
Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired because I resisted “illegal” diversity efforts - kbwt
https://www.arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/ex-google-recruiter-i-was-fired-because-i-resisted-illegal-diversity-efforts
======
to3m
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16497551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16497551)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This one has been flagged out also. It’s beginning to look like HN really
doesn’t like this story, since it’s the third time in the last 24 hours
they’ve blown it off the front page.

~~~
throwaway1584
Personally I wanted to discuss the article yesterday, but it was moved off the
front-page too fast despite high interest. It is very common on HN for
articles that does not agree with or points out problems in the prevailing
viewpoint to be blown off the front page.

I think this is emblematic of how tyrannical some of the people subscribing to
the prevailing Silicon Valley viewpoint are.

~~~
13years
Issues that can't be discussed can't be solved, they only grow larger.

I once would have thought that this would have been somewhat obvious.

~~~
hncensorship
I used to think HN was one of the better forums, but after recently trying to
post a rebuttal to this [0] with multiple experiences from my workplace, and
seeing my response vanish moments later, alongside the speed to which these
threads have been flagged out of visibility (whilst anecdotal stories
concerning women still rank very highly despite having far less age and far
higher votes), I've lost faith both in the moderating abilities and the
community to self-regulate.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16502359)

~~~
forgottenpass
I vouched that one (and this) for ya, buddy.

I don't think either were particularly strong positions or poorly spoken.

It probably doesn't help that the automated rulesets here aren't kind to
downvoted first posts by new users.

~~~
grzm
There are some anti-abuse features on HN which cause some new accounts to be
banned when they're created. Such comments will be marked [dead], not
[flagged][dead]. I suspect that's what's happened with both 'hncensorship and
'throwaway12395 (though I didn't see the status of the latter's comment before
it was vouched). Some people get caught by this feature unintentionally: if
they suspect this is the case, the mods have been very open about whitelisting
such accounts. You can email them via the Contact link in the footer.

Note that this is different from people being flagged or down voted by members
because of content. I can imagine it's very frustrating, but they are
different behaviors. In one, specific action has been taken by members; in
another, one has been caught by automated anti-abuse measures.

------
colmvp
I have to say, as an Asian male I found this comment by dirtyid in the article
to be succinct and all too true:

> "Pour one out for Asian males. Get screwed by affirmative action in
> education, media representation and now employment but can't get screwed on
> dating apps."

Asian men constantly get grouped as a single entity when it comes to tech and
aren't considered an added element of diverseness within the industry despite
Japan, China, Korea, India, etc. being quite different from one another.

Then you look at industries where Asians are under-represented and you can
read articles from actors like Steven Yeun who talk about how they rarely get
offered roles and when they do, it's often for roles that stereotype their
ethnicity. For example, I just watched Annihilation and the only Asian actor
they had in it of course had a broken English accent despite the fact that in
real life, the actor actually has a British accent.

Pull up an article on diversity in the U.S., and chances are if you search
"Asian" in the article you'll get 0 results.

I've always looked up to tech because it's a realm where we Asians are judged
by our skill level and output, not the color of our skin or how attractive we
look. It's a realm that rewards people who study hard and work tirelessly to
refine their craft. And so it's absolutely frustrating to hear that we're too
successful and that people scale back our representation despite the fact that
they never happens for us in other industries.

~~~
soreasan
As an Asian male this article also frustrates me. Google has always been a
company I've wanted to work for but if this article is true and Google
discriminates against Whites and Asians in their hiring process then they're
not the dream company I previously believed they were.

~~~
bitL
Go to FaceBook, they still retained hacker spirit, at least for time being.
You can meet a lot of previously frustrated Googlers there.

~~~
jnbiche
I like Facebook as an engineering organization, and was tempted when I was
heavily recruited there. Problem is, many feel Facebook the social media
company is making the world a worse place in many different ways, and their
leadership had their head in the sand. Otherwise, I'd love to work there.

------
2aa07e2
> In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Stafﬁng Management team was instructed
> by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software
> engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either
> female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-
> diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with
> this request.

Good for him. Google is now excluded from the "dream" companies I'd want to
work for.

~~~
jsmeaton
It sounds like it was one manager. Is that all you need to blacklist an entire
company?

~~~
fwdpropaganda
To be fair, from the outside it is often hard to tell what is one manager and
what is company culture.

~~~
organsnyder
For any organization this size, assume that there is a fair amount of variance
from one division to another.

~~~
nugi
I hold all organizations responsible for their own actions, reguardless of
size. Too big to fail is a poor concept, logically, ethically.

~~~
boomboomsubban
This isn't too big to fail, it's "a bad egg doesn't ruin the bunch." Whether
that's the case here is arguable, but no one is saying they aren't responsible
for their actions.

~~~
nugi
Is 'allowing for variance' up to and including racism and sexisism in hiring?
Because it seems like you are giving them a pass, because there are many
hiring managers.

~~~
edanm
If someone who worked for Walmart became a murderer, would you condemn all of
Walmart as murderers? Promoting a culture of murder?

If that's too far removed from the actual job for you, how about if someone at
Walmart acted in a sexist way in an interview. Would you condemn all of
Walmart? Would you automatically assume there is a culture of sexism? Or would
you at least entertain the possibility that Walmart employs thousands of
managers, so it's not crazy to imagine that some of them might sometimes act
in sexist ways, even without such a corporate culture?

You need more than a few instances to prove a claim of "this must be a
cultural thing", IMO.

~~~
HelloNurse
A Walmart shop could be an isolated environment where a bad person can prosper
despite a generally contrary company culture, but it isn't an appropriate
comparison for this case: important HR managers like this Alogna aren't many,
even in a large company, and the higher level management who kept him and
fired the recruiter is an even smaller part of Google. They must be assumed to
be representative of the whole company.

------
xxcode
I work at Google. It is the most unpleasant place to work, largely because
work evaluation is almost 80% politics (might be 100%). I am a senior
engineer. You get stuck here because the pay you better than elsewhere, but I
think it is a very bad and very sad place to work. My stomach curdles every
morning before going to work and I wonder if it is worth it. Many of my peers
talk in the same vein.

