

Building a better and more diverse community - izqui
https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/43-building-a-better-and-more-diverse-community

======
nicholasjbs
In anticipation of the comments we've gotten in the past:

* We hold everyone to the same admissions standard, regardless of race or gender. The grants are our way to create a more diverse applicant pool.

* Hacker School is free for _everyone_

* We admit everyone who applies who we think is a good fit. No man has ever been rejected because a woman was accepted, so there's no way in which this harms men.

* We auto-generate pseudonyms for applicants, so our initial application review focuses on people's code and what they write, not their race or gender

(I'm one of the founders, and I'm happy to answer any questions folks have
about Hacker School.)

~~~
dwild
Yeah maybe you hold everyone at the same admissions standard but it's not true
for accessibility to the grants. Will we reach a society where we hope to be
born from a more "diverse" race?

That's racism... it's sad that you use racism while believing that you are
solving it. Please don't help based on the race, help based on the needs.

Edit: Can anyone debate instead of downvote? That's doesn't seems like an
healthy way to change opinions...

~~~
dethstar
Okay so, not so long ago they were only providing grants to women. Did I think
to myself oh that's sexist? No, you know why? Because I'm pretty sure they
provide the grants to people with needs (at the end of the applying form you
check a box that says you'd need financial aid). Yes, they're using filters
like gender and race first.

But if you were a white male, you live in a society where you could probably
approach any hacker space or anything else without feeling weird about it,
unlike many trans*, queer or black/latin@ people. That's the way they're
promoting diversity, by creating spaces where people can feel more
welcome/safe, they're in no way denying white people or males.

~~~
dwild
I did find that sexist, maybe you weren't but I was. I was afraid to talk
though... this is the sad part I guess.

> you live in a society where you could probably approach any hacker space or
> anything else without feeling weird about it, unlike many trans*, queer or
> black/latin@ people.

That's what need to be fixed. You don't solve that by giving them money. You
solve that by showing we accept them, by stopping people from making them feel
weird. A strict policy against racism is what's needed and being vocal about
it.

> they're in no way denying white people or males.

That's making the issue here way more complicated to talk about for no reason.
You need to draw a line between the school and the grant. I'm not saying they
are racist for the school admission, I'm saying they are racist for their
school grant. They are denying white people that school grant.

~~~
dethstar
>I was afraid to talk though

Yeah, don't worry. While I may not agree with you on this issue I'm all for
your right to express your opinion. However you may have to accept the fact
that your opinion may give you a negative backlash, that happens to everyone,
how ever it will only give you negative internet points (at least on hn).

>A strict policy against racism is what's needed and being vocal about it.

While I agree, how do you enforce that? How do you make sure that actually
happens? How do you protect the groups which we agree have certain degree of
disadvantage most of the time from the outside? And even with that enforced,
being in an environment where most of the people might hate you based on your
gender/sex/skin color won't change your experience based on a paper/set of
rules.

>They are denying white people that school grant.

They're denying a group the grant. A group that as we have discussed and you
seem to agree with me have more advantages, and even if they couldn't afford
to go to hackerschool, could go to any other similar space near them. Because
again they don't have to fear racism or sexism that can not be controlled.

edit: fixd typo, more space for read-ability.

~~~
dwild
> While I agree, how do you enforce that? How do you make sure that actually
> happens? How do you protect the groups which we agree have certain degree of
> disadvantage most of the time from the outside? And even with that enforced,
> being in an environment where most of the people might hate you based on
> your gender/sex/skin color won't change your experience based on a paper/set
> of rules.

Giving them money might fix that? What you do however is punish any racist
action that happens. You kick people out of the school when it happens, no
second chance. You give people opportunity to talk about it, you talk about it
with people. What about a class that everyone need to do which talk about
racism.

Now they are saying that it's okay to care about your gender and race, you
will get monetary support if there's a possibility of racism... if you are not
white...

>A group that as we have discussed and you seem to agree with me have more
advantages

No I disagree on that part. I know multiple people that are white that have
trouble with money and I know plenty of people from other gender/race that
doesn't. Generalization is wrong. There's plenty of white people that couldn't
afford to go and there's plenty of non-white people that could afford to go.

> could go to any other similar space near them

You make me think about it. A good way to use that money would be to help
hacker school to stop racism. A safe network of hacker school that fight
against racism.

> Because again they don't have to fear racism or sexism that can not be
> controlled.

I still doesn't see how giving them money fix that. I completely agree that's
the issue that need to be solved.

~~~
dethstar
This is getting too long and we're going around in circles about the issue.

So the only thing I'm going to reply is:

>Giving them money might fix that?

