Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest • Hacker News Board

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#51

Post by devalier » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 8:57 PM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #41

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

This very common assumption -- which I used to hold -- has it exactly backwards. Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs. Mathematically, if 90% of your egg-crackers are short, you've already hired under-performing egg-crackers. You've passed over some really good tall people in favor of the short people you hired. If you want the best egg-crackers, you need to interview a bunch of…

Let's assume tall people and short people are equally good at cracking eggs.

Umm, in the actual example we are talking about, the evidence is on the side of that assumption being false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977751 https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i...

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#52

Post by ksenzee » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

devalier wrote: post #50

mklim wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter argument that I've heard most is that minorities are less likely to be hired than equally qualified members of the majority because of subconscious bias. Enforcing a quota is a sort of equalizer—formal discrimination in one direction in order to push back against informal discrimination in the other direction. I'm not completely sold on the method, but the problem of subconscious bias in hiring is very we…

If those studies are true, then the correct solution would be to: 1) ask people not include their names on their resume. Or don't use resumes at all. Create a web form application that does not require a name and only asks about the crucial skills you actually need. 2) Create a highly objective hiring process, such as this: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ I don't really buy that subconscious bi…

It sounds like you were trying to correct for an assumed subconscious bias of "deep down, we really want to hire men." In my experience, though, decent people like you don't have that bias. What they do have is a subconscious idea that "good candidates will look like X," where X is a mental image of a male candidate. Both women and men are subject to this bias, and it's a lot harder to correct for. Simply asking the same set of questions to all candidates won't fix it, if the questions themselves have the effect of weeding out women.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#53

Post by infosample » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

xanderstrike wrote: post #17

infosample wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming a different race/gender is under the bar or will under-perform seems discriminatory.

This is why the discussion can't even happen, and why companies and universities still enforce percentages for underprivileged groups even though it is obvious discrimination (but it's "good" discrimination! Give me a break). Person 1 says that enforcing a 50 people of type A and 50 people of type B when the number of qualified candidates is 20 and 80 will result in either hiring significantly fewer people in general…

It helps to have a discussion when affirmative action and the Rooney Rule aren't conflated.

We have a tendency to assume type A is qualified and type B isn't. That is a natural bias based on evidence. We must actively subdue our biases if we want to overcome them, sometimes with rules.

I think we sometimes forget that the goal isn't to get a qualified employee but a successful employee. Qualifications generally leads to success but not always, so we should constantly question our qualification criteria.

White males have benefited from discrimination for a long time. White males have been discriminated against sometimes.

This article isn't about discrimination or affirmative action. It's about setting a goal to be more diverse, not by lowering the bar, or forced hiring, but through awareness, inclusion, and an opportunity to interview.

BTW, everyone's been given a chance they didn't deserve.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#54

Post by devalier » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:16 PM UTC

ksenzee wrote: post #52

devalier wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those studies are true, then the correct solution would be to: 1) ask people not include their names on their resume. Or don't use resumes at all. Create a web form application that does not require a name and only asks about the crucial skills you actually need. 2) Create a highly objective hiring process, such as this: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ I don't really buy that subconscious bi…

It sounds like you were trying to correct for an assumed subconscious bias of "deep down, we really want to hire men." In my experience, though, decent people like you don't have that bias. What they do have is a subconscious idea that "good candidates will look like X," where X is a mental image of a male candidate. Both women and men are subject to this bias, and it's a lot harder to correct for. Simply asking the…

Simply asking the same set of questions to all candidates won't fix it, if the questions themselves have the effect of weeding out women.

The questions I asked were representative of things we actually had to do on the job, for instance: "write code to spider a web site." Does that unfairly weed out woman?

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#55

Post by mklim » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:18 PM UTC

devalier wrote: post #50

mklim wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter argument that I've heard most is that minorities are less likely to be hired than equally qualified members of the majority because of subconscious bias. Enforcing a quota is a sort of equalizer—formal discrimination in one direction in order to push back against informal discrimination in the other direction. I'm not completely sold on the method, but the problem of subconscious bias in hiring is very we…

If those studies are true, then the correct solution would be to: 1) ask people not include their names on their resume. Or don't use resumes at all. Create a web form application that does not require a name and only asks about the crucial skills you actually need. 2) Create a highly objective hiring process, such as this: http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ I don't really buy that subconscious bi…

1. I agree, this would be preferable and a great step for the initial screener. But that leaves the problem of the actual interview—the studies that I've seen test written resumes, because it's possible to ensure that two resumes are identical except for one variable in ways that you can't ensure that two interviews are identical. But it's highly likely that the bias would carry over to any interaction with the candidates, though I don't have any studies on hand that prove it.

