
Diversity and Inclusion at GitHub - ahhrrr
https://github.com/blog/2176-diversity-and-inclusion-at-github
======
guessmyname
This blog post reads to me like the Pokemon motto "Gotta Catch 'Em All".

Being non-american (I'm from a South American country) it is hard for me to
understand the importance giving to these things associated to racism and
sexism. The United States is the only place I have seen where people invest a
considerable amount of time and resources just to put people from minor groups
or specific genders in pedestals just to please other people. You will
(probably) never see such thing in Latin American because no one cares why
color your skin is or what gender you identify with in order to get a specific
job.

Why do they care if there are no "Black/African-American" in their company? Or
that 10% are black women? Or that 35% of women are in a leadership role? Like
who cares? Are their roles assigned based on their gender and/or skin color?

Jesus, even my European co-workers make fun of Americans for these things. Let
people build their career based on how they work and not their ethnicity nor
gender, otherwise you will be incentivizing more racism and more sexism.

~~~
danudey
Europe doesn't have the sort of ingrained racism that exists in the United
States. For example:

> Despite similar rates of drug use, black people are nearly four times as
> likely to be arrested for marijuana use,⁴ and black males are often given
> longer sentences for crimes than their white peers.⁵

[ from [https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration-
ff73...](https://medium.com/@dan_nott/what-is-mass-incarceration-ff737196580)
]

Likewise, women tend to make significantly less money for doing the same work,
in the same positions, at the same company, because of (largely) subconscious
biases.

So called 'affirmative action' movements and diversity pledges are a direct
response to the acknowledgement of our unconscious biases. If you know that
you're 20% more likely to judge a candidate as unfit just because of the
colour of their skin or the sound of their name, then that means that, over
time, you're losing out on a lot of talented candidates.

Likewise, if you're less likely to fairly evaluate a woman's performance or
contributions, then you're going to promote talent to positions of leadership
or management less often, meaning you're not going to put your best people in
those positions.

Lastly, diversity is important. You don't get anywhere by looking at only one
viewpoint. Look at the state of American media right now: you have tons of
content on Fox News that repeats the same few lines as facts, and they've all
convinced themselves that it's true because they hear it everywhere. With that
environment, why would anyone consider a different fact? When you're
surrounded by people who have the same experiences with you, the same
viewpoints as you, the same background as you, the same friends as you, you're
never going to learn _anything_.

It's when we surround ourselves with people different to us that we grow and
learn. We start to see things from other points of view, we learn about new
experiences that we didn't have growing up. We create new collaborations that
build on our different backgrounds to produce something that feels new, and
not just a retreading of existing works.

In other words, the reason for forcing diversity is to both counter our own
(and others') conscious and subconscious biases, as well as to ensure that
you're exposing people to as many new and differing viewpoints as possible
(and, in turn, taking those viewpoints seriously), so that you have more
resources to build from, which makes for a more robust environment.

~~~
yarper
> Likewise, women tend to make significantly less money for doing the same
> work, in the same positions, at the same company, because of (largely)
> subconscious biases.

I see this everywhere, and yet no citations (and when asked, I usually get
referred to someones blog - not from a respected scientist completely
unaffiliated with the feminist movement). Either that or I get linked to 4 or
5 default papers which have little reference to the claim.

People need to accept that bold statements like this are absolutely not
excluded from burden of proof - and what's more if you live in the UK (I
expect much of Europe) it's time to speak up, it's illegal to pay less based
on gender.

The usual problem with this is, that the actual fact is that women earn less
than men on average. That's kind of a crazy comparison - software developers
earn less on average to CEOs, on average sewage workers earn less than those
in hedge funds and so on.

It assumes fairly boldly that women and men operate in equal proportions in
every industry (which is false).

