Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
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Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#2Meritocracy is like traditional view of objectivity that knowledge exists without the knower. Truth of the matter is, knowledge exists without the knower but it is not independent of the knower.
This is why 14 year olds writing app is a reason for celebration and why encouraging more females is a good thing. By doing so, we allow our work to expand to incorporate the values that those group represent, which is important because our work is user-centric, it doesn't stand by itself. If the work doesn't stand by itself, how can its creators?
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#3Meritocracy is like traditional view of objectivity that knowledge exists without the knower. Truth of the matter is, knowledge exists without the knower but it is not independent of the knower. This is why 14 year olds writing app is a reason for celebration and why encouraging more females is a good thing. By doing so, we allow our work to expand to incorporate the values that those group represent, which is import…
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it the exact opposite of a meritocracy? If someone makes something awesome, it doesn't really matter if they're 14 year olds, women, men or aliens.
I know at least I'd high five someone who made something cool, regardless of gender/age/other factors.
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#4I'm curious to know what aspects of Khan's recruiting/admission policies
resulted in such a large number of female admissions. It would be nice if the authors' response included some description of their policies.
As the person who stands at the end of our hiring process’s pipeline, I find “Mark“‘s idea that we’re sacrificing quality to fill some quota merely very insulting. If I were one of the women who has successfully navigated our brutal interview process, I’d be furious.
This is said as if there is no basis for "Mark's" belief. Affirmative action programs are notorious for establishing two-tier admissions policies for the sole purpose of fostering "diversity". While official quotas are illegal, it's well known that minority students are admitted to prestigious universities with far lower SAT and GPA's that their white/Asian counterparts. What's to make us think that's not what's at work here? Especially given that increasing female enrollment was a high priority given that there are so many "big smiles" when it was achieved. Again, some transparency would be nice.
Edited for spelling and grammar
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#5How can people who claim to be meritocratic immediately cry "discrimination! misandry!" when women outperform men? Yep, must have been discrimination, because we all know women can never be better candidates unless there's something else going on.
And being excited about a historically underrepresented group overcoming adversity isn't the same thing as "we are favoring primarily women applications". Anyone who's actually meritocratic would be ecstatic that the walls in tech are slowly dissolving away.
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#6I'm curious to know what aspects of Khan's recruiting/admission policies resulted in such a large number of female admissions. It would be nice if the authors' response included some description of their policies. As the person who stands at the end of our hiring process’s pipeline, I find “Mark“‘s idea that we’re sacrificing quality to fill some quota merely very insulting. If I were one of the women who has success…
"it's well known that minority students are admitted to prestigious universities with far lower SAT and GPA's that their white/Asian counterparts"
SATs have been criticised for having inherent socioeconomic bias. The validity of both SATs and GPAs, and their appropriateness as gauges of student intelligence, future performance, learning, and appropriateness for use in admissions have all been questioned.
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#7Meritocracy is like traditional view of objectivity that knowledge exists without the knower. Truth of the matter is, knowledge exists without the knower but it is not independent of the knower. This is why 14 year olds writing app is a reason for celebration and why encouraging more females is a good thing. By doing so, we allow our work to expand to incorporate the values that those group represent, which is import…
Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it the exact opposite of a meritocracy? If someone makes something awesome, it doesn't really matter if they're 14 year olds, women, men or aliens. I know at least I'd high five someone who made something cool, regardless of gender/age/other factors.
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 :)
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#8I'm curious to know what aspects of Khan's recruiting/admission policies resulted in such a large number of female admissions. It would be nice if the authors' response included some description of their policies. As the person who stands at the end of our hiring process’s pipeline, I find “Mark“‘s idea that we’re sacrificing quality to fill some quota merely very insulting. If I were one of the women who has success…
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/khan-academy-internship-summ... http://bjk5.com/post/15500332273/khan-academy-internship-fal...
Transparency from previous interns about their work, which I believe speaks for itself: http://david-hu.com/2011/11/02/how-khan-academy-is-using-mac... http://dylanv.org/2012/09/14/the-khan-academy-internship-exp... http://jamie-wong.com/2012/08/22/what-i-did-at-khan-academy/
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.
We need to get past our default response being a knee jerk assumption of discrimination.
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#9I'm curious to know what aspects of Khan's recruiting/admission policies resulted in such a large number of female admissions. It would be nice if the authors' response included some description of their policies. As the person who stands at the end of our hiring process’s pipeline, I find “Mark“‘s idea that we’re sacrificing quality to fill some quota merely very insulting. If I were one of the women who has success…
"it's well known that minority students are admitted to prestigious universities with far lower SAT and GPA's that their white/Asian counterparts" SATs have been criticised for having inherent socioeconomic bias. The validity of both SATs and GPAs, and their appropriateness as gauges of student intelligence, future performance, learning, and appropriateness for use in admissions have all been questioned.
Do you have a better criterion with which to measure?
Re: Meritocracy and Discrimination in Tech
#10How can people who claim to be meritocratic immediately cry "discrimination! misandry!" when women outperform men? Yep, must have been discrimination, because we all know women can never be better candidates unless there's something else going on. And being excited about a historically underrepresented group overcoming adversity isn't the same thing as "we are favoring primarily women applications". Anyone who's actu…
Yep, must have been discrimination, because we all know women can never be better candidates unless there's something else going on.
It's not that women can never be better candidates, it is merely that this is unlikely.
Consider a set of applications, 20% of which come from women (fairly typical numbers, from what I've read). Assume women and men are equally skilled. If 30 interns are selected without bias, the odds of choosing at least 60% women (18/30) is quite small:
In [1]: from scipy.stats import binom
In [2]: rv = binom(30, 0.2)
In [3]: 1-rv.cdf(0.60*30)
Out[3]: 2.8432472531925157e-07
Anyone have more exact numbers to plug into this calculation? Perhaps kamens can give us some more exact numbers?
(Of course, in a much smaller applicant pool, e.g. 6 students, you might arrive at results like this due to random chance.)