No, they're not trying to battle this issue you want to tackle. Simply because
is bigger than them.

>I still doesn't see how giving them money fix that.

Again, this is not to fix this huge issue. This is to give other people the
chance to assist this and assure them they can feel safe.

>There's plenty of white people that couldn't afford to go and there's plenty
of non-white people that could afford to go.

And again, they're not giving you the money simply because you're non white.
They might give you the grant if you mark any of the checkbox that make you
eligible but you still need to check "I'd need financial assistance to do
Hacker School" which is not automatically checked as you seem to believe
simply because you check that you're non white.

Again, what you propose is that non white people who want to attend to a place
like hacker school:

a) wait until racism is non existent

b) deal with ugly situations/experiences because there will be rules to make
sure to deal with the cause after

Instead of doing what they want/love and creating safe spaces where they don't
have to deal with stuff they shouldn't deal with in the first place.

If you want to keep discussing you can shoot me an email
(pcepedam92@gmail.com). I could probably even direct you to people who could
answer as to why your proposal of simply solving racism is not as easy, with
plenty of real life examples and historical facts.

------
Karunamon
That's actually quite clever, wrt. generating everyone who applies a nonsense
pseudonym so there's no unconscious bias happening in the pre-selection
process.

~~~
incision
It is, but what I've found a bit funny about the entire recent 'diversity'
discussion is that such things aren't already done as a matter of course.

We're in an industry where modeling, A/B testing, logging, trending and
engineering for redundancy is implicit - except when it comes to hiring
apparently.

If a load balancer assumed to split 50/50 was actually operating at 80/20
someone would notice. If a particular demographic were bouncing from the
landing page at disproportionate rates, someone would figure out why.

Both problems would be broken down empirically and solved with a thorough
post-mortem published on the company blog.

To this point, those same sort of issues applied to hiring have been largely
addressed with "We've got to do better" and "The problem is upstream" with
barely a word about how things managed to creep so far out of whack to begin
with.

It's really refreshing to see admission of an actual (potential) problem and
some of brains being applied to mitigate it directly.

~~~
yummyfajitas
As an industry, we used to be in favor of approaching meritocracy as a goal.
We'd take pride in using github in lieu of a resume, difficult technical
tests, and general attempts at objectivity.

Strangely, the pushback against meritocracy as a goal and objective
measurement as a method doesn't come from the alleged "good old boy" network.

[http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-
rug](http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug)

[http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-
an...](http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-
community)

~~~
swampangel
Consider 2 candidates with github profiles:

\- A has a created small number of functional and elegant projects

\- B has created a large number of functional but sloppy projects

Which is objectively better? The candidate who is more productive, or the
candidate whose products have higher quality?

One may be a better fit for your organization, based on your group's needs and
existing makeup, but that doesn't mean they are objectively "better" than the
other candidate. Do you believe one of these candidates has more "merit" than
the other?

Some people who believe a person has objective merit (as opposed to
suitability for a particular organization or role) are actually expressing an
aesthetic preference (selecting for tidy code, or work ethic, etc) while
claiming/believing that their preference is "objective" truth. People opposed
to using "objective" or "meritocracy" as labels are arguing for more nuance in
understanding the needs and biases of people and teams.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Wait, I can go one better. Candidate A) has a large number of elegant
projects. Candidate B) is a ninja with a large number of high profile
assassinations under his belt.

Obviously the question of "objectively better" comes with an implicit "for the
role in question".

 _People opposed to using "objective" or "meritocracy" as labels are arguing
for more nuance in understanding the needs and biases of people and teams._

That sounds pretty but it's totally vacuous - it doesn't give me any
information on how the decision process would be altered.

------
ntonozzi
Really impressive program! I'm glad that these guys are encouraging diversity,
but focusing on keeping the bar for admission the same across all candidates.

------
aclockheart
Any '-ISM' CANNOT be a real '-ism' if does not combine prejudice (which is the
only thing people think it is) PLUS power (the social, cultural, and political
heft which usually underlies the ability of prejudice to keep or enforce -isms
in place)

[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power)

Until folks understand this primary principle, most of you arguing for this
"anti-white and asian" bias will simply be tools of the status quo. Equality
does NOT mean treating all people equally, WHEN ALL PEOPLE DON'T HAVE THE SAME
FOOTING, and don't have the same political power (which is conferred from our
social and political system).

------
lordsheepy
I am so happy to see this program in place. We all talk about how most
problems we have with diversity come from upstream, and now a school is
directly addressing it. An objective solution to an objective problem.

------
uniclaude
Diversity in our field is a hard issue to tackle, and it's great to see people
trying to find solutions.

This said, I'd like to see the results, as I would believe the diversity
problem is not as much with hackerschool as it is with the pool of applicants.

------
yummyfajitas
Their evidence for lack of bias in their process is pretty weak: "Men and
women are invited to interview, advanced to a second interview, and admitted
at the same rates."

All this means is that the person doing interview #1, interview #2 and
admission decision are biased at the same rate. It doesn't mean that rate is
zero.

The proper test - compare admission rates against a truly objective and
unbiased measure like a final exam (particularly if students anonymize their
names). If gender information does not leak to the grader, bias is impossible.

[edit: Wow, I've clearly made a blatant failure of reasoning - apparently my
knowledge of statistics is far less than I thought. I hope someone can explain
my error - I'm not afraid of math, so don't skip the details.]

