41–50 of 227 posts
Why is it needless to say that?
I don't understand. Sure, the name idea wasn't perfect but the VP had good intentions. Is this really that upsetting?
Agreed. It seems like this particular idea could have been abandoned, without aborting the entire endeavor (or quitting the company). The words "feasibility study" come to mind... As an aside, I ran the names Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Morgan Freeman, Ben Carson, and Charlie Rangel against one the tools the author mentioned [1] and also got no correct answers. 1. http://www.textmap.com/ethnicity/
George Washington GreaterEuropean, British
John Smith GreaterEuropean, British
Barack Obama GreaterAfrican, Africans
Mike Brown GreaterEuropean, British
Tamir Rice GreaterEuropean, Jewish
Eric Garner GreaterEuropean, British
John Crawford GreaterEuropean, British
Akai Gurley GreaterEuropean, British
Ezell Ford GreaterEuropean, British
Cynical Oogaboogoo Asian, IndianSubContinentThis guy sort of sort of undermines the standard case for diversity: "Twitter as a platform has empowered underserved and underrepresented people. It has fomented social movements and..." Sounds like twitter is killing it for people of all ethnic groups. It's as if a bunch of White/Asian dudes can actually design algorithms that work for everyone. So, um, why do we need a non-Asian engineer? It's also worth questioni…
If we're going to blame the employers, can someone show me that there's a disproportionately large number of unemployed minority engineers that are seeking work but not getting it?
The one thing that he never explains is exactly what "diversity" he is looking for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color of the person's skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn't really call that diversity, that's…
Really? Less than 5% of staff are non-white and you're arguing he needs to explain what "diversity" is? Come on. At under 5% basically ANYTHING ELSE is diversity. Also, he does touch on this in the article. He says that Twitter relies heavily on a few schools for hiring so even if they get 'diverse' candidates from those schools they've still had a very similar experience compared to people from geographically divers…
This guy sort of sort of undermines the standard case for diversity: "Twitter as a platform has empowered underserved and underrepresented people. It has fomented social movements and..." Sounds like twitter is killing it for people of all ethnic groups. It's as if a bunch of White/Asian dudes can actually design algorithms that work for everyone. So, um, why do we need a non-Asian engineer? It's also worth questioni…
The one thing that he never explains is exactly what "diversity" he is looking for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color of the person's skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn't really call that diversity, that's…
In point of fact, an African-American guy and a white guy from the same neighborhood and school will have had different experiences growing up. For example, the white guy probably never had the cops called on him for wandering down a dark street wearing a hoodie. He probably also got more job interviews, if his name sounds white and his friend's doesn't. These experiences will have shaped the two men differently. Tha…
The way people look at you, talk to you (or ignore you), talk about you, extend invites, etc..that ALL changes with your race.
The one thing that he never explains is exactly what "diversity" he is looking for at Twitter. It seems that the only thing that matters to him is the color of the person's skin. In other words, an African-American MIT CS grad that grew up in Iowa is somehow going to come at problems differently than a white guy from the same town and school and with the same background. I wouldn't really call that diversity, that's…
Really? Less than 5% of staff are non-white and you're arguing he needs to explain what "diversity" is? Come on. At under 5% basically ANYTHING ELSE is diversity. Also, he does touch on this in the article. He says that Twitter relies heavily on a few schools for hiring so even if they get 'diverse' candidates from those schools they've still had a very similar experience compared to people from geographically divers…
This guy sort of sort of undermines the standard case for diversity: "Twitter as a platform has empowered underserved and underrepresented people. It has fomented social movements and..." Sounds like twitter is killing it for people of all ethnic groups. It's as if a bunch of White/Asian dudes can actually design algorithms that work for everyone. So, um, why do we need a non-Asian engineer? It's also worth questioni…
The arguments for diversity usually say that organizations improve when people from different backgrounds are part of them. This is the argument for increasing diversity along gender, orientation, and ethnic lines. If different points of view help then we should be trying for ideological diversity directly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'd agree with the OP's reasoning about why the idea wasn't very good, but if that mistaken attempt to help is grounds for quitting, they're going to really struggle at a corporation that's less interested in identity politics.
As ksenzee alludes to in a parallel reply, it could be (to use an American cliche) the straw that broke the camel's back, coming on the heels of a whole host of stupid decisions. I've been there, where no single decision or behavior is enough to quit over, but enough of those add up and one starts looking for the door.
But I can only go by the arguments the poster who was in the meeting made, and he seemed insistent that Dorsey is sincere about diversity, and decided to focus on why the "tech visionary" VP's idea was notionally sensible but had practical limitations rather than lambast their general attitude. And it's not an idea that ranks particularly high on an ignorance scale, or particularly shocking that a "tech visionary" not expected to have any particular expertise in the area of diversity might gravitate towards a tech solution. Ironically, it sounds like precisely the sort of misguided suggestion a VP is likely to propose after reading articles about name-based studies of hiring biases and being shocked by their findings them rather than the sort of idea that gets proposed out of ignorance or dismissive attitudes towards diverse hiring policies. Certainly sounds like a better response than "go and talk to HR about it. After finishing your work, obviously" that he might find all too common a response elsewhere...
Normally when we're discussing quitting over straws that broke the camel's back it's allegations of subtle workplace bullying rather than not thinking an engineer's idea would work...
HN moderators: It would probably be best if you buried my post. I idiotically misread the chart posted in the post. I originally thought the chart under ( https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*F9MLGQLTU2HZD4In6o... ) wasn't normalized to anything; but upon rereading i found that the top row is the comparison row and represents the percentages of working force age us citizens in the tech industry, which Twitter wi…