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If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

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Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#401

Post by jboggan »

Muuuchem wrote: post #189
drewg123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ended up at a no-name school because I got a terrible financial aid package at an elite school that I'd applied to early decision. So bailed and went to a state school for almost free.

Got paid to go to state school lets get it

Absolutely a great way to do it. I got paid to attend a great state school (above and beyond room and board), had several travel grants, and was sent to 20 countries and Antarctica! I've never had any student loans and it really helped me take some riskier career moves earlier on.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#402

Post by codeonfire »

codeonfire wrote: post #373
drewg123 wrote: post #37

When I was at Google, I was asked if I wanted to make a recruiting trip to my alma mater. I was excited until I found out they were talking about my grad school where I got my MS, and not UB, a large state school where I got my BS. I told them I'd be happy to take a trip to recruit at UB. I got mostly crickets back from that reply. However, I ended up getting signed up for a series where they had a panel of a few HR…

They understand perfectly. They are hoping for rich, well connected kids from rich families that can bring in money and power into the organization. They may have tried some "ordinary" people before and were befuddled when it did not bring in $100 million dollars and several political contacts.

Downvoted for truth. I don't like it either, but the world is not fair.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#403

Post by chrisco255 »

Another point on diversity: It's never going to happen to the extent that people want so long as most of the jobs are in Silicon Valley. For many women and minorities and older men (with children), it is difficult to make that move, away from their families. We can't pretend like this isn't a factor. I recently moved to Austin from south Florida and my last company had a very high Hispanic ratio, because it was located in south Florida, where the local population ratio is quite high. I knew many talented developers who couldn't or wouldn't make the move to one of the tech hubs because family. Without spreading out tech jobs over more of the country, you'll never see great representation.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#404

Post by fnbr »

humanrebar wrote: post #130
crispyambulance wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could companies reach the great students at unknown schools systematically? Maybe it's better that these great students at "unknown schools" DON'T get hired by google/facebook/amazon/microsoft ? Maybe their talents are best directed at small-ish companies where they can contribute, grow, and do interesting stuff outside of monstrously large companies with cut-throat competition? Having ALL the "top" candidates…

> Having ALL the "top" candidates vacuumed up by the "top" employers just seems wrong to me. In my experience, "top" employers are employers that pay the best. I'd probably be happier at a small and scrappy company, but they so far have offered worse compensation.

Much, much worse- in my experience, 3-4x.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#405

Post by srj »

whipoodle wrote: post #117
gonehome wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - and this is even more true at state schools than the slightly more selective schools (like RPI that I went to). State schools have people that got into MIT, but didn't go for financial reasons or family reasons. Nobody at RPI got into MIT because if they did they would have gone to MIT (maybe some rare exception exists, but this is generally true). School admission is obviously not a perfect indicator of ab…

I didn't even understand the whole world of prestige and specialization among colleges when I was 16 or 17 and trying to pick a school. I didn't know that some schools were where the "good" people go. I just knew I was supposed to go to college, so I visited the local Penn State campus and people said "don't come here". Then I visited another state school and people seemed to like it, so that's where I went. I wonder…

This was my experience as well. I knew and admired schools like Berkeley as the home of Berkeley UNIX, but didn't recognize that the people who went there were considered the upper crust or that colleges were widely categorized into tiers until later on. As none of my family had gone to college, the goal simply seemed to be to get into a "4 year school".

