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Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

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Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#71

Post by eadmund »

effie wrote: post #23
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 d…

In the hypothetical example, yes the assumption is that they have equivalent skills. My issue is that in real life you can never assume that two candidates have equal skills (in fact, the odds that they do are negligible); instead you have to make assumptions about the probability of increased skill given various priors. Given standard priors based on my own experience, I'd be more likely to hire the woman in that example.

If I actually did know that they were exactly identical skill-wise, it'd be a different story.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#72

Post by themarkn »

foobarbazbat wrote: post #28
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…

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?

We are very far away from the inherent limitations of measurement in this case though. Eventually we will hit those limits and have to throw up our hands and say “we’ve done our best”, but there are lots of big, well-documented effects of individual biases, which end up aggregated into systems and institutions in various ways, the effects of which are readily measurable.

> Isn't it better to treat people as individuals?

This is an equally impossible goal. The system is already unfair. You want to preserve the current unfairness. I think we should instead calibrate the unfairness to optimize for undoing the weirdness caused by humanity’s awful history of subjugating, robbing, and denying the rights of various kinds of people over many centuries. People born today experience various benefits and drawbacks related to conditions completely beyond their control.

If we have privilege this is the god damn least we can do.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#73

Post by shalmanese »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #24

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…

Women aren't some pokemon you collect by tapping in the right cheat codes. They're career professions who are making the choice of employer based on what they believe is best for their lives. If your company is ~50% women then guess what, all that means is that plenty of women have independently decided that your company seems like a great place to work which seems like a thing to be celebrated.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#74

Post by shalmanese »

michaelmrose wrote: post #46
batiudrami wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want the best candidates you want to make your company look as desirable as possible. A 50% M/F workforce isn't scaring any good candidates away and might even attract a superstar who prefers a great culture over a bigger paycheque. It's just playing up a company's strengths.

Mathematically its hard to select a higher percentage of anything than the population of applicants without picking inferior players. I know its challenging to rank people in real world jobs compared to say scores on a test but humor me here. Say you score people on an objective metric from 100 to 0 and you have 5 times more applicants than jobs. One logical way to hire than is to hire the top 20% of the population.…

Companies don't pluck candidates out from an unbiased set at random. Companies that are attractive to women get top tier women to apply which means they're able to select their 50% from the top 5% of women. And guess what, a major factor in a company being attractive to women is a culture where women have a voice roughly equal to men.

Increasing your percentage of women increases your candidate quality, not decreases it, because it forces you to address all the issues that make it challenging for you to attract/retain women in the first place.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#75

Post by zakm »

shalmanese wrote: post #73
toomanybeersies wrote: post #24

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…

Women aren't some pokemon you collect by tapping in the right cheat codes. They're career professions who are making the choice of employer based on what they believe is best for their lives. If your company is ~50% women then guess what, all that means is that plenty of women have independently decided that your company seems like a great place to work which seems like a thing to be celebrated.

Or maybe the company is seeking out women in particular.

If there was a company that was made up of 90% men when the workforce was 50%, would you say that "plenty of men independently decided that that company was a great place to work in?"

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#76

Post by eesmith »

freedomben wrote: post #15
eesmith wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what it means to at least estimate representation based on gender, race, religion, nationality, veteran status, etc., and from that infer possible discrimination. I can also understand the reasons for having civil rights laws to protect members of those groups, and I fully acknowledge the long history of discrimination in the US (I'm from the US) against Native Americans, blacks, women, non-heterosexuals…

> freedomben? Can you tell me how one might meaningfully characterize "diversity of thought"? For lack of a better definition, by "meaningful" I mean "incorporate it into hiring decisions such that the result is to the overall benefit of the company and the society which allows the company to exist". You make some good philosophical points (that "assholes" are part of the diversity of thought), but practically I don'…

Yes, diversity is "insanely broad" which is why I don't think it's meaningful. As the old saying goes, "you are unique, just like everyone else." This means that any criteria can be used in the selection process in order to weight what one things of as "diverse", and it cannot be opposed in court.

I can understand the issues regarding so-called 'diversity hiring' - it's due to the generations of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bigoted practices.