In another note, just by writing this I'm opening myself to someone telling me
to check my privilege, which is a codified way to tell me as a white male
there's some secret sauce I can't possibly know about (so should be quiet on
the issue). The deepest irony is that this behaviour is exactly what the
movement was designed to disassemble.

~~~
pessimizer
I'm going to tell you to check your privilege, which is a codified way of
telling you that if you were really concerned about whether there was a gender
pay gap, you'd look for the research yourself instead of waiting for somebody
to hand it to you. If you were either familiar with the existing research and
saw flaws in it, or were familiar with better evidence that contradicted the
accepted wisdom, your statements about the burden of proof would be a lot more
interesting and sound a lot less like whining.

It's not the world's duty to convince you of anything. I'm not even going to
refer you to a blog - go to scholar.google.com and search for "gender pay
gap." Follow the citations. You should also do that if you're not sure if
racism exists, or if other planets exist. Then instead of trying to one-up
people on message boards when they won't do your research for you, you can
lead in whatever direction your research takes you.

Also, nobody knows you're a white male on the internet until you broadcast it.

~~~
ManlyBread
>if you were really concerned about whether there was a gender pay gap, you'd
look for the research yourself instead of waiting for somebody to hand it to
you.

Are you seriously expecting people to fact-check every single broad statement
they come across and then come to the exact same conclusions you did?

>It's not the world's duty to convince you of anything.

It's not my duty to find arguments supporting your cause. The gender pay gap
is a myth anyway. I'm not going to tell you why - go to scholar.google.com and
search for "gender pay gap myth debunked." Follow the citations. You should
also do that if you're not sure if racism exists, or if other planets exist.
Then instead of trying to one-up people on message boards when they won't do
your research for you, you can lead in whatever direction your research takes
you.

------
johnnyg
"There are no Black/African-American GitHubbers in management positions, which
is unacceptable."

It is only unacceptable if people with the skills to be in management
positions didn't get a promotion because of a non-relevant personal attribute.

Otherwise, it is acceptable and in the best long term interests of the
company.

I acknowledge that America has equality of opportunity problems. There are
strong and just historical reasons why the government has carried the torch on
this issue. However, I think its time to let the market work. Companies that
place talent above non-relevant personal attributes are at a competitive
advantage as they are drawing from a larger talent pool. Letting that market
run on a long enough time line means that companies who discriminate will grow
weaker, as well they should.

Github has come out and said "we're going to make sure that we meet target
quotas for people of X, Y and Z non-relevant personal attributes." I think
that's bad business and not the equality we need to be going for.

If you have the skill set, drive and integrity to be a strong contributor to a
team, I want to work with you and make wealth with you. If you don't, I don't
want to work with you - go get educated, build skills and try again or if I'm
wrong about you, prove it by out competing me. This is equality of opportunity
and of ideas. What Github is doing isn't, nor does it get us closer to what
the idea of America promises us all.

I think that providing the resources to build skills to those whose parents
didn't or couldn't provide them is a great idea.

I think shaking up our education system (because the numbers show that
investing doesn't produce better results) is a great idea.

I want to be fellow citizens with educated, driven people who are so in part
because society ensured it'd happen.

Lets not go too far or go in the wrong direction.

~~~
drhayes9
I think GH is starting from the point of "the distribution of our employees
doesn't line up with the larger population of the country we operate in". If
you think each of those groups of people has the potential to be as talented
as any other, then why is there a discrepancy? I think they're saying, "We
don't think the market is working." There are hidden biases at work.

For example, people with "non-white sounding" names don't get hired at the
same rate as those with "white sounding" names when they have the same
skillset.
[http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html)

I think these biases operate at a low level, below most of our understanding.
I like that GH is having this conversation in the open and working to rid
themselves of these biases as much as possible.

To me, this is all relevant socioeconomic data. Why not look at the
distribution of gender, race, sexuality, religion, etc, in your workplace? If
there's a discrepancy, why not figure out what the root cause is? Given the
starting point of "all these groups of people have the same capacity for
talent and skill", why is the distribution skewed? What does it hurt to ask?

~~~
wskinner
GitHub is focusing on the very bottom of the funnel. They are noticing the
distribution of their employees doesn't match that of the larger population,
then attempting to make it match. But what if the reason their company
distribution doesn't match up is that the distribution of people with the
requisite skills doesn't match up? They are trying to treat the symptoms of a
supposed problem rather than the ailment itself, and putting themselves at a
competitive disadvantage by doing so.