2. Also agree that an objective method would be preferable, thanks for the link. Great read. IIRC, in the study I link in the third bullet point, forcing the person reviewing the resume to create a rubric before reading any of them greatly reduced the biased results. Having an objective process goes a long way. The point in the link about confident interviewers performing better in the traditional hiring process is definitely true, and also tied in a roundabout way to gender, funnily enough (women tend to be less confident than men: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/the-conf...).

It's definitely not the only problem—the pipeline is obviously skewed dramatically—but I don't see any reason why tech workers would be exempt from the biases of the general population as they've been studied. Maybe the drive to hire more women would counteract it, like in your example—that's the reasoning under which minority quotas are implemented, after all. The problem of subconscious bias is that it's not consciously recognizable by its very nature. It's just gut feeling. I know a site that uses association to try to test it for you, if you're interested: http://implicit.harvard.edu/.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#56

Post by tzs » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:40 PM UTC

cryowaffle wrote: post #16

Bar charts should be sorted with the biggest ones at the top. It looks wierd the way it is. And why do all of the Latino parts have a "@" next to them when a "*" is used to reference?

> Bar charts should be sorted with the biggest ones at the top

That would greatly reduce the usability of the charts in this case. The charts are much more useful when they all present the categories in the same order.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#57

Post by BhavdeepSethi » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 9:45 PM UTC

rada wrote: post #49

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #5

Isn't this wrong at some level? I support the idea of promoting programs like Women In Engg., but hiring based on race/gender is so wrong. Do you lower your hiring bar to get the numbers you've aimed for? And assuming some of these employees turn out to be under-performing, how do you deal with the appraisal process? I'm not sure if Pinterest posted this article with some other intent (like having more support progra…

The fact that you immediately equated "diversity" to "lowering your hiring bar" and "under-performing" is as ignorant as it is insulting. Women and brown people are not lower quality humans, and it has been shown over and over and over that companies who hire for diversity perform better . http://lmgtfy.com/?q=do+diverse+companies+perform+better

I think ignorance is taking things out of context unnecessarily. I am assuming Pinterest already has an unbiased hiring bar. Yet, due to sheer probability, the number of other races get hired much more. Considering the number of applicants remain the same, how do you balance the race/gender without being biased to one race/cast?

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#58

Post by tzs » Thu, Jul 30, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

OK, I had a weird thought here.

1. Their approach seems like it will work, if it does, mostly by increasing the chances that women engineers or women engineering students will choose to work for Pinterest instead of work for someone else.

2. I've frequently read that there is a shortage of tech workers, and companies like Pinterest have trouble finding the people they need.

3. Putting this together, does this mean that much of any increase in diversity they get will come at the expense of reducing the diversity elsewhere (unless, of course, they significantly hire away from other companies that are more diverse than they are)?

A bit of Googling turns up assorted claims on what percent of developers are women, but many seem to claim in the 10-20% range.

It would be interesting to take the data from Pinterest, and from other tech companies where this kind of data is available, and use that to classify them into three groups: those where women are under represented, those where they are over represented, and those where it is neither. The comparison should be to the percentage of women in tech, not the percentage in the general population.

It would then be interesting to see if there is something the companies in each group have in common.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#59

Post by rheydrichSS » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 12:05 AM UTC

henok wrote: post #31

rheydrichSS wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a site whose chief technical accomplishment is to allow women to pin and share cutesy images, I'm not sure having top talent really matters that much.

I hope that you're just a troll and not serious. Pinterest is one of the most visited sites in the world. It requires huge technical talent to handle that much traffic and data. WTF is wrong with you?

I guess pornhub also requires such talent.

Re: Our plan for a more diverse Pinterest

#60

Post by dylanjermiah » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 6:05 AM UTC

I'd suggest anyone here seriously interested in the effects of Affirmative Action and similar policies read 'Affirmative Action Around the World' by Thomas Sowell. It's only 200pages, but incredibly sourced and well written. Highly recommend it for those wanting a further understanding.