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

Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

poseidon01.ssrn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 198 posts

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#101

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #37

The only problem with blind selection, is that, sooner or later, the race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/fitness/attractiveness/age (I'm an old fart, so I can tell you a thing or two about ageism in tech) becomes apparent. I have heard story after story from peers (around my age), about passing numerous rounds of phone and test interviews, only to see the interviewer's face fall, as soon as they walk in the door.…

This is why I actually believe there should be hiring quotas. Tell departments that at least XX% of their hires are expected to be woman, or older than 50, or racial minorities, or whatever else. Set the percentage based on the pool of applicants, minus a bit to allow wiggle room. (And if there are legal blockers, let's change the law!)

It feels wrong to me too, I know it does! But if hiring happens based on gut, and if our gut is biased, then we need a way to systematically counteract our biases.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#102

Post by BoiledCabbage »

giantg2 wrote: post #74
secondcoming wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where candidates of underrepresented groups are dissuaded by a lack of pre-existing representation I don't understand this persepective from candidates. The job market must be really good if they can use this as a metric for pursuing a job opportunity. I was the only person from my country when I joined my current employer. It never even crossed my mind that it could be an issue. There was also a post on HN a few m…

At my company, you have a leg up if you fit one of the diversity metrics and are applying for a job. I've worked on teams where I'm the only one of my race. I've been on group projects where I'm the only one of my gender. Based on the conversations I've heard on some of the teams I've been on, I have a minority political view and culture/lifestyle as well. It's almost never a problem unless you believe or think it is…

Thank you. Your experience in not suffering from discrimination clearly invalidates all of the millions of people who do. It's clearly all in their head.

It boggles my mind on people's basic inability to realize that not everyone has the same experiences in life as them. And rather than accept other peoples experiences as valid, it's always the same argument of "I haven't had to deal with this therfore they don't either."

Yes they want to be in a situation where they can just ignore it and it won't be an issue, the problem is they don't have that luxury. It's great that you do, but that doesn't change their circumstances.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#103

Post by leftyted »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #37

The only problem with blind selection, is that, sooner or later, the race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/fitness/attractiveness/age (I'm an old fart, so I can tell you a thing or two about ageism in tech) becomes apparent. I have heard story after story from peers (around my age), about passing numerous rounds of phone and test interviews, only to see the interviewer's face fall, as soon as they walk in the door.…

> The only problem with blind selection, is that, sooner or later, the race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/fitness/attractiveness/age (I'm an old fart, so I can tell you a thing or two about ageism in tech) becomes apparent.

This too is a problem we can solve with technology:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqrvzb

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#104

Post by dkersten »

secondcoming wrote: post #55
candu wrote: post #16

There's a fascinating study on orchestra auditions, where it was found that performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... IMHO, if the tech industry wants to live up to its narrative of meritocracy, this is one obvious improvement over existing processes. No, it won…

> where candidates of underrepresented groups are dissuaded by a lack of pre-existing representation I don't understand this persepective from candidates. The job market must be really good if they can use this as a metric for pursuing a job opportunity. I was the only person from my country when I joined my current employer. It never even crossed my mind that it could be an issue. There was also a post on HN a few m…

I've actually seen women on twitter say something like "if your company doesn't already have women, we're not interested, stop your pretending to care about diversity and women's issues" or something to that effect. How will the situation ever change, then, though? Its most definitely a chicken and egg problem for employers.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#105

Post by smbullet »

dkersten wrote: post #87
throwawaympfsin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the reasons I left tech and went to work for an investment bank. At least here no one pretends to be in it to "make the world a better place" or whatever agenda tech companies are selling nowadays. YMMV

Ugh, that's one thing I really hate about much of tech: supposedly everyone is in it to make the world a better place, somehow, by actually making it worse through advertisement and destroying privacy and getting people addicted to social media.