Affirmative action doesn't work, except for the short-term career prospects of
those individuals lucky enough to profit from it, and the virtue-signalers who
propose it.

~~~
phasmantistes
This is just the pipeline argument. And while there are very real aspects to
the pipeline -- yes, women and minorities drop out of the tech industry in
early education, late education, and on the job -- the problem with the
argument is that it attempts to absolve blame.

GitHub is not at the "bottom of the funnel". They're in the middle: people who
work there today may go on to wildly successful careers elsewhere. And people
who have bad experiences there may _not._

So please don't make the pipeline argument. Just because other earlier stages
have failed to be welcoming to minorities doesn't mean GitHub shouldn't try,
and just because GitHub is a corporate employer doesn't mean their employees
aren't still living developing human beings.

------
twunacceptable
"There are no Black/African-American GitHubbers in management positions, which
is unacceptable."

Why is it unacceptable? Just by virtue of the number of different kinds of
people -- race, gender, etc there's no way to have 'one of each' for every
position for maximum diversity. This sort of thing is so creepy because it
treats people like collectible figures ("Oh yeah? Well I added a black
transgendered person to our team today! I have way more diversity points than
you!") instead of actual people you judge on their merits. How is a white
person supposed to feel about applying to Github management position after
reading "Its unacceptable we don't have a black manager"?

I'm not white and I don't want to be treated as some statistic you can show
off on your diversity report card. Thats really demeaning and insulting.

~~~
cjbprime
Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far
below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US,
indicating a probable bias in their hiring, retention or promotion pipelines
that they're announcing they find concerning.

You're making it about individuals, not GitHub. They're comparing statistics.

~~~
Pyxl101
> Because the percentage of black GitHubbers in management positions is far
> below e.g. the percentage of e.g. black people with CS degrees in the US

Where's the data for this? Often people talk about these things as
assumptions, but I've never seen credible data. Can you share a source?

Furthermore, even the comparison that you mentioned is not accurate. It should
start from a funnel like: "the number of qualified black applicants to GitHub
with CS degrees", or something along those lines. GitHub can't hire people
that don't apply.

~~~
ascendingPig
Starting from only the people who apply gives a free pass to biased
recruitment.

~~~
GunboatDiplomat
What, you want them to go kidnap black people and force them to apply?

~~~
jacalata
So you don't think it's a problem if their ads say "whites only"? Or if they
only advertise to white people? Or are you thinking "nobody would say whites
only" and just totally unaware of the many ways that language and targeting
can affect who applies to a job, sometimes skewing the pool of applicants in
unintended ways? A nice, nobody-meant-it way to bias your candidate pool: only
hire people who know an existing employee. White Americans mostly know white
Americans.

------
brbsix
Ever since Zach Holman "left", it appears as though GitHub has been eaten away
from the inside by intersectional feminism. There appear to be subversive
efforts to turn tech companies into platforms for social justice. I can only
imagine it must be really uncomfortable to work in this sort of environment.

~~~
djtriptych
Slightly less comfortable for the most-privileged people on earth; probably
more comfortable for everyone else.

cf. Every other American industry's initial foray into diversity.

~~~
dijit
Oh, it's fine that it's racist, because I as a white male have it so good?

Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't buy,
it's not a ticket to middle-class.

Being cis doesn't make me any more worse at my job than being gay would, don't
judge me on that merit it's bullshit.

FWIW I grew up incredibly poor and my "advantage" in IT was that people don't
care about your background. If I had wanted to be a lawyer or doctor I would
bet my life that I would have failed. Tech is definitely inclusive as hell by
default and making it less so is rather stupid.

If there are people who are actively stopping women in tech or downplaying
them then those people are at fault, I would argue _as_ at fault as a company
that wont interview me based on my skin colour or gender.

~~~
balls187
> Seems odd to me mate, there are things that being white certainly doesn't
> buy, it's not a ticket to middle-class.

Perhaps not.

But there are things that being white does grant you:

1\. Police won't hassle you for driving a nice car.

2\. Police won't hassle you for walking in a nice neighborhood.

3\. People won't report you as "suspicious looking" for wearing a hoodie and
walking in a neighborhood.

4\. Police won't be as likely to use force to resolve a situation.

5\. People will be less likely to have negative assumptions about your career,
your intelligence, and your capabilities.

//

Being white is not a ticket to success, but it's not a hindrance either.
That's the difference.

