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

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

#111

Post by username90 »

nashalo_nighly wrote: post #100
username90 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumption relies on the women getting into the field are the best women. I don't see why that would be true. The fields with many women like law, medicine or psychology are much harder to get into than computer science or engineering so most of the best women likely ends up there.

Given that as a woman you don’t benefit from the “competency bias” and constantly has to prove yourself (which is not necessarily bad), combined with the fact that many women simply walk out of careers in computer science and physics because of sexism/harassment, you could consider that the women left are indeed more competent than the average man in the industry.

Women do benefit from likeability bias though, and likeability is certainly a factor when hiring and firing.

As for fake resume studies, the problem with those is that male and female resumes are evaluated differently. If they made a male looking resume and sent it out with a female name it will do badly. But a female looking resume with a male name will also do badly.

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

#112

Post by milansm »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #101
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…

Why do we need to systematically counteract our biases? Why is that right thing to do? And who decides what is right?

I was biased when I married, I’m biased when I pick people I’ll spend time with, I’m biased when I apply for a job, and wouldn’t like it to be any other way... Of course, unless it’s me deciding for everyone else what they should optimize for their decision making process.

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

#113

Post by robotnikman »

lettergram wrote: post #8

I always try to give the recruiter no indication of race or gender. Frankly, if we all did that it would remove the bias. The challenge is, I suspect they ask for race & gender is intentionally requested to add bias . I’ve worked with recruiters and part of the job is indeed targeting “under represented” groups to improve the figures.

It would be nice if we could just hire people based on the necessary experience and regardless of how people were born or how they look; features they have no control over

Unfortunately seems like a pipe dream for the human race right now, cheers to those who try though.

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

#114

Post by tpoacher »

This paper is a prime example of not accounting for Simpson's paradox: "These numbers suggest that women and White applicants are proportionally more likely to get hired compared to their counterparts." No, you haven't given us the men/women breakdown by ethnicity. It may actually be that there is an over-representation of women in the white category compared to other ethnicities, and therefore the bias towards hiring females carries with it a bias towards hiring white. However it's possible that if you compare ethnicities separately between men and women you might find no racial discimination exists.

(and vice versa for ethnicity vs gender).

The fact that they don't show these breakdowns is a major weakness of this study.

Or strength. Depending on whether the desired metric is scientific correctness, or political marketability.

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

#115

Post by hello_1234 »

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…

That your post is on the top shows the "white male" bias in hackernews audience. People are up-voting your personal anecdote and your "I am a white male victim" post more than the discussions about the actual results on the original article.

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

#116

Post by at_a_remove »

At this one job, we had only two remotely viable candidates for an open position. I was on the hiring committee, as I often was in those days.

Candidate A: Had worked in the industry, had all of the qualifications, already chock-full of some interesting ideas I wanted to hear more of from the interview alone. Excited at the prospect.

Candidate B: Had never worked in the industry, had only a handful of qualifications, barely responsive. Seemed indifferent to getting the job. Additionally, not too fluent in English, to the point where it was more than a little difficult to communicate.

Candidate A was a white man, Candidate B was a recent immigrant and a woman. The immediate supervisor for the position -- a woman -- wanted Candidate A, as did most others. However, the person running the show said, out loud I might add, that our group already had "too many pale males." I would like to repeat that: too many pale males. A significant glance was then cast at me and the guy in the wheelchair on the hiring committee, both being not-particularly-dark men. Presumably by "virtue" of our disabilities we would automatically be down for the Diversity Squad.

Candidate B was hired and turned out exactly as she was in the interview: disinterested in doing the job, lacking even some bare understanding of how to accomplish many things, always trying to find ways to do her grad school homework while on the job and pushing off her duties on someone else, rather than trying to learn her tasks. Her poor English was a significant barrier. She remained a leaden weight until she went off to be someone else's problem. She wasn't a drag due to her skin color or sex, but she was hired because of those things.

My guess is that this kind of discrimination (I use that word specifically) goes on all the time in at least some segments of the industry.

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

#117

Post by osipov »

hello_1234 wrote: post #115
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…

That your post is on the top shows the "white male" bias in hackernews audience. People are up-voting your personal anecdote and your "I am a white male victim" post more than the discussions about the actual results on the original article.

The post reveals the hackernews bias against discrimination in all forms, regardless of whether it is targeted at minorities or white males. Meritocracy baby!

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

#118

Post by treeman79 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #108
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 act…

Ah, that’s another common attitude. I’m white so I HAVE to admit to my racism.

People don’t like it being called out on it.

Had some girl come up to me and demand I apologize for being a a man, and how that’s kept her out of tech.

I have many daughters and work hard to show them programming and other concepts.

So yeah, she was flat being sexist.

As a child I saw pictures of a crowd shouting at a a black girl for going to school. To this day always remember the look of pure hatred on their faces. I’ve always kept that in mind in dealing with others.

I see that a same hatred in all kinds of people. Some of it has had grown socially acceptable now.

Why need to strive to a point where none that maters. We treat each other with respect.

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

#119

Post by bluntfang »

xibalba wrote: post #66
bluntfang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno man, are black people systemically killing other ethnic groups in America right now? Do they have a history of genocide and slavery on the scale of white people? Do we see a bunch of black people doing the black equivalent of Nazi salutes on the side of the road around the country?

Is there any group that is "systemically killing" any other group in America right now? Please bring data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...

Stop and Frisk is widely believed to be proof that police are disproportionately targeting black people, and it seems interactions with police end in death more for black people than white people.

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

#120

Post by bluntfang »

tdevito wrote: post #79
bluntfang wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno man, are black people systemically killing other ethnic groups in America right now? Do they have a history of genocide and slavery on the scale of white people? Do we see a bunch of black people doing the black equivalent of Nazi salutes on the side of the road around the country?

[flagged]

Nice high value comment here. Straw manning and ad-hom all in one with a higher score than my comment.

Seems like poor discourse is better received than challenging historic white supremacy on hackernews.

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