Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

blog.pinterest.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#41

Post by ksenzee »

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

This very common assumption -- which I used to hold -- has it exactly backwards. Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Mathematically, if 90% of your egg-crackers are short, you've already hired under-performing egg-crackers. You've passed over some really good tall people in favor of the short people you hired. If you want the best egg-crackers, you need to interview a bunch of tall people.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#42

Post by tedunangst »

cpeterso wrote: post #36
thadd wrote: post #20

This seems like it's pursuing skin-deep diversity. Diversity of thought is much more interesting to me, and probably much more apt to drive profits than this.

What is your plan for increasing diversity of thought in hiring?

Everybody is different, so if I only hire people who look just like me on the outside, that must mean they think differently on the inside....

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#45

Post by wvenable »

comrh wrote: post #9
BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

If you have 9 men who apply and 1 woman and they're all of equal skill, chances are a man will get it purely on probability.

Where I work, if we had 9 men and 1 woman of equal skill applying for a job the woman would get it hands down. I find most good sized companies would rather have that kind of diversity even when it's not official policy. Our team has a few women but still well less than 50%.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#46

Post by mklim »

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

The counter argument that I've heard most is that minorities are less likely to be hired than equally qualified members of the majority because of subconscious bias. Enforcing a quota is a sort of equalizer—formal discrimination in one direction in order to push back against informal discrimination in the other direction.

I'm not completely sold on the method, but the problem of subconscious bias in hiring is very well documented:

* Resumes with stereotypically White names receive 50% more callbacks than identical resumes with traditionally black ones. The addition of honors and special skills had a significant effect on the likelihood of White applications being called, but a statistically insignificant effect for the otherwise-identical African-American ones. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf

* Applicants with male names are rated as more competent and offered higher starting salaries than identical applications with female names. Identical resumes with male names are called back more often than female ones. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+html, http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf

* Initial subconscious bias is logically justified post-hoc—in the linked experiment, the qualities deemed necessary for a position would actually be redefined by the person reviewing resumes depending on the gender of the applicants so that the male applicant's traits fit the position better. http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%20...

There's quite a few more papers on the subject, it's easy to search for them. Depressing read all around.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#47

Post by tedunangst »

ksenzee wrote: post #41
BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

This very common assumption -- which I used to hold -- has it exactly backwards. Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Mathematically, if 90% of your egg-crackers are short, you've already hired under-performing egg-crackers. You've passed over some really good tall people in favor of the short people you hired. If you want the best egg-crackers, you need to interview a bunch of…

This analysis has its own flaw. This assumes that their other opportunities are also equal. But tall people may make better apple pickers. And apple picking pays more than egg cracking. If you want 50% tall people, you are going to need to compete directly against the apple picking market as well. You need to account not just for your own selection criteria, but that of everybody else as well. (Not to say this actually explains tech demographics; it's a point about the stats in your example.)

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#48

Post by im3w1l »

rheydrichSS wrote: post #22
netfire wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Pinterest is ranked #16 by Alexa in the US for internet traffic[1]. Do you really think running such a site with that much traffic doesn't require top talent? [1] http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/US

Come on. This is not like Cancer research. Its a solved problem.

It's a solved problem in the sense that the 5% of work that yields 95% of benefits have already been done. But because of the massive user base small improvements at great cost can be worthwhile.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#49

Post by rada »

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

The fact that you immediately equated "diversity" to "lowering your hiring bar" and "under-performing" is as ignorant as it is insulting.

Women and brown people are not lower quality humans, and it has been shown over and over and over that companies who hire for diversity perform better.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=do+diverse+companies+perform+better

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#50

Post by devalier »

mklim wrote: post #46
BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

The counter argument that I've heard most is that minorities are less likely to be hired than equally qualified members of the majority because of subconscious bias. Enforcing a quota is a sort of equalizer—formal discrimination in one direction in order to push back against informal discrimination in the other direction. I'm not completely sold on the method, but the problem of subconscious bias in hiring is very we…

If those studies are true, then the correct solution would be to:

1) ask people not include their names on their resume. Or don't use resumes at all. Create a web form application that does not require a name and only asks about the crucial skills you actually need.

2) Create a highly objective hiring process, such as this: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/

I don't really buy that subconscious bias is the problem in tech. I've been part of a lot of hiring, we were actually consciously biased toward hiring women since we wanted better numbers. I had an objective interview process, always giving the same questions, and the hiring was still very disproportionately male whasian (the applicant pool was also very disproportionately male whasian, despite doing active reach out to woman-in-tech events).

Post reply on HN