
Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts - margotcodes
https://medium.com/@margotcodes/tech-companies-make-remote-work-part-of-your-diversity-and-inclusion-efforts-b100ab74bf97
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twblalock
Companies have to be serious about a culture of remote work for this to
happen. That means including the remote workers in all of the meetings, code
reviews, etc. It means making a conscious effort to include the remote
employees even when doing so is a pain for the onsite employees. Otherwise the
remote employees become second-class citizens and miss out on a lot of what is
going on.

For that reason, I think remote-only companies are probably easier to run than
companies with a mix of remote and onsite workers -- at remote-only companies,
it's not possible to intentionally or accidentally exclude the remote workers
from things they ought to be involved in.

Also for that reason, adding a culture of remote work to the kind of company
where any onsite employees can grab a room and start whiteboarding stuff is
going to be very difficult.

~~~
ravenstine
Not to say anyone here is wrong, but I'll weigh in with my experience, which
is success with a team that was a mix of remote and on-site. Maybe it was just
a unicorn, but it worked quite well. The downside to that, though, is the
remote workers have to be prepared to feel a certain amount of disconnection
from the rest of the team who are probably having lunches together and group
activities that leave out those who aren't physically present. Otherwise, I
think it ultimately comes down to how the team and the leaders of the
organization view the remote employees – not as synonymous with freelance
"techies" working in their underwear, but playing on the same field as
everyone else and having as much value to bring despite not having their butt
placed in a specific chair.

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CabSauce
I honestly think remote work is pretty detrimental to innovation and progress.
Many of the best projects that I've worked on started as hallway
conversations.

Obviously, this isn't true for everyone and all situations... It's just like,
my opinion... man.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
Someone needs to tell all of those open source project things about this.
They've been doing it wrong the whole time!

~~~
jasode
Open source development as "obvious" proof of remote work superiority is often
brought up but proponents don't realize they aren't the same.

E.g. open source project like Linux kernel where _volunteers_ choose what they
want to work on, with little or zero effects on careers for missing deadlines
has different dynamics than businesses.

If we want to convince businesses to adopt remote work, the Linux kernel is
not a relevant example. Businesses have:

1) finite budget

2) deadlines

3) pressure to innovate for marketplace acceptance or go bankrupt

We need a better explanation for why business-related success of Google
Pagerank/Bigtable, Apple iPhone, Facebook, etc comes more from teams in the
office rather than remote workers on Skype. The Linux project -- even though
it is "successful" \-- is not that explanation.

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dleslie
Remote work is a boon for anyone with kids. You get to cut the commute out of
your day, and so long as day care is nearby, recoup that time with your
family.

But AFAICT, the tech industry is generally hostile to the notion of having
children, or aging past thirty-five.

~~~
roguecoder
That has not been my experience at all in comparison to other fields I've been
in. My managers especially have often left early to pick up kids, or take a
day to care for sick children. People talk about their children vomiting the
night before to excuse their sleep deprivation. Every programming job I've had
comes with maternity and paternity leave. Two-income households are far more
common than stay-at-home parents, and the pay is sufficient people can afford
childcare.

It is at least much less hostile than most of the rest of America.

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klenwell
A big part of the rational and moral justification for diversity initiatives
and affirmative action programs, as I understand them, is as a means to help
correct the history of institutional racism and discrimination in this
country.

So while the idea that meeting and working "with folks from all over the
world—Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, South Africa, the Philippines,
Mexico, and others" is appealing, for me it sidesteps the major issues
diversity efforts should be addressing. And as an outsourcing mechanism, it
can serve as a means of wage suppression, which has also exacerbated social
divisions in this country.

~~~
forinti
I think more emphasis should be given on the benefit that diversity brings to
the organization. A university or a company with lots of young white middle-
class people will miss a lot of ideias that people from other backgrounds
might bring.

~~~
devmunchies
This is dangerous thinking. Its skin-deep diversity. This makes it ok to look
at a person and assume they have a typical middle class upbringing, but you
don't know anything about that person. They could have grew up doing hard
labor on an almond farm in central California and then lived a few years in
haiti before going to college.

Diversity _does_ increase innovation, but its a diversity of experience and a
diversity of thought and not based on skin color and gender.

~~~
roguecoder
You can't have a representative group without diversity of gender and race.
They may not be sufficient, but they are necessary precursors.

Additionally, of course, a system that even implicitly excludes people on the
basis of gender or race is inherently unjust, whereas experience can
reasonably be a requirement for a particular position when it results in
necessary skills.

~~~
jasode
_> You can't have a representative group without diversity of gender and race.
_

I think devmunchies' point is that if you have a finite set of job
positions... e.g. 3 jobs, you might have the following situations:

Group 1:

    
    
      1) white man (Democrat Stanford grad)
      2) white woman (Democrat Stanford grad)
      3) black man (Democrat Stanford grad)
    

Group 2:

    
    
      1) white man (Democrat Stanford grad)
      3) white man (Libertarian Kansas kid self-taught)
      2) white man (South Africa bootcamp grad)
    

Depending on what's important, Group 2 would be seen as "more diverse and
representative" even though the skin color is all the same. In that case,
diversity of _thought_ is valued more than diversity of skin color.

------
whipoodle
From what I can tell, most diversity efforts are more like a fig leaf. They
don't want to change how the company works so it can be more diverse, they
want to fit more women and minorities into how things work now. It's all about
status quo, and maybe having an "event" or hosting a "girls who code" type
class in the office space, that sort of thing. And don't get me wrong, doing
those kind of things is perfectly noble and good, nothing wrong with it. But
ultimately this only seems like an issue the industry wants to fix if it
doesn't have to really do much of anything.

------
maxxxxx
Ain't not gonna happen. From what I can tell from articles and company
brochures diversity means young, good-looking people in an open office all
staring at the same screen.

There will be no diversity regarding introverts, shy, disabled, fat, ugly or
other types of people.