Please consider not working here, if you have other options (which you almost
always do)

~~~
thorwawayforg
Can you tell me more about this? I have interviewed at google 2 times now. The
first interview I bombed -- and I knew it. It was my first interview in near
10 years. The second interview I thought I aced. There was not a single answer
I could not answer expect one about obscure hardware that nobody uses any more
-- which I think was a test on how I handle not knowing something -- I ended
up learning something neat.

The process took a long time -- much longer than the first interview or any of
my other friends. And every time I talked to the recruiter I could tell
something was up. At the end the recruiter confessed there was issues at the
hiring committee and a unusual event of a manager getting involved. They
seemed to indicate there was a fight about me being accepted. I have a unique
skill set and am very qualified to work at google. I have over 15 years
working the full stack. I write drivers for Linux, and design big cloud
deployments -- I have the history and the background, so I would not be a
gamble on any front. So I thought it odd that there would be an issue at this
level, it was only later that I figured I was not diverse enough when a intern
I helped train -- who happens to be diverse did get into google.

Anyways, with all the politics going on I am wondering if it is even worth
responding to a current recurrent request.

My questions for you xxcode are the folllowing --

It sucks, but are there teams I can try and get on that would not suck?
Somebody at google has to be doing good things and just be excited about
working on the project they are working on.

I have a good job in Texas. It pays me $150k a year. I sometimes get bonuses
and have a fairly good thing going with stock (not options, but stock). Is the
money good enough at google to make it worth while?

Will living in CA/MV negate any gains in pay and benefits?

Is there any way to work at this company and avoid the entire diversity thing?
I just want to write code and build awesome software that people enjoy using.
Diversity -- while I care about it -- is not something I want to actively take
cycles out of my life to solve -- there are fare more passionate people who
are better equipped to think about these issues, I would rather write
software.

Please don't think I am a horrible person. We here on this planet once, and
writing code what I want to do with my life -- not everybody has to be a
warrior for social justice.

~~~
nojvek
On the other side Google’s getting shamed for not being diverse enough. I’m
sure many recruiters and hiring managers’ bonuses are tried to how many
diverse candidates are hired.

~~~
Slansitartop
In other words, this mess could be due to a lack of true leadership. They're
reacting to one criticism then the next, without really having a coherent,
defensible idea of their own.

------
gpm
People should check out the actual complaint [0]. It includes a lot of things
the article doesn't including:

A screenshot of an email from Allison Alogna to "Team" stating

> Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only accept new L3
> candidates that are from historically unrepresented groups.

Another stating in part

> And we should only consider L3s from our underrepresented groups.

It also tells us that this wasn't the first time the plaintiff had issues with
his manager over this topic. He had the same issues with the previous manager,
the previous manager was found by internally by Google to have retaliated
against him for his complaints, and Allison Alogna was hired to replace that
manager.

[0]
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4391847-18-CIV-00442...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4391847-18-CIV-00442.html#document/p4/a407608)

~~~
0xfeba
I don't understand how this didn't raise red flags from legal/HR.

From the article:

> In a statement, Google said [...] it has a "clear policy to hire candidates
> based on their merit, not their identity. At the same time, we
> unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of qualified candidates for open
> roles[...]"

You can't have it both ways. You're either based solely on merit, or on merit
_and_ how non-male and non-white they are. Which is discrimination.

EDIT: Sorry -- Finding pools in "diverse" areas is fine, but dropping resumes
in the bin when they are not "diverse" enough is not.

I hate that "diversity" has been politicized like this and I feel like it's
one of the failings of the left's identity politics bent that will come back
to bite them.

Getting minorities in your company to win some diversity points is great, but
missing the actual benefit to society. The goal should be, for society, to
equally encourage minorities to get STEM degrees and jobs so that companies
don't have to play this stupid "look how diverse we are!" game.

And it won't happen overnight.

Companies should just hire on merit[1]; be completely blind to their
workforce's background. They should enforce this neutrality like they enforce
neutrality toward anyone's religion. "I don't care as long as you can do your
job". If they are concerned about monoculture, then advertise and advocate in
areas that they think will improve that. But just leave hiring to merit.

Eventually diversity will trickle-up. It shouldn't just be up to companies.

EDIT [1]: Yes, merit can be an ambiguous term. And I should have also stated
they can hire based on "fit", which is another ambiguous term. But sorry, if
your devote beliefs restrict you from using any electronic devices, then no,
you aren't getting the web developer job. It's not a good "fit".

~~~
eloisant
> You can't have it both ways. You're either based solely on merit, or on
> merit and how non-male and non-white they are. Which is discrimination.

Actually yes, you can. There are 2 steps in recruiting:

1\. Find people who want to apply 2\. Have them go through a hiring process to
select which one you make an offer

You can seek diversity in step 1 and be completely merit-based on step 2.

If your step 1. is mostly ask your (currently overwhelming white male)
engineers for referrals, of course you'll get a bunch of white dudes. You have
to find other channels.

Diversity shouldn't be excluding people who happen to be part of the current
majority, but enlarging your pool of candidates.

Also, the whole idea of hiring "merit-based" is a bit naive because you're not
hiring people on a single objective metric. There are a bunch of metrics, most
of them judged subjectively: technical abilities, adaptability, communication
abilities, person easy to work with, and the list goes on.

So while Google definitely screwed up by trying to take the easy path to a
more diverse workforce, you can seek diversity without excluding white dudes.

~~~
friedButter
>You can seek diversity in step 1 and be completely merit-based on step 2.

What are your feelings on blocking all non diverse applications in step one
and allowing only diversity candidates to proceed to step 2?

------
gwbas1c
I suspect that lawsuits like this will show that trying to artificially
influence diversity through hiring practices is an incorrect approach. When
I'm in a hiring position, it's not like we sit around a table and say, "we'd
prefer the white male." We just don't have enough women and minorities in the
hiring pool to begin with.

The problem is that there aren't enough women and minorities entering our
field. We just can't decide to hire more women and minorities when there
aren't any to hire. Getting women and minorities to choose tech as a career
isn't something that I honestly don't know how to solve. Ultimately, our
employees reflect who's in our hiring pool.