I can appreciate now that these schools offer stellar educational opportunity in contrast with many others. It's just that this should still be seen in the context that a person attends for a brief time when they're young and that perhaps it's not the be-all and end-all of intellectual ability that cultural attitudes (especially seemingly here in New England) might suggest.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#406

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #361
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have to be careful about using the phrase "less biased Fine--we want more women. Research, and personal experience, shows gender-mixed teams outperform [1][2][3][4]. This is a business, not HR, decision. We also want more cultural diversity. I don't like pitching in Latin America or the Middle East with zero cultural context on the home team. If you're a B2C company, you probably want socioeconomic diversity on…

If you want to bring more women into your firm because you think they have some biological or sociological advantages over men in some areas then that's fine, do so. But look at the majority of posts in this thread, they're all about reducing gender bias. These other posts don't make sense in the context of an employer whose payroll is already proportional to the pipeline. You're saying the opposite, that increasing…

"Bias" measures deviance from a parameter. Without agreement on the population being measured and the parameter in question, the term--and quibbling over it--is meaningless. You are defining the population as something close to "people who possess the relevant skills," i.e. the pipeline. Others are using "people who possess the relevant skills but aren't in the pipeline" or "people who could possess the relevant skills if factors out of their control were accounted for". Others, still, disagree with how you're measuring "possess the relevant skills". This is all reasonable disagreement.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#407

Post by jasonx1e »

dba7dba wrote: post #399
dragonwriter wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a common myth. Since I personally experienced it, I'm pretty sure it's not.

I'm sure you and few others experienced it. But I'd say it's not that common. Just look at the make up of study body at the top 5 schools.

>> But I'd say it's not that common.

Then you should look at the actual university policies outlined on their website. At top of line elite schools (Stanford, Princeton level), if your family income I know for a fact that state schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA aren't that generous with housing.

>> Just look at the make up of study body at the top 5 schools.

Students from wealthier backgrounds tend to have more access to academic and educational resources and are thus more qualified and more likely to be admitted.

Not a judgement suggesting that a less fortunate child would not succeed in a similar environment; many of them just don't have one.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#408

Post by jasonx1e »

gumby wrote: post #146
Consultant32452 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's bad, and it matches that of the schools we recruit from. I don't understand this. If you're matching the diversity of the market, that would seem to me that your recruiting practices are unbiased, which is good, right?

They are matching the diversity of the schools' recruiting efforts. So yes, you could say they are (perhaps) unbiased vs their input, but their input has problems. In other words, their selection of schools to recruit from means they are outsourcing the distribution of your their candidate pool, and the GP poster is not happy with that aspect of the result. If it doesn't match your society or customer base, and you t…

It is matching society, however: CollegeBoard testing statistics reveal that in high school girls take AP Computer Science much less frequently than boys - at proportions fairly close to 1:3.

Given that anyone is free to take an AP exam provided they can spend $100, the only plausible explanation is that fewer girls choose to pursue computer science as a major.

Alternatively, you could suggest that there is nationwide collusion between CollegeBoard and amongst computer science teachers to limit girls from taking the APCS test - and that no one has found out or exposed it.

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#409

Post by jasonx1e »

home_boi wrote: post #347
gumby wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are matching the diversity of the schools' recruiting efforts. So yes, you could say they are (perhaps) unbiased vs their input, but their input has problems. In other words, their selection of schools to recruit from means they are outsourcing the distribution of your their candidate pool, and the GP poster is not happy with that aspect of the result. If it doesn't match your society or customer base, and you t…

> They are matching the diversity of the schools' recruiting efforts. I think many undergrad schools actually positively discriminate based on gender/race for underrepresented minorities.

This is pretty clearly documented.

In universities that don't consider race or gender in admissions (notably the UC system and Caltech), the minority rate tanks (except for Asian-American rates, which double).

Re: If you care about diversity, don't just hire from the same five schools

#410

Post by dragonwriter »

dba7dba wrote: post #399
dragonwriter wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a common myth. Since I personally experienced it, I'm pretty sure it's not.

I'm sure you and few others experienced it. But I'd say it's not that common. Just look at the make up of study body at the top 5 schools.

That reflects more the effects of family educational background and socioeconomic class on pre-collegiate academic achievement and, even with good achievement, inclination to even bother to apply to elite schools (in part, again, because of lack of awareness that headline price isn't the whole affordability story.)
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