~~~
thedevil
This made me wonder: What does it take to become a protected/victim group?

Ugly and socially-unskilled people are not protected/victim groups even though
their lives are harder.

My current hypothesis is that the main reason that a group gets that status is
that they have an emotionally compelling victim-story (although I think
there's some randomness due to political movements).

Under this hypothesis, the struggles of the ugly and socially-unskilled may be
less emotionally compelling because they are less likable and so we have less
empathy for them.

Disclaimer: All of this is just descriptive speculation. I don't very well
understand the relative struggles of different groups and don't endorse poor
treatment of anyone. And I'd love for anyone to show flaws in my hypothesis or
present a better one.

~~~
notahacker
Conventionally ugly and socially-unskilled people might get rough treatment
from their peers, but generally haven't been subject to special laws against
them, pogroms or even the relatively mild insinuation they should be avoided
as a group because of their "immorality" or "agenda".

Also, appearance and social skills are gradients which don't fit neatly into
groups, and many people who might widely be considered to sit at the
ugly/unskilled end of the spectrum have absolutely no desire to identify as
such.

~~~
BearGoesChirp
Is it that society hasn't discriminated against them, or that we haven't been
made aware of such discrimination. Many extremely racist laws that directly
discriminated against minorities have fallen out of common knowledge and we
are only aware of it because the common understanding of past injustice (and a
few specific stories) are in the collective knowledge.

So perhaps such discrimination has existed, but too few have worked to add it
to the common knowledge of our society. For example, maybe ugly people get
significantly lower pay and longer prison sentences (all else being equal),
but no one has spent the time researching such data? Should laws against
sexual harassment end up being considered, to some extent, laws against the
unattractive and socially awkward since the same interaction may or may not be
considered harassment? Maybe treatment of socially awkward children (which can
get very brutal and lead to suicide) hasn't been considered an issue of a
group because no one has yet made the emotional argument it should be
discrimination of a group.

>and many people who might widely be considered to sit at the ugly/unskilled
end of the spectrum have absolutely no desire to identify as such.

There is a lot of history of who was considered black and who wasn't that
might be of note.

~~~
notahacker
Nobody is pretending that ugly and socially awkward people have never been
discriminated against by individuals and peer groups; all kinds of people are
cruelly and unusually treated on a large variety of arbitrary and non-
arbitrary criteria on a daily basis, and many more are marginalised.

But social awkwardness isn't something which was only decriminalised 14 years
ago in the US and still illegal in 72 countries. Influential religious leaders
do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly people to subordinate themselves to
their partners. Beautiful, socially adept people don't hold tiki-torch-lit
rallies to venerate people that lead the fight to keep ugly or socially
awkward people as _property_.

Maybe nobody influential is making the emotional argument that kids bullied
for their individual awkwardnesses should be protected as a group because
nobody influential is making the emotional argument _for_ discriminating
against socially awkward children as a group...

Protected discrimination classes haven't emerged as a consequence of extensive
research to find hints of systematic discrimination, they've arisen as a
response to obvious, organised and usually very open attempts to encourage and
enforce systematic discrimination. If you're inclined to make the mistake of
assuming that discrimination against protected classes is historic or the
result of statistical fishing expeditions, it's probably because - whatever
other mistreatment or misfortunes you might have suffered in your life -
you're not in a group that is subject to organised and systematic attempts to
suppress it.

~~~
BearGoesChirp
> because nobody influential is making the emotional argument for
> discriminating against socially awkward children as a group

Why is the metric about who is making the argument, instead of what is
actually happening?

Also, many influential people make arguments such as 'kids being kids' that
open tolerate bullying. Especially people directly involved in the school
system that should be protecting these kids. There is no one in the national
spotlight for it because it isn't outrageous enough for our society to put it
in the national spotlight.

>Influential religious leaders do not deliver sermons on the duty of ugly
people to subordinate themselves to their partners.

Writers at major news organizations, who have audiences that would make most
pastors jealous, have written such things. Especially if we talk about people
who openly support discrimination against short men. And the attack on men's
sexuality is pretty brutal as well, yet openly tolerated (just look at how
often virgin is equated to someones who hates women and wants to enslave/kill
them).

> they've arisen as a response to obvious, organised and usually very open
> attempts to encourage and enforce systematic discrimination

And there are still groups who have experienced such who haven't yet been made
into a protected class. For an example I think we can both agree on, sexual
orientation hasn't yet been made (federal level in the US at least) into a
protected class.

Also, this doesn't explain why the majorities are also protected. Race is a
protected class, not just being a minority. (Age is a weird one where being
old is protected but being young isn't, despite massive historic
discrimination against young people, namely the forcing of young men to die in
wars on behalf of old people.)