The same happens in other fields, too. In pediatrics, there aren't a lot of
men entering medical school, so there is a desire to hire more men.

Anyway, getting back to the original topic; I suspect there's more going on
than we realize. I'm curious about how much this reflects Google actual
policies versus a decision of a middle manager.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I agree with you in general, but I'm curious how many would be "enough"?

~~~
kelukelugames
A supreme court justice was asked the same question. I don't agree with it
completely but think it's an interesting opinion.

>Rosen: Why is it good for men—as you said recently, there should be nine
women on the Supreme Court …

>Ginsburg: No, I didn’t say there should be. The question was when will there
be enough, so there’ll be enough when there are nine.

>For most of our history, except the times the court was less than nine, and
the one time there were 10, they were, until Justice O’Connor, all men. And
nobody thought anything was unusual about that.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/ruth-
ba...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/ruth-bader-
ginsburg-opens-up-about-metoo-voting-rights-and-millenials/553409/)

~~~
humanrebar
The logic there is just terrible. Maybe her point was that even if eight women
were sitting, we'd still be considering women candidates for the open seat? If
so, it didn't come across in the text.

~~~
akvadrako
The way court transcripts read it often doesn't come across as very natural.

------
munnisthebest
throwaway for obvious reasons.

I work at Square, and there was an interesting presentation in front of the
company about diversity efforts. Someone asked our head of diversity (who has
since left) what "diverse" means, to which she responded pretty casually "non
Asian and non White".

As an Asian male I guess I feel privileged to be lumped in with the White
males? I came here with my parents at age 10 with not much, and lived in an
attic above a car rental company for a year because it was the cheapest rent
we could find. Both parents worked labor jobs for years (i.e. inside a dry
cleaner, and inside a factory assembling CD cases). Thanks to their efforts, I
got in a good CS program (my parents couldn't pay for shit, were still poor),
and then got a job at Square. It's just kind of weird to hear your entire
people get lumped in with the "privileged white males" in front of the whole
company like that.

It's always really weird that "Asians" get treated as one homogeneous group in
the name of diversity. It's weird because if you are say Hmong, or Cambodian,
or from Laos, or Thailand, or Vietnam, or various parts of Southeast Asia, or
Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka, statistically you are far more disadvantaged than
your "traditional" Asians, like Indians or Chinese or Koreans or whatever. Yet
these individuals often become disadvantaged in the name of diversity.

Also for anyone working at Square, can we please stop referring to a candidate
as "diverse"? I really hate that term, to describe one candidate as diverse,
when it just means non White/Asian/Male.

~~~
0x00000000
When I was applying to universities I came to realize all they actually care
about is how you will look in a slide or pamphlet about diversity. They don't
care about your story or experience or upbringing. Diversity as they use it
only means physical appearance

A side note I also had a real existential crisis as a half white half asian
male. What do you put down in order to be fucked over the least? Asian? White?
Both if they let you or would that make you twice as screwed? Why should I
have to make that decision at all?

------
throwaway1957
Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I was once asked to do recruiting at a university. They told me to only
collect the resumes of Females, Blacks, and Hispanics. And that they would not
consider any other genders/races for the positions. This was for the BOLD
program:
[https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html](https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/bold.html).

Talking around with my co-workers, we found Google has multiple programs like
this. Another is a program to hire only LGBTQ people for entry MBA positions.

Still afraid to speak up within Google as I fear my job would be at risk.

Google claims its a meritocracy. It used to be a meritocracy , but in the past
few years thats no longer the case. We've become a Microsoft.

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
How do you know if a candidate is LGBTQ? Do you just ask them?

~~~
throwaway1957
They will email the LGBTQ organization at the university. And the only place
they'll be is that club. For BOLD most people were only emailing the Hispanic
/ Black frats & organizations.

I know that Google even has a dedicated team who does interview prep & mock
interviews (with real questions btw) for `diversity` candidates. This training
is not available to whites / asian males. Obviously if you've interviewed 10x
before hand and seen all the real interview questions, you're going to do
better.

Basically they are doing everything they can to make sure diversity candidates
are applying and have the absolute best chance of getting in.

------
samfisher83
If this is true and the recruiter has emails to back up his case it should be
a pretty easy case to win.

According to the the rules:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which makes it illegal
to discriminate against a person on the basis of race, color, religion, sex,
or national origin.

It should also be a massive fine.

~~~
hunta2097
I have recently left tenure at a large telecoms company in the UK. They
definitely had a practice of encouraging female hires. Even if they weren't
the best fit for the role.

Don't get me wrong, I am not approaching this in a sexist way - on the
contrary I have worked with excellent and poor colleagues of both sexes.

I think it diminishes the accomplishments of genuinely great minority/female
employees to have this policy.

I would prefer identity to be neutralized somehow during the hiring process.
The best person for the job, no matter your sex, colour, creed, disability.

~~~
rayiner
Except that’s not what we get right now. We have qualified women driven away
from the profession because of all the unwanted attention and hurdles that
come along wit being a minority at work.

In my profession (corporate law) we get a balanced gender distribution of
applicants at the entry level. But that’s because of aggressive efforts to
recruit women, as well as lawsuits, in the 1980s and 1990s, to counteract the
long history of discrimination (the field as 95% men in the 1960s). If people
back then hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be getting the “best person” today.
We’d be getting the subset of the best people who were willing to put up with
a highly gender skewed environment.

~~~
mrep
How do you guys recruit and how has that influenced the number of law school
graduates by gender assuming you are not a professor?

I see that woman now are the majority of law graduates [0] which I find
doubtful that it is attributable to corporate recruiting tactics.

