
Donations and Women in Tech Panels Are Not a Diversity Strategy - j_s
https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/donations-and-women-in-tech-panels-are-not-a-diversity-strategy-do-better-c3c51022a916
======
Oxitendwe
I don't understand why anyone would need a "diversity strategy". Just hire
whoever seems like they would do the best job, and then spend the remainder of
the apparently monumental effort that you would have spent executing your
"diversity strategy" on improving your bottom line. It's ridiculous that we
focus on the racial and gender makeup of applicants instead of just judging
them on their accomplishments.

~~~
grzm
Do you believe there are any disparities in demographics between the general
population and a given field (such as tech)? What demographic do you belong
to? How do you think these disparities might affect society as a whole? If
there are disparities, what, if anything, do you think should be done to
lessen the disparity in demographics?

Edit to add: If you choose to reply, please include attempts at answering all
of the questions. Note there's nothing in this comment that assumes that
hiring is the appropriate (or only) place something (if anything) should be
done. It's easy to dismiss this as only "yes, there are disparities, but it
shouldn't be fixed here", or "equal opportunity". That's not the end of the
conversation. What does a better solution look like?

~~~
teacup50
> _If there are disparities, what, if anything, do you think should be done to
> lessen the disparity in demographics?_

Target inequality of _opportunity_ , and do not assume that differences in
_outcome_ are prima facie evidence of differences in opportunity.

In other words, the pipeline is the place to solve this.

~~~
grzm
What does that look like in implementation? How do you ensure and measure its
effectiveness? What rates of improvement should be acceptable?

~~~
edblarney
I'd suggest that a starting point could be to make sure that those hired
roughly reflect the diversity of the talent pool being hired from.

If they 'match' \- then it's a roughly good indicator that the hiring process
'is fair'.

As far as I know - this is generally true: the ratio of female engs. in the
valley is roughly commensurate with the ratio of females graduating from Comp
Sci. Which is actually positive news.

Now - that's nowhere near the whole story, but at least it's a crude basic
metric.

~~~
grzm
I tend to agree with you on the starting point and that it's a rough
indicator.

 _that 's nowhere near the whole story_

I'm glad you acknowledge this. It's a story that tends to get abandoned after
looking at the types of metrics you describe. I don't think that's what you're
doing here, by the way. Just the fact you bring it up makes it clear you
don't.

~~~
edblarney
Thanks. But I often feel that that core metric is way too often overlooked by
those lamenting injustice.

The fact that 'the first rough metric' is pretty decent, I think speaks to the
general fairness and goodwill in the tech industry.

I've worked in tech my whole life - and without a doubt the people are pretty
good. It can be a little guy-ish sometimes, and there are some bad-
actors/companies, but I reject the idea that Tech is bad for women. Google and
Facebook are probably 95% Obama voters, and progressive on almost every issue.
To scream bigotry among this group is just too rich.

So yes - the story does not end there, and there are clearly more obvious
problems as you move up in management - but I also don't see an entire
industry that's in some kind of trauma.

Interesting tidbit: a survey of tech workers shows that men point primarily to
the 'funnel problem' whereas women point to the 'lack of role models'. Which I
thought was telling, and hints at an opportunity for improvement.

~~~
grzm
I'm a bit taken aback by your comment here. I was encouraged by the lack of
partisanship that began our exchange, as that so often does nothing but
further polarize discussions. There are indications that you're looking for a
more nuanced discussion, but phrases like "those lamenting injustice" and "to
scream bigotry among this group is just too rich" makes it harder, rather than
easier, for those that don't already agree with you to be willing to enter a
discussion: it takes extra effort and good faith to attempt to engage in
substantive discussion on contentious issues (rather than fall into the echo
chamber everyone decries).

 _a survey of tech workers shows that men point primarily to the 'funnel
problem' whereas women point to the 'lack of role models'._

Interesting. Do you have a reference to this survey at hand?

 _Which I thought was telling, and hints at an opportunity for improvement._

I'm not sure if I'm particularly dense (though I don't dispute this might be
the case), but I think people generally assume that their intent in statements
like this are much clearer than what is actually the case. I have a hard time
knowing how to interpret what you mean, or what opportunity you see. Is it
that you think there should be more role models for women? That the lack of
role models for women indicates that there just aren't that many women in tech
and that's because women aren't generally interested in tech so there really
isn't a problem? That there's a mismatch between how men and women perceive
the problem that needs to be addressed? If that's the case, do you think one
perception is more accurate than the other? My comment to which you initially
responded asked for specifics on implementation and measurement on addressing
disparities in tech. I'm still interested in hearing for details rather than
generalities.