~~~
Futurebot
Exactly. This is a frequently misunderstood set of points. Having non-economic
privileges does not automatically make you wealthy or even non-poor, and it
doesn't automatically give you the best jobs or even any job. Some non-econ
privileges are also relative not just to each other, but to each other in a
geographic sense (skin color privilege helps you a lot more in Atlanta than in
a town in Appalachia, for example.)

What it can do, for example, is help keep you from getting shot by the police
on the way to your interview.

~~~
balls187
> Having non-economic privileges

I can't stand referring to my comment as "white privilege." It's just another
way to discount a person simply because of their race.

Being white is like starting a race at the starting line. Being black can be
like starting that same race 10 feet back.

Starting at the starting line, _isn 't_ a privilege--it's just how a race
should be, in order to be fair for everyone participating.

What it also means is that being black means you just have to run faster to
win.

> What it can do, for example, is help keep you from getting shot by the
> police on the way to your interview.

Which we should solve the problem, not badger whites to feel guilty by calling
it a privilege.

~~~
mmel
Saying that someone is suffering from "black hinderance" sounds even more
terrible.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
Maybe it sounds more terrible but it accurately describes the problem. You
shouldn't be guilt tripping white people, you should be encouraging black
people to perform better. "White privilege" falls into a mentality that I call
victimization, where instead of people looking at things through the lens of
"how can I change myself and be better", they look at it through the lens of
"how can others change themselves to help me be better". You need both
mentalities for things to work out but there's a heavy focus on the second
one, because it's a lot easier and more convenient.

~~~
jmcgough
> You shouldn't be guilt tripping white people, you should be encouraging
> black people to perform better.

White people are the ones in power in this country. You can't just expect
people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, because it'll never happen
unless the people in power put in effort to change the status quo, which is
exactly what some tech companies are trying to do.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
Like I said, I think both mentalities are necessary but there's a heavy focus
on the wrong thing. The message it sends to people is wrong. The signal is
that there are systemic problems that can't be changed because people in power
are guilty of having power. This is a hopeless signal that doesn't help
anyone. What we should be saying to people is that they should strive to be
better because that's the only sure way they can hope to improve their
situations. Waiting for other people to help you isn't going to do anything.
The only thing you have control over is your own life. If the public discourse
around these issues focuses solely on how other people have control and how
you have no control, then the situation only becomes worse because then people
have an excuse to not try, and they don't.

------
alva
I expect this is a well intentioned mission. But to what extent do you take
this? Does not making sure other (less in the zeitgeist) groups are involved
mean they are failing at this?

Hasidic Jews, Inuits, Wheelchair users, Men named Reginald, A person with a
southern drawl, a person with one hand, a person with no hands, a 45 year old.

Quick googling suggests Jews make up 1.4% of the US population. You can't
really pull out the privilege card on them before anyone tries it. This is far
higher than the estimates of transexual people. Are GitHub anti-semitic? Why
do they hate Jews so much that they refuse to include them in diversity
reports? Do they not care for their struggle? Why is it important to stress
the number of transexual people they hire over the number of Jews they hire?

It is a race to the bottom.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
You're making a false equivocation between arbitrary demographic "groups" and
demographic groups that have faced well documented systemic discrimination in
America, both historically and continuing in the present.

And to preempt a counterargument via your chosen example, yes, you could argue
Jews have and do face discrimination in America - but garden variety American
anti-semitism is not of the systemic, historical nature that makes a random
Jewish American more likely to be passed over for a job because of their name,
or treated drastically differently by the average police officer, or less
likely to have become engaged in tech earlier in life, etc.

~~~
alva
> but garden variety American anti-semitism is not of the systemic, historical
> nature that makes a random Jewish American more likely to be passed over for
> a job because of their name, or treated drastically differently by the
> average police officer, or less likely to have become engaged in tech
> earlier in life.

