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Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#61

Post by Manuel_D »

MyHypatia wrote: post #57
Manuel_D wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goals of most DEI programs can't be achieved without discrimination on the basis of protected class. If software developers are 18% women how can a company achieve 40% women software developers without discrimination? And that was a DEI goal a previous employer used. In fact they had the same goal for electrical engineer too despite being 10% women. Ambiguous goals like "make people feel welcome" doesn't require…

You say that 3/4 of companies you are familiar with used discrimination to achieve numeric thresholds of 40% women software developers. I can't name a single medium or large tech company that is 40% women software developers. Can you?

Only one company had 40% threshold, the others had 33% and 30% respectively. They also didn't always hit those thresholds. But yes, the recruiters explicitly had 40% women in tech roles as one of their OKRs at one of my previous employers.

The only company I know of that has over 40% women software developers is ThoughtWorks. But they are an Australian company and it is legal for them to discriminate against men in that country. They are transparent about their use of a strict 1:1 gender quota: https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-es/insights/blog/beyond-quot...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#62

Post by xxreasonable »

kiitos wrote: post #54
AlexandrB wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question only ever seems to be asked about "desirable" fields. There doesn't seem to be as much of a push to achieve gender parity in sanitation work[1], for example. The whole exercise feels like an effort to take attention off of the problem of income inequality by instead framing it as an issue of identity. Under this framing, "fair" means we have parity in male and female CEOs - never mind that those CEOs ar…

Rather than "desirable" I would maybe say something like "economically dominant". If the highest-paying and most-powerful careers in a society don't at least somewhat meaningfully reflect the demographics of that society, then, well, what does that demonstrate, and is that something we want to try to fix? Hopefully you can at least see the position where the answer to that last question is yes, even if you don't agre…

It may be that hire paying fields attract men who want to be able to attract mates. That women prefer men who make more than them is pretty established in research, as is is the lack of interest in what a woman makes as income. (On average in psych studies). Why wouldn’t we expect results and society to reflect this?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#63

Post by kiitos »

xxreasonable wrote: post #62
kiitos wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than "desirable" I would maybe say something like "economically dominant". If the highest-paying and most-powerful careers in a society don't at least somewhat meaningfully reflect the demographics of that society, then, well, what does that demonstrate, and is that something we want to try to fix? Hopefully you can at least see the position where the answer to that last question is yes, even if you don't agre…

It may be that hire paying fields attract men who want to be able to attract mates. That women prefer men who make more than them is pretty established in research, as is is the lack of interest in what a woman makes as income. (On average in psych studies). Why wouldn’t we expect results and society to reflect this?

It's not -- "why wouldn't we expect important career X to have way more men than women, given "

It's -- "if important career X has way more men than women, is this a good thing, at a net societal level, regardless of that can explain why this is the case?"

Nobody is looking for complete and perfect parity in all influential careers. The intent is just to make sure that, for the highest-impact careers, we should work towards making them representative of our society, as much as possible

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#64

Post by kiitos »

Manuel_D wrote: post #58
kiitos wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, because the problem that's trying to be solved is that the tech industry has default, implicit biases in its hiring processes, which tend to favor the majority. Anonymization acts as a force multiplier for those defaults/biases.

I don't understand. If gender discrimination is the cause of the disparity, anonymization should eliminate the disparity. Under an anonymous hiring process, you can't know the gender of the applicants and so you can't discriminate on the basis of gender. If coding interviews were done with cameras off, and voice masked so gender can't be known, how would that be more subject to bias than with the camera on and the ge…

I think we're talking past each other. Tech hiring biases, implicitly, for stuff that's considered to be culturally normative. That's not just about gender labels or how someone looks. It's also about stuff like how the applicant phrases and delivers answers to questions. The high-confidence and authoritative tone used by many western white male engineers tends to be -- again, implicitly -- preferred, over, for example, a more nuanced and lower-confidence response that might be delivered by a non-western woman engineer.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#65

Post by PakG1 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #40
PakG1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue if you're looking to achieve DEI goals in the short-term rather than over decades, you're going to fail because the backlash and other consequences will destroy any progress you think you made. And I think that's what we're seeing. You can work towards DEI goals without achieving them in the short-term and still look to make good changes over the long run. But it requires a systems view of everything, inclu…

This is sort of no-true-scotsman argument. Sure, there is "DEI" that doesn't amount to a dog whistle for discrimination. That was the case at 1 out of the 4 companies I've worked at. But it's the exception to the norm in my experience, and in that of my peers. It sounds like Meta has reached the same conclusion.

