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

Are gender quotas good for business?

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 82 posts

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#21

Post by m1el »

ChrisSD wrote: post #14
m1el wrote: post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

With respect, I think what you just wrote is statistical nonsense. If your ultimate selection from a pool is heavily biased towards an irrelevant fact (gender) then countering that bias can lead to a better selection.

A better solution would be to do gender-blind hiring, not gender quotas.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#23

Post by mirimir »

tomhoward wrote: post #22
mirimir wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paywall? I see no paywall.

Some people do, evidently. There's a limit on articles per month, at least in some regions, and maybe other restrictions in different regions.

Huh. I'm using a VPN exit in the US, to avoid GDPR bullshit.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#24

Post by codingdave »

Before the comments go too far down a rabbit-hole, I encourage everyone to respond to the article instead of answering the question in the headline. The article is talking about boards, not employees, and states that there is no causation proven, despite some correlations found in Europe after they required quotas on company boards.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#25

Post by m1el »

sago wrote: post #20
m1el wrote: post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

What very confident nonsense! Individual fitness is not independent, let alone group fitness. And without independence you are just plain wrong. Sociology dressed up as a priori mathematics is rarely credible. Even worse if the math simply isn't correct.

> Individual fitness is not independent, let alone group fitness. And without independence you are just plain wrong.

Who said that fitness in my description cannot include group fitness? The same argument goes for adding a worker to the workforce. Does the worker fit the existing workforce?

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#26

Post by icebraining »

m1el wrote: post #16
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are not numbers. If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company.

There are plenty of numbers associated with humans in workforce. For example, their salary. > If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company. I don't see any complaints about "diversity" in female-dominated or minority-dominated professions.

I don't see any complaints about "diversity" in female-dominated or minority-dominated professions.

Then you haven't looked very hard. There are even programs with financial incentives, e.g. http://www.independentnurse.co.uk/news/new-bursary-introduce...

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#27

Post by desdiv »

mirimir wrote: post #12
chungy wrote: post #3

No-paywall link: http://archive.today/mTZp3

Paywall? I see no paywall.

The Economist allows two free articles per week for non-registered users[0]. You are not seeing the paywall likely because you have not hit that limit yet.

[0] https://www.economist.com/help/paywall

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#28

Post by onion2k »

I've never worked in a company that hires based on quotas, but I have found organically diverse teams seem to make better products. Having people who are able to see that a product doesn't work for them means features don't get added/dropped as easily. I've never made software as accessible as the code I wrote with a disabled person on the team, or as friendly as when 50% of the team were women.

I suspect the reason is that building software that works for users is about asking the right questions, and more diverse groups ask more diverse questions. That doesn't mean an all-male or all-white team can't ask the right questions but in my limited experience it seems they don't.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#29

Post by m1el »

icebraining wrote: post #18
m1el wrote: post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

How are you supposed to choose a candidate without filtering by any criteria?

The statement is true for all possible criteria.

Re: Are gender quotas good for business?

#30

Post by lucozade »

m1el wrote: post #2

No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.

That's meaningless.

If it were true then it would apply to selection by any attribute e.g. experience or qualification. The only way you'd get around that would be to include the attribute in the fitness function. You're then back to deciding what effect gender has on the fitness function i.e is gender selection good for the business?

Post reply on HN