forcing outcomes will never lead to fairness and will instead create misery for all involved. The best plan is to make the process as fair as possible so that everyone has an opportunity if they want it, then let people do what they desire. It may not "look" like what some people want it to look like, but the whole point is that doesn't matter anyway.

I disagree that this was well said. I think the underlying is point that blind tests of skill reduce bias and lead to increased diversity is a good one. As is the idea that we need to measure diversity on more than one axis. (My wife is not Caucasian but she looks Caucasian... The cultural and ethnic diversity she brings to her team is invisible to most people.) What's missing in this is the acknowledgement that "div…

>What's missing in this is the acknowledgement that "diversity quotas" while, of course, imperfect and clumsy, reflect an effort to counterbalance institutional discrimination

Diversity quotas are by their very nature institutional discrimination. You can’t jusify it by saying the people they discriminate against deserve it.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#22

Post by d--b » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:49 AM UTC

Quotas are tough for people right now, but they serve a longer term role. Because of quotas, there is more diversity in tech. That's a fact.

Some dumb-ass dudes may tell you: "oh you're here because of diversity quotas, not for your inherent quality", and it will be annoying for you. But the purpose of the quotas is that the next generation of students can look at the distribution and tell themselves: "oh, actually this field is not only populated by bros, there is a lot of women in it, maybe I'll give that a shot".

Ok, it's not meritocracy, but come on, meritocracy is only unbiased if the culture is unbiased...

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#23

Post by effie » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:57 AM UTC

eadmund wrote: post #18

> I think it’s important to ask ourselves what we want to accomplish with diversity quotas in the first place. Are we trying to level the playing field for marginalized groups? To bring in the requisite diversity of thought that correlates so strongly with a better bottom line? Or to improve our optics so that when the press writes about our company’s diversity numbers, we look good? Honestly, I believe it's the last…

Agreed on the fashion. Hiring both 1) fairly to all candidates and 2) most effectively for the company is a difficult and potentially impossible task. Introducing quotas is an easy "solution" of this problem for the hiring department.

However, I do not understand your rationale for hiring the woman. By assumption, both the woman and the man have the same skills. It is the histories of how they got those skills that differ.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#24

Post by toomanybeersies » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC

What I've always found odd is when a company advertises something like "we have 50% women on the programming team" when only 20% of the programming workforce is female.

That's not really fair is it? The company is overly diverse if anything. In a way they're stealing women from the workforce of other companies.

Diversity needs to happen from the ground up. Affirmative action is more effective and more appropriate the earlier in life that it is. Special coding classes and programs for underserved groups (e.g. Rails Girls) are the best, because a lot of girls don't get the same opportunities. In New Zealand, a lot of single-sex girls' schools don't teach programming at all. It's the same with schools in lower income areas, they often have very underdeveloped STEM programs.

Having lower entry requirements to university for less privileged populations also makes sense, although using ethnicity is a very blunt stick, as there are often external factors that mean that equally talented students have worse educational outcomes in school, such as poor nutrition, working a job after school to help pay the bills, and low quality teachers (most good teachers want to teach at good schools). There external factors tend to be ironed out at university.

Obviously not every type of affirmative action is appropriate for every situation. Requiring lower grades for women to get into engineering programs at university probably isn't appropriate, since it's not like women grow up in less privileged households than men.

Affirmative action in hiring makes a lot less sense than at earlier stages. There's only a certain percentage of women in the workforce, hiring over that percentage isn't going to help with diversity or inclusion. If only 20% of programmers are women, then your company's programming team should be somewhere around that number. If it's a lot higher or a lot lower than this, there's something wrong.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#25

Post by dnautics » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

d--b wrote: post #22

Quotas are tough for people right now, but they serve a longer term role. Because of quotas, there is more diversity in tech. That's a fact. Some dumb-ass dudes may tell you: "oh you're here because of diversity quotas, not for your inherent quality", and it will be annoying for you. But the purpose of the quotas is that the next generation of students can look at the distribution and tell themselves: "oh, actually t…

