Live data from Hacker News

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

poseidon01.ssrn.com

121–130 of 198 posts

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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve come to see it as people naturally tend to an US vs Them attitude.

Sports is a fairly safe outlet for this sort of thing.

Religion is a bad one to have that attitude. Holy wars, etc.

Race is dangerous, as history is full of exterminations.

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

#122
post #43

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…

If it was just n=1, then we wouldn't have this brilliant social commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZy4QXLKHlI

Wow. That was exactly my experience. I tried so hard to stay out of it and just code. That really upset several people.

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

#123

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…

It seems to me that if you choose something that is completely equitable in who is able to participate, then the rest of it sounds like manufacturing dissent by companies or corporations that want a "leg up" on the competition in the D&I category, which is all the rage these days in terms of marketing. Maybe there are other reasons women don't want to enter these fields, but prefer to wholly dominate others, and mayb…

I once went to a members-only hackerspace that was very open and equitable, at least in theory. To join, you had to get a recommendation from another member and support from one more. They held regular open days and were very welcoming but definitely had an established subculture that didn't include much diversity. Joining really meant being the friend of a member or possibly a friend of a friend. If you were an outsider, you'd really need to show them you were already a part of their sub-culture before they'd consider you. Openness to diversity really meant openness to conforming to an existing culture before joining.

Diversity and inclusion is an extremely hard thing to get right or even to agree on what "right" means. I don't think anybody would agree that diversity issues are fixed now and so it can't be "time to turn the conversation to this being OK". As I pointed out in my story above, lots of people can't even see that there is a present and persistent problem despite the good intentions around fixing it. That's exactly why we need to pay more attention to studies like this.

You seem keen to switch to a conversation about nature instead of having one about nurture/culture (there were a few historical arguments about race that took a similar approach). Perhaps these two are so intimately bound that it's not helpful to make observations about one in the abstract. Instead, should we not simply focus on those things we can change and try our best to ensure the inequalities of the past aren't reflected in the culture of today? It's not about some set of absolute outcomes, its about the absence of bias - an outcome I'd hope we were all on-board with.

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

#124
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

All hatred needs to stops.

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

#125

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.

Based on the research paper, it doesn't look like they're biasing towards underqualified minority candidates.

In the paper they controlled for "years of experience, average tenure, past employment at a talent competitor, education, university rank, referral status, and skills." Even with the initiatives you mention, Black (-6%), Hispanic (-9%), and Asian (-13%) applicants are less likely to be called back.

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

#126

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…

It's equally telling that someone experiencing racism and sexism from "minorities" (we're not, come visit the rest of the world) made you jump at the throat of the poster and pull a straw man, accusing him of attributing these negative traits to all non-whites and women. And, that anyone who would agree with him should be ashamed.

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

#127

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…

How is this tripe upvoted to the top ?

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

#128
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are many other reasons some groups may have higher interactions with the police than others, including high rates of absentee fathers, drug addiction and poverty.

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

#129

Women: +9 to +10% chance of callback relative to men Black, Hispanic, and Asian: -8 to -13% chance of callback relative to White people. I wish they had broken out the other ethnicities separately in the abstract. The reasons that Black and Hispanic people might be getting fewer callbacks relative to whites are likely quite different from the reasons that Asian people might be getting fewer callbacks. I'm making my w…

As far as I can tell, the paper doesn't seem to control for citizenship or immigration status. It seems likely that Hispanic and Asian job-seekers, especially in Silicon Valley, would be much more likely to be from overseas and therefore require a work visa.

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

#130

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…

So instead of working to convince innocent people that are part of a previously-"privileged" group through reason and dialogue, are you saying we should instead have them be discriminated against because of their skin color? Oh, and we must also tell them to shut up because they can't admit that it's actually their own fault that they're being discriminated against simply because they were born a specific color? Absolutely shameful.
Post reply on HN