You seem to be an example of what I'm saying. There are very few people that are able to separate the goals of DEI from the practice when doing their analysis. If we're able to do that, we'll be able to find better solutions. And the solutions can't be found by or within individual corporations IMHO. It's much more complicated than that.

It's also possible that you and I have a different idea of what the goals of DEI are and should be.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#66

Post by Manuel_D »

kiitos wrote: post #64
Manuel_D wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. If gender discrimination is the cause of the disparity, anonymization should eliminate the disparity. Under an anonymous hiring process, you can't know the gender of the applicants and so you can't discriminate on the basis of gender. If coding interviews were done with cameras off, and voice masked so gender can't be known, how would that be more subject to bias than with the camera on and the ge…

I think we're talking past each other. Tech hiring biases, implicitly, for stuff that's considered to be culturally normative. That's not just about gender labels or how someone looks. It's also about stuff like how the applicant phrases and delivers answers to questions. The high-confidence and authoritative tone used by many western white male engineers tends to be -- again, implicitly -- preferred, over, for examp…

Every company I worked at grades interviews based once correctness and performance. A candidate that fails to produce a working solution at all receives a worse score than one that produces a working, but inefficient solution, which get a worse score than one that has a working and optimal solution.

And again, if the bias comes from people's tone then the interview can be conducted over text. Or have a transcript of the interview that is used by the hiring committee, to ensure that a "high confidence and authoritative tone" doesn't introduce bias. Bias can be eliminated. And if the disparity remains the same, the disparity is not due to bias.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#67

Post by t8sr »

Manuel_D wrote: post #14

To be clear, Meta's "Diverse Slate Approach" was explicitly discriminatory with regards to protected class. It prohibited hiring managers from proceeding with an offer until at least one of the on-site interviews contained an "underrepresented group", meaning women and URM males. In practice this meant that white and Asian men had to wait a long time to get an offer even after they passed the interview rounds. But wo…

What you're describing is not how it works. Chiefly, the hiring pipelines are not set up for a single role, but a whole family of them. They are filled ahead of need. (Or were, at a time when this would've been taking place.)

There are other inaccuracies, but suffice it to say, this comment section is full of comments by people who have never been hiring managers talking about how hiring works.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#68

Post by kiitos »

Manuel_D wrote: post #66
kiitos wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're talking past each other. Tech hiring biases, implicitly, for stuff that's considered to be culturally normative. That's not just about gender labels or how someone looks. It's also about stuff like how the applicant phrases and delivers answers to questions. The high-confidence and authoritative tone used by many western white male engineers tends to be -- again, implicitly -- preferred, over, for examp…

Every company I worked at grades interviews based once correctness and performance. A candidate that fails to produce a working solution at all receives a worse score than one that produces a working, but inefficient solution, which get a worse score than one that has a working and optimal solution. And again, if the bias comes from people's tone then the interview can be conducted over text. Or have a transcript of…

You continue to focus very narrowly on the specific details of the hiring process. I'm trying to make points about higher-level stuff, related to the intent and scope of DEI-type initiatives. From these few comments, I gather that you're not really interested in talking about any of those higher-level things, so I'll stop trying to explain them.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#69

Post by forgingahead »

kiitos wrote: post #60
forgingahead wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYTimes has a history of fabricating and outright lying to serve their own corporate or affiliated agendas. See for eg: https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrica...

The New York Times is probably the most trusted, and trustable, publication in all of journalism.

"Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low"

https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-re...

And from the NYTimes themselves:

"‘Trust’ in the News Media Has Come to Mean Affirmation"

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/11/why-has-tru...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg for Meta 'inclusivity' push: report

#70

Post by forgingahead »

kiitos wrote: post #59
forgingahead wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYTimes has a history of fabricating and outright lying to serve their own corporate or affiliated agendas. See for eg: https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrica...

The New York Times is probably the most trusted, and trustable, publication in all of journalism.

"Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low"

https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-re...

And from the NYTimes themselves:

"‘Trust’ in the News Media Has Come to Mean Affirmation"

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/11/11/why-has-tru...

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