Many people would find that highly offensive and ignorant. Why are you trying
to diminish the struggles faced by the Jewish people in America? Why are you
trying to defend a now well known anti-semitic organisation Github?? Your
hateful statements are dangerous and violent. (Oh, away from my posturing as
an online hate-mob, you are completely incorrect in that statement)

This game is very, very easy to play, but unfortunately, everyone loses.

Lets go on. You are saying wheelchair users, disabled people have not faced a
large amount of societal discrimination that can affect their job chances?
Don't you know how many public buildings and spaces aren't accessible? I
cannot believe how ableist you are. Does your employer know of your hateful,
bigoted views? Do your colleagues?

The problem with presenting the argument that the workplace and other groups
need to be representative of wider culture, is that it will always run into
this issue. If you say, discriminated groups need to be represented, and
present it as a tautology, then you cannot decide which trendy group of the
moment is more important.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
But you're still making the same false equivocation. A "large amount of
societal discrimination" ≠ institutional racism. It's a subtle distinction,
but once you grasp it you can see the need for affirmative action and
understand that it's not just about helping certain groups deemed "trendy".

------
dijit
every time I hear about "inclusive" practices at github it makes me grimace,
not because it's not a good idea. Diversity is good. But because it's rather
racist, partially sexist and it's increasingly the norm to be this way.

Equal opportunity, not outcome, if 4% of your applicants are British, but do
not pass because of technical reasons. (I'm using British because I am one,
replace with $minority), then why should I hire them? Ideally we'd interview
blind and whoever is the best tech, is the best. I'm not sure why this isn't
possible in our technology culture, do you really need to be face to face with
a person to assess their technical merits and ensure they are the right fit
for a company.

But, anyway, to me this stuff is exclusionary, I am apparently cursed to be a
white male in tech, and as a majority I now have to work much harder for SV to
acknowledge me for my merits, I am of the firm belief that if I were a black
lady I would have enough support to prop me up above my current experienced
position in no time. I'd love to test this theory honestly.

And anyway, who cares who delivers github/facebook/$website at the end of the
day, hire who you think will do the job, nobody is going to feel excluded from
the services you provide because you didn't meet your quota of transgender
people.. and if they were, you could very easily mislead them.

 __edit: __I know it 's against etiquette to mention downvotes, but if you
must downvote me please reply stating why. That is also against etiquette.

------
pwim
Previously I thought hiring diversity for diversity's sake didn't make sense,
and hiring should be based solely on "merit". After all, as a company, you
want to hire the best people.

However, since then, I have found there is research that indicates diverse
groups can be more advantageous than homogenous groups of highly talented
people [1], [2]. So from this perspective, striving for diversity makes
economic sense.

[1]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full)

[2] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-
make...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-
smarter/)

~~~
ASpring
I'm glad someone is making this point. Here is a concise summary pdf from
NCWIT.

[https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactge...](https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactgenderdiversitytechbusinessperformance_print.pdf)

------
jchiu1106
In NBA, 74% players are Blacks while Asians are at 0.2%. Maybe some SJWs
should lobby to get NBA "reflect more the demographics of the society"???

If you haven't figured out already, I was being sarcastic. This just shows how
ridiculous and superficial this whole trend is.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA)

~~~
Gigablah
You jest, but discrimination in the NBA is a real issue:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvaM0pMj-8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvaM0pMj-8o)

------
t0mbstone
Amidst the forest of diversity demographics, I found this little tidbit:

"We have a flexible paid time-off policy and our maternity/paternity leave
policies exceed the tech industry’s norm. In addition, our policies do not
differentiate between maternity or paternity leave."

Now THAT is cool. I really wish more companies did that. When my wife had a
c-section with our son, she got 6 weeks off of work. I got nothing.

~~~
dijit
Come to Sweden, Paternity leave and Maternity leave are basically tied up into
a shared "Parental" leave, a couple of new parents get upwards of 400+ paid
days between themselves to divvy up as they see fit.

Source: my colleague just had a child and I have to do all his work as well as
my own now :( (not salty, glad we have this!)

------
BurningFrog
How many republicans work at GitHub? How many evangelical christians? How do
these numbers compare to the distribution in the larger population of the
country?

~~~
jshevek
I'm outraged that github has not reported these numbers. What are they hiding?