~~~
edblarney
"I was encouraged by the lack of partisanship that began our exchange"

 _There is no 'partisanship' in my comments_. I'm just making a comment.
That's all.

"I have a hard time knowing how to interpret what you mean"

 _I mean exactly what I say_. There's nothing to interpret.

There is a lot of noise in the press about 'injustice' in terms of gender and
race in the Silicon Valley - when, as a baseline - the Valley employs almost
exactly the people that are fed into it. When you read articles about such
issues - they generally do not refer to the fact that the % make up of the
Valley is almost identical to the % makeup of those with relevant
qualifications.

So - as a 'starting point' for any concern, it should be noted that by the
easiest and most obvious measure - the Valley seems to be doing a pretty good
job. Maybe even a great job.

I think this is unfair: a lot of voices 'screaming bigotry' in the press lack
this perspective, and instantly distort the scenario by taking the assumptive
position that 'there is inherent unfairness in the valley because only x% of
their Engineers are of minority group ABC' \- when in fact, it's actually
pretty fair, given the talent pool they draw from.

I can't say that I've ever read an article critiquing the Valley on gender
representation - that ever made mention of this fact.

So even though there is an issue to be addressed - it's also being
misrepresented.

When I say 'there's more to the story' \- I'm not offering a consolation or
token to 'the other side' of the debate. I don't view these things as having
sides. I'm simply stating that I think there's more to it. That's all.

I'm not debating anyone or taking any sides.

As for the 'male/female' perspective - I wish I had that reference for you - I
read it relatively recently, and the data point really popped out at me, which
is why I remembered it.

I'm a guy - so 'lack of role models' is something I would never consider as a
possibility for 'why I wouldn't want to work in tech'. So, knowing that so
many girls feel that way, make me think about the issue differently.

How can this be helpful? Well, for one, obviously by making sure that the
'stories' of female engineers are told, that there is visibility etc. - which
is kind of a no-brainer, one that really should not be contentious.

But there are other issues. The Canadian Navy did a study (long ago) where
they found that when ships deployed with very few women on board, that it was
stressful for them. But when there was a 'critical mass' of them (I think like
8%), then they seemed to get along a lot better. So, this 'critical mass'
concept might be useful in planning: if a 'guy founded' startup grows, they
may consider reaching that 'critical mass' as an absolute minimum for female
participation. Most companies don't think about gender issues until headcount
gets larger, so maybe once they start growing, they can try hard to get 'a
good group' of girls in, beyond that threshold, so that they don't feel
isolated. The same could very well apply to minority groups - i.e. maybe there
is a 'critical mass' below which many feel isolated. Black and Latino
Engineers are pretty rare. This could be an issue there.

The 'role model' issue may be also strongly related to the lower participation
of females in upper management. But that's a whole other can of worms, and
I've already written too much so ...

------
dongslol
Is there a refutation to the argument that all these "diversity for
diversity's sake" programs, this sort of frantic insistence upstream to
achieve diversity at all costs, produces some less than qualified candidates?

In every institution I've ever been at, people talked about how to recruit
more women, but in practice this meant grabbing the first woman who applied
and using them as a prop to show how diverse they were. Professors have
blatantly admitted to my female friends that they were being used for that
purpose.

~~~
Oxitendwe
Yes, hiring people based on their race/gender creates a perverse framework of
incentives. A good example of some of the problems that arise from valuing
"diversity" over actual merits is Susan Fowler. Her bosses treated her very
badly because she was a woman, by refusing her requests to transfer and giving
her bad marks on her performance exams, and the reason they did it was because
of their incentive to appear "diverse". I don't mean to excuse their behavior,
it was horrible, but maybe things would have been somewhat better if the
system didn't reward her bosses for having a woman on their team (and
subsequent disincentive for them leaving).

~~~
dllthomas
> the reason they did it was because of their incentive to appear "diverse"

This seems to radically mischaracterize the issues in that case.

~~~
emiliobumachar
It seems to match her original blog post.

"It turned out that keeping me on the team made my manager look good, and I
overheard him boasting to the rest of the team that even though the rest of
the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some
on his team."

(from [https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-
on...](https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-
strange-year-at-uber))

That's not the worst thing she reported, but it's there, and it's definitely
very bad. Would you elaborate on what mischaracterization you see?