I think some turn it into a "diversity for the sake of diversity" argument, but I think that's because we (meaning Americans) often do that to avoid facing up to our history, and the problems of how to right those imbalances.

That's why it's so easy for me to reject a "diversity of thought" argument - it's not quantifiable or actionable.

I also think it's a misnomer. No one cares about "thoughts", only the expression of those thoughts.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#77

Post by eesmith »

zaarn wrote: post #61
eesmith wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "people can process data and reason through complex problems differently" This was in the context of hiring, and I gave my operational definition - how does one apply 'diversity of thought' to the hiring process? > "Here is a complex problem that can be solved in more than one way - show your work." Presenting a solution, or an attempt at a solution, is an expression of one's thoughts. > "diversity of thought is ve…

Here is an example that I've mentioned in a top-level comment here; ask the candidate to design a calculator. Budget doesn't matter and they can do it software or phyiscal. All that matters is that at the end the calculator is the most ideal one for you as the candidate. All the features you wish for and none of the downsides. So you get a bit of paper to draw on and maybe write some short text. Compare the results t…

The stated goal is to design the model which is most ideal for me.

The real goal - meaning, the one which decides if I will be hired - is to design the model which is most different from others.

Since I want the job, shouldn't I disregard the instructions and instead create crazy looking calculators which aren't ideal for me but which are different enough to stand out, and thus get me hired?

As a test designer, aren't you making a bias toward hiring people who are good at gaming the system? Is that really good for the company?

Going back to my examples, which you did not address, would your team hire the "C++ programmer" who implemented the sorting challenge by using the Python/C API to write a Python program? Because that's certainly thinking outside the box. But it doesn't tell you if the programmer would be a good C++ hire.

> If you develop COBOL look for a developer that can do COBOL but hates it and would love to switch elsewhere.

What? If you want to hire a COBOL developer with the expectation of working for 20+ years at a bank, why would you want that developer to hate that job? Do you have any evidence that they will be "more efficient" at it? Why wouldn't they do the bare minimum need to do a satisfactory job, while looking for a new job on the side. And when that happens you'll need to retrain your new employee.

It seems like money down the drain.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#78

Post by themarkn »

dnautics wrote: post #33
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…

I was going to write this as a throwaway but you know f it. I stand by my stories. > As such I believe quotas are a good thing You don't address the article's claim that quotas make stereotype threat worse. This is a real, lived experience. In high school, I (an overrepresented minority) failed to get in to MIT, and my best friend (an underrepresented minority) got in, despite me looking better 'on paper'[0]. He chos…

Thank you for this perspective. I’m not going to argue. It sounds like this experience sucks mightily and I need to give it some thought.

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#79

Post by dubdub55 »

throwappppp wrote: post #60
ikeyany wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You work at a company where minorities get praised for not having any deliverable in 6 months? Which company? If this does happen at your company, there's no need to use a throwaway account.

The rule of thumb is not disclosing any identifiable info on the internet. :P The company is a big one, a named one, but with some age on it. As absurd as it sounds, the candidate is hired for a hotly sought after position, that supposedly requires production ready coding skills AND battle tested machine learning skills. Yet the candidate comes with no knowledge of Python or Linux.

Occam's razor. You're leaving some critical information out. No one gets hired for a competitive ML role without basic backend knowledge, let alone "python or linux".

Re: Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why

#80

Post by TheCoelacanth »

chii wrote: post #47
batiudrami wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad that you think diversity is overrated because there are corporations who get "great financial results" without it. Diversity is good because it is designed such that, as best we can, everyone has equal opportunities. While, as a white man the fact that I may have been overlooked in graduate programs because many engineering firms have quotas sucks, but it is one small impediment in a world which was b…

> diversity is overrated because there are corporations who get "great financial results" without it. in a competitive market, the company that performs well would be the one that's diverse, if the theory is to be believed. I have not yet seen much evidence for or against though.

Financial performance does not indicate that the company's actions are ethical. To the contrary, it is often the opposite because one of the prime motivators for unethical behavior is the promise of financial gain.
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