Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#41

Post by rjknight » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 10:38 PM UTC

LockeWatts wrote: post #30

rjknight wrote: post #18

One of the commonly-stated reasons for why discrimination persists in a field is that people making hiring decisions are biased. They might not know that they're biased, but they have some notions about the kind of people they want to see working for their company, and they disproportionately hire those people. This is quite an insidious form of discrimination because it's hard to prove, but it is possible to catch p…

"how there are exclusive events for female staff where female leadership is advocated." Can someone on HN give me a level headed explanation, for why this is more appropriate than the opposite (An event exclusive to men)? It's never made sense to me why one is accepted and the other isn't.

In general, the idea is that actions designed to improve outcomes for underprivileged groups are acceptable, and actions designed to improve outcomes for privileged groups are not. In other words, "it depends". This obviously undermines the "don't discriminate based on gender" norm, which is quite easy to understand, and replaces it with "only discriminate against the privileged". Unfortunately, while it's quite easy to work out what gender someone is (or identifies as), privilege is a more slippery concept.

We could say that men are privileged relative to women. This shows up in the data on educational attainment and wage differentials, which have historically favoured men. Actually, in the case we're currently discussing, of younger people who are in the typical intern age bracket, women already outperform men in both education and pay[1]. It's actually not at all clear that young women are an underprivileged group relative to their male counterparts, so we should probably start treating instances of bias in favour of young women against young men as just as objectionable as bias in favour of older men would be. There's probably going to be some time lag involved here, as it will take some time for people to update their priors on this subject, but I can easily imagine affirmative action in favour of men within the next decade or two.

This is one of the main arguments against allowing positive discrimination - when the time comes to acknowledge that this discrimination is obsolete, there's not much incentive for those who benefit from it to do so (any more than there was any incentive for men who benefited from the old male privileges to acknowledge that it was time to end them). Personally, I think this is why we need to ensure that discourse on this issue remains civil and focused on fairness, rather than "men vs. women".

[1] http://womensissues.about.com/od/womenintheworkforce/a/Gende...

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#42

Post by LockeWatts » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 10:38 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #37

LockeWatts wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how there are exclusive events for female staff where female leadership is advocated." Can someone on HN give me a level headed explanation, for why this is more appropriate than the opposite (An event exclusive to men)? It's never made sense to me why one is accepted and the other isn't.

It is a private organization is probably why; so they are allowed to discriminate. In government if they had a female issues oriented event there would be a foot note stating that men are welcome to attend. edit: to respond to the below comment, I don't think it is socially acceptable. It just isn't something that affects people too adversely yet so while they may shake their head and fire off a tweet no one really c…

I wasn't really thinking about the legality of the issue so much as the social acceptability.

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#43

Post by milfot » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 10:45 PM UTC

rjknight wrote: post #18

One of the commonly-stated reasons for why discrimination persists in a field is that people making hiring decisions are biased. They might not know that they're biased, but they have some notions about the kind of people they want to see working for their company, and they disproportionately hire those people. This is quite an insidious form of discrimination because it's hard to prove, but it is possible to catch p…

"If bias is wrong, being biased in favour of a minority group is still wrong, in this view."

Another way to look at this is that the exception proves the rule. These sorts of deliberately perverse inversions of discrimination really offend. Perhaps they may also serve spur the male colleagues to clean their own house. Sometimes people can become aware of their own biases when they see their actions mirrored in front of them.

As an aside, I will believe the people arguing for deontological ethics just as soon as they give up the lifetime of power, privilege and status afforded them due to their sex (or race).

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#44

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 10:53 PM UTC

rjknight wrote: post #18

One of the commonly-stated reasons for why discrimination persists in a field is that people making hiring decisions are biased. They might not know that they're biased, but they have some notions about the kind of people they want to see working for their company, and they disproportionately hire those people. This is quite an insidious form of discrimination because it's hard to prove, but it is possible to catch p…

[deleted]

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#45

Post by mhp » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 10:56 PM UTC

cantastoria wrote: post #11

kamens wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transparency about our interviewing process: http://bjk5.com/post/3340326040/in-any-language-you-want-kha... (which comes from the hiring cultures at Fog Creek and Google, see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing... ). Transparency about all past internships, their expectation and accomplishments: http://bjk5.com/post/36067210182/khan-academy-internship-sum... http://bjk5.com/post/8826207372/k…

Fogcreek and Google's interview process both seem to yield a far larger number of male employees than females yes? David, Dylan and Jamie are all men yes? If any piece of evidence from the above points to an organization that values quotas over excellence in interns and the work expected of them, well please raise the alarm. No one is accusing you of using quotas and no is saying you do not value excellence in intern…

One thing Fog Creek did was we hunted harder for qualified women applicants, which meant we actually had to go to female tech recruiting events.

The problem is that there are few female developers to start with, and they are all heavily recruited by large software companies (Google, Microsoft, etc) already. The larger companies have big budgets to devote to this and encourage the very small number of women developers to go work there.

If you just sit back and wait for more women to apply, they are going to get picked up by the bigger companies before you even get a chance to interview them.

