As a female engineer, I am not diversity • Hacker News Board

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#51

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

zaccus wrote: post #27

hkai wrote: post #13

Interesting that this person does not mention diversity of political opinion, which seems to be lacking.

That's not something you should ask someone in a job interview though. And most people (mercifully) don't talk about politics at work. So what would promoting political diversity look like?

>So what would promoting political diversity look like?

Not ostracizing people for having political opinions that are not the majority but fairly mainstream.

I work at the satellite office of an east coast tech company and how you have to be careful not to say anything that betrays politics that are not officially condoned is a bi-weekly gripe among the group I eat lunch with.

I'm not saying it should be perfectly acceptable to tell your coworkers you went to a KKK chapter (is that their organizational unit?) barbecue when discussing what you did over the weekend but if you went to see NASCAR you shouldn't feel compelled to tell people you stayed home.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#52

Post by zhangela » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #20

I do think that pointing at someone's physical body and saying, "They bring diversity because they're X!" is wrong. However, I do think that gender and race have an influence on your thought processes because of who you tend to associate with. In addition, she spent 15 years in China, which is definitely not very common here in the US. That alone means she's going to think somewhat differently than the average engine…

Yep I completely agree that gender and race have an influence on our thought process, and perhaps the title of "I'm not diversity" is a tad overdramatic, because I _do_ bring in a unique perspective.

My goal with this post is to convince people to not just limit their views of diversity to race and gender, but also look beyond those 2 to care about the other ways each of us bring in diverse perspectives as well.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#53

Post by dx87 » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #38

> "I’m not bringing in the diverse perspective that is so critical to the success of any company." Based on what evidence, or even logic, is diversity critical to the success of even some companies? Let alone any company?

For most companies it probably doesn't matter, but if you're trying to market a product to a diverse group, it'll help to have diverse input when creating the product. An example is facial recognition software developed by a US company not recognizing black people, or cameras saying "woops, looks like someone blinked" after taking pictures of an asian person. If they had a more diverse development or testing team, they probably would have noticed it before being publicly embarrased.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#54

Post by mantas » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #20

I do think that pointing at someone's physical body and saying, "They bring diversity because they're X!" is wrong. However, I do think that gender and race have an influence on your thought processes because of who you tend to associate with. In addition, she spent 15 years in China, which is definitely not very common here in the US. That alone means she's going to think somewhat differently than the average engine…

Or perhaps they use a different metric of diversity and just hire regardless of popular physical groupings.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#55

Post by babygoat » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

justaman wrote: post #47

I'm going to say it. The most excluded group in SV are conservative republicans. Its a death sentence to your career to come out as one. If you truly value diversity, their point of view is the most absent from tech.

It's also the most incompatible point of view. They do not want to be around diversity.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#56

Post by ousta » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

She doesn't know what is it to suffer from diversity. Elizabeth Warren has 0.0001% things to say about that.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#57

Post by myWindoonn » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

justaman wrote: post #47

I'm going to say it. The most excluded group in SV are conservative republicans. Its a death sentence to your career to come out as one. If you truly value diversity, their point of view is the most absent from tech.

I know that y'all feel oppressed, but the most-excluded are those who are homeless, computerless, penniless, and therefore voiceless. They aren't our customers, they aren't our users, they aren't our investors, they aren't our employees, and so it shouldn't be surprising that we pay them no attention.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#58

Post by nil-value » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

justaman wrote: post #47

I'm going to say it. The most excluded group in SV are conservative republicans. Its a death sentence to your career to come out as one. If you truly value diversity, their point of view is the most absent from tech.

Universities are similar, claiming they champion diversity, but (usually) not wanting diverse political thought.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#59

Post by 40acres » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

I agree with her, diversity is more than just race, sex, sexual preference, etc. However I would say that I think these things as a top level attribute DO correlate with different lived experiences that you want in a diverse workforce.

Companies are not going to ask you about your political leanings, they are probably not going to give you some mental test to see how you react to situation A and situation B. If you look at the stats, race and gender do correlate between stark differences in people. For instance, the "wealth gap" between black and white Americans is about 10x, growing in poverty vs. growing up in a stable middle class family causes a different lived experience, you view the world differently because of how you grew up. That's not to say that all black people are poor and all white people are rich, but if you're working with a limited data set and are thinking about how you can get some people in a room with different lived experiences, you could do a lot worse than saying "let's get a mix of different races in here". I think the same thing applies to women and other traits that companies and institutions use for their diversity metrics.

Re: As a female engineer, I am not diversity

#60

Post by zhangela » Thu, Oct 25, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #38

> "I’m not bringing in the diverse perspective that is so critical to the success of any company." Based on what evidence, or even logic, is diversity critical to the success of even some companies? Let alone any company?

Here are a few articles on why diversity is good for business:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-re...

https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diver...