Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 464 posts

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#181

Post by mrep »

rayiner wrote: post #23
hunta2097 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recently left tenure at a large telecoms company in the UK. They definitely had a practice of encouraging female hires. Even if they weren't the best fit for the role. Don't get me wrong, I am not approaching this in a sexist way - on the contrary I have worked with excellent and poor colleagues of both sexes. I think it diminishes the accomplishments of genuinely great minority/female employees to have this p…

Except that’s not what we get right now. We have qualified women driven away from the profession because of all the unwanted attention and hurdles that come along wit being a minority at work. In my profession (corporate law) we get a balanced gender distribution of applicants at the entry level. But that’s because of aggressive efforts to recruit women, as well as lawsuits, in the 1980s and 1990s, to counteract the…

How do you guys recruit and how has that influenced the number of law school graduates by gender assuming you are not a professor?

I see that woman now are the majority of law graduates [0] which I find doubtful that it is attributable to corporate recruiting tactics.

[0]: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/business/dealbook/wome...

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#182

Post by 0xfeba »

gpm wrote: post #87

People should check out the actual complaint [0]. It includes a lot of things the article doesn't including: A screenshot of an email from Allison Alogna to "Team" stating > Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically unrepresented groups. Another stating in part > And we should only consider L3s from our underrepresented groups. It also tells us that thi…

I don't understand how this didn't raise red flags from legal/HR.

From the article:

> In a statement, Google said [...] it has a "clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their identity. At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles[...]"

You can't have it both ways. You're either based solely on merit, or on merit and how non-male and non-white they are. Which is discrimination.

EDIT: Sorry -- Finding pools in "diverse" areas is fine, but dropping resumes in the bin when they are not "diverse" enough is not.

I hate that "diversity" has been politicized like this and I feel like it's one of the failings of the left's identity politics bent that will come back to bite them.

Getting minorities in your company to win some diversity points is great, but missing the actual benefit to society. The goal should be, for society, to equally encourage minorities to get STEM degrees and jobs so that companies don't have to play this stupid "look how diverse we are!" game.

And it won't happen overnight.

Companies should just hire on merit[1]; be completely blind to their workforce's background. They should enforce this neutrality like they enforce neutrality toward anyone's religion. "I don't care as long as you can do your job". If they are concerned about monoculture, then advertise and advocate in areas that they think will improve that. But just leave hiring to merit.

Eventually diversity will trickle-up. It shouldn't just be up to companies.

EDIT [1]: Yes, merit can be an ambiguous term. And I should have also stated they can hire based on "fit", which is another ambiguous term. But sorry, if your devote beliefs restrict you from using any electronic devices, then no, you aren't getting the web developer job. It's not a good "fit".

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#183

Post by Slansitartop »

bitL wrote: post #124
xxcode wrote: post #85

I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers talk in the same vein. Please consider not…

Consider deleting this post. You can be easily doxxed from your HN post history; it's not worth it.

Once there's a reply it can't be deleted, only edited to remove the content. After two hours that's not even an option anymore.

Generally, I think it's good policy to be very guarded on the internet and/or change accounts often. There are all kinds of awful people out there, and you can't control who you may come across.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#184

Post by Cthulhu_ »

darepublic wrote: post #67
icc97 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously think that Google is going to stop hiring white men? What is claimed sounds like a completely crass method. Whether you like Google or not they typically do things in a fairly data driven method even with their hiring. It is also blatant discrimination that as others claim would be fairly easy to prove in court. This would be stupid. For Google to be both crass and stupid seems unlikely.

They will stop hiring level 3 engineer who are Asian and white according to this allegation. The discrimination against asians matters to me even if you're perfectly happy with it in your social justice utopia that discriminates against me.

Meaning the "asian and white" people will become more entrenched in the (I assume) higher levels, with minorities doing the junior work. Or am I missing the point?

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#185

Post by jccalhoun »

bitL wrote: post #44
icc97 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously think that Google is going to stop hiring white men? What is claimed sounds like a completely crass method. Whether you like Google or not they typically do things in a fairly data driven method even with their hiring. It is also blatant discrimination that as others claim would be fairly easy to prove in court. This would be stupid. For Google to be both crass and stupid seems unlikely.

Do you really want to work for a company where world-class work might not be that important for your career progress? Do you think a super talented high-achieving person with wrong gender/race should be expected to sacrifice their achievements for "common good" as defined by internal diversity officers? Do you think those diversity hires would be happy staying at junior positions and not pushing beyond their capabili…

"Do you really want to work for a company where world-class work might not be that important for your career progress?"

I think pretty much every company has employees who would say that there are definitely people who get promotions and bonuses for reasons that are not related to "world-class" work.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#186

Post by nojvek »

thorwawayforg wrote: post #170
xxcode wrote: post #85

I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers talk in the same vein. Please consider not…

Can you tell me more about this? I have interviewed at google 2 times now. The first interview I bombed -- and I knew it. It was my first interview in near 10 years. The second interview I thought I aced. There was not a single answer I could not answer expect one about obscure hardware that nobody uses any more -- which I think was a test on how I handle not knowing something -- I ended up learning something neat. T…

On the other side Google’s getting shamed for not being diverse enough. I’m sure many recruiters and hiring managers’ bonuses are tried to how many diverse candidates are hired.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#187

Post by greenshackle3 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #171
gpm wrote: post #87

People should check out the actual complaint [0]. It includes a lot of things the article doesn't including: A screenshot of an email from Allison Alogna to "Team" stating > Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically unrepresented groups. Another stating in part > And we should only consider L3s from our underrepresented groups. It also tells us that thi…

Another interesting thing there is that it's only L3's, which (it seems) are juniors / new people; you could argue that that too is discriminatory and it enables the "white male" stereotype to remain in leading positions while the "grunt work" is done by underrepresented groups.

My guess it that for more senior roles they do not have the luxury to be so selective.

Re: Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts

#189

Post by novembermike »

richmarr wrote: post #54
hunta2097 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recently left tenure at a large telecoms company in the UK. They definitely had a practice of encouraging female hires. Even if they weren't the best fit for the role. Don't get me wrong, I am not approaching this in a sexist way - on the contrary I have worked with excellent and poor colleagues of both sexes. I think it diminishes the accomplishments of genuinely great minority/female employees to have this p…

> I think it diminishes the accomplishments of genuinely great minority/female employees to have this policy. This view is contradicted by the weight of evidence for unconscious bias in hiring. [Edit] Although obviously I don't know exactly what their policy was... maybe they were hiring badly, but the evidence suggests that people (of both sexes) discount the abilities of people in gender-incongruous roles. > I woul…

A lot of the unconscious bias studies are failing to replicate.
Post reply on HN