------
jbob2000
I wish so much that I could be picky about my hiring like GitHub. I wish I
could have so many qualified candidates applying that I am able to create a
diverse team. But I put out job ads and get like 2 qualified responses.

How the hell are they able to find all these candidates such that they can
start being picky about who they hire???

Maybe Toronto just sucks for tech talent... Argh...

~~~
MustardTiger
>But I put out job ads and get like 2 qualified responses.

And 200 completely unqualified ones. It is crazy how many people apply for
jobs they have absolutely no qualifications for.

~~~
sotojuan
Anyone can apply to a programming job—it's not like you need formal education
like lawyers or doctors.

~~~
MustardTiger
Yes, but I would have hoped people would have the common sense to only apply
if they know how to program. I don't even mean this in the sense of "you
aren't good enough", I mean people who literally have no idea what programming
is. People who rate their winzip using skills on their resume as part of their
"computer experience".

------
powertower
To me every example of diversity basically has been the concept that "there
are too many white people in the room." And to a smaller degree that "there
are too many straight men...".

I've never seen this applied to non-whites, at least not to this degree. In
fact, 100% black-demographic teams (or businesses or organisations) are
oftentimes praised for being "authentically black".

IMO, the way I see it is once a productive homogeneous group (which by
definition is composed of members that are able to agree with each other and
engage in actual progress rather than in-fighting) puts in the effort and
spends the time building the infrastructure/business/etc and makes it
successful - then other groups see this as an opportunity to get something out
of it... "Diversity for the sake of diversity" only comes in at the end, never
at the beginning.

It is also odd that when someone says diversity is our strength, they never
really share the actual details of that strength.

To me this is a turning point for a company that goes from being work oriented
to becoming a race/gender oriented cesspool where everything is about your
color, genitalia, and gender.

~~~
djtriptych
So you would bet there is no bias in extant hiring practices? How do you know?

~~~
spriggan3
You're answering literally every comment on this thread, with this "passive
aggressive" tone that will do nothing but derail the conservation. That's the
definition of a troll. Why don't you make a point of your own instead?

------
jpeg_hero
> At a high level, GitHub is 64% male worldwide and 64% white in the U.S. That
> said, the company has improved since the end of 2014, when it was 79% male
> and 21% female worldwide.

I wonder what their male/female split is in daily active users.

~~~
WillAbides
93% male / 4% female / 3% undisclosed.

source: [https://medium.com/@tenaciouscb/github-com-demographics-a-
st...](https://medium.com/@tenaciouscb/github-com-demographics-a-story-of-
researching-uncovering-blind-spots-21d7f1f90204)

------
brandoncordell
Weird, it seems like some of their team has been decidedly anti-white.

[http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-
just-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-just-as-bad-
as-the-rest-of-silicon-valleys/)

Edit: Removed Breitbart link

~~~
_toastie
really? breitbart.com?

~~~
brandoncordell
Sorry, I grabbed the first link. Are they a poor source (honestly don't know)?

I also found [http://www.techinsider.io/github-the-full-inside-
story-2016-...](http://www.techinsider.io/github-the-full-inside-story-2016-2)
and [http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-
just-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-just-as-bad-
as-the-rest-of-silicon-valleys/)

The tweets and images came from Githubbers themselves.

~~~
zyxley
> Are they a poor source (honestly don't know)?

Extremely. Breitbart regularly publicizes stories that are misleading at best
or just flat out wrong:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News_Network#Notable...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News_Network#Notable_stories)

~~~
brandoncordell
Thanks. Wow, TIL!

I feel like an idiot now, but I've edited the original post with the
TechCrunch link.

------
vemv
It's like a law of nature... your organisation grows, its culture becomes
braindead.

There should be more Basecamps around. I don't know what their equality policy
is, but they sure have very little tolerance to bullshit - and don't mind
letting you know!

------
garfieldnate
My questions:

* Do you run the same diversity program in every country you have an office, so that, say, in Japan you try to hire Chinese and Brazilians?

* Do you actually give points to someone over other candidates for filling a minority slot, or do you just focus your recruiting towards the target groups?

* If you hire remote workers from anywhere in the world, do you even bother with diversity for them, since the definition of diversity would have to depend on their country?