~~~
dllthomas
A characterization that the origin of the problem was Uber paying too much
attention to diversity statistics.

~~~
Oxitendwe
I think it's very reasonable to say that the reason it made her bosses look
good to have a woman on their team was directly because of the push for
diversity and inclusion in the tech world. Why else would they value such a
thing?

------
ve55
If you want to convince people it is in their own best interest to invest
significantly in diversity, it's not likely the intro to this article will cut
it for most.

The first paper mentions that they only found a correlation, however
contradicts themselves in attempting to turn this into causation, despite
mentioning that correlation != causation: "While correlation does not equal
causation (greater gender and ethnic diversity in corporate leadership doesn’t
automatically translate into more profit), the correlation does indicate that
when companies commit themselves to diverse leadership, they are more
successful."

It doesn't seem like this was checked for backwards-causation (companies may
be more likely to start prioritizing diversity when they are succeeding, but
not when they are failing), among many other potential confounding variables,
and it seems that they were very intent on trying to prove their outcome
regardless of what kind of data they had, where the article starts out with
"We know intuitively that diversity matters. It’s also increasingly clear that
it makes sense in purely business terms." I didn't check everything from the
second link, but this appears to be a very common pattern.

The third link attempts to appeal to the same sense, however goes much
further, stating: "it was not “diversity” (having equal numbers of men and
women) that mattered for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women."
This would seem to prove far too much, and is obviously not a generalizable
result unless you sincerely believe that replacing all men with women will
make your company perform better. I'm unable to view the full text or data
from this paper due to the paywall.

If you're concerned about the proportion of groups such as women in tech, the
right time to get them interested is when they are very young. Not during or
after college. With a baseline of significantly more men in tech, you cannot
reasonably expect to achieve figures such as a 1:1 ratio of female to male
employees. With that said, the author seems to be focusing more on problems
after people enter the workplace. There may be a lot of issues here, but I
think solutions need to focus on deeper underlying problems such as culture,
rather than single bottleneck processes such as promotions (and that which
leads up to them).

------
ygaf
The first paragraph is her premise. On first read, I uncharitably dismissed it
- "yeah, tech companies should be tripping over themselves to achieve
diversity so they can take advantage of this.... uh, correlation with.... a
hot 35% bonus....in the mission-critical field of "probability of "performing
well""" (all quotes intentional).

Then I charitably followed the links in the paragraph. The scientific studies
are underwhelming (in terms of convincing a tech company to do something). The
mckinsey article cheapens itself towards the end ("The unequal performance of
companies in the same industry and the same country implies that diversity is
a competitive differentiator shifting market share toward more diverse
companies." That implication is terrible)

It's not hard to understand how diversity in the workplace might challenge our
minds more, keep us more professional (in company culture and hiring
practice), improve fitness in whatever other ways. But it's all conceptual,
and until there's more scientific evidence, the literature has to settle for
being obnoxious - light on information, heavy on telling the reader what to
think before and after said information (tabloid style).

------
poiuiop
Reading the existing comments on this thread, if it represents an accurate
sample size of the type of culture in tech: this is why as a woman I want to
drop out.

~~~
Oxitendwe
Ironically, I've known women who've wanted to drop out of tech culture because
of the massive push for "inclusion" and "diversity". Nobody wants to be a
diversity hire, and nobody likes seeing people propped up beyond their ability
because of their gender or race. A lot of these people just want to be treated
normally, and you don't get that by giving people special treatment.

------
logfromblammo
The action points in the article:

    
    
      1. Treat the women and people of color already working at your
         company well, including paying them equitably and preparing them
         for promotions.
      2. Overhaul your interview process.  Hire programmers that have
         the skills the company needs.
      3. Institute onboarding.  Make sure that everyone has the
         information they need to succeed at their jobs.
    

None of my employers have ever prepared _anyone_ for promotions, regardless of
sex or color. Companies would have to do this at all before questioning
whether they do it equitably.

Most of the prospective employers I have approached regarding job openings
have had a horrible interview process. And I would suggest hiring for
_aptitude_ rather than existing _skills_. Almost everyone focuses on "what
have you already done?" rather than "what could you do if we hired you?" It's
maddening. Companies can barely test for skill, and I have only seen _one_
that even tried to assess aptitude.

That would be great if companies maintained persistent records of internal
collaboration. Unfortunately, I have anecdotally observed a trend of
decreasing job-specific training, and less robust internal technical
documentation. Some companies don't even have a stepwise guide for doing a
manual build of their main software product after getting the latest source.

In short, those are good suggestions, but they don't need to be specifically
targeted by sexes and colors. Everyone would benefit if companies did this. So
why don't they? It seems like a sane and decent company would become diverse
without needing to make any specific effort to do so, whereas a dysfunctional
company would see its problems manifest in many different symptoms, with
monoculture being just one of them.

------
jza00425
Women should not get preference because they are women.

~~~
dang
That is an obnoxious way to reply to someone who expressed a personal concern.
If you can't be respectful of others, please don't comment here.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716297)
and marked it off-topic.

Edit: it looks like you've been using HN exclusively to comment on politics.
That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do it, so please
don't use HN this way.