It's also difficult to attract that small group of women devs to apply to work at your company when there are no women developers there currently. The larger companies already have a bunch of women developers, so it can suggest to future candidates that these companies are great places for them to work (i.e. they won't be discriminated against at these companies). It may be that your small company is also a great place, it's just that you don't have any women to vouch for that.

So in Fog Creek's case, we increased the number of women applicants by making it our goal to get more women to apply. That's the only thing we changed. Our interview process stayed exactly the same.

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#46

Post by Tichy » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:00 PM UTC

rjknight wrote: post #18

One of the commonly-stated reasons for why discrimination persists in a field is that people making hiring decisions are biased. They might not know that they're biased, but they have some notions about the kind of people they want to see working for their company, and they disproportionately hire those people. This is quite an insidious form of discrimination because it's hard to prove, but it is possible to catch p…

Breaking my planned HN abstinence, but this is exactly the one thing I worry about: "for instance if they display a preference for talking to or dealing with male colleagues over female ones"

Why is this discrimination? I think people should still be allowed to be individuals. So maybe I am more interested in Star Wars and some female developer is more interested in Sex And The City (sorry for the stereotypes, but actually I think more women than men are interested in Sex And The City - fwiw I actually found SATC more interesting than Star Wars, I am just making this example up). So maybe I prefer to talk to a colleague who is also interested in Star Wars? If that is discrimination, or if to be a good non-sexist developer I have to take an interest in Sex And The City, I think this approach to eliminating discrimination is not going to work out.

Personally I think there are differences between men and women and to try to pretend they don't exist will end up a failure. (I don't mean mental capabilities).

I am not writing this to deride the anti-sexism campaigns, but because I genuinely would like to understand how the future is supposed to work out.

One example: will sexual attraction still be allowed at the work place? Obviously it is going to exist, but we can of course learn to suppress it. I would like to hear from the anti-sexism crowd a definite statement on how the envision the sexes to deal with each other.

Making a rule "sexual attraction at the work place is a 100% no go" is of course a possibility, but the reality at the moment seems to be that ~20% of couples met at work. So taking that opportunity for couples to meet away will create a hole that needs to be filled in some other way.

Sexual attraction is also another reason why men might be less comfortable talking to other women than other men. I don't think calling that "discrimination" is doing the complexity of the issue much justice. I also reject the notion that being sexually attracted to a woman is sexist (or vice versa).

(Edit: I'll log off again, but I'll read replies next week...)

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#47

Post by mjmahone17 » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:08 PM UTC

jfim wrote: post #29

cantastoria wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent is describing the postmodern definition of Meritocracy where "merit" is just a point view. In that world all achievements/failures must be evaluated in light of the person or group's privilege/race/class/gender and sexuality. People who subscribe to this definition really don't believe in meritocracy as it's generally viewed as a way to institutionalize white male advantage. Just a heads up :)

I completely agree with you that there is more merit(effort) in coming from a disadvantaged background (say x-5) and getting to point x than coming from a wealthier background (x-3) and getting to point x. I believe though that a meritocracy is a system where people are selected based on an objective criterion, regardless of the above definition of merit and completely orthogonally to privilege/race/class/gender.

I believe though that a meritocracy is a system where people are selected based on an objective criterion, regardless of the above definition of merit

Why? If two candidates are equal in every way, why not favor the one coming from a disadvantaged background? Shouldn't they be more, rather than equally, likely to achieve more given the same future resources?

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#48

Post by tzs » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

Maybe I overlooked it, but I didn't see any mention of the size of the intern class. A 2:1 ratio in a very small class has quite different implications than a 2:1 ratio in a very large class.

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#49

Post by cantastoria » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:18 PM UTC

mhp wrote: post #45

cantastoria wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fogcreek and Google's interview process both seem to yield a far larger number of male employees than females yes? David, Dylan and Jamie are all men yes? If any piece of evidence from the above points to an organization that values quotas over excellence in interns and the work expected of them, well please raise the alarm. No one is accusing you of using quotas and no is saying you do not value excellence in intern…

One thing Fog Creek did was we hunted harder for qualified women applicants, which meant we actually had to go to female tech recruiting events. The problem is that there are few female developers to start with, and they are all heavily recruited by large software companies (Google, Microsoft, etc) already. The larger companies have big budgets to devote to this and encourage the very small number of women developers…

And that's fine but did you get a 2 to 1 f/m ratio after you increased your female recruitment? That's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of.

Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech

#50

Post by spamizbad » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 11:22 PM UTC

LockeWatts wrote: post #28

spamizbad wrote: post #17

Are tech internships a big enough deal with people to merit this controversy? Don't tell me you need to participate in one these days to break into the industry(if so, that's sad).

I'm in college presently, and to get into the tech world, it's a requirement from where I'm sitting. Good candidates have multiple ones with big name companies\hot start ups.

Boo, that stinks. Personally, I think internships are bullshit unless they're having you work on genuinely interesting stuff like Google's Summer of Code. I must have been pretty lucky as I never had to jump through any credentialing hoops to break into the industry (That was in '05, pre-bubble no less. Didn't even finish college). If I were you, I'd pair up with a co-founder, come up with an idea, and apply to one of the incubators while you're still young. Don't waste your youth trying to impress HR drones. Or, if you want to look-before-you-leap, just "intern" at a less sexy startup (You'll learn the same stuff pretty much)