* Do you look for diversity in communication styles, personalities, philosophies, etc. (read Quiet), or do you only look for diversity in the trends you mentioned (sex, "race", etc.)?

* What about fighting ageism?

* Will you please write a post giving basic information on the advantages/goals you hope to achieve through American-style diversity? As it is I think everyone will just argue about what your agenda is.

------
throwaway934825
The last time this topic came up was around the same time that that open
letter of from maintainers of GitHub repositories was making its rounds.

If I recall correctly, GitHub responded to that open letter by implementing
the lowest hanging fruit - bug templates and +1s - and then went radio silent.
Have there been meaningful product updates since?

Now we know what happened: they minimally addressed the PR needs of their
business, and then went back to doing nothing interesting to advance their
products.

I was on the fence before, but now I'm certain: GitLab is the superior
experience.

------
kkirsche
Diversity for the sake of diversity. So dumb. Promote for qualifications not
junk like this

------
davidcelis
Looks like the link to the actual data[1] was posted and subsequently removed,
making it unable to be submitted. Why?

[1]: [https://diversity.github.com](https://diversity.github.com)

------
Keats
How about adding other parts of the company like HR/Sales/Marketing/etc etc to
their data?

------
wozer
Previous discussion of GitHub's diversity culture:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067)

------
petsormeat
Anybody besides me impressed that they released data about employee age
ranges?

~~~
hokkos
I like how the graph is carefully crafted to make it like there is good age
distribution when it does NOT. There is twice a subdivision in ages 20-40 than
in ages 40+.

------
rubyfan
Explains why they haven't delivered a notable imporovement in the last year
and a half. They've been focusing on social justice instead of making a great
product that we all want to use.

------
exstudent2
As a Hispanic, I would never work at Github because I find this quest for
"diversity" to be extremely patronizing and objectifying. As a male, I'd never
work at Github because their policies are sexist.

------
nolepointer
Jesus Christ, I never want to work on the Left Coast.

------
balls187
It chaffes me when I see companies talk about diversity and inclusion (ignore
that the blog post is written by a young white guy).

You want to use data to make Github more diverse--great. Just shut up about it
and make it happen. Posting your diversity data like this, like it's some
badge of honor, is ridiculous.

Someone wants to know how diverse you are? Great, show them the data, and tell
them you're working on it.

Just please stop it with the public discourse.

You know what I _don 't_ see--companies like MSFT, and Google, and Facebook,
and Github who talk about their inclusion showing up to the poorer parts of my
neighborhood trying to address diversity issues there.

------
ghrifter
I am now a #GitLabMissile

~~~
nolepointer
I moved all my code over to BitBucket when this nonsense started.

------
Futurebot
The goal of hiring diversity is to reach Proportional Representation; you want
your workforce to resemble the demographics of the nation as a whole. If you
accept that anyone, regardless of their genetic heritage, gender identity,
sexual identity, skin color, etc. can do the job just as well as anyone else
can, then you should be supportive of, or at least not oppose, efforts like
these. If you don't think so (with regards to genetic heritage especially),
there's really no discussion to be had, as that's a likely irreconcilable
conflicting understanding of the science, especially at the individual level
(intra-haplogroup potential ability swamps any supposed inter-haplogroup
potential ability) or just plain, old-fashioned prejudice.

What are the benefits to PR? Two major ones:

\- Countering structural biases in society. There has not historically been
anything like a level playing field with regards to inherent attributes in
this country. Many of those attributes cause people to get discriminated
against, and this gets perpetuated across time. It's a "market" solution to a
societal problem, which means that it can't magically counter much larger
structural forces all by itself, but it can help.

\- Producing better results. Many studies claim that diverse teams operate
better, and potentially produce superior products and services. A major part
of the reason is the introduction of diversity in _perspectives_ , which can
allow a company to understand different potential markets better and can make
a company potentially more welcoming, which can improve hiring (i.e., a great
candidate who might feel out of place in an environment with non-diverse
demographics might decide to join if the demographics were more diverse. This
can become a virtuous cycle.) Whether this is true or not, or how much it's
true, is not that relevant. It certainly can't _hurt_.