It's because they only want the world to be a better place for themselves.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#106

Post by [deleted] »

leftyted wrote: post #103
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #37

The only problem with blind selection, is that, sooner or later, the race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/fitness/attractiveness/age (I'm an old fart, so I can tell you a thing or two about ageism in tech) becomes apparent. I have heard story after story from peers (around my age), about passing numerous rounds of phone and test interviews, only to see the interviewer's face fall, as soon as they walk in the door.…

> The only problem with blind selection, is that, sooner or later, the race/gender/sexual orientation/religion/fitness/attractiveness/age (I'm an old fart, so I can tell you a thing or two about ageism in tech) becomes apparent. This too is a problem we can solve with technology: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqrvzb

[deleted]

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#107

Post by commandlinefan »

dalbasal wrote: post #63
candu wrote: post #16

There's a fascinating study on orchestra auditions, where it was found that performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... IMHO, if the tech industry wants to live up to its narrative of meritocracy, this is one obvious improvement over existing processes. No, it won…

We talk a big game about merit, capability, qualifications and such. Ultimately though, nearly all actual selection processes are are subjective or ilegible... depending on how you see these things. How an interviewer feels about you intuitively matters a lot, maybe the most. Actual tests of skill are usually intuitive as well. An interviewer tries to gauge your skills, but it's rarely designed to be an objective tes…

> an objective test of skill

Other industries/careers have exactly this: a professional licensing exam. Most programmers vehemently oppose any sort of standardized testing.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#108

Post by enraged_camel »

treeman79 wrote: post #36

Personal experience. Got hired into a company that did everything possible to avoid hiring straight white men. Everything was completely dominated by not offending anyone over anything. Unless you were the aforementioned group. Turns out there simply isn’t a lot of the right race/gender/sex. I’m sure that’ll be different as time progresses, but for now there is clearly some catching up to do. So it was all jr develop…

It's definitely very interesting to see white men's reactions now that they are starting to experience discrimination themselves. Your comment is actually very telling. Instead of realizing and admitting that racism and sexism are bad and hurtful, you instead referred to the perpetrators as "arrogant sexist bigots" and talked about how scary the "echo chamber" was.

edit: In fact, it is remarkable that this "it is actually the minorities who are the real sexists and racists!" comment is the top comment on HN. Absolutely shameful.

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#109

Post by raxxorrax »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #57
monoideism wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To believe that blind applications would help increase female representation presupposes that they're being discriminated against right now, when TFA shows that women are getting preferential callbacks. That completely jives with my experience: most female candidates are highly, highly sought-after, and are quickly hired by top tech companies (leaving smaller companies looking bad in the process, despire their equal…

> most female candidates are highly, highly sought-after, and are quickly hired by top tech companies Let's say we believe that women are on average equally as capable of men, and we know there are maybe 10-20% as many women in the industry. Are those 10-20% women roughly as good as the average man, or are they roughly as good as the top 10-20% of men? Have they had the same experience as average men, or have they fo…

Wouldn't you need to have evidence of discrimination before you start to discriminate against other groups in the name of women? Women might actually get a backlash for that and you have the classic self-fullfilling prophecy. Why not try a revolutionary approach and treat people equally, everyone to their best ability as their conscience allows?

We would need to scrap esoteric models about bias and have very simple rules that everybody understands?

Re: Gender and Race Preferences in Hiring at Silicon Valley Tech Firms [pdf]

#110

Post by giantg2 »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #102
giantg2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my company, you have a leg up if you fit one of the diversity metrics and are applying for a job. I've worked on teams where I'm the only one of my race. I've been on group projects where I'm the only one of my gender. Based on the conversations I've heard on some of the teams I've been on, I have a minority political view and culture/lifestyle as well. It's almost never a problem unless you believe or think it is…

Thank you. Your experience in not suffering from discrimination clearly invalidates all of the millions of people who do. It's clearly all in their head. It boggles my mind on people's basic inability to realize that not everyone has the same experiences in life as them. And rather than accept other peoples experiences as valid, it's always the same argument of "I haven't had to deal with this therfore they don't eit…

I never said it doesn't exist. I'm sure there are people who are victims of discrimination. Where's your proof of the millions who do suffer from workplace discrimination in tech every year? More specifically, how do you see the chicken and egg problem posed in the parent comment not being a mindset issue?
Post reply on HN