> Because of quotas, there is more diversity in tech

Did you read the article? Aline claims that a completely blind application process lands more diversity in tech.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#26

Post by fipple » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

"Diversity" is just overrated completely, as a concept. The highest-performing company in America, Apple, has close to zero race or gender diversity, and if you peel back one layer, it has very little diversity of thought" as well. Why? Because the company was built to execute Steve Jobs' ideas. The more that any given executive could run an emulator of Steve Jobs' brain, the less of Jobs' time he required. "Ideas are cheap, execution is everything" we have all heard. Well, if you don't need a lot of ideas, but you need a streamlined execution organization, diversity is a huge weakness!

For every fun example of "Oh, only a tattoo wearer would recognize that this product wouldn't work for people with tattoos! Diversity would have halped!" there are the Silicon Valley giants, achieving ridiculous financial results with highly non-diverse teams.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#27

Post by manigandham » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

d--b wrote: post #22

Quotas are tough for people right now, but they serve a longer term role. Because of quotas, there is more diversity in tech. That's a fact. Some dumb-ass dudes may tell you: "oh you're here because of diversity quotas, not for your inherent quality", and it will be annoying for you. But the purpose of the quotas is that the next generation of students can look at the distribution and tell themselves: "oh, actually t…

Why do people care so much about what others look like in a field instead of doing what they're interested in? Perhaps that's the real issue at the root of all this.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#28

Post by foobarbazbat » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:04 AM UTC

themarkn wrote: post #6

manigandham wrote: post #5

Well said. The fact is that forcing outcomes will never lead to fairness and will instead create misery for all involved. The best plan is to make the process as fair as possible so that everyone has an opportunity if they want it, then let people do what they desire. It may not "look" like what some people want it to look like, but the whole point is that doesn't matter anyway.

I disagree that this was well said. I think the underlying is point that blind tests of skill reduce bias and lead to increased diversity is a good one. As is the idea that we need to measure diversity on more than one axis. (My wife is not Caucasian but she looks Caucasian... The cultural and ethnic diversity she brings to her team is invisible to most people.) What's missing in this is the acknowledgement that "div…

The problem is that institutional bias and discrimination are unmeasurable. So dropping the quotas never seems like a reality.

Quotas are inherently unfair and take opportunity away from others.

Isn't it better to treat people as individuals?

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#29

Post by gattilorenz » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:07 AM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #21

themarkn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that this was well said. I think the underlying is point that blind tests of skill reduce bias and lead to increased diversity is a good one. As is the idea that we need to measure diversity on more than one axis. (My wife is not Caucasian but she looks Caucasian... The cultural and ethnic diversity she brings to her team is invisible to most people.) What's missing in this is the acknowledgement that "div…

>What's missing in this is the acknowledgement that "diversity quotas" while, of course, imperfect and clumsy, reflect an effort to counterbalance institutional discrimination Diversity quotas are by their very nature institutional discrimination. You can’t jusify it by saying the people they discriminate against deserve it.

> Diversity quotas are by their very nature institutional discrimination.

Sure, they are institutional discrimination in the sense that institutions recognize the differences between gender/races and the differences in the treatment they receive, which is often based on negative prejudice (the other meaning of "discrimination" [1]). Discrimination is not negative per se, as long as it's the "neutral" meaning of the word (e.g., having different toilets is also discrimination).

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/discrimination

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#30

Post by manigandham » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

conception wrote: post #12

manigandham wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that is covered under "make the process fair", but enforcing quotas based on random unchangeable physical characteristic is the opposite of fair.

I think what they were trying to also say is "make the process fair" isn't as simple as 4 words. It's a struggle for even the most ardent of believers in giving everyone a fair shot. The problem is defining what is fair.

Of course it's not simple or easy. It's not completely possible either, as life itself isn't fair. That's just the reality we live in.

But that's why we should do the best we can, to make it as fair as possible, and while there is much progress to be made around the world, there are also some clearly wrong ways to go about it and diversity quotas are about as worse as it gets.