~~~
nicholasjbs
What we mean by "at the same rate" is that these rates are the same as the
rates that men and women apply. For example, about 65% of our applications are
currently from men, and men are about 65% of the people we invite to
interview, advance to the next round, and ultimately admit.

~~~
yummyfajitas
This is only evidence of lack of bias if you know the quality of both pools is
equal. If there was a quality gap between pools, this would be evidence that
you are biased.

I reiterate - if you truly want to measure bias on factor X, you need to
compare to a metric that is blind to X or otherwise known to be unbiased.

~~~
swampangel
They did point out that the first round selection is done based on anonymized
applications.

It might not be not perfect, but if round 1 is blind to X, and rounds 2 and 3
admit people in similar ratios to round 1, it sounds pretty good to me.

~~~
yummyfajitas
They did not claim that the % passing the blinded stage is the same as the %
passing the other stages. The only points they listed were interview #1,
interview #2 and admission (none of which are blinded).

~~~
swampangel
> about 65% of our applications are currently from men, and men are about 65%
> of the people we invite to interview

That sounds to me like the point where blind review of applications would take
place.

~~~
yummyfajitas
They said the blinded portion is only skimming the application, and they get
that info after a minute or two. If they blinded the entire pre-interview
process (e.g., browse github profiles/etc through a chrome plugin that changes
"nitin patel" to "grande puta"), that would be fairly convincing.

Ultimately a quality measurement at the end of the process would be the best,
however - measure the outputs rather than the inputs.

------
sauere
If you are someone that buys in to all this diversity nonsense, please watch
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_dRt00ufp4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_dRt00ufp4)

I am prepared for the downvotes, keep them coming.

~~~
wismer
oh, please. No one wants to engage with a self-proclaimed martyr.

------
nawitus
>The short: We now have need-based living expense grants for black and non-
white Latino/a and Hispanic people, as well as people from many other groups
traditionally underrepresented in programming.

I disagree with this, it's racist.

~~~
dethstar
If it simply said "for under-represented groups" you wouldn't have made that
comment. The difference is that they need to clarify what groups are under-
represented so they (people within those groups) can approach hacker school
and don't feel like I did a year or so ago when I thought "oh I can't go cuz I
don't have enough money to sustain myself".

~~~
dwild
Please define "under-represented groups". How do you divide theses groups? I
love movies, does they have a group for movie-lover? What about books? I
believe theses groups are based on race. Divide by race and you get what?
Racism.

> "oh I can't go cuz I don't have enough money to sustain myself"

That's the reason why you should get that grant, not because you are from a
different race.

~~~
techpeace
> "Divide by race and you get what? Racism."

I believe you're confusing the mere recognition of races and the fact that
they exist with racism. They aren't the same thing.

Not to go all dictionary on you, but here's what American Heritage has to say:
"the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities
specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to
another race or races."

Nothing in the post falls under the strict dictionary definition of racism. I
would also argue that nothing in the post _at all_ falls under any definition
of racism.

------
xienze
I really don't understand this obsession with diversity in tech, particularly
the oft-repeated mantra of "the team as a whole improves when there's more
ethnic/gender diversity", as if being black or genderqueer gives you special
insight into distributed computing algorithms. This seems like a uniquely
American phenomenon. I certainly don't think you hear a lot about this in
India, China, Japan, etc. And yet, their companies still manage to function.

~~~
idlewords
It's pretty easy:

1\. American society consists of all kinds of people

2\. A lot of those groups are weirdly underrepresented in the American tech
industry

3\. That means we're wasting a lot of great programming talent at a time when
we badly need it.

~~~
sauere
1\. American society consists of all kinds of people

2\. One group is weirdly underrepresented in the American
[nursing/childcare/secretarial industry]

3\. That means we're wasting a lot of great [nursing/childcare/secretarial]
talent at a time when we badly need it.

Does this make any sense to you? If no, your own statement should not either.

