Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#181

Post by nojvek » Fri, May 27, 2016, 2:43 AM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #59

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…

Companies want to be in a possition where if a talented candidate is african american, female, gay, transgender, ect. that they wouldn't turn down the offer simply because they didn't feel comfortable working there/there is another company that is more diverse that makes this kind of person more comfortable there. The talent war is so competitive that companies are doing everything they can to keep up, including dive…

I still find the whole "talent war is so competitive" statement a bit of a hype. Is there any data on this? There are millions of Engineers in the US.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#182

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 27, 2016, 2:46 AM UTC

chickenfries wrote: post #19

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…

There are literally countries that have laws mandating gender representation in government. Since you don't seem invested in the topic, why not assume that GitHub has benefitted in the way that they say they have in this post?

[deleted]

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#183

Post by ps4fanboy » Fri, May 27, 2016, 2:46 AM UTC

ASpring wrote: post #180

ps4fanboy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the sources I would say there is evidence that employees in the survey they conducted self reported better financial performance from the following options: "how would you compare your organization’s performance over the past two years in terms of market share? .|.|. Would you say that it was (1) much worse, (2) somewhat worse, (3) about the same, (4) somewhat better, or (5) much better?” Surely we can…

You are truly grasping at straws. There are 15 citations there, many of which show direct data of market cap and share price performance for these companies and you hunt down a single survey you have an issue with. Please.

I dont have time to review all 15 citations, it was the first one I picked based on the claim made in your document. It was also the most closely related claim that you linked to the document in question:

>"An investigation of 500 U.S. businesses found that companies with more race and gender diverse teams had higher sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater profits than did less diverse companies.4"

You are being very uncharitable to suggest I am "grasping at straws" by reviewing the very document you are using as evidence.

Lets review page 3, each paragraph is a claim.

1. executive boards

2. executive boards

3. top management level

4. top management teams

5. greater profit and market share

6. student study make believe

Now you can see why I Chose 5 to investigate as 1-4,6 are pretty much unrelated to what we are talking about which is diversity of the work force, not high level management.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#184

Post by nojvek » Fri, May 27, 2016, 2:51 AM UTC

johnnyg wrote: post #56

"There are no Black/African-American GitHubbers in management positions, which is unacceptable." It is only unacceptable if people with the skills to be in management positions didn't get a promotion because of a non-relevant personal attribute. Otherwise, it is acceptable and in the best long term interests of the company. I acknowledge that America has equality of opportunity problems. There are strong and just his…

Sometimes this could have negative impact if promoted too much right? Imagine the feeling that your peers thinking you're in management level because HR wants to meet the quotas and don't actually respect you for the talent.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#185

Post by reader5000 » Fri, May 27, 2016, 2:58 AM UTC

resu_nimda wrote: post #158

reader5000 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important things: producing a good or service that is valuable to some market and that supports the livelihoods of employees/stakeholders in an equitable way. Not important things: disfavoring groups of people that it is currently stylish to consider as "oppressive", "problematic", or "triggering" in favor of other groups of people that are currently deemed to be "diverse", "oppressed", "modern". Real life isn't hand…

So obviously there is quite a lot of overlap between companies doing important things (by that incredibly broad definition) and companies that devote some of their resources to diversity. It's almost as if working on important things and caring about diversity are not mutually exclusive, that people/companies can care about multiple things... I don't get why it is so irksome to you that a company would make a diversi…

"Do you assert that that doesn't happen?" Yes.

Many (most?) ethnic minorities are significantly more successful than whites in the US. Whites represent the largest group of people in the US living in poverty. Whites must face the entire ideology of diversity which is that they must be replaced by non-whites due to inherent moral inferiority. Wait you're right I think systematic disadvantage does happen..

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#186

Post by cb18 » Fri, May 27, 2016, 3:00 AM UTC

danudey wrote: post #117

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 m…

Despite similar rates of drug use, black people are nearly four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana use

This can be pretty obviously understood as the result of compound charges, of which the drug charge is a minor component.

Bear with me, facts incoming...

Black people, particularly young black males commit crimes at a much higher rate than other groups. In committing these other crimes and then being arrested, a certain percentage of them happen to have a bag of weed in their pocket, which then gets tacked on as an accessory charge.

Before anyone wants to argue about the objective and carefully tabulated crime rates. No, whites don't just get away with more of the petty, street, and violent crime we are discussing, race ratios of victim reports match those of arrests.

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.

No, because of intentionally faulty statistics to calculate such things.

The gender wage gap uses bogus statistics - Christina Hoff Sommers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58arQIr882w

https://www.google.com/search?q=milo+wage+gap

If women are doing the same work as men and accepting significantly lower pay to do so, why aren't companies tripping over themselves in trying to hire all women staffs and significantly reduce costs?

diversity is important.

"Diversity" in the sense it is used in social policy(for some reason only in the west, no one is harping on Japan, or Saudi Arabia, or Angola about diversity) is harmful and destructive to otherwise healthy societies.

We show that ethnic diversity or fractionalization and values diversity are distinct and while the former has a negative effect on innovation, the latter contributes positively. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504851.2015.11...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...

Diversity DESTROYS Social Cohesion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTROCGb5qj8

"Diversity is our Strength" ^ watch that

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)

Actually, historically successful societies have pretty refined heuristics for what to take seriously and it has served them well.