[0]:
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/business/dealbook/wome...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/business/dealbook/women-
majority-of-us-law-students-first-time.html?referer=https://www.google.com/)

~~~
rayiner
At a higher-ranked law school, 80% of graduates will go into private practice,
about evenly split by gender. What the prospects are at the other end has a
big impact on the people coming in.

As to what law firms do—they do about the same thing any Big Corp. does, and
it works out at the entry level (at least as to gender) because the pool of
applicants is gender balanced. The more interesting question is how they got
there. There was a strong push in the 1980s and 1990s to simply hire more
women, to make up for the fact that the profession was 95% men due to past
discrimination. The whole industry did this, from law schools to law firms to
the judiciary.

And it ended up being largely self-perpetuating. While law still faces
challenges retaining more senior women, there is a critical mass (probably a
third of potential clients as well as judges are women) such that qualified
left-brained women aren’t turned away from the field because they don’t want
to put up with a 10:1 ratio.

Now you can debate about whether two wrongs make a right, but realize that’s a
different point than what I was replying to. If you’re in a highly gender-
skewed industry that hasn’t tackled the effects of past discrimination, you’re
not getting the best of the best. You’re limiting half your potential talant
pool to the subset of people who are willing to put up with the hassle of
being a minority in their field.

~~~
beingrealistic
why do you think the push to hire more women is the reason for the current
gender balance in law hiring rather than a simple increase in the number of
women choosing to pursue legal qualifications? there is a huge push to hire
more women in tech yet it has done little so far to change the balance. there
is certainly no hard barrier on women pursuing a tech career as there was for
women pursuing a career in corporate law before the 80s.

~~~
rayiner
There hasn’t been a huge push. What law firms did in the 1980s and 1990s was
basically decide “we’re going to hire an equal number of men and women.”
Eventually, women came to see law as a career women could pursue because there
were lots of women in the profession. There were other women to be mentors and
role models and friends. Eventually, the need for affirmative measures
evaporated.

Having done both, I just find it difficult to believe that substantive
preference (rather than the preference not to be in a single gender
environment) has anything to do with it. I’m surrounded by highly analytical
left brained women who dissect mortgage backed securities for a living. I
think they would’ve been great programmers. But the path to being a programmer
starts with being the only girl in your high school CS class, and that’s a
huge disincentive.

~~~
jnbiche
> There hasn’t been a huge push. What law firms did in the 1980s and 1990s was
> basically decide “we’re going to hire an equal number of men and women.”

If this is true, then there must have been a lot of women coming out of law
schools in the 1980s and 1990s. Otherwise, law firms in general could never
hire and equal number of men and women. It's statistically impossible.

Whereas there are only a very small percentage (<10%) of women now graduating
with CS and software engineering majors.

------
yomly
Something I have been mulling over lately is, how "progressiveness" encodes
bias in and of itself.

Let's reason out a (very naive and overly simplistic) thought experiment:

You are BigCo and want to promote diversity. Part of your cultural strategy is
nurture a culture that is "progressive". Therefore you implement a litmus test
behavioural question that implicitly tests the candidate's attitudes to sexism
as part of your hiring procedure.

Enter candidate A and candidate B, both are male.

Candidate A went to IvySchool and studied CS, candidate B grew up in
LEDCountry but was #1 national algorithms prize-winner.

Suppose A and B were identical in performance in every part of the interview,
save for the "progressive" litmus test. A gave a stellar answer, meanwhile B
gave some answer which could be described as being a bit "traditional".

Under these conditions, A would probably get the job for being a "culture-
fit".

What interests me though is that being able to speak the same "language" of
progressives is correlates with access to education, and access to education
is largely coupled to wealth. So here we have a system which is yet again
entrenching a power group of sorts, and extrapolating, I see echoes of the
institutions which churn out readymade bankers and lawyers.

Now this is all grossly oversimple, and I don't really have any solutions I
can propose, but I find the notion of bias in culture fit, even the
paradoxically "I am pro diversity" culture to be a curious idea.

~~~
err4nt
Any time a principle is applied to a culture at a specific point in time, when
you look back from an even better place the original improvement can look
barbaric.

An example: killing animals to eat them. In the ancient world I heard that it
was common to tie up an animal and cut off one limb at a time, keeping the
animal alive as long as possible to keep the rest of the meat 'fresh'. When
you got hungry, you would go hack off another limb, etc.

This means that the kosher laws that involved swiftly killing an animal before
eating any part of it actually reduced the animals suffering quite a bit. But
from our modern perspective where we have access to even more efficient
slaughterhouses, by our standards the kosher laws seem unnecessarily gory and
greusome.

In this case, the principle has remained the same over time: try to reduce the
animal's suffering and bring it a swift death…but when you compare how that
progressive principle gets applied into different cultures at different times,
you can have wildly different perspectives on how ethical the different
practices are.

~~~
yomly
Your anecdote is both valid and interesting, I suppose (having had a bit of
time to reflect on my post) what interests me is:

some measures to improve diversity and counter privilege will ironically
favour people who are privileged.

------
cik
I find the whole thing offense. I'm 'white'(ish coloured), I'm also half-
african, half-asian, due to geography, and I'm sick of the identity politics.
At the end of the day, I can be ~28th generation African, 28th generation
Asian, 100% white, and not meet a 'quota'.

Years ago, working with a US company going after 'Section 503' funding for
something, I was the randomly pulled auditee. The auditor freaked out at the
notion that I can be half-african, half-asian and white, and I refused to
'update my answer' on the government survey. Seriously.

What happened to the idea that in Tech we'd have a legitimate meritocracy. It
really doesn't matter what someone's skin tone, language, gender expression,
or sexual preference(s) are. We do work, we do work individually and
collectively, and we put our best into it. Anything else is simply
disingenuous.

/rant over.

------
heisnotanalien
What about if you are white working-class man? Is a middle-class black woman
less privileged than a white working-class man? What about short versus tall
people? What about beautiful versus ugly people? The halo effect is well-
known. The whole thing is just absurd and dehumanising.

~~~
mlevental
yes:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/10/white...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/10/white-
high-school-dropouts-are-wealthier-than-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates-
can-a-new-policy-tool-fix-that/?utm_term=.db15a22d5a09)

~~~
sol_remmy
> White high school dropouts are wealthier than Hispanic college graduates.

What I'm seeing is "people who have lived in America for a long time (European
heritage) are on average wealthier than people who arrived fairly recently
from third world countries (Hispanic heritage).

