

Why 'Cultural Diversity' in the Workplace Needs to Die - SparkyRobinson
https://medium.com/@markrobinson_18774/what-happened-to-finding-the-best-person-for-the-job-yes-i-m-mad-f14c3b05b97e

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tstrimple
While I can sympathize with his sentiment, I don't think his example of Ellen
Pao is really fair. Here is the quote he used:

    
    
        ‘She has passed on hiring candidates who don’t embrace her priority of building a gender-balanced and multiracial team. “We ask people what they think about diversity, and we did weed people out because of that,” she said.’
    

To me, that doesn't imply that they are excluding people because they don't
fit some diversity quota, but because they don't share the same values.
Clearly she cares about building a diverse team, and it only makes sense that
she would hire individuals who also see the benefit of that.

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SparkyRobinson
Hey thanks for replying.

I see what you're saying. At the same time, would Ellen hire me because of my
views? I'm not sure.

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ghostberry
"What Happened To Finding The Best Person For The Job!?"

It never existed. Study after study has shown the gender and race implied by
your resume massively impacts the chance of you getting a callback.

~~~
SparkyRobinson
Thanks, and fair enough. I've actually read into that before also. I think
it's in freakonomics, where they found that if a black person had a typically
white name on their resume they'd have more chance of a callback.

I know cultural diversity is a problem, I just don't think that's the way to
solve it. Maybe I should have explained that I know everyone doesn't have the
same views as myself, I just don't think the equal and opposite views are the
way forward.

Unfortunately I'm in no way qualified enough to discuss how to fix it. I think
it's an education issue at the ground level.

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mjb394
Education is where the least disparity occurs. Everyone, regardless of
demographics, goes to the same lectures, turns in the same projects, takes the
same exams, gets graded on the same rubric.

Bias and discrimination creeps in once humans start to make judgments on
things that aren't so clear cut. There is no objective scale for a resume, or
a conference proposal. People use their intuition and judgment to make
decisions about hiring, and speaker selection, and salary offers, and
everything else- and that intuition has been shown to be unconsciously biased
in many studies, including the ones you referenced.

It's probably very frustrating, as a white male (according to the picture on
the article at least), to feel like the deck might be stacked against you in
some way, in some situations, at some companies. It's also very frustrating as
a minority in a field to _know_ that it is, for it to have been shown to be
true both in your own experience and in decades of research.

Solutions are up for debate. No one has the best answer. What is happening is
an iterative process towards something that is better, that works for more
people, more of the time.

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barbrastreisand
I can understand your argument here, but the problem is essentially that
almost nobody is fair (as someone else commented here - that based on biases
against cultures they will filter our resumes based on names and such). I also
get that you think that the issue is a matter of foundation - since fewer
women/minorities are learning to be software developers, fewer of them apply.
You're just at the end of the assembly line, not the cause of the problem.

The issue is that while misogyny and racism are no longer institutionally
enforced, they are far from dead. There's still deep seeded biases and
cultural attitudes that are constantly oppressing women and minorities from
succeeding (we can certainly argue how big or small an impact this may be, but
it is very certainly there without a doubt). Trying to address the foundation
(i.e. schooling of children and their upbringing) is a start, it's just not
enough. There needs to be a decelerating force applied at all levels of
society to counter act decades of inertia working against women and
minorities.

Further, my own personal belief is that 'best for the job' is a loose term,
especially in the tech industry. Maybe for something like a fireman that has
strict and narrow requirements it's easy to say "you need to be the best"
through physical endurance tests, but for something as wide as computer
software, best can also be people who are more organized, more loyal to the
company, and especially more diverse (in terms of creative power). I think I
went off on a tangent at the end here, but I hope you understand my main
point, which is - affirmative action may seem very unfair, but it is fair in
the larger picture, and hopefully something that can go away soon.

