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Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

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Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#252

Posing the question to gain more familiarity with African-Americans in tech: who were the other candidates for this position?

There was a reddit announcement the other day that stated /u/kn0thing was stepping down from the board and requested that a black person fill his place.

https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/gxas21/upcom...

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#254
The most unmeritocratic job filling I’ve seen. He got the job for being black.

They should have just employed the Rooney Rule to make things seem fair. This will just spurn the opponents of Affirmative Action that much harder, myself included. Weird that the NFL has the better idea here.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That being said please make Reddit more like HN. I deleted my Reddit account years ago. In the cases where it wasn’t a doomed echo chamber vortex it was stupid framework trend of the moment, which isn’t interesting when your primary concerns are technology and programming.

HN is literally a reddit clone.

Given that the creator of HN was also the person who conceived Reddit, I'm not sure you have your arrow of causality right.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#256
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arc in the past, Arc in the present, Arc forever.

Nice, I thought I heard someone say at one point that it had been rewritten in rails. I'm much happier knowing this comment is going through Arc.

You had half the story, just the wrong half. HN and YC used to be a single program in Arc (a single thread, even: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231810). When pg left, the YC side was split off and redone in Rails. In the narrative in my head, this is known as "the great lobotomy". I still wish they hadn't, but oh well.

If you know anyone who would love to program in Arc and wouldn't mind being publicly impaled (<-- the moderation part of the job), please send them my way. It isn't necessary to know Arc, since anyone good can learn it quickly, but it is necessary to like the idea.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#257

Posing the question to gain more familiarity with African-Americans in tech: who were the other candidates for this position?

There was a reddit announcement the other day that stated /u/kn0thing was stepping down from the board and requested that a black person fill his place. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/gxas21/upcom...

are boards not considered employees. feel like this would violate labor laws.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#258

Being a republican, I'm scared of the leadership choices social platforms are making. Michael Seibel is a pro-Democrat and anti republican and anti-Trump. For god sake, allow reddit to have free-speech and don't censor the voices of "silent majority" in the USA. P.S 60M American citizens voted for Trump.

I don't see why Republicans can't just use another platform like gab or voat if they think reddit has become hostile to them. Reddit being a private company has every right to control what ideologies are promoted on their pages just as you have every right to start your own reddit clone and moderate it however you feel. There's even an open source core with which to start from: https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddi…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#259

The most unmeritocratic job filling I’ve seen. He got the job for being black. They should have just employed the Rooney Rule to make things seem fair. This will just spurn the opponents of Affirmative Action that much harder, myself included. Weird that the NFL has the better idea here.

He got the job because he is friends with powerful people. He is friends with powerful people because he worked hard to be in situations with opportunity and proved himself repeatedly by delivering extraordinary results.

The only reason his race is coming into play is that people realize that this self selection of white men will continue as long as the decision makers are white and chose to hire people from their own limited social circle, peer group, college, previous employer etc. It's human nature to hire people you trust, and trust people you know. Therefore, we as a society, if we want a true meritocracy should make the funnel as big as possible by having decision makers that reflect the broad demographics of society such that this human tendency to reach out to people known to us doesn't self select a limited pool of candidates.

Your argument that choosing Michael is unmeritocratic isn't supported. Just because race was a factor, reasonable in light of the goals, doesn't mean that all of the factors that show Michael is an extraordinary candidate suddenly disappear. Trying to position this situation as though it does makes race the ONLY relevant factor. That is an unfound, shallow interpretation of the facts.

Seriously, when you make this kind of argument in public in 2020, it just looks silly and lacking in credibility. If you want a meritocracy, focus on getting opportunity to the biggest number of people in the world.

Re: Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors

#260
post #40
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read this backwards? He was added to reddits board. Why would this influence hn?

Hacker News has a weird, almost pathological aversion to Reddit and the cultural mainstream it represents - even a vague hint at some tangential influence glanced at will lead some here to fear the barbarians storming the gates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence

http://www.sulloway.org/BirthOrder-Sulloway-1999a.pdf

:)

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