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Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

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Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#61

Post by hiram112 »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #15
nnfy wrote: post #9

I think there is a growing problem in our society, or at least what appears in media, wherein any systematic discrepancy is blamed automatically on some kind of discrimination, without consideration of the possibility for consistent differences in merit between subpopulations.

I think it's more likely that the problem (bias) has always been there, but society is only now willing to even entertain the idea that it's real, despite the studies and data showing it is. I used to feel like you did, when I was a college kid. I liked to believe I had gotten where I was because I worked hard, not because I was a white dude. Then I got out in the real world and saw situations just like the one descr…

I don't doubt that this is the case many times.

On the other hand, I'm beginning to think the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction.

I feel I have worked hard to get to where I am. But just because I am white and male, I'm no longer entitled to enjoy the privileges associated with this hard work and skillset I've developed.

I'm all for equality of opportunity. But this equality of outcome is not something I'm going to be shamed into supporting.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#62

Post by sctb »

nnfy wrote: post #9

I think there is a growing problem in our society, or at least what appears in media, wherein any systematic discrepancy is blamed automatically on some kind of discrimination, without consideration of the possibility for consistent differences in merit between subpopulations.

Where does “automatically” come from? This has the same ring of ideological boilerplate that we've asked you many times not to post here, so we've banned the account.

We're happy to unban accounts if you read the guidelines and then email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll follow them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#63

Post by dragonwriter »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #55
dragonwriter wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success. Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success?

You wouldn't. That's why people use, or include, subjective evaluation.

Subjective measures are, inherently, “not directly tied to their contribution to company success”.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#64

Post by Will_Parker »

s73ver_ wrote: post #60
Will_Parker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still some major irrational points that I see: - Bias (conscious and not) is assumed to be a problem mainly perpetuated by white men, when reality is that, for example, women may have as much or more bias toward women than men do. I.e. the factor of women enforcing gender roles among themselves is dismissed. - The success of white men in startups is assumed to be caused by them excluding others, rather than…

Nobody is saying that only white men have bias. However, white men are overwhelmingly in positions where that bias can be used to discriminate against others. Women may have just as much, but far fewer of them are in positions where that bias comes into effect.

I think bias and gender expectations among peers could have a very large effect.

It's striking to me watching my nieces play and how strictly they enforce whether something is for boys or girls. Also it looks to me like groups of women in an office enforce very different norms on each other than men do in terms of fashion, socialization, communication style.

How large is this effect compared to biases down the power structure? I don't know, it's an empirical question but everyone seems to pre-assume the answer.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#65

Post by ravenstine »

dragonwriter wrote: post #53
SamReidHughes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success.

> The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success. Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success?

Would it surprise you to know that many managers and business leaders don't only care about company success?

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#66

Post by koolba »

nradov wrote: post #19
hnaccount357 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I take that at face value doesn't that mean any performance evaluation system would be flawed so long as a man is in charge of it? (Assuming that women don't also rate women higher) >“This pay-for-performance system is fundamentally flawed,” Tavis said in an interview. “The performance element is very subjective.” What is the alternative?

One partial alternative is 360-degree performance reviews where each employee's performance is subjectively evaluated not just by one manager but rather by a collection of other employees they work with spread out across all levels of the org chart. Of course that's not perfect either but at least it provides more data points and can reduce the impact of some biases.

If everyone has similar biases then having more reviewers isn’t going to address the issue. It would just normalize the bias toward the mean of the reviewers. I’ve seen that first hand at offices that do this type of review system and the “cool kids” still end up on top.

At least individual biases being the driver allows a person to find a manager that champions their style of person.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#67

Post by alasdair_ »

mfoy_ wrote: post #18
jey wrote: post #2

Tldr: the claim is that when male managers are faced with stack ranking employees, they will often choose male reports over female reports due to sexist bias.

I think a simpler and better claim would be that: When managers are faced with stack ranking employees, they will often decide based on factors not purely related to the productivity or value of the employee. ---- That, and as an employee in a stack-ranked organization, you know you need to be competitive. Not in terms of productivity but in terms of "in the eyes of your manager"-- Perception is more important than p…

>Studies have shown that men compete more aggressively than women, on average.

Studies have also shown that when women exhibit identical "aggressive" behavior as men, they are labeled more negatively than their male counterparts.

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#68

Post by gaius »

dragonwriter wrote: post #53
SamReidHughes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success.

> The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success. Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success?

Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success?

What metric would you recommend?

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#69

Post by gaius »

eridius wrote: post #49
SamReidHughes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success.

But you can rate them by metrics such as are they completing all their assigned work in a reasonable amount of time, and are they producing code that's up to the quality standards of the team (which could be measured by tracking whether they're introducing new bugs).

But you can rate them by metrics such as are they completing all their assigned work in a reasonable amount of time

No you can't, unless you have a method for dividing a project up into blocks of exactly equal difficulty. The person who takes more time to do genuinely difficult things is probably closing fewer JIRAs than the one quickly cranking through easy ones, which would score more highly on that metric, but which is the more valuable to your organisation?

Re: Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says

#70

Post by dragonwriter »

gaius wrote: post #68
dragonwriter wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is you can't rate employees by objective metrics (like, line of code count) without them getting gamed, unless you can tie them directly to company success. Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success?

Why would you ever want to evaluate employees by any metric not directly tied to their contribution to company success? What metric would you recommend?

I would recommend not evaluating employees if you can't be bothered to develop and validate a meaningful metric, since doing so with a bad metric is actively harmful (even aside from potential liability issues if it adversely impacts a protected class without demonstrable validity.)

This isn't, by the way, an original concept; the dangers of the inappropriate use of micro-level metrics that aren't tied to business outcomes in decision-making (and the individual employee level is about as micro as you can get) was one of the key problems W. Edwards Deming identified.

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