
Diversity fatigue - ohjeez
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21692865-making-most-workplace-diversity-requires-hard-work-well-good-intentions-diversity
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koder2016
"We increased diversity in IT!"

"Cool, you hired a dynamic Python dev, a static functional Haskel dev and a UX
inclined HTML/C# dev?"

"Err... No, we hired a cartesian product of races and genders within Java
skillset... But they sure have different worldviews!"

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gaius
There is a saying that you can only manage what you can measure, but the
problem is then, you _only_ manage what you can easily measure. It's easy to
tick boxes for gender, sexuality, race etc - but if everyone you hire is a
20-something graduate of the same top 10 universities, from the same socio-
economic class, having sat in the same lectures, read the same books, been
exposed to all the same ideas, buys the same brands, has the same hobbies,
then how can the benefits of diversity be realized? I believe nearly every
high-profile product flop from major tech firms can be attributed to this.

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hprotagonist
tl;dr: human resources ruins everything.

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donatj
Arguably the tl;dr for the entire corporate world.

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sattoshi
Why does everybody keep saying that diversity is a good thing?

I'm not arguing it's a _bad_ thing.. but why is it a bad thing?

The most notable thing I see in diversity are additional language and cultural
barriers that will slow down productivity.

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ohjeez
Monocultures, almost by definition, encourage groups to think alike. That
means the group doesn't invent anything new, and has a strong tendency to work
towards the lowest denominator. While that's sometimes valuable -- not
everything needs to be revolutionary -- it does mean that true innovation is
harder to achieve, because nobody is thinking outside the box. In fact, most
of the team isn't even aware of the box.

Step back from the color- and gender-counting varieties of diversity for a
moment, and just think of the notion of diversity itself: a variation of
backgrounds and viewpoints, which can contribute to a wider view and, when
done mindfully, more opportunities to serve the community (the same community
that buys your products).

Surely you've had that wonderful feeling when a teammate comes up with an
idea, and you respond, "Wow, what a great suggestion! I'd never have thought
of that!" With attention to diversity (by which I mean, "attracting people of
different viewpoints"), you encounter that sense of discovery far more often.

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markonthewall
Except the diversity quotas, or EEOs as they call it now, almost never allow
for truly norm-bending individuals to access those roles. Having a different
skin colour does not make or break group thinking.

It's a mirage, at best, and a sad state of affairs for racial perception at
worst. That trendy cult of diversity is only contributing to kick-start racial
consciousness among white people and that fragmented society is going to blow-
up in your face, down the road.

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ohjeez
FWIW I agree with you. Anything forced on a group is apt to be resented by its
members, including the "token whatever" who feels that she has to represent
"her kind" instead of winning or failing on her own merits.

Instead, groups benefit when they themselves work to expand their own
membership. It's _really_ easy for all of us to look for people who share our
outlooks and opinions, a "mini me" in some way. But we grow only when we
insert new ideas.

I've been exceedingly lucky, in that I've worked with diverse groups of all
sorts. They include people from varied backgrounds (rural vs city, money vs
poor, race, gender), and in every instance I can think of a time when that
"differentness" caused us to think of a better and different answer. For a
lame example, someone who grew up in a rural area is more likely to think
about how an online application works in a region with lousy connectivity.
It's not that other team members can't think of such things, but the
background ensure someone does.

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thescribe
> The growing diversity of the workforce should be a cause for celebration.

Why? What makes this inherently better than say, a monocultural group like
Japan.

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bewo001
A real-world example: we were in negotiations about a big project with a
vendor. We - a team of guys about the same age - had a lot of issues with the
technical solution the vendor proposed. The next day they brought in a very
attractive blonde engineer, and my useless straight colleagues would be gazing
at her legs rather than asking tough technical questions. The vendor wouldn't
have tried this if we had some women on the team.

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ManlyBread
All this really means is that your colleagues are unprofessional and/or
incompetent. There's a zero guarantee that having women on your team would
prevent them from doing that.

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kingmanaz
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Diversity is strength.

