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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]

#131

Post by commandlinefan »

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…

> experience discrimination

But didn't we all agree a long time ago that discrimination is inherently bad?

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

#132

Post by hello_1234 »

osipov wrote: post #117
hello_1234 wrote: post #115

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!

I totally agree. But shouldn't we trust the data more than one person's anecdote? The original article clearly did not find any discrimination against white male. Rather than discussing that result, we are here commenting about one person's anecdote.

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

#133

Post by equaminity »

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…

Thank you for sharing this experience.

It makes it clear that if bias against a member of the most privileged group in our society can create this kind of trauma, what must it be doing to the minority groups that have been suffering under the same pain for many, many centuries. I applaud your vulnerability.

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

#134

Post by benjaminjosephw »

treeman79 wrote: post #121
smbullet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The idea that "race is dangerous" is dangerous.

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

#135

Post by nailer »

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…

> Got hired into a company that did everything possible to avoid hiring straight white men.

Same here. Like you mentioned, anecdotes are not data.

But likewise - I was pressured to specifically hire a female / non-white developer for my team.

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

#136

Post by smbullet »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #134
treeman79 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The idea that "race is dangerous" is dangerous.

They're saying it's dangerous to have an Us vs Them attitude when it comes to race.

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

#137

Post by treeman79 »

equaminity wrote: post #133
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…

Thank you for sharing this experience. It makes it clear that if bias against a member of the most privileged group in our society can create this kind of trauma, what must it be doing to the minority groups that have been suffering under the same pain for many, many centuries. I applaud your vulnerability.

I don’t ever want to be viewed as a victim. I’ve had some major tragedies. I move on and keep going. With new scars. But those are proof I’m human. And well not fully flammable.

Blaming others is a destructive pattern.

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

#138

Post by tomp »

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…

Well this might be taking it a step too far. The first, obvious step would be simply to compare the actual hires (workers) with the available pool... almost nobody actually does that. People keep claiming that e.g. Google is sexist because they hire so few women, without regard to the fact that their worker pool has about the same distribution as their hiring pool (CS graduates). The UK passed a law requiring companies to disclose average salaries by sex etc. with no regard on the actual job / education level / level of employment.

We can't even begin to talk about solutions if all the media / researchers / activists keep pushing misleading statistics.

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

#139

Post by tomp »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #41
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…

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…

> women don't prefer the "rat race" as much as men

It's not just that. Money is like make-up for men. It's obvious why men would put more effort (on average) in acquiring it.

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

#140

Post by mpfundstein »

smbullet wrote: post #136
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that "race is dangerous" is dangerous.

They're saying it's dangerous to have an Us vs Them attitude when it comes to race.

Treeman is surely a he ... and a singular person... gosh this rape of language is so ugly
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