Why is that surprising? Why is that a problem?

~~~
mlevental
the article says absolutely nothing about immigration or third world
countries. whether the paper controls for generational wealth i don't know.

>Why is that surprising?

...it's not to me since i understand we live in a structurally racist society

>Why is that a problem?

...the op asks about "privilege" not whether it's problematic. inherited
wealth is most certainly privilege. i was only addressing that. there are many
good reasons why privilege of this sort is problematic that i will not
rehearse here (many smart people believe estate tax should be 100%; here is
the guardian on it
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/24/utopia...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/24/utopian-
thinking-fund-welfare-state-inheritance-tax)).

~~~
heisnotanalien
So people work hard all their life for their wealth (maybe they earned a lot
or maybe they were just frugal) and smart people think it is okay for the
state to take 100% of it away? And you think that's okay? I just can't get my
head around how anyone can think that's moral at all.

Oh yes, I see this is teh same Guardian writer that was defending Stalin so no
surprises really.

~~~
mlevental
>I just can't get my head around how anyone can think that's moral at all.

it's not rocket science: fair is value-system and ethics dependent. yes in a
certain value-system and ethics it is not fair to give people advantages they
didn't themselves earn. whether it's the right ethics/value-systems is up to
you as an individual and us as a society to decide.

really obvious example: weight classes in combat sports.

~~~
heisnotanalien
Well duh. That goes without saying.

------
sp527
I once had the ‘privilege’ of talking to one of the admissions directors at my
alma mater (an Ivy fwiw). An eminently qualified Asian candidate I had
interviewed was rejected (while an inferior Jewish-Cuban candidate from the
same school was accepted), I had quit the interview program out of disgust,
and my complaints were escalated up to this director.

Now this particular individual happened to be Asian himself. So am I. I
expected empathy. Here’s what I got instead: this director asked me to imagine
what a predominantly Asian campus would look and feel like. Is that a
university experience I would have appreciated?

I found this absolutely flabbergasting. This director had blown past the tacit
admission that a quotaless, merit-based system would result in a visibly
higher ratio of Asian students into outright stereotyping and borderline
racism.

Here’s the problem: people equate diversity with race and gender. They really
do. They’re not after real diversity. They want the outward presentation of
real diversity. Then no one can ask them difficult questions. No one is going
to ask them to prove that they’ve achieved true diversity on the basis of
character and intellectual bent.

------
projectramo
> In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Stafﬁng Management team was instructed
> by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software
> engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either
> female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-
> diverse employees from the hiring pipeline.

If this were remotely true, we wouldn't see any white men hired in a junior
level at the moment. Yet every year you see hundreds hired at that level.

~~~
gpm
> the manager of YouTube's Tech Staffing Management Team, Allison Alogna

So not all of Google, just junior engineers who came in via this manager. Also

> Google had a policy that recruiters were not to hire Level 3 ad Level 4
> Software Engineers. However, YouTube recruiters were given permission to
> hire Level 3 and Level 4 Software Engineers, if they were diversity hires.

and I've been told the general way to get hired at Google as a new graduate is
to apply to a general thing, and that you get placed somewhere in Google after
you get hired, so it's quite possible that most junior engineers even in
YouTube simply don't go through people working for this manager while getting
hired.

~~~
benmmurphy
There is a good chance if this was true it was just the result of a rogue
manager. You can imagine some managers might have incentives to increase
diversity, and there is also a policy of non-discrimination in hiring.
However, one of the easy ways to increase diversity to achieve your objectives
might be to engage in a discriminatory hiring policy. So it might be very
tempting for some managers to go rogue if they are not able to hit their
objectives using non-discriminatory methods.

------
wand3r
> In a statement, Google said that it would “vigorously defend this lawsuit,”
> adding that it has a “clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit,
> not their identity. At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a
> diverse pool of qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire
> the best people, improve our culture, and build better products.”

This sounds contradictory.

~~~
spunker540
It’s not. The idea is that when evaluating/interviewing an applicant it’s
strictly merit based. But when reaching out to potential candidates on
LinkedIn, choosing how to represent the company on campuses and at conferences
the company can choose to act in ways to bring in more underrepresented
applicants. So without changing their hiring standards, they can hopefully
still increase the diversity of the pool of applicants and in turn increase
diversity of the company. A lot of tech companies right now are adopting this
diversification strategy.

~~~
sol_remmy
That violates that "Equal Opportunity" clause if you exclusively reach out
only to certain groups

------
dep_b
You can't fix in hiring what's already broken before people even get to
college. I'm pretty sure Google's hiring disproportionally much women, black
people, gay people already if you would compare it to what's graduating from
the compsci careers in the US.

Google is making other companies probably even more exclusively white/asian
male because they tend to hire more of the women that do qualify for
programming jobs.

There are only two things you really can do: \- Fix the school system. But the
people that really call the shots in the US would call that communist because
you would have to raise taxes \- Train people from minority or disadvantaged
backgrounds yourself

If they really would care about diversity they could have Google schools in
prisons to educate the more motivated and promising inmates in the skills
Google requires.

~~~
GuiA
_> If they really would care about diversity they could have Google schools in
prisons to educate the more motivated and promising inmates in the skills
Google requires._

Precisely. Or sending recruiters to Mississippi/Alabama/Louisiana/etc to
identify brilliant 18 year olds who can’t go to college because of their
socio-economic situation, etc. One can come up with many other ways to
directly attack these problems.

But really, most at Google/FB/Apple/etc do not believe there is much of an
issue. They just want to appease the media by saying how much they care about
diversity, resulting in terribly misaligned incentives all over, resulting in
the kind of crazy situations the original linked article describes.

------
turc1656
_" Google said that it would “vigorously defend this lawsuit,” adding that it
has a “clear policy to hire candidates based on their merit, not their
identity. At the same time, we unapologetically try to find a diverse pool of
qualified candidates for open roles, as this helps us hire the best people,
improve our culture, and build better products."_

You'll notice that official statement from Google did not claim the
allegations were false nor that the events by the recruiter's manager did not
take place. Defending yourself vigorously doesn't mean you're not guilty.
Usually we see companies come right out and say that the claims are false.
Google didn't do that, I suspect, because this is almost certainly documented
in emails and formal communications. If this guy knew he was stirring the pot
and causing issues and making claims of illegal activity, I doubt he didn't
put at least _some_ of this in email to protect himself. I'm sure Google
performed a preliminary investigation once the lawsuit was filed and found
internal emails which clearly show this guy documenting what he was told to do
and his objection to it. Emails which the guy probably CC'ed or BCC'ed himself
on so that he would also have a record of some of it is probably
included/mentioned in the lawsuit when it was filed.

------
RandomCSGeek
One thing I never understand is how people claim to support both equality and
pro-minority/anti-majority actions at the same time. It's like saying you
support democracy and kim jong un.

