
Slack’s top engineer suggests that Google do “blind assessments” for hiring - hvo
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/12/slacks-top-engineer-suggests-that-google-do-blind-assessments-for-hiring/
======
Eridrus
I went and found Slack's diversity report and they have more white people than
anyone else mentioned in the article: [https://slackhq.com/inclusion-and-
diversity-at-slack-e42f938...](https://slackhq.com/inclusion-and-diversity-at-
slack-e42f93845732#.caxjzqld1) And even Google has more Women in engineering.

I'm not sure if they're really in a position to be lecturing everyone,
especially considering they're burning money and running at a much smaller
scale.

Interestingly, in the Ars comments someone made a good point about how these
companies draw from an international pool of candidates, so maybe it's not
correct to compare their entire working populations to US ethnic demographics.
I don't know if these companies have this info, but it would be super
interesting to get these statistics for employees who were born in the US or
emigrated there as children.

Though the numbers on women would remain lackluster.

All of this makes me much more sympathetic to Facebook's stance on this, that
this is a pipeline problem. Only 18% of CS degrees are going to Women:
[https://ngcproject.org/statistics](https://ngcproject.org/statistics) Until
we fix that, these companies will be fighting over the same pool of talent.

------
euyyn
> “Google has such great facilities—Twitter has two or three cafes and so no
> one goes to spend money in mid-Market,” he said, referring to a section of
> downtown San Francisco where Twitter is based.

> Similarly, many large Silicon Valley companies have in-house catering,
> daycare, and other amenities that make offices little self-contained
> communities that hardly require interaction with surrounding neighborhoods.

> “Do we need to open up an office and have six cafes?"

Obviously easier to do in the middle of San Francisco, than in zoning-
nightmare Mountain View: Imagine 10k+ people trying to have lunch in the one
and only pub around.

------
automatwon
_They created this culture where people came from certain schools and certain
backgrounds. That is a very, very hard culture to change._

What kind of 'background'? Economic? Social? Education? They're inter-related,
yes, but for actionable initiatives to take place, the lack of diversity along
these dimensions have to be isolated, acknowledged, and prioritized.
Otherwise, it's just recasting the problem and expecting companies to spit out
answers. If Engineering schools became more diverse, I have no doubt there
will be more diversity of engineers in the workforce, too. Without
establishing diversity in these earlier funnels, such that people's background
are more diverse, companies will continue to have to "overcompensate" for
diversity, as to avoid criticism.

In the case of these particular companies having a lack of diversity, I don't
think it's inherently a 'culture' that has been formed, but more so about the
network. Network and compound effects makes it harder for these companies to
course-correct. A person's set of friend is not a random sample. Potentially,
people are more likely to form friendships with people from their own race /
culture. This is not to say they are discriminating or racist. An H1B worker
who went to school in Asia will likely have a greater percentage of Asian
friends, and by transitivity refer more Asian people. Again, if the earlier
stages in the funnel, such as education, more diverse, maybe people will have
a more diverse set of friends, in the aggregate, and refer a more diverse set
of friends to their employer, in the aggregate.

