
White men to women and minorities in tech: We just DGAF - richmarr
https://pando.com/2017/02/14/white-men-women-and-minorities-tech-we-just-dgaf/ceba19a45685d33b6f9cb161593d0fc5a9353144/
======
_s
We're hiring devs, designers, PM's, digital producers etc. working with
recruitment companies, advertising in various places - meet ups, job boards
etc etc.

Recieved hundreds of CV's, run dozens of interviews.

I can count on one hand the number of women that sent their CV through, and we
interviewed two, hiring one.

This isn't a tech thing - this goes back to children growing up in an
environment where gender should make no difference to their desire or interest
in STEM subjects, which should be encouraged regardless.

Now the conundrum:

Given two candidates (m/f) of equal footing (talent, skill, comms etc) - would
you offer work to the female or male?

Given a stronger male candidate over a female candidate - should I offer the
job to the female instead just because she's a she?

~~~
richmarr
A few points to make here:

> _I can count on one hand the number of women that sent their CV through, and
> we interviewed two, hiring one._

Studies show that:

(a) You can create a biased process inadvertently before the CV stage based on
the language you use and approach to sourcing.

(b) CVs themselves are also a biasing influence.

(c) Interviews are extremely biasing unless done in a very structured way, and
even then they're not great.

So it's very likely that you're (without meaning to) introducing additional
bias on top of the constraints on the talent pool. This isn't finger-pointing,
it's very hard to run a bias-free process. Even the Googles of the world fail
at this.

> _...an environment where gender should make no difference to their desire or
> interest in STEM subjects_

Are you saying that the environment _is_ neutral, or that it _should_ be
neutral? First would be wrong, second would be correct.

> _Given two candidates..._

Your hypotheticals are premised on the idea that your hiring process and
judgement are objective, and that you need to positively discriminate in order
to redress the balance... that's simply not a view supported by the literature
on this.

~~~
_s
Should be neutral of course; and I concur with all of your points. We've gone
back and had our female staff give us plenty of input in our outreach / hiring
/ on-boarding practices, but it's certainly something we need to keep working
at; I think a bit of herd mentality also kicks in when you're already on the
inside and can no longer see things from an outsiders perspective.

------
dbg31415
Is there some benefit to giving a fuck?

I think we're at the point where we respect people enough to just say, "Yup, I
don't care what sort of junk my boss has, or what color it is, or what other
kinds of junk s/he likes to bump it with."

The intent of the article is to say we should have some sort of mandated
demographics among leadership or in the board room?

Because trying to pick a c-team to match up with census data seems like it
would mean not picking a c-team based on merit.

The color and kind and intent of junk should probably just not be something
that we give a fuck about.

~~~
richmarr
> _Is there some benefit to giving a fuck?_

Yes. Studies show diverse teams perform better... (and incidentally they also
show that people who believe themselves to be unbiased are actually more
likely to make biased decisions).

~~~
dbg31415
Going to call BS on this. "Studies show..." \-- without a citation seems like
an opinion.

Lab experiments using mock juries is all I'm finding. Doesn't quite seem
relevant to technology teams.

Most teams are distribute these days... so literally, other than Google
Hangouts and conference calls, I don't get any daily indicators about my
team's composition.

I don't think it would matter if we did, but I don't see any studies that
pertain to tech about diversity improving productivity.

~~~
richmarr
Ellison/Mullin (2014) used 8 years of data from professional services firms in
60 locations. Is that close enough to tech?

You assert that distributed teams change the relationship between diversity
and productivity, but I assume you're doing that without evidence, right?
What's that opinion based on?

------
lebanon_tn
From the cited survey:

"Less than 5% of investors surveyed by LinkedIn rated diversity as their 'top
concern' as compared to macroeconomic conditions, raising capital, hitting
revenue targets, or hiring the right people. More than half of investors
ranked founder commitment to a diverse team as the least of their concerns
when considering to invest."

I'd be surprised if even an investment firm made entirely of "women and
minorities in tech" had drastically different priorities than this 5%.

Diversity for diversity's sake is not a real solution.

~~~
richmarr
> _Diversity for diversity 's sake is not a real solution._

As I've commented above but will summarise here, there are two main points to
make in reply to this position

(i) You're assuming the status quo is based on merit, which studies
unambiguously show isn't the case

(ii) Studies also show that diverse teams perform better. So this is also
about competitive advantage.

~~~
gspetr
Studies also show that women are paid less than men for similar work.

Where are all the tech companies created by women, with mostly women as
employees capitalizing on the market inefficiency giving them competitive
advantage?

~~~
richmarr
> Studies also show that women are paid less than men for similar work.

Yes they do, but don't get hung up on women. Studies also show a beneficial
effect from racial diversity.

As for your other question, is your point that studies are sometimes wrong, or
that women are worth less than men, or that there's a gap in the market?

~~~
gspetr
My point is the latter.

~~~
richmarr
Agree with you.

A couple of examples of change in that area;

Companies taking advantage by mothers who want to the workforce once their
kids are in school by offering flexible working.

Companies dropping their long-standing policies of hiring from specific
schools or attainment levels. These policies are historically quite common in
professional services firms, but heavily reduce the available talent pool (and
thus the quality of hires, because schools and attainment levels are not
strongly predictive of productivity).

~~~
gspetr
When we bring parenthood into the picture I think this is confounding the
results that the studies should account for, but in too many cases, they do
not.

Then the mainstream media and people championing social justice causes often
take these results the wrong way (even if they do so for noble reasons) and
run with it too far.

I think we should compare never married men to never married women, otherwise
I believe it to be disingenuous to make that wage gap argument based on
gender.

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell argues that economic
differences between working men and women are not generally due to employer
discrimination, as is widely alleged:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EK6Y1X_xa4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EK6Y1X_xa4)

~~~
richmarr
>... confounding the results that the studies should account for...

You're absolutely right that studies should make sure to control for
potentially important variables. I don't know which studies you referring to.
Not a topic I've looked at.

That said, criticising a second group of studies can't reasonably cast shade
over the first group, if that was your implication.