~~~
dragonwriter
> One thing I never understand is how people claim to support both equality
> and pro-minority/anti-majority actions at the same time.

If you believe that the status quo is systematically biased, you cannot
meanignfully support equality without supporting action to correct the bias.

~~~
RandomCSGeek
There are two ways to nullify a problem. 1. Solve it 2. Create another problem
in equal magnitude and opposite direction.

Unfortunately, most countries/organisations seem to prefer second one, because
it's easier and shows effect earlier, although over long period of time, it's
going to be the worse one.

~~~
shimon
Do you believe it feasible for Google, or even a theoretical consortium of
powerful companies like Google, to solve the gender, race, and socioeconomic
inequalities in access to education and other resources that enable someone to
work at such companies?

If yes, how?

If no, do you think it's better for them to attempt to compensate in a way
that is feasible, or to do nothing?

~~~
RandomCSGeek
They should solve the problems, instead of hiding the symptoms. They need to
encourage women to enter tech field. This could be done at school level. They
could ensure that women don't face harrasement at work. They could help women
find jobs after a gap due to childbirth.

Find why women don't take admissions in STEM as much as men do. If there isn't
any human-made reason, then let it be. Don't force equal numbers down the
throat of deserving candidates.

What is currently going on in the world isn't going to solve the problem of
race/gender based problems.

~~~
shimon
I think all these suggestions could help. But it seems highly unlikely that a
single company (even a powerful one like Google) can categorically solve the
problem through these methods.

The reason I asked about your view of feasibility here is that you seem to be
arguing that Google (and others with diversity preference in hiring) are
making the wrong choice. But the alternatives you seem to favor are not a real
choice Google could execute. It's not like they thought about massively
altering the perception and delivery of STEM education to all kids, figured
out an effective affordable method to do that, and then just did diversity
hiring instead because the VP of HR felt like it.

You could certainly make the argument that there's a better choice they could
make, or that their apparent choices are doing more harm than good. But right
now you're comparing against an impossible straw-man so it's hard to take the
argument seriously.

------
burger_moon
It's interesting, in the time it took me to read through the comments this
went from #4 to #33. The discussion isn't crude or a flame war, so why does it
get flagged?

------
zerr
This happens in many companies. The response rate is much higher if you refuse
to specify the corresponding details in the application.

------
kraig911
When I started working in the late 90's I had worked for this old guy who now
looking back was way smarter than I caught on. He always said crotchety shit
like:

I'd ask hey lets put a job ad in the newspaper and he'd respond, " When you go
fishing for trout it's best to cast your line by a stream and not out in the
ocean."

I'd have a stack of resumes to contact and he once picked up half of them and
threw in the trash. He said "You don't want to work with unlucky people"

I wonder if Enterprise HR's cultures have gotten so PC that they're losing
sight on the companies needs. It'd be better to go to largely black
universities, or smaller colleges. Code quizzes and job fairs on college
campuses attract people who can afford to go. The kids I've helped largely
have families that need them outside of college, and jobs. Maybe an
internship/mentorship-hire program would be better fit than a top-down
candidate approach.

------
chippy
The lawsuit makes interesting reading:
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4391847-18-CIV-00442...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4391847-18-CIV-00442.html)

------
jameskegel
As with all extremes, the pendulum must return to its path, and soon we will
see a return to a meritocratic approach. Approaching the lack of diversity in
this industry from a hiring perspective is too late stage and short sighted-
the change should happen with education during childhood and teen years in
areas where there are concentrations of historically uninterested parties that
are uninterested due to a lack of mentorship availability.

I want to see after school programs being arranged, charter schools being
built, stipends for families who encourage this field of study, fair pay for
the teachers who are selected to offer to service to these areas,
extracurricular activities that focus on tech and following through with those
that show any modicum of interest potential.

The change begins at home, and it has nothing to do with race, it has to do
with opportunity to learn and the freedom to abstract your home life problems
and concerns long enough to make use of the education without the
preoccupation of where the next meal is or where you’ll sleep.

------
KeitIG
I strongly believe diversity should be solved when students declare their
major, and not by HR years later (though I have no idea "how" we could achieve
that.

If the workforce of a country in a certain is composed of 80% white male, then
having the same representation in your company is NOT wrong.

Hire people that are competent and with who you would enjoy working with.
That's it.

------
killjoywashere
No less a bastion of conservative lust than the US Military actively pursues
diversity in promotion and selection processes. While it makes my own life a
little harder, I can't disagree with the motivation. And, quite frankly, it's
not the minorities internally pushing this. It's saltine-white leadership
over-ruling minorities in management positions and demanding they find even
the most marginally qualified minority candidates. I have heard a senior black
woman say "I can't in good conscience recommend any of the available
candidates" only to hear the senior member say "I totally understand, but the
slate as it stands is completely white. I, the institution, cannot accept
that. This will face public scrutiny. Of the options, who's the most
qualified? Of the white slate, who can we most easily replace?"

------
thegreatcosmo
It looks like the dam is breaking on lawsuits against Google.

Google will not settle, it will attract the worst kinds of lawyers, unless
discovery for them is worse.

------
adomanico
Those screenshots are damning. Enforced equity is not the answer to these
problems.

------
gigatexal
There has to be a way to use tech to anonymize vetting and hiring until the
hired candidate shows up for work the next day. Phone interviews could be
handled in such a way that gender can’t be determined say by using voice
scramblers. Whiteboarding can be done in separate rooms with a digital
whiteboard that evaluators see and where the candidate can ask questions but
not be seen. Etc etc. or, or, people could stop being biased which as you get
more educated you become less racist and biased and sexist I thought.

~~~
chrisseaton
Unless you are fresh from an undergraduate degree, the thing people care about
is what you have shown you can actually do in the industry. And showing what
you can do will in most cases instantly identify who you are.

As soon as I say what projects I've worked on or what my skills are anyone
recruiting me will know exactly who I am.

How do you get around that?

