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Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

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Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#111

Post by clevernickname »

PeCaN wrote: post #72
djtriptych wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly less comfortable for the most-privileged people on earth; probably more comfortable for everyone else. cf. Every other American industry's initial foray into diversity.

Personally, I don't think I would be very comfortable knowing I was hired because company X has to meet diversity quotas and not solely because I was the best candidate for the job. I think it's an offense to hackers in general—I'm hired based on merit.

This is where affirmative action is a step backwards. The unconscious assumption goes from "they're an X in this field, they have to be good" to "they're an X in this field, they're probably just here to fill a quota" and makes matters worse for everybody.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#112

Post by nevir »

advantark wrote: post #63
guessmyname wrote: post #12

This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups or specific genders in pedestals just to…

I have never heard a good argument explaining how affirmative action is good for a company or society outside of college.

It forces a company to try multiple approaches to hiring. E.g. having many criteria for what the company considers a good candidate.

For example, a tech company that requires college degrees for all candidates might want to loosen that, and figure out other signals that indicate strong candidates without a degree.

There's a strong tendency to hire what you know (e.g. people like you, and to interview how you've been interviewed).

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#113

Post by yummyfajitas »

cjbprime wrote: post #77
Pyxl101 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US Where's the data for this? Often people talk about these things as assumptions, but I've never seen credible data. Can you share a source? Furthermore, even the comparison that you mentioned is not accurate. It should start from a funnel like: "the number of qualified bl…

You're asking for a citation for zero being less than non-zero? :)

He's asking for a citation that the probability of seeing zero is small (p<0.05 if you want to be frequentist about it), contingent on a proper funnel analysis and no bias.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#114

Post by phasmantistes »

wskinner wrote: post #100
drhayes9 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GH is starting from the point of "the distribution of our employees doesn't line up with the larger population of the country we operate in". If you think each of those groups of people has the potential to be as talented as any other, then why is there a discrepancy? I think they're saying, "We don't think the market is working." There are hidden biases at work. For example, people with "non-white sounding"…

GitHub is focusing on the very bottom of the funnel. They are noticing the distribution of their employees doesn't match that of the larger population, then attempting to make it match. But what if the reason their company distribution doesn't match up is that the distribution of people with the requisite skills doesn't match up? They are trying to treat the symptoms of a supposed problem rather than the ailment itse…

This is just the pipeline argument. And while there are very real aspects to the pipeline -- yes, women and minorities drop out of the tech industry in early education, late education, and on the job -- the problem with the argument is that it attempts to absolve blame.

GitHub is not at the "bottom of the funnel". They're in the middle: people who work there today may go on to wildly successful careers elsewhere. And people who have bad experiences there may not.

So please don't make the pipeline argument. Just because other earlier stages have failed to be welcoming to minorities doesn't mean GitHub shouldn't try, and just because GitHub is a corporate employer doesn't mean their employees aren't still living developing human beings.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#115

Post by GunboatDiplomat »

drhayes9 wrote: post #104
GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about race makes things which aren't about race about race, which introduces racism. Not talking about race lets the issue of race go quiet into that good night where it belongs.

Behavior introduces racism, not talking. Talking about it means we might find a solution or a mitigation. You make it sound like the problem would go away if we'd just stop talking about it. That's not a solution; that's just sweeping it under the rug.

Talking is a behavior, is it not?

The problem ises some people know that they can discriminate against people based on skin color. They learned that certain groups had certain stereotypes. They learned these "facts" because people around them reinforced that these groups were different by talking about how the groups were different.

Talking about race is only going to beget more racism at this point.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#116

Post by GunboatDiplomat »

pron wrote: post #105
GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's a good chance it's because you're biased (intentionally or not) in your recruiting or evaluation. I don't think this is necessarily the case. Or even likely the case. For example, we know that the number of blacks, latinos, and women studying CS, etc., is much lower than their proportion in the population. It follows that even the most equitable tech company is unlikely to have demographics which match the p…

But it's also possible that the reason that some groups are underrepresented because is because they don't like their prospects (say, in term of a welcoming work environment). Causality works both up and down the pipeline; not just up.

It's possible, but you'd have to prove it, and I think that's an uphill battle.

Further, that's not what the previous poster was saying, and not what I was addressing. They said that there's a high degree of likelihood that not reflecting the population at large is the result of bias. That, as I said, is not likely to be true.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#117

Post by danudey »

guessmyname wrote: post #12

This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups or specific genders in pedestals just to…

Europe doesn't have the sort of ingrained racism that exists in the United States. For example:

> Despite similar rates of drug use, black people are nearly four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana use,⁴ and black males are often given longer sentences for crimes than their white peers.⁵

[ from https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration-ff73... ]

Likewise, women tend to make significantly less money for doing the same work, in the same positions, at the same company, because of (largely) subconscious biases.