There are valid criticisms of hiring diversity _methods_ , but I'm not seeing
many of them in the comments here:

\- Can PR be achieved? Getting PR at a place with 10 employees is going to be
very tough, so coming down on companies this small who can't do so should not
be done, IMO. 100? Easier. 1000. Much easier. The larger the organization is,
the more possible it becomes. So no, it's not always possible, and some
perhaps well-intentioned activists beat up on companies they shouldn't, but
that does not mean it should not be a goal that is pursued as a general
principle for hiring.

\- Do the people who get hired necessarily represent who those hiring them
_think_ they represent? Not always, no. If you're hiring a perfect rainbow
coalition of identities, but all of them come from wealthy backgrounds or
elite schools, for example, you may be getting less diversity than you think.
It's not tokenism, but it's definitely not PR. Many Left criticisms of our
current version elite liberal meritocratic culture center around this. The
antidote is to include things like educational background, economic
class/upbringing circumstances, etc. when considering a candidate vis a vis
diverse hiring; that's what intersectionality is all about. You do not
consider advantaging/disadvantaging attributes in isolation. Many companies
have do a very poor job of the latter, but in this case, GH has explicitly
said they are more open to non-traditionally educated candidates.

PR and hiring diversity is not going to fix all society's problems; for that,
we need major reforms like free higher ed, federal, rather than local, funding
of K-12 education, GBI, UHC, ending the drug war and a dozen other things. Can
it help, especially by helping push American _culture_ towards greater
acceptance of diversity and pluralism? Yes, so companies should strive for it.

~~~
this2shallpaas
>The goal of hiring diversity is to reach Proportional Representation; you
want your workforce to resemble the demographics of the nation as a whole.

What about when that is reached, or is nearly reached? What's the medium term
end goal? Long term end goal? I think here is where people disagree even more
than the means to get there.

>Whether this is true or not, or how much it's true, is not that relevant. It
certainly can't hurt.

It can lead to distrust, skepticism, disrespect, worse communication. All
sorts of negative things.

If we include ideology in the general diversity conversation, and class,
rather than primarily gender and race, I'd respect the intention much more.

------
yuhong
I have been thinking of the problems anti-discrimination laws. Not all kinds
of discrimination leave evidence. I have a feeling that they should be
restricted to certain job categories. Similarly, sexual harassment leave
evidence more often, but this don't mean they are worth the costs. I have been
thinking of this Ask HN for example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857)

------
ps4fanboy
I dont want to live or work in a society where employees at every company
reflect the demographics of that society, where everyone gets equal pay, feels
less and less like diversity and more and more about conformity. Its the road
to socialism, if all of this diversity was valuable the market will reward
companies accordingly.

~~~
ASpring
And it does. More diverse companies perform better financially.

[https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactge...](https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/impactgenderdiversitytechbusinessperformance_print.pdf)

~~~
ps4fanboy
After reading the sources I would say there is evidence that employees in the
survey they conducted self reported better financial performance from the
following options:

"how would you compare your organization’s performance over the past two years
in terms of market share? .|.|. Would you say that it was (1) much worse, (2)
somewhat worse, (3) about the same, (4) somewhat better, or (5) much better?”

Surely we can be more factual than this?

~~~
ASpring
You are truly grasping at straws. There are 15 citations there, many of which
show direct data of market cap and share price performance for these companies
and you hunt down a single survey you have an issue with. Please.

~~~
ps4fanboy
I dont have time to review all 15 citations, it was the first one I picked
based on the claim made in your document. It was also the most closely related
claim that you linked to the document in question:

>"An investigation of 500 U.S. businesses found that companies with more race
and gender diverse teams had higher sales revenue, more customers, greater
market share, and greater profits than did less diverse companies.4"

You are being very uncharitable to suggest I am "grasping at straws" by
reviewing the very document you are using as evidence.

Lets review page 3, each paragraph is a claim.

1\. executive boards

2\. executive boards

3\. top management level

4\. top management teams

5\. greater profit and market share

6\. student study make believe

Now you can see why I Chose 5 to investigate as 1-4,6 are pretty much
unrelated to what we are talking about which is diversity of the work force,
not high level management.