~~~
gigatexal
“Built micro services that served millions of api calls per second in golang”
how is that self identifiable?

~~~
chrisseaton
But how are you going to use something as bland and generic like that to
differentiate your applicants?

You've got twenty applicants, and they've all built a production API using Go
or some equivalent language and they used some design pattern like micro-
services or something else. Now what?

Plus in my field even something as generic as that would identify me.

~~~
gigatexal
I still fail to see how that generic tagline (albeit admittedly bad for a
resume) is self identifiable. What industry are you in that is so small that
one could find you from that?

------
nell
My request to the courageous recruiter: please don't settle.

------
pmarreck
The fact that affirmative-action policies of any kind are technically
discriminatory but legally ethical continues to confuse people

------
wyck
There's more than a few very large tech companies that have let politics and
emotions take over from innovation and excellence. It's opened the door to
mass demotivation because people know inherently what is fake and posturing
over what is real, creative, and interesting.

------
doktrin
In my opinion, and only my opinion :

Google has for a while been toxic to the technology ecosystem. I don't think
their halo is deserved, certainly not on the basis of the "free" trinkets they
release to the public (like, say, Kubernetes). More often than not they are
corrosive to innovation, and I don't take them at their word when they swear
that your/mine/everybody's data is safe in their hands.

It comes as no major surprise that their actual workplace is as toxic as their
role in the market, even with all the creature comforts they dangle in front
of their employee.

------
mc32
I think, or hope, one day we'll come to realize the only fair way to do any
sort of affirmative action is by evaluating on economics, after ability.

That's to say the objective is not to hire underrepresented groups based on
loose ethnic lines, but rather on their circumstance in life, all other
meaningful qualifications being equal and lawful.

That said, regarding women, that's a special case where we want to improve
things at the input side, get pupils when young excited so that one day they
may find it's what they want to do to contribute to our society.

------
southphillyman
Companies should clearly articulate how diversity programs work. It seems like
people don't understand that diversity outreach programs don't create an
advantage for minorities, instead they level the playing field as once closed
pipelines get opened/discovered.

I fear that all this recent news about diversity and Google will create an
environment where perfectly qualified non Asian minorities won't feel welcomed
or will unfairly have their competency questioned.

~~~
viridian
Isn't this allegation an exact counterpoint to what you are saying? Throwing
out the resumes of everyone who isn't hispanic, black, or female seems to be
creating an advantage.

~~~
southphillyman
This specific allegation seems like "reverse discrimination" sure. But as of
right now it's just a one sided allegation presented in a lawsuit. I'll be
interested in seeing what the evidence bears out.

I have intimate knowledge of the workings of diversity programs at some of the
FAANG and big 4 consultancy companies and none of them involve purging white
male applicants. Do postmortems occur when the diversity goals aren't met?
Well sure, it IS a targeted diversity program after all. Sourcing initiatives
have no bearing on whether a candidate meets a manager's hiring bar or not.

------
sol_remmy
For an ongoing discussion of this topic see:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/81aw5u/google_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/81aw5u/google_accused_in_lawsuit_of_excluding_white_and/)

------
muddi900
ITT: all top comments about how HN censors their viewpoint, with no sense of
irony.

Literally every thread on a topic like this is a bunch of Conservative martyrs
bleeding all over page.

------
enknamel
Well the top of the funnel (your applicant pool) is like 90% asian or white
men. If you want a 50/50 workforce you MUST be super discriminatory.

------
rvo
And it's removed from the front page ...

------
cletus
This is such a minefield of an issue that I don't envy anyone who has to deal
with it. For one, it seems almost impossible to have a rational debate about
the issue of diversity because there are some pretty strongly held views on
both sides of this.

So just some general observations with an explicit disclaimer that I know
nothing that directly relates to this case.

1\. I'm personally a little skeptical about a flurry of lawsuits like this.
Lawsuits can be a little... opportunistic. I mean this in the sense that
they're somewhat predatory and there's a tendency to "pile on" when the other
side has a vulnerability. This isn't to say that this or any other given case
doesn't have merit. It's just that a flurry tends to raise the chance that any
one case of spurious.

2\. US CS graduates are still predominantly white males [1] [2]. Obviously
there are also graduates outside the US. I'm not sure on numbers on those but
it's hard to come up with a reasonable estimation given the fact that a)
employment in tech is predominantly US-centric and b) visa quotas in the US
artificially limit the number of non-US people you can hire.

3\. The graduate figures are important for those who take the so-called
pipeline view of workforce diversity, namely that if 20% of graduates in a
given field are women then you can't really expect more than 20% of your
workforce to be women. This is not a universally agreed principle where some
argue you can and should do better than this;

4\. Doing better than this seems like nothing more than local vs global
optimization. For example, I've known different companies to mandate diversity
targets from the executive level and some orgs will deal with this by simply
hiring underrepresented groups from other parts of the same company in a
classic "robbing Peter to pay Paul" type scenario. It's hard to argue that
this does anything more than make some manager or director's numbers look good
and nothing more.

5\. Other commenters have argued that favouring underrepresented groups is
illegal. IANAL but the case law on this in the US isn't so clear. Just look at
SCOTUS's rulings on affirmative action eg [3].

6\. While some hold the view that you can't discriminate in favour of one
group you are by definition discriminating against others. This is both
strictly true and too simplistic a view. Specifically, others will argue that
you need such "positive discrimination" to correct against bias and historical
imbalance.

7\. Elements of the majority arguing that there is bias against them isn't of
course limited to tech eg [4] [5].

8\. One wonders, in situations like this one, that (if true) whether
management's instructions (mentioned in the complaint) were a response to an
executive edict to increase diversity numbers.

9\. Pipeline issues aside, it's worth considering internal long-term diversity
trends within a company and within different parts of the company. For
example, let's say 25% new hires are women, after 1, 2, 3, 5 or 10 years how
does that figure change? Does it stay constant or go up or down? If it goes
down, why? This may hint at cultural issues worth addressing.