So called 'affirmative action' movements and diversity pledges are a direct response to the acknowledgement of our unconscious biases. If you know that you're 20% more likely to judge a candidate as unfit just because of the colour of their skin or the sound of their name, then that means that, over time, you're losing out on a lot of talented candidates.

Likewise, if you're less likely to fairly evaluate a woman's performance or contributions, then you're going to promote talent to positions of leadership or management less often, meaning you're not going to put your best people in those positions.

Lastly, diversity is important. You don't get anywhere by looking at only one viewpoint. Look at the state of American media right now: you have tons of content on Fox News that repeats the same few lines as facts, and they've all convinced themselves that it's true because they hear it everywhere. With that environment, why would anyone consider a different fact? When you're surrounded by people who have the same experiences with you, the same viewpoints as you, the same background as you, the same friends as you, you're never going to learn anything.

It's when we surround ourselves with people different to us that we grow and learn. We start to see things from other points of view, we learn about new experiences that we didn't have growing up. We create new collaborations that build on our different backgrounds to produce something that feels new, and not just a retreading of existing works.

In other words, the reason for forcing diversity is to both counter our own (and others') conscious and subconscious biases, as well as to ensure that you're exposing people to as many new and differing viewpoints as possible (and, in turn, taking those viewpoints seriously), so that you have more resources to build from, which makes for a more robust environment.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#118

Post by baudehlo »

jbob2000 wrote: post #10

I wish so much that I could be picky about my hiring like GitHub. I wish I could have so many qualified candidates applying that I am able to create a diverse team. But I put out job ads and get like 2 qualified responses. How the hell are they able to find all these candidates such that they can start being picky about who they hire??? Maybe Toronto just sucks for tech talent... Argh...

Tech talent is tight in Toronto. There are too many jobs and not enough talent. Job postings suck at attracting people here. You literally have to crawl through LinkedIn to find people. Stack overflow careers is actually pretty decent though. But a lot of small companies aren't willing to pay for it.

Your best bet here? Frankly a recruiter if you're willing to pay them. They are still the gold standard for finding good tech talent in Toronto.

I wish we could offer our product for developers, but we are very focussed on sales recruiting right now. Maybe in a year or so.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#119

Post by pwim »

Previously I thought hiring diversity for diversity's sake didn't make sense, and hiring should be based solely on "merit". After all, as a company, you want to hire the best people.

However, since then, I have found there is research that indicates diverse groups can be more advantageous than homogenous groups of highly talented people [1], [2]. So from this perspective, striving for diversity makes economic sense.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full

[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-make...

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#120

Post by said »

laughinghan wrote: post #108
said wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the widespread use of pro-black affirmative-action (practiced by GitHub, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft; nearly every major university; many government contractors; and probably the majority of F500 companies), isn't it only logical to view black resumes with more suspicion? Objectively, blacks need to display lower competency in relevant skills to achieve identical resumes as whites. On a side note, af…

> Objectively, blacks need to display lower competency in relevant skills to achieve identical resumes as whites. The scientific consensus is that the opposite is true, that black people need to display higher competency in relevant skills to achieve identical resumes as whites, which is precisely why affirmative action is hoped to be valuable. See "Social Justice for the Highly-Demanding of Rigor" for a meta-analysi…

That article does not refute what I'm saying.

By the 1990s, affirmative action was already in full swing. Universities and large companies were already on board, as was the federal government and many state and local governments.

Additionally, by the 1990s, the national media had been very sympathetic to affirmative action policies for at least 20 years—you would have been hard-pressed to find a single American who didn't know those policies existed. So it was already perfectly reasonable (and expected) for a profit-seeking non-racist [1] to view black resumes with more suspicion.

[1]: And indeed, the studies mentioned in the article showed that blacks and whites exhibited the same bias toward black resumes.

Furthermore, regarding the studies mentioned in the article, there are some important question that need answering (by someone who has access):

1. To which employers did the subjects apply?

2. How were those employers selected?

3. Did any of those employers have pro-black affirmative action policies?

4. If the studies did include employers with pro-black affirmative action policies, how heavily were those employers represented in terms of applications? This is important: even if only 2% of employers have pro-black affirmative action policies (a number far too low), those employers might employ (directly or indirectly) 60% of Americans.

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