It is absurd to say we should take all viewpoints seriously.

How are you defining 'viewpoint', and 'seriously'?

What does it mean to take seriously the viewpoints common in Islam that --

gay people should be persecuted, to the point of being thrown off buildings, stoned to death, or beheaded?

family members should kill other family members in the name of 'honor'?

murdering non-believers is acceptable?

How seriously do you take these viewpoints?

Were NASA hindered in their mission to get to the moon in the 1960s because it was a bunch of white guys with viewpoints grounded in careful observation, excelling at math and science and a kind of boundary pushing audaciousness that seems quite particular to men of European descent?

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#187

Post by MaxfordAndSons » Fri, May 27, 2016, 3:03 AM UTC

cb18 wrote: post #157

zyxley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"Institutional racism,"(has it undergone re-branding as "institutionalized discrimination"?) is this vague, boogey-man term used as an explanation of last resort to explain the "achievement gap," among other divergences between the races. The thing is, there is tenuous evidence at best for "institutional racism," and in nowhere near the quantity that would be needed to account for all of its supposed effects. Indeed…

>Has anyone attempted to explain why all this "institutional racism" seems to be working to such great benefit for north-east Asians in the US, who consistently rank above the supposed "evil white oppressors" in various socio-economic metrics?

Since others are picking apart your argument in the large, I'll just add this. Institutional racism, though it continues to manifest in the present, can only be fully understood through history: the extremely racist practices and policies of past generations of Americans have had compounding effects through time on the populations subjected to them. Regarding Asian American immigrants, the vast majority of them have only arrived since the 1960s[0], so they've had much less time to be dragged down by systemic racism. And additionally, the fact that they are lighter of skin tone tends to make them a less targeted group by racist actors.

>Or why we see common patterns of achievement and behavior between races across societies with wildly different institutional histories?

Who is 'we' and what exactly do 'we see'??? I'm dying to know.

[0]http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/asian-immigrants-unit...

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#188

Post by cb18 » Fri, May 27, 2016, 3:06 AM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #166

cb18 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Institutional racism,"(has it undergone re-branding as "institutionalized discrimination"?) is this vague, boogey-man term used as an explanation of last resort to explain the "achievement gap," among other divergences between the races. The thing is, there is tenuous evidence at best for "institutional racism," and in nowhere near the quantity that would be needed to account for all of its supposed effects. Indeed…

"Institutional racism,” also “Systemic racism,” is not a vague, bogeyman term, it has a specific and objective meaning. It can be measured and has been measured, repeatedly. In almost every area of American life, there are measurable effects. Blacks are more likely to be arrested than whites for the same crimes. They are more likely to be sent to prison and to get longer prison sentences given the same criminal recor…

You're taking observations(one of them isn't even a factual observation[0]) and then a priori assigning a cause, "systemic racism," to those observations. That is not how facts, or rational, coherent reasoning works.

[0] Races aren't arrested at different rates for the same crimes, race percentage in victim reports match race percentage in arrests.

Drug arrest rate appear to vary as the result of compound charges, i.e. while being arrested for another crime, blacks happen to have drugs on them. Because blacks commit some crimes at a much higher rate than whites the drug numbers look biased without this context.

---

Reread the questions and arguments I posed, then if you want to respond to them, ok, but otherwise don't waste my time.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#189

Post by cb18 » Fri, May 27, 2016, 3:07 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #179

braythwayt wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Institutional racism,” also “Systemic racism,” is not a vague, bogeyman term, it has a specific and objective meaning. It can be measured and has been measured, repeatedly. In almost every area of American life, there are measurable effects. Blacks are more likely to be arrested than whites for the same crimes. They are more likely to be sent to prison and to get longer prison sentences given the same criminal recor…

> What I am finding more and more is a certain type of rhetoric, I will call it “Racism Denial.” That's an excellent name for it. What I find especially frustrating about it is how it's dressed up in a search for objective truth. However, the only kind of evidence they want is the kind that proves racism. They never appear to search for evidence for the opposite proposition, that racism does not exist. That's always…

The US's history is enormously racist. We fought an entire civil war over whether black people were actually people. The racism denialists are in effect claiming that on some unspecified date in history, all of that racism evaporated and left no trace in heart, mind, or law. That's the proposition I think we should be demanding evidence for.

What explains the similarity in crime rates, test scores, achievement, SES, between Africans in the US, England, and Sweden? 2 of the 3 having no history of enslaving Africans.

Re: Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub

#190

Post by MaxfordAndSons » Fri, May 27, 2016, 3:29 AM UTC

alva wrote: post #176

I expect this is a well intentioned mission. But to what extent do you take this? Does not making sure other (less in the zeitgeist) groups are involved mean they are failing at this? Hasidic Jews, Inuits, Wheelchair users, Men named Reginald, A person with a southern drawl, a person with one hand, a person with no hands, a 45 year old. Quick googling suggests Jews make up 1.4% of the US population. You can't really…

You're making a false equivocation between arbitrary demographic "groups" and demographic groups that have faced well documented systemic discrimination in America, both historically and continuing in the present.

And to preempt a counterargument via your chosen example, yes, you could argue Jews have and do face discrimination in America - but garden variety American anti-semitism is not of the systemic, historical nature that makes a random Jewish American more likely to be passed over for a job because of their name, or treated drastically differently by the average police officer, or less likely to have become engaged in tech earlier in life, etc.