10\. Being an engineer and having worked with lots of engineers I think I can
fairly safely say that engineers (IME), as a group, are more socially awkward
than the general population. This alone may well be a significant factor in
long-term retention of a more diverse workforce.

[1] [https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-
computer-...](https://www.computerscience.org/resources/women-in-computer-
science/)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/upshot/dont-blame-
recruit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/upshot/dont-blame-recruiting-
pipeline-for-lack-of-diversity-in-tech.html)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger)

[4]
[https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/07...](https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/07/look-
data-and-arguments-about-asian-americans-and-admissions-elite)

[5] [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-
di...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-
discriminating-against-jews-2014-12)

------
plebian79878
I am a female engineer. All of this is so frustrating because whether what
Google is doing is right or wrong (and I do have opinions on that to come)
about how they are going about this, regardless, this kind of media buzz
belittles the general view of value add of female engineers like me.

I work really hard, and I don't want to be given extra breaks, or have the bar
lowered. I would rather fail an interview (and I have) than be given a boost
in the process.

That being said, one thign that annoys me about the media scrutinizing tech
companies like this, is that the MEDIA themselves is one of the most
masogogynistic cultures out there, with the most widespread global impact on
the perception of male and female roles in society, yet they have the audacity
to scrutinize industries who have done far more for society, pumped far more
into education programs for just females, both males and females, science
fairs etc and provided more opportunities to open the playing field than
anyone else.

I went to an engineering school as an Electrical Engineer with a minor in
Computer Science and my department was 5% female is f that, despite my school
bragging 30% of our school was female. Yeh right, 90% of those girls were
management majors, the rest of us were sparsely strewn across the engineering
majors.

------
plebian79878
I am a female engineer. All of this is so frustrating because whether what
Google is doing is right or wrong (and I do have opinions on that to come)
about how they are going about this, regardless, this kind of media buzz
belittles the general view of value add of female engineers like me.

I work really hard, and I don't want to be given extra breaks, or have the bar
lowered. I would rather fail an interview (and I have) than be given a boost
in the process.

That being said, one thign that annoys me about the media scrutinizing tech
companies like this, is that the MEDIA themselves is one of the most
masogogynistic cultures out there, with the most widespread global impact on
the perception of male and female roles in society, yet they have the audacity
to scrutinize industries who have done far more for society, pumped far more
into education programs for just females, both males and females, science
fairs etc and provided more opportunities to open the playing field than
anyone else.

I went to an engineering school as an Electrical Engineer with a minor in
Computer Science and my department was 5% female is f that, despite my school
bragging 30% of our school was female. Yeh right, 90% of those girls were
management majors, the rest of us were sparsely strewn across the engineering
majors.

I have worked in male dominated environments my entire career and at the age
of 27, I am and almost always have been the youngest in upper level management
meetings in addition to being the only girl.

What I can tell you is this, and i have talked to many female and male
engineers working on east coast, west coast, multiple countries in Europe,
India and Asia including Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and many other places in
China.

The issue is this. Yes (disclaimer) everyone needs to take responsibility for
their own success, companies included, but this is really about society, and
the tech companies are at the end of the pipeline of a girls life before she
hits her career, the end of a pipeline of 21 grueling years of social
conditioning, and the tech companies inherit the results of our heavily biased
society.

And I would also like to add, WOMEN DO ADD TO THIS PROBLEM. I've seen more
MOTHERS steer their daughters away from STEM to engage in socialite activities
and trophy wife conditioning and I've seen MORE WOMEN than men making fun of
girls for being "weird" (weird in America means, oh my gosh that girl does all
of her homework and prioritizes her school and career over boyfriend. O. M.
G.)

to put it best, someone I know who has worked at 2/3 big three companies on
both coasts and in Europe, as well as other people I know, men I respect, work
with, men who have daughters they teach to code and want to raise to be strong
independentm, smart respectable women, have said this "The western culture is
very limiting to women. What women need to do to do more in STEM is stay at
home, play with things on their computer and break things. Women are not
encouraged to stay at home and be introverted and curious"

I agree, women are taught to waste their money and time being politically
polite, politically correct and wasting money on clothes and makeup to seem
desireable.

If you don't believe me just leave your home and go to any store, gas station,
grocery store, clothing store, anywhere basically where other humans reside
and you will see this conditioning all around you.

This is not the fault of tech companies, yet the media, the very people
propogating this disgusting excuse for equality (spoken from the microphones
of women who are airbrushed in pencil skirts with perfect hair) is asking tech
companies to fix all of the root of societies problems with women and equality
because they found a statistic the liberal media (I'm a liberal myself, but
I'm also capable of scrutinizing my own party, you know why? Because I'm not
in a cult.) and its just not going to happen.

Tech companies are an easy finger to point to.

YES, beleive me, I have lots of rants about the companies I have worked for,
but I can tell you this issue did not start at these companies. They should
take on more responsibility to stop it.

However, to believe that these issues begin and end with tech companies, and
that tech companies can make their portfolios equal in 5 years with some
stretch recruiting goals is unreasonable at best, but the media is pressuring
them to do that.

I would LOVE to see this same scrutiny go to the finance industry, which is
WORSE than tech and WAY worse when it comes to how they treat women, but
finance and media are all snuggled up together in NYC so they are pointing at
their biggest industry threat, which is tech.

Thats what really going on in my opinion.

~~~
HelloNurse
What good are these discriminatory efforts to hire "diverse" people? They are
essentially programs to hire technically mediocre people; even the most
_actually_ progressive employer is going to think "maybe this woman chose
Google because she couldn't be hired on merit elsewhere".

------
chapill
Plausible deniabilty. Google will claim the illegal activity was due to the
management of the recruitment company and not direct orders. And ARS puts
illegal in scare quotes. Shameful.

~~~
shaki-dora
The lawsuit insists on putting _diversity_ in scare-quotes, so I guess fair’s
fair?

~~~
chapill
I would assume a legal filing would call it what it is: illegal
discrimination. I don't trust ARS to get these things right.

