Live data from Hacker News

Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

github.com

131–140 of 246 posts

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting from only the people who apply gives a free pass to biased recruitment.

What, you want them to go kidnap black people and force them to apply?

So you don't think it's a problem if their ads say "whites only"? Or if they only advertise to white people? Or are you thinking "nobody would say whites only" and just totally unaware of the many ways that language and targeting can affect who applies to a job, sometimes skewing the pool of applicants in unintended ways? A nice, nobody-meant-it way to bias your candidate pool: only hire people who know an existing employee. White Americans mostly know white Americans.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#132

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 m…

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

Who's throwing bananas at their black soccer players?

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#133
It chaffes me when I see companies talk about diversity and inclusion (ignore that the blog post is written by a young white guy).

You want to use data to make Github more diverse--great. Just shut up about it and make it happen. Posting your diversity data like this, like it's some badge of honor, is ridiculous.

Someone wants to know how diverse you are? Great, show them the data, and tell them you're working on it.

Just please stop it with the public discourse.

You know what I don't see--companies like MSFT, and Google, and Facebook, and Github who talk about their inclusion showing up to the poorer parts of my neighborhood trying to address diversity issues there.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#134

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 m…

> Europe doesn't have the sort of ingrained racism that exists in the United States

O_o

There's plenty of ingrained racism in Europe. From constant and persistent jokes about the French in the UK, to the French hamlet called "Death to Jews" that only recently changed it's name, to the consistently poor treatment of Romany people in most places, right up to the ethnic cleansing of the former Yugoslavia in recent memory, there's plenty of ingrained racism in Europe.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#135
post #20

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…

> 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 please other people. It's not "just to please other people"; it's to attempt to counteract the institutionalized discrimination against minorities that exists throughout the country. Studies have shown[1] that, for example, peop…

> it's to attempt to counteract the institutionalized discrimination against minorities that exists throughout the country.

No. The reason companies hire in this way is to defend against discrimination lawsuits. The Supreme Court already decided against the principle you're describing in the ruling of the Bakke case.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#136

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 m…

> 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.

I see this everywhere, and yet no citations (and when asked, I usually get referred to someones blog - not from a respected scientist completely unaffiliated with the feminist movement). Either that or I get linked to 4 or 5 default papers which have little reference to the claim.

People need to accept that bold statements like this are absolutely not excluded from burden of proof - and what's more if you live in the UK (I expect much of Europe) it's time to speak up, it's illegal to pay less based on gender.

The usual problem with this is, that the actual fact is that women earn less than men on average. That's kind of a crazy comparison - software developers earn less on average to CEOs, on average sewage workers earn less than those in hedge funds and so on.

It assumes fairly boldly that women and men operate in equal proportions in every industry (which is false).

In another note, just by writing this I'm opening myself to someone telling me to check my privilege, which is a codified way to tell me as a white male there's some secret sauce I can't possibly know about (so should be quiet on the issue). The deepest irony is that this behaviour is exactly what the movement was designed to disassemble.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#138
post #75

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.

Oh, it's fine that it's racist, because I as a white male have it so good? Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't buy, it's not a ticket to middle-class. Being cis doesn't make me any more worse at my job than being gay would, don't judge me on that merit it's bullshit. FWIW I grew up incredibly poor and my "advantage" in IT was that people don't care about your background. If I had…

[deleted]

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#139
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

It's a direct counterargument to what you're saying.

You're saying that due to 20 years of affirmative action policies where a black person who is less competent than a white person is able to put an identical item on their resume, it's reasonable to expect that a black person with an identical resume as a white person is less competent. Is that a mischaracterization?

I said that the scientific consensus is that the opposite is true, that a black person has to be more competent to be able to put an identical item on their resume. Therefore affirmative action when considering resumes is reasonable.

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

This is generally taken to mean that black people are just as racist as white people, just like women can be just as sexist as men. I'm not sure why you're concluding that non-racists can be racially biased (which seems to me like a contradiction in terms).

> Furthermore, regarding the studies mentioned in the article, there are some important question that need answering

What answers to those questions would change your mind, and what answers do you believe should change my mind?

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#140

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's not good as a general practice. It's probably a sensible imposition against companies that persistently get in relevant legal trouble.
Post reply on HN