Live data from Hacker News

PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

pyfound.blogspot.com

691–700 of 886 posts

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#691
post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accounting is not a branch of mathematics.

Accounting is applied mathematics.

If that would make it count as STEM, you could just rename STEM to M because STE is arguably all just applied mathematics.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that it was technically illegal (but IMO very common) back then, it's hard to quantify. Usually, they were smart enough to not put the most blatant parts in writing, and of course the same HR departments pushing this were also doing outreach. All that I can say is that the form of DEI that I, myself, saw and experienced certainly included a lot of the "bad" form, people were justifying it (and some still are in…

If it really was this common how come that the percentages of e.g. blacks in tech jobs didn't actually change significantly. I mean if you listen to people here it sounds like companies were absolutely flooded by DEI hires. It is also quite telling how everyone is up in arms about these discriminatory hiring practices, but the same people don't bat an eyelash about the fact that discrimination happens mostly the othe…

>If it really was this common how come that the percentages of e.g. blacks in tech jobs didn't actually change significantly.

Because the race based pity hiring programs didn't actually address the pipeline problems.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how DEI should work, and probably does in some, or maybe many, cases. In other cases, it boiled down to "this quarter, we only have headcount for 'diverse' candidates", metrics for DEI hiring that turn into goals, and e-mails stating "only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups". I expect that I'll get accused of making this up, which is why the latter is an exact quote sh…

You have cited a lawsuit (of which there is no recorded outcome, so probably an out-of-court settlement) against the same company that has had to pay millions for discriminating AGAINST women and minorities. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-settles-28... So maybe one could argue maybe they were not DEI enough! On this topic HN almost always devolves into anecdotes. There's gotta be data on this. What…

Check out Google's diversity report[1], pages 63-110. It contains a lot of data. E.g. for US tech hiring, in 2015 2.2% of hires were Black+, in 2024, it was 10.0%. For global tech hiring, in 2015 19.6% of hires were women, in 2024, it was 30.2%.

Disclosure: I work at Google.

[1] https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/819bcce604bf5ff7...

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#694
post #341

It seems like a number of the "DEI is anti-merit discrimination" messages in this thread are overlooking how DEI work usually works. A relevant tweet from 2016 ( https://x.com/jessicamckellar/status/737299461563502595 ): > Hello from your @PyCon Diversity Chair. % PyCon talks by women: (2011: 1%), (2012: 7%), (2013: 15%), (2014/15: 33%), (2016: 40%). #pycon2016 Increased diversity in communities usually comes from ac…

Realistically, the whole 'DEI is anti-merit discrimination' argument falls incredibly flat in the year of the current admin, where they openly and brazenly admit to both racially discriminating against individuals and casually committing sexism. Said argument should simply just be tossed away in the garbage where it belongs. Notably none of the people that act like they give a shit ever show up when the Supreme Court says it's completely okay to racially profile people or when the US government attempts to kick out otherwise fit members of the military. They're arguing like it's 2022, not 2025.

The PSF not taking the deal is the right play because as we've seen repeatedly over the past few months the current admin has zero issue using these things as leverage for harassment and politically motivated gain, which never ends no matter how much you try and appease them.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#695
post #233

Good for them for putting their money where their mouth is and standing up for what they believe. Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar tech companies to also do the same and match or double the grant money in support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?

Can’t. The money went to pay for the Trump’s new ballroom…

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Then we made it illegal, but universities started doing it in the other direction. That’s the timeframe relevant to my point, which is about the people who made the illegal hiring decisions in 2020. They went to universities in the 21st century, not in 1945.

How else are they going to balance out all the legacy admissions?

[deleted]

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#697
post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, it went on for a few centuries like I said.

Discrimination didn’t magically end with the Civil Rights Act, either. American universities are still mostly good ol’ boy networks in all the relevant ways.

[deleted]

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your mind, if the company had researched their past hiring and found that whites/males had been favored for the previous history of the company, how long would it be reasonable for them to favor minorities and other underrepresented groups to balance the scales?

Suppose you were abused by your parent. How much would it be reasonable for you to abuse your child, in order to balance the scales?

That's a bad metaphor.

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your mind, if the company had researched their past hiring and found that whites/males had been favored for the previous history of the company, how long would it be reasonable for them to favor minorities and other underrepresented groups to balance the scales?

You cannot make a fair system by introducing subjective ideas like historical balance. A set of rules for fairness require that current decisions only account for individual merit; not special status.

I didn't propose subjective harm in the past, why would you suggest that I did?

But in any case, it seems like your answer is zero, right?

Re: PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program

#700
post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your mind, if the company had researched their past hiring and found that whites/males had been favored for the previous history of the company, how long would it be reasonable for them to favor minorities and other underrepresented groups to balance the scales?

"If countries conscripted only men for thousands of years, for how many thousands of years is it reasonable to conscript only women to balance the scales?"

Okay, so we've established that your upper bound is "less than thousands of years" but what's your lower limit? Or were you just strawmanning?
Post reply on HN