
Ask HN: Thoughts on diversity/inclusion efforts in tech? - JCOdom
Over the past few years, there has been a huge push for hitting diverse hiring (African American &#x2F; Latin &#x2F; LGBQT &#x2F; Female) targets at large tech companies, especially in engineering. I&#x27;ve noticed this phenomenon first-hand in Silicon Valley.<p>I do believe that these efforts mean well, and come from a good place. Diversity of ideas is very important for building successful products for a diverse audience - there is no doubt about that. However, there are two things that leave me puzzled:<p>1) I feel that it has become a matter of one-upmanship between companies, with huge emphasis on proudly touting how many black or latinx people they hired last quarter ([1], [2] to name a few).<p>2) Related to 1), the emphasis on equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity. I think Goodhart&#x27;s Law is at play here (&#x27;When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.&#x27;). &quot;Diverse people hired&quot; may be becoming a lousy metric that doesn&#x27;t account for differences in talent pool size, enrolment in schools, number of people interviewed, etc. A very common phrase, especially used at one of my former employers, was this idea of &quot;overcoming a homogenous workplace&quot;.<p>There are diversity teams at most big tech firms geared to drive up these metrics - just like any other team which is driven by ad revenue or MAU.<p>At my ex-employer, hiring managers were invited by a &#x27;diversity lead&#x27; and told to &#x27;account for diversity&#x27; when candidates are fairly even; in this case, the other candidate is placed at a disadvantage.<p>I am not trying to be inflammatory here; I just want to learn how these programs are bringing real benefit - or at least the underlying reasoning&#x2F;legislation driving them.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;work&#x2F;1793500&#x2F;etsy-doubled-its-hiring-of-black-and-latinx-employees-in-one-year&#x2F;<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2018&#x2F;04&#x2F;how-slack-got-ahead-in-diversity&#x2F;558806&#x2F;
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auslegung
I’m not in hiring nor do I have data to back this up. I doubt anyone has data
to back up or refute my claim.

I claim that diversity is an inherent good for jobs that involve lots of
thinking. My reasoning is that a mixture of diverse ideas and thought patterns
are going to come up with higher quality solutions on average, and a if we’re
excluding non-white non-males, we’re not coming up with the best solutions.

Of course this breaks down if we’re talking about someone “diverse” with an
8th grade education vs someone with a PhD. I’m pretty sure the PhD is ALMOST
ALWAYS going to produce higher quality solutions. But Master’s vs PhD?
Bachelor’s vs Master’s? Go with diversity.

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belorn
I strongly doubt that the kind of skin deep diversity that people do does any
good. The most similar attributes I see in tech is not gender or race, but
rather aspects like health, wealth, social status, and age.

As an example, 60% of the total population has a chronic diseases. You won't
find many in the technology industry that want to imagine that. Accessibility
is an almost forgotten concept, and most people if forced to think about
accessability can only imagine concepts like blindness, deafness, and
wheelchairs. The wast majority of those 60% does not have either of those and
are basically invisible in the thought process when people produce solutions
and products.

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jahell
I think what should be focused on first is getting more diverse people
majoring in computer science.

In my graduating class (2017) the ethnic ratio was 80% white 20% Asian. All
men. This was a private liberal arts school where 60% of the student
population was female, so it's not like it was an engineering school with no
women.

Since I've graduated there have been a few women and other ethnicities but
still way more white men.

There were a few women my year who started out as cs majors but switched as
underclassman.

That being said, I'm not sure why this is. In other hard/scientific (math,
natural science, etc.) majors there were way more women then men.

