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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]

#41

Post by dimitrios1 »

monoideism wrote: post #28
candu wrote: post #16

There's a fascinating study on orchestra auditions, where it was found that performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... IMHO, if the tech industry wants to live up to its narrative of meritocracy, this is one obvious improvement over existing processes. No, it won…

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 maybe that we should turn the conversation to this being OK. We've spent so many cycles trying to "figure this out" when there is research after research that just shows women don't prefer the "rat race" as much as men, and gravitate towards roles that focus on helping, nurturing, and community, hence why they dominate roles where those are highlighted: teachers, administrators, nurses, psychologists, etc.

There's never going to be a feeling of "service" or caring when you are writing ad-tech for a FAANG. It's just not going to happen, no matter how many D&I articles you write.

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

#43

Post by osipov »

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…

If it was just n=1, then we wouldn't have this brilliant social commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZy4QXLKHlI

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

#44

Post by sanxiyn »

monoideism wrote: post #28
candu wrote: post #16

There's a fascinating study on orchestra auditions, where it was found that performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... IMHO, if the tech industry wants to live up to its narrative of meritocracy, this is one obvious improvement over existing processes. No, it won…

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…

> Blind applications would probably hurt female representation.

Isn't this good for gender equality?

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

#45

Post by giantg2 »

Communitivity wrote: post #12

Surprising study results regarding women being more likely to receive a callback than men. From personal experience and the teams I've been on, women have always been in the minority, along the lines of 8-10 men for every two women. However, I am not in Silicon Valley. We need more studies in this area. I'd also like to see studies that include other possible sources of discrimination (gender identity, age) that are…

The graph on page 13 was interesting. The gender distribution of applicants stays about the same, but the gender distribution for hires has dropped for men and risen for women. So were the women previously dropping out of the workforce? Do we now have men dropping out of the workforce? Or are they simply being reshuffled among the various companies within the industry? I ask this because there are other studies that say the industry in the US is facing a shortage of tech workers, so it seems unlikely to be that a significant number of people would be dropping out, or that this study accurately represents the industry as a whole.

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

#46

Post by st1x7 »

lettergram wrote: post #18
einpoklum wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you do give them their name, that's a strong indication of race and gender for most people, isn't it?

Sure, my name is unisex though. Race might be obtained, but honestly even that is questionable

It only seems questionable because of your specific name. If your first name was Zhang or Priya, your race would also be quite obvious.

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

#47

Post by bluntfang »

monoideism wrote: post #17
reader5000 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://apnews.com/article/9105661462

So if they don't capitalize "white", because that's what white supremacists do, what does that say about capitalizing "black"? A good number of the people pushing the "Black" spelling are openly Afrocentric, or profess to be.

I dunno man, are black people systemically killing other ethnic groups in America right now? Do they have a history of genocide and slavery on the scale of white people? Do we see a bunch of black people doing the black equivalent of Nazi salutes on the side of the road around the country?

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

#48

Post by iguy »

monoideism wrote: post #29
jefftk wrote: post #2

> Using matched sample analyses and controlling for a rich set of job and applicant attributes found in applicants’ resumes and LinkedIn profiles, we find that women are 9-10% more likely to receive a callback compared to men, whereas Black, Hispanic, and Asian applicants are 8-13% less likely to receive a callback compared to White applicants. These outcome gaps do not cancel-out in the later stages, as female and W…

> I'm skeptical that this actually captures what hiring managers or recruiters care about when looking at resumes, You're in the tech industry and you honestly are skeptical that recruiters and hiring managers at most companies aren't extremely eager, to say the very least, to hire female candidates?

But regardless of whether the outcome fits your priors or not, you may wish to know whether the study has decent evidence, or is just noise.

And GP has a good point. The authors have some automated scheme for grading how well-qualified people are. The recruiters also have some such scheme. If these two schemes differ, and the distributions aren't identical between the groups being compared, then you will detect group differences like what they see. To label these differences bias in the recruiter's process, you must be confident that you have less bias in your process. The details of this correction are going to be crucial.

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

#49

Post by jefftk »

monoideism wrote: post #29
jefftk wrote: post #2

> Using matched sample analyses and controlling for a rich set of job and applicant attributes found in applicants’ resumes and LinkedIn profiles, we find that women are 9-10% more likely to receive a callback compared to men, whereas Black, Hispanic, and Asian applicants are 8-13% less likely to receive a callback compared to White applicants. These outcome gaps do not cancel-out in the later stages, as female and W…

> I'm skeptical that this actually captures what hiring managers or recruiters care about when looking at resumes, You're in the tech industry and you honestly are skeptical that recruiters and hiring managers at most companies aren't extremely eager, to say the very least, to hire female candidates?

That the bottom line results be plausible is not enough. It matters whether the study is a good source of evidence for its claims. Otherwise none of us have any reason to update our views in response, and the study has no value as information.

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

#50

Post by travisoneill1 »

jefftk wrote: post #21
candu wrote: post #16

There's a fascinating study on orchestra auditions, where it was found that performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impac... IMHO, if the tech industry wants to live up to its narrative of meritocracy, this is one obvious improvement over existing processes. No, it won…

> performing blind auditions (where the interviewee's identity is hidden to the interviewer) led to more equitable gender representation There has recently been quite a bit of pushback on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-audition... > It can't be any less arbitrary than asking random questions about manhole covers and light bulbs. Asking random questions about manhole covers and lightbulbs do…

Well of course the people who want to hire by race want to get